This highfiber, lowsodium recipe was made similar to my GardenCuizine New Year's recipe post last year. This year I changed the greens from spinach to kale and added one jar of flavorful Just Peachy Salsa - a local salsa blend from The Food Bank of South Jersey.
Follow the recipe here with the following substitutions:
Use black-eyed cowpeas (Fagiolo dell'occhio) from your own garden; or, if you only were able to harvest a small baggie full like us - use store-bought, plus whatever you can spare of your own.I added1/4 cup extra cowpeas from our garden for good luck!
Use Kale greens instead of spinach: rinse kale, pick off stems, break leaves into bite size pieces. Follow recipe.
Stir in one, 16-ounce jar Just Peachy Salsa (or1-2 cups chopped tomatoes)
Taste and adjust seasonings as desired. Simmer on low heat partially covered until ready to serve.
Celebrate the New Year with this Nigerian good luck meal featuring black-eyed peas and plantains. We grew black-eyed peas last year for the first time and found them fun and easy-to-grow. I saved some dried to use for a special recipe to ring in the New Year. Last year we made Hoppin' John.
This recipe is my version of Ewa Dodo. Ever since I learned how to cook beans from macrobiotic cooks back when I had my health food restaurant, to this day, I still add a small piece of dried kombu seaweed to the bean pot. I also add a splash of vinegar to bean dishes when they are cooking.
For flavor, adding garden herbs and hot pepper enhances the recipe without adding extra salt. I also added a few sweet peppers because we had a bountiful fall harvest and have a freezer full! Stews are like soups - you can be creative and use up ingredients that you may have available.
Serves 4
Ingredients fish or shrimp (can be salmon, tilapia or we used grilled Chilean Sea Bass) 2 ripe Plantains Vegetable oil enough for frying 1 1/2 cups dried black-eyed peas small piece dried kombu seaweed
1 cup chopped onion 1-2 small sweet peppers, chopped dried hot pepper, minced (however much you want to add) 2 teaspoons minced garlic 1/8 teaspoon minced ginger
2-3 Tablespoons chopped fresh parsley 1/8 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon dried thyme 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar Putting it all together Decide how you want to cook the fish: in the stew or cook it and then add it to the stew. Traditional Nigerian stew cooks the fish directly in the stock pot. We used sea bass and grilled it before adding it to this New Year's dinner.
In a stock pot, rinse and soak the black-eyed peas for 2 hours. Drain and refill with fresh water add a small piece of dried kombu seaweed. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer, partially cover and cook until tender. Drain (to stop cooking), saving cooking liquid and set aside.
Fry the Plantains Peel ripe plantains (ripe plantains have black sections all over skin), slice on bias (diagonal), and fry plantains in veggie oil until golden. Place on paper towels to cool and blot off excess oil, set aside. In stock pot, heat olive oil; saute onion and peppers; stir in garlic and ginger. Add seasonings and tomatoes, stir. Add beans and saved bean cooking liquid - add as much as desired. You may or may not use all of it, depending on how much water you cooked your beans in. Use your judgement. Stir in vinegar, fish and parsley; cover and simmer to blend flavors.
Note: this was our first time frying plantains, we fried yellow plantains and found them to taste starchy and dry so we added them in with the stew rather than serving as a side. We learned that you should wait until the plantains get some blackening on the skin before peeling and frying.
Welcome to GardenCuizine by Diana P. Wind, MS, RDN
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Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (click image) is published every 5 years since 1980 by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA). The new guidelines are in the works now and will be released at the end of 2025. Dietary Guidelines provide scienced-based, culturally sensitive, food and nutrition guidelines for people (age 2 and older). Good dietary habits promote health and reduce the risk for major chronic diseases. The guidelines serve as the basis for Federal food and nutrition education programs. Healthcare professionals like myself utilize the recommendations in practice.
Help Feral and Stray Cats
Lucky Lucy rescued from Bridgeton, NJ
Help Feral and Stray Cats
RIP Jazzy boy; Sept. 14, 2022. This once terrified wall climber wasn't feral at all. He just ended up living outside for years patiently waiting to be rescued. Free roaming tomcats can get FIV. Jazzpurr had FIV; he went fully blind in 2021. So glad we rescued this boy. He lived his best life with us.
Eat more Plant Foods!
Plant Sterols look similar to Cholesterol and block Cholesterol from being absorbed
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As of January 2012, The American Dietetic Association (ADA), the world's largest organization of food and nutrition professionals was officially renamed the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (A.N.D.). A.N.D. is committed to improving the nation’s health and advancing the profession of dietetics through research, education and advocacy.
Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid) ~ Dietary sources of vitamin C include fruits and vegetables: particularly Acerola (West Indian Cherry), Rose Hips, Lychee, Guavas, Currants, Red Peppers, Ziziphus Jujuba (Korean date), Persimmons, Oranges, and Papayas
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Most eating disorders occur during puberty and the late teen/early adult years, however, symptoms can begin as young as kindergarten
More than one in three normal dieter’s progress to pathological dieting
