My Hot Beverage alternatives to coffee! More about Coffee!

I know , I know I haven't blogged in a month or TWO.  First off let me start off with blaming twitter.I have been twittering or tweeting like crazy these past two months.I guess it is the easy factor of just needing to type in a mere 140 characters or so . 

  Anyways, while I was tweeting on twitter about how i am gonna try find hot beverage alternatives to coffee ..someone replied back asking me what I had in mind. I had quite a list in mind..So, decided , why not just blog about it .

Why do people drink coffee?

First off, coffee has a lot of bio active components but the most important component that we look for is caffeine.Caffeine per say is a stimulant-makes us active, alert and even happy. But , in lieu of its same effect, overconsumption of great amounts can lead us to become jittery and hyper too.

Some other reasons people drink coffee is 

a)instead of water when thirsty.

I have myself noticed that sometimes when I am really thirsty, i kinda don't immediately feel like i need to drink water.Instead I have this craving to drink coffee.The sad part though about this situation is that coffee is a diuretic--It actually causes the kidney to excrete out more water from the body making the body even more dehydrated.So yes,if you are thirsty, coffee is not the right drink to drink at all.

b)when i need of something warm or hot to warm the innards when it rains or is cold weather

Drinking cups and cups of steaming hot coffee just coz it is cold outside is not a great idea after all. As such in winters coz it is so cold outside, our body doesn't send you signals asking for water and on top, water does get lost from the skin even when cold. So we do need our water quota each day no matter what the weather outside.Water is our vehicle to excrete toxins produded in our body.On top of all this limited water intake, we end up drinking alcohol and coffee in large amounts and both of them are diuretics  and they end up making you lose more water from the body.

c)To cure the blues

Because of its stimulant effects and by virtue of other biologically active compounds, coffee does literally pep you up . 

Q.So, is coffee bad for us?How much is okay?

Coffee is not bad at all. It is not bad if you consume just a single 150-200 ml cup of milked coffee each day. Please remember that coffee can be addictive and also can cause you get hyper and insomniac if consumed in large amounts.Yes, compared to other mind altering substances, coffee really may not alter your perception or sensorium and thus is SAFER than other substances like alcohol or drugs..but then, it does alters sleep patterns .

Q.Why am i looking for hot beverage alternatives for coffee?

I strictly limit my coffee intake to that single cup of coffee early in the morning just to kick me awake. I don't drink any more ever, unless I am on a night shift and absolutely nodding off or some such which hardly happens if i have had a good 8 hrs of sleep in the past 24hrs.Ideally, If you are nodding off that means your body is really tired and wants rest. Coffee is not the solution to nodding off .Sleeping is the best solution for nodding off.So, anyways, the past week or so , random sleep timings have led me to drink 3 cups a day and then I noticed that ,THE THREE CUPS OF COFFEE PER DAY  were perhaps the real reason behind my silly nightmares and fitful sleep and then the VICIOUS CYCLE of sleepy groggy days that follow the fitful poor quality sleep nights and then i drink coffee to keep awake.. 

  Contrary to popular belief, not drinking coffee 4 hours prior to sleep is not going to prevent insomnia ESPECIALLY if you have consumed more than 500ml of coffee prior in the day.. the coffee still circulates in your system longer and thus might still give you insomnia.

IF YOU ARE A LARGE COFFEE DRINKER AND HAVE INSOMNIA PROBLEMS, AND IF YOU CAN MANAGE TO SOMEHOW CUT COFFEE COMPLETELY JUST DO SO . 

  Speaking of which that is what  I am planning to do in the next three days, just to detox myself of the overdosing i have done in the past week. Also, i have noticed that i sometimes drink coffee just coz it is so cold outside or raining and i want something warm.

HERE IS MY PLAN 

Here is my list of non coffee hot beverages I am looking at instead of coffee

1/Tea- Tea has a lesser conc of caffeine and thus will give me (hopefully) lesser nighmares 

2/Hotchocolate-Also, even lesser caffeine.More than anything a soymilk hot chocolate is greatly vegan when made with cocoa powder and is damn tasty and is a hot treat on a cold day.

3/Warm salty spiced soymilk-I think they actually do drink warm salted soymilk early in the morning in china instead of coffee. I guess it is nutritious, replenishes the salt in the body(sodium and chloride).The spice kinda accentuates and makes the soymilk special

4/Warm soup- Well, for one, this takes a long time to make when compared to a quick cup of coffee in a microwave and as all of you know, I will not touch a canned soup spiked with preservatives and color and what not..But then, yes , microwaving at tomato makes for a quicker soup . A good choice esp if i have a wee bit of time.

Why RAW VEGANISM may not be such a good idea afterall!

well, I turned vegan last year. it has been great.I was a vegetarian prior to that,so the transition wasn't as tough as some of the meat eaters might find it .

Anyways, Now that i am vegan, many people come up to me and ask if i will try and go all raw vegan in the next year, as if raw veganism is an upgrade from veganism. I say, "NO" 

  Well, for one exculsively raw food may not be a great idea . 

Raw veganism essentially excludes the heating process altogether and I have a problem with that. 

WHY COOKING FOOD IS A GREAT IDEA! 

Heat sterilizes food prior to consumption

Please remember that the food we eat is not sterile in any way.Cooking food is a great way to make sure that the food is safe enough to eat .There are lot of parasite eggs, worms, insects , dust etc that are present in fresh food-vegetables or otherwise. Plainly just washing them is not going to kill all of them.Some parasite infective forms though get easily killed by simple heating. Not just parasite eggs but many viruses and bacteria also get killed during the heating process. Needless to say, raw veganism usually avoids heat and thus skips an important sterlization process..

       

Heat breaks down fibrous food into easily digestible forms

Plant food is the greates for our bodies since it doesn't stagnate in our foodpipe and start rotting there for days like meat does, But having said that, some nutrients don't get absorbed fully coz the cellwalls of plant material are too tough to break down completely. Slightly steaming or cooking foods helps plant nutrients to become more assimilable and absorbable. Having said that, overcooking/frying/ovencooking might make foods lose their nutritive value by the same principle of heat breaking up nutrients into useless forms.Thus, slightly cooking plant foods is the key. Slightly cooked food is better than just raw or overly cooked food.

Heat breaks down some forms of plant food toxins in food to harmless forms

Many plant products, nuts etc have slight traces of toxins which easily get destroyed during slight cooking or steaming.Thus, cooking foods is a great idea just to make sure the harmful substances are broken down into less harmful or harmless structures.

Heating/cooking alters texture and taste of foods and make them more tasty or palatable

Point in question is vegetables which get tastier with a bit of steaming or roasting etc(again, please don't roast the hell out of food so that there are no nutrients left at all , even if that make them super tasty). Nuts when toasted get nuttier and tastier. Rice when cooked gets tastier, easily digestible and tastier too, same for potatoes and tubers etc.

Just because in raw veganism you are not heating things yourself doesn't mean you are not using products that were previoulsy processed in any way/Using a blender is a processing method in Itself Ya know!

I see a lot of raw vegans who use the blender a lot. I mean, i would rather eat crunchy semi cooked spinach rather than blend it raw. that way, i chew better, experience better natural texture of food and also break down spinach to take full advantage of its nutrient value. Blending uses electricity(so that cancels out the energy saved by not cooking) and seriously, why not enjoy the textures of food as is rather than blend it like that.Yeah, blending once in a while is a great alternative texture experience, but then using the blender like crazy everyday is really bad.After all , we do have teeth for a reason.

Speaking of teeth I don't want all the meat eaters saying, see, we have teeth to eat meat.. really? try chewing raw meat and tell me how long it takes for your silly lil non carnivorous human teeth to make a paste of the raw meat piece.Sure, we have teeth but we have herbivorous teeth.

   So, coming back to why raw veganism is not processed food free. See, I see a lot of coconut oil being used.No matter how virgin it is, some amount of processing has taken place to extract the oil from the coconut meat, yeah? Some machines very used to grate the meat, crush out the oil , then refine it and make it bacteria free.There ya go, raw veganism is not really that natural. Yeah, eating up raw pieces of coconut after freshly breaking open a coconut from a tree sure is a natural one though.

   I see a lot of raw vegans using cocoa power in recipes and calling it raw recipes. It is not really raw if the cocoa beans went through processing where they were first powdered, heated up , then cocoa butter seperated and the rest of the paste then dried up and packaged.That is major processing right there. Yeah? So that kind of raw veganism is not really raw at all.

    Which is why, you might as well cook most of your food prior to consumption.No biggie.Raw veganism is good only if really raw. If one is going to use coconut oil and cocoa powder and other preprocessed foods , why not just make that lil bit of cooking as acceptable too.

What is the ideal vegan diet ?

Raw is good in some way but then Cooking your food for most part ensures that it is safe to eat since heat kills most bacteria and viruses. Thoroughly wash your fruits and veggies and cook most veggies since they are more fibrous and have more minerals which get better absorbed after plant cell walls are slightly broken down with food.Eat your fruits raw since that ensures you get your water soluble vitamins intact which usually evaporate or get destroyed upon super heating . Include a lot of grains in your diet-whole grains is a great idea since that ensures consumption of fiber along with the complex starches.Our body runs of sugars , therefore, a low carb diet is a very foolish thing to do. Sure, don't stuff yourself like a pig.Overeating any food will make you fat be it protein or starch.So, eat in moderation. There ya go, that is it.

           

Cooking In an Iron wok-Great Iron source for vegans

First off, as you as you tell people that you are vegan, they have a pitiful shocked out look on their faces, as if they just witnessed a starvation case or some such.The truth of the matter is , veganism is the only healthy way of diet . It is only because of lack of familiarity with any ingredients other than pieces of another animal's flesh that makes them think that vegans don't eat much.In fact we eat much better than the average meat eater.We tend to have a better variety in foods, more fiber and more vitamins too.  One concern that people often express is, "How can we make sure we get enough Iron and enough calcium?"

            I already wrote a brief but informative blog about vegan calcium sources. About Iron, yes, spinach is a great source and it is very commonly available too. Don't cook the hell out of your spinach though , because overcooking removes all vitamin C and vitamin c is what helps absorb both the calcium and iron abundant in the spinach. 

     Let us get back to Iron for a minute.I am going to write another mini blog listing common foods which have decent amounts of iron in them and those which are vegan but commonly available in the remotest of countrysides even. 

     Let us just talk about the wok shall we. I used to cook my noodles and stir fries in a large nonstick pan. It works great in terms of no trouble cooking. No stuck up food at the bottom of the pan, all even cooking and what not. Lately I haven't had enough time to make sure I eat spinach everyday. And that got me thinking of ways to ensure that i included enough iron in most of my vegan meals, spinach or not. That suddenly made me remember about the charm of Iron utensils. Of course, cast iron won't do. A pure iron wok is what you need. A pure iron wok for stir fries kinda scrapes small traces of iron each time you scrape together a stir fry in it. NO , I am not joking. Trust me, it does. Just as much as bits of Aluminium get scraped up when people used to cook food in large aluminium pans in yonder times.Till ofcourse Alzheimer's disease was associated with aluminium utensil usage. So, yes, don't use any mixed alloys or aluminium dishes or those cheap tin crock pots for cooking.Stick to good ole stainless steel or ceramic or clay. iron is just fine. After all, most of Hb(hemoglobin ) needs iron in its structure. So yes, An iron wok is a great idea irrespective of how much spinach you include in your diet. Especially women who lose some amount of Hb each month during menstruation. 

  Also make sure you use pure iron woks only. I reiterate here, don't use pathetic cheap lil alloys. As far as where you can get a good iron wok. Try china town. Ask for thick iron woks. You it as cheap as 4 -5$ if you know how to bargain. how to test if it is pure iron,"you scrape the surface and then smell. It needs to smell rusty or irony in some way" Ask the wok seller though.They will tell you if it is a mixed alloy . Cheers.

Great breakfasts-vegan breakfast options

A lot of meat eating people are so used to rut of eating pig pieces in the morning , they get so used to not having to think and decide what to make for breakfast since ofcourse it is gonna be eggs and some pig pieces. they quite forget that eating the same thing over and over is not really luxury . 

  After having given up eggs, I suddenly was left with the question, Now what do i do for breakfast?

For the first few days, it looked like there is no choice, nothign available, what does one eat if they don't eat eggs for breakfast. Then slowly i figured that i must research to find foods that will substitute by calcium needs adequaltely and more than anything else, it is so necessary for any breakfast to be laden with carbohydrates. As you all know, when we sleep for 8 or more hours, we are starving during that period and the body needs carbohydrates after having starved that long. Protein is not really a requirement . We can have protein but like i mentioned in one of my older blog entries, there is only so much of protein a body needs especially if you are one of those people who doesn't do much hard manual labor. 

           Here is a list of great breakfasts i eat nowadays, all vegan, all much more tastier than any non vegan breakfast I have ever eaten. They are not any pricier than a non vegan breakfast even

1/ Nice toasted white or whole wheat bread with tomatoes , cucumber and some vegenaise with a nice cup of soy latte

2/ Good cup of granola with nuts and raisins and cornflakes and wheat flakes with guava nectar and some good coffee .

3/Nice tofu scramble with pepper and tomatoes ,coffee and or fruit juice

4/ Nice warm bagel(vegan) with fruits and some good hot chocolate

5/Millet and lentil pancakes with sugar and fruits and coffee

6/Nice stuffed wheat breads again with fruits and coffee

Anyways, it is all about coming out of that meat and egg breakfast rut and thinking different.  These six sets are just examples , I have had

7/ bean tortillas with potate falafels with soy yogurts another day.. 

8/Nice pasta with olives and tomatoes(yeah , pasta for breakfast, why not?
 

4