Sunday, March 24, 2013

The Raw Carrot Test

During freshman orientation at UM, we submitted to a battery of tests. One tested our reading speed. I had messed up the grid answering vertically when I should have filled in the grid horizontally. This impacted my score. I was treated with numerous follow up phone calls urging me to enroll in a speed reading class because with my score, success at UM was doubtful. These I ignored as I know I am a quick reader even compared to my UM peers.

Another test was dubbed the Raw Carrot Test because it contained the question: Do you prefer raw carrots to cooked? (Raw definitely) I can't remember if this was a personality test or a career choice test, either way, I don't know how my answer would impact the results. The only other question I remember is whether I climb steps one or two steps at a time. I guess this would show if I were impatient or had extra long legs.

The other day at my Cooking for Survival class, we were treated with a variation of this: Which is more nutritious  Cooked carrots or raw?

Answer: cooked carrots. Per carrot, the antioxidants (mainly carotenes) are twice as bioavailable when cooked. This is true for many of the vegetables containing fat soluble vitamins. I assume cooking breaks down the cell walls to release them.

The focus this month were superfoods. Number one food on the anticancer list would be...KALE. Not a fan of it. This was the second month in a roll that we dealt with this vegetable. She bought a bunch of black kale which is especially narrow, rough and curly with the idea that the deeper the color, the more nutrients. Kale bruschetta was made (which was continually mispronounced with a soft ch..I kept my pedantic self in check..hard as it was). A tastier dish was carrot/sweet potato coconut curry soup chock full of antioxidants including the stuff found in onions and garlic and the tumeric of the curry powder. An even tastier dish was a quinoa spinach casserole containing sun-dried tomatoes (more nutritious than raw tomatoes) and cheese. This was pure comfort food. I could not get enough of it. The week before due to the extended version of a 24 hour bug, I hadn't eaten much. This week I was ravenous. So many times I have to tell myself No..No NO!
One of the main problems with these recipes is the amount of slicing and dicing involved. One lady worked on the kale for a full hour. I chopped up 6 cups of carrots and almost an equal amount of sweet potatoes. I also was in charge of onion dicing. My hands stunk for a good day after that (yes I wash my hands).

I dutifully save all these recipes. What I need to do is to adopt them more in my cooking. I know what I need to do..why is it so hard for me to start?

1 comment:

Teri Bernstein said...

The raw carrots test was a VALUES test. It measured how much your values overlapped the values of people who were successful in various fields--business, humanities, social science, physical sci, life sic...I still have my printout. BTW I got a "0" in Business.

I know what you mean about knowing what you have to do but not being able to do it. Sigh.

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