A friend in need and wetter water.

One of the beauties of 'primal' or 'paleo' dieting is that you don't need to explain it to your friends if you don't care to...  most of the meals we eat are perfectly acceptable to our guests.  Good thing, too as we have had unexpected house-guests this last week.

Some friends from Vancouver are moving to Hawaii and were coming through town, partly to arrange to ship his motorcycle; a trike actually, which is their only vehicle.  Unfortunately the motor broke down rather spectacularly and they found themselves in need of a place to stay- but needed to save money to fix the trike and for their move.

Let me explain that our house is small... almost tiny.  The 'master' bedroom is about 12'x12 and the second bedroom, our 'office' is even smaller.  But needs must, so we removed the kennel from the office to the kitchen and relocated our computers to the dining table in the living room.  We procured an air mattress and we were set. We were a bit concerned to have four adults sharing a bathroom but Aedan and Erika have been model house-guests.  It's actually been quite pleasant having them here.  Being good house guests of course they brought us Krispy Kreme doughnuts, sodas and other treats.  Our diet has suffered.  This was exacerbated by a joint birthday celebration  for my two older brothers where salmon burgers, brots, potato salad and Chocolate cake were served.  Sometimes you just have to shrug and roll with it.

In our turn we have been feeding them our diet and they have likely benefited more from the trade than we have... Naturally we told them about our diet, but had we not they might not have noticed.  Serving a meal of meat, vegetables and salad with fruit for desert is hardly 'out there' after all.  Here's what we had for dinner last night:

Slow-Cooked Pork Chops with Turnips and Carrots
1 pork chop per diner
Crushed Garlic
1 large Turnip per diner
1 cup of peeled baby carrots per diner
1/4 cup honey

Place a pork chop in the center of the slow cooker and cover generously with crushed garlic. Stack another on top of that and repeat.  Obviously if you have a lot of guests you will need a bigger slow-cooker and multiple stacks.  Wash turnips thoroughly and cut into pieces of roughly twice bite-sized and fill in around chops with turnip pieces.  Cover the turnips and chops with baby carrots and drizzle the honey over everything in the pot.  Cook on your slow cooker's High setting for four hours (five hours if chops are frozen.)  The meat will be falling off of the bones,  Remove the bones and serve immediately.  The meat will be tender and flavorful and the turnips will have picked up the other flavors.  Serve with a salad and/or fresh fruit.  Easy and delicious!

I've mentioned washing your fruits and vegetables... let's talk that a bit.  First off why wash produce? After all, modern supermarkets have misters spraying the veggies every five minutes, right? They ought to be clean, right? Nope. Why not?  Because water isn't wet enough.  Uh... come again?

Simple really; it's a matter of surface tension.  Water on a smooth surface forms into drops because of surface tension.  Bugs can run across water because of surface tension.  Water doesn't easily saturate fine dust because of surface tension.  Without going into the full science class suffice it to say that when something is small enough water goes over or around it rather than getting it wet.

While part of the reason for washing produce is to remove visible dirt it's more important function is to remove bacteria and pesticides which are so small that water simply won't wash them away unless we break the surface tension.  Which is where soap comes in.  The way that soap works is simply to make water wetter by breaking the surface tension, which allows it to wash away tiny particles like bacteria and pesticides.  The good news is that it takes very little soap to accomplish this and nearly any soap will do.  Depending on what you use 2 tablespoons of liquid soap will do for an average dish-tub of water (about a gallon) and you can wash all of your vegetables at once before stashing them in the fridge or whatever.  Just gently wash your veggies and rinse thoroughly and dry them or allow them to dry on a rack.  This simple process can prevent E.Coli, Salmonella and a variety of other noxious ailments- not to mention removing pesticides which let's face it just can't be good for you.