Happy Holidays!

We wish everyone a safe, happy and healthy holiday season. In the last ten years Western Herbal has expanded their product line to include some of the most effective and progressive natural supplements available. Western Herbal has earned respect as a leader in the industry and achieved distinction with doctors, chiropractors, and natural practitioners through products designed to target specific health conditions. Stated differently, they carry products that actually work!

Did You Know?

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• If you burn your finger tip(s) touching a hot surface around the stove, immediately grab your ear lobe at the bottom of your ear.  You ear lobe will draw the heat away from your finger to minimize tissue damage and works quicker than running to the sink for a stream of cold water.  This was learned from a French Chef as was the next tip.
• If you serve Champagne during the holidays and have a partially used bottle, the carbonation (fizziness) can be preserved for several days by placing a silver spoon, stem faced down into the neck of the bottle.  Don’t ask us how it works, but it really does work!
• When making your gravy from scratch, instead of a rue (thickening base of cooked clarified butter and flour), consider using Kudzu Root otherwise known as Arrowroot.  This is often used in Asian cuisine, and easier to use.  Take your boiling stock and simply add a few tablespoons of Arrowroot to a small amount of water in a glass.  Pour the milky mixture into the sauce or gravy that needs to be thickened while stirring the pot, and Voila!  Instant thickening in a minute or so.  Also, Kudzu root (Arrowroot) has medicinal qualities.  Chinese medicine holds that Kudzu balances yin and yang. Furthermore, recent studies show Kudzu helps balance sugar levels in the body.  Best attribute for cooking purposes; less chance of lumpy gravy.
• Consider using a brown rice dish to compliment your menu for the holidays.  Also, adding half-cooked brown rice to your stuffing mixture can really “take it up a notch,” as the chef Emeril would say.

The Skinny on Brown Rice - By Thomas Miller

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According to Wikipedia, rice is the second most cultivated grain on the planet.  In many third world countries, rice is a cheap food source and often represents the only barrier between starvation and life.  However, white rice has significant drawbacks.  White rice lacks the nutrition and fiber found in the whole grain version.  Yet in the West, especially the U.S., rice is secondary to our staple grain wheat. Unfortunately, even wheat has drawbacks. Much of the wheat cultivated in the United States is GMO or with the designation of a Genetically Modified Organism. Worse yet, more people have an allergy to wheat than any other grain on the planet.  It is estimated some 40% of the general population has an allergy to wheat and most people will never know it.  Whole grain rice is not limited; brown rice, red rice, forbidden rice, wild rice, yellow rice, black rice, sticky rice, wild rice are just a few of the whole grain choices of rice.  Recent studies around the virtues of rice are summarized as follows:

 

• A recent study established a strong link between the consumption of white rice and diabetes.  There is almost no nutritional benefit to white rice and it has a glycemic value of 90, almost the same as white sugar.  Yet even in the U.S., many people of ethnic origins still consume white rice daily even though superior nutritional sources abound.
• Another independent study stated that one serving of brown rice weekly translates to 30% reduced colon cancer risk.  Imagine the benefits of eating whole grain rice daily!
• Additionally, another study suggests that the dark colored rice such as red rice and black rice are rich in antioxidants.

 

Egg Fried Rice Dish

 

These days, I generally recommend using a multigrain approach to cooking rice.  I use brown rice, red rice, forbidden rice, wild rice and black rice in combination in the rice steamer.  After rinsing the raw ingredients and adding water, I add butter, coconut oil, vegetable bullion, coconut milk and seasoning to bring to the table the best rice you have ever eaten.  Oftentimes, after cooking the rice in a steamer, I turn the mixture into an egg-fried rice dish by adding shredded cabbage to a whole grain rice mixture in a frying pan.  Next, before turning on the heat I stir a hole into the middle, put in a pat of butter, and drop in two or three cracked eggs.  Season the eggs.  Apply gentle heat and gradually stir in the eggs. Delicious!

 

Karachi Rice

 

Different versions of this recipe can be found on the internet yet I think this one is best.  This ingredient list is said to benefit every organ in the body.  Simple, and easy to prepare:

 

1 cup brown rice
1 cup of mung beans
1 tablespoon of Tumeric
1 tablespoon of Coriander
1 tablespoon of Cumin

 

Steam or cook till ready.  Eat this dish once a day for seven days for vitality and rejuvenating benefits.  Share your feedback with us by phone, e-mail, Facebook, contact us page, or testimonials. 

 

Sprouted Rice

 

Sprouted grains have become a huge and growing segment of the nutritional foods industry.  The premise is quite simple; apply water to a seed (grain), let it marinate a few hours (20 hours for rice), and the seed or grain has now become a living organism.  Science bears out that a nutritional analysis of almost any sprouted grain far surpasses that of an unsprouted seed.  I have seen graphs of nutritional spectrographs showing doubling of nutritional benefits for certain vitamins or compounds.  Sprouted rice is no different; the nutritional spectrum is enhanced through sprouting the grain.  Until recently I assumed that sprouting rice involved putting the grain in a jar, placing the jar in a dark environment to encourage germination, and I was wrong. Nothing so complicated. Simply put your whole grain rice or whole grain mixture in a pot and soak in water for 20 hours (overnight.)   How difficult is that?  The profile of beneficial amino acids increases as does GABA, a beneficial compound.

 

 

 

 

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