Avoid Destroying the Color, Texture and Nutrients in Vegetables!

Nutrients in vegetables usually wind up in the green colored water you've just cooked them in. Have you ever noticed that if you cook carrots in water, you've got orange colored liquid and carrots that taste like water? Where do you think the nutrients go?

If you want to avoid destroying the color, texture, and nutrients in your vegetables, there are some simple adjustments you can make in your cooking. By controlling the heat and understanding the effect of acids and bases in cooking, you can make vegetables even children will eat!

Keep in mind that there's a BIG difference between boil, simmer, and poach. Most people make the mistake of cooking everything at a violent, rapid boil. You shouldn't use the highest amount of MOIST heat by boiling any more than you'd put everything in your oven at 500F to cook in a DRY method. You control the heat and get better results.

You can destroy the nutrients in vegetables by treating them too rough. Boil is 212F/100C, and has large, violent bubbles in the liquid. Items are bounced around and cooked at the highest MOIST temperature you can achieve. Nothing in the kitchen should be boiled.

Simmer is characterized by small bubbles in your cooking liquid, usually around the edges of the pan. Items in a proper simmer are cooked at 185F/85C to 200F/93C and move about softly in the environment. This is a much gentler way to cook, and most things in the kitchen should be simmered.

Poaching temperatures are even lower, from 165F/74C to 185F/85C and have no bubbles visible. The poaching liquid has a slight convection to it. Large items don't move, smaller bits slowly float across the liquid in a leisurely fashion.

The first thing you can do to retain nutrients in vegetables is to cook them as softly as possible in a moist environment. This means poaching them, not subjecting them to a violent boil.

Acids and bases also act upon the color, texture, and nutritional value of vegetables during cooking. I've created a small science experiment to demonstrate this fact.

With three pots of water at a soft simmer, I'll add vinegar (an acid) to one. The second pot gets baking soda (a base), and the third is left alone as a control baseline.

Green vegetables poached in acid will become very drab and turn an olive or army green. However, green vegetables poached in baking soda will become a vibrant, bright green.

Not only will the drab green bean poached in acid have its color dulled, but it is now very flexible. It can be bent without breaking. The green item poached in baking soda has a crisp "crack" to it when broken.

Acids will dull the color and texture of green vegetables.

However, the direct opposite is true of most other colored vegetables. Carrots poached in vinegar will retain their color and texture; while the same item poached in a base liquid turns very mushy. The same is true of white vegetables, like onions and potatoes.

So, what does this mean to the household cook? It explains why potatoes cooked for Potato Salad should be cooked in an acidic liquid. It will keep them white and keep you from having mashed potato salad. They'll hold their shape.

Have you ever cooked green beans and tomatoes together? Or, perhaps okra, turnip greens, or spinach cooked with tomatoes? Did you notice that the green item looks limp and drab? You now know the underlying science behind it. Acids destroy the color and texture of green vegetables.

When I'm finished with this experiment, I notice one last thing. The poaching liquid that I added vinegar to is clear. It still looks like water. However, the baking soda bath is a slight green/orange color.

Since acids firm textures of vegetables, they also prevent the leaching of nutrients and color into the cooking liquid.

You can retain the color, texture, and nutrients in vegetables by being mindful of your cooking process. Don't subject your delicate ingredients to a high-heat violent boil. Vegetables should be poached or steamed. And, if you want to keep them looking bright and tasting crisp, use a bit of vinegar during cooking on all colors but green. For them, use a touch of baking soda.

Where Can I Go Skating?

When you receive or purchase a set of skates, one of the first decisions you need to make is finding a place to use them. Now, that decision might have already been made if you bought a skate with wheels that can only be used indoors or outdoors. If you did that, you can always buy another set of wheels and change them when you want to be either outside or inside. Remember that soft wheels 89A and lower can be used outdoors. 90A and higher should only be used indoors. So let's look at different possible places to stake

The Rink
The most obvious place to skate is a skating rink. They can be found in just about every city in the United States and even in small towns as well. Search the internet and you will see what is available in your community. If you live in a city, you probably have many to pick from. If you decide on a rink, you will have to pay a fee to skate. If you have your own pair of skates, your costs will be minimal. Check with the rink before you go, because the rink is not always open to the public. Ask when they have public skating. Usually the evenings and weekends are public skating times.

Parks
If you are skating in a park, you probably will be able of find a trail. But before you venture onto the trail, make sure that they allow roller or inline skaters on the trail. Also, find out if the trail is paved all the way. You do not want to try skating on gravel or dirt!

Biking Trails
More and more cities are providing biking trails. Check to see what is available in your city. If you can find a biking trail, this probably would be the best place to skate because you will probably have no problems with traffic. Just watch out for people on bikes and joggers.

Parking Lots
On Sunday you probably would be able to find an empty parking lot and it could be a good place to get on your skates and have fun. But please make sure that you are allowed to do this on the property. If there are no trespassing signs, stay away even if it looks like a great place. Another caution would be cars. Since you are in a parking lot, watch for cars. Always skate in an area where you can see cars coming from a great distance. Finally, don't skate in a parking lot at night even if they have lights.

In conclusion, know your neighborhood and get on those skates. Every town and village will have a place where you can enjoy your sport. Have fun!

Behind Science and Technology

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Staring at this fourteen inch size screen in front of me, I was smiling sheepishly and at the same time unusually amused, it is not my first time, nor second or even going to be the last time I will use a video cam, but today's case is a different issue, maybe is it because of the picture quality it portrayed or the coverage it gave? I was goaded to dismantle the tool so as to see what it was composed of, which I did and to my amazement I saw only chips all connected to a panel and this increased my curiosity as I wondered more what could be responsible for the effective functioning of this device, capturing an image and displaying on a screen exactly as it is.

Sounds awkward? Actually I have really been having serious and diverted thought about this, right since beyond the scope of science and technology. In this our age of science and technology, one would see it as a state of ignorance and naivety to find that someone is still actually thinking towards this line of thought, doubting the existence of machines, functions of computers, cell phones, radio sets, TV sets, wireless devices like the Bluetooth and the WLAN which is commonly known as the Wireless Local Area Network, and also not forgetting to mention the widely used wireless society, The Internet. But in case you still want to castigate this write up I still ask that you actually complete the remaining part of this article and put it into thought.

So I am still staring at the chips in the camcorder, my thoughts wondered as I scrutinized every inch and component of the microchip one could easily observe the bewilderment visibly expressed on my face.

Now many thoughts were racing through my mind, how did this little component sum up to a device that can capture my image perfectly or let's say a little or less perfectly and transfer to a screen? I seem to be asking myself that question alone as I looked round me to realize no one was actually there to give me the answer. At first it looked absurd then when I had started to check if really I was seeing myself or just an image programmed on the cam. but alas what a thought, as I was really quick in condemning that line of thought as I recalled several times I have stood in front of the mirror, and moreover there were up to 6Billion people in the world and I imagined the producers of this device must have considered that and so I wondered how the hell were the chances that they could actually programmed the cam to display a variety of 6Billion different faces at different locations and tell the cam to know when and how to display any at the right time.

Now I stared at the screen itself, a 14inch built box, with an LCD display. How the hell was it able to show my picture? It stared at me, although can't recognize if I was actually looking at it or at the image in the screen. I started to recall that this device is in the category of device that are called computers and are used to perform many meta-physical (I call them meta-physical because I doubt their physical function) operations and command. Now my thoughts were starting to deviate, the Internet! Recall several occasions when I have sat in front of this system and browsed the internet, sending messages, pictures, multimedia files across to people miles away from me and funnily enough they receive I, chatting with different persons in chat rooms, and now am really beginning to doubt if they are all real. So how were these messages sent to the receivers, how were the operations performed? That is where my major ambiguity lay. Just by pressing a remote, you tell a television set to power on and off, change to a different channel. Just by pressing a remote you tell the engine of a car to start, just by tapping some keys on a keyboard you send messages across to many people living miles and very long distances in different geographical locations, Now my most confusing wonder arises, "are there no messenger who actually carry out this messages?" that I typed a "Z" button here and someone in USA sees it and replies me, I pick up my phone and dial a number and someone somewhere claiming to possess a device identified by that number picks up and we start talking, transferring voices over a little device, being aided by a card they call a micro sim card claiming it's a microchip, or a radio device?. Is it just like that? Well we were made to believe that this mechanism are the effect of the wireless communication, well this is just a term they use to define it, but I believe there is more to that than the just "Wireless Communication".

I wouldn't want to go further, this is just an ambiguity troubling the mind of a young chap who really want to find answers, I thought presenting this question to other individuals and people who possibly could have more experience and knowledge than I so maybe help could actually come, because I still believe that sometimes two heads could actually be better than one.

IMAGINE
Imagine an opposite world, a world where there may be a possibility of waking up one morning and find out that we have been dreaming. Dreaming that we really may not be existing, dreaming that the food we eat, the house we live in, our parents, siblings and loved ones weren't really there, just imagine.