It’s hard to believe another week of 2016 has passed.
Right after the first of the year, I bought some large containers of spices to make my own home made taco seasoning, pumpkin pie spice & onion soup mix. I got tired of buying the over priced packages with all the additives. This is one of the best decisions I made. It’s far healthier, tastes better & I feel like I accomplished something good for our bodies. I enjoyed doing this & will locate a place where I don’t have to pay retail for bulk spices now.
Thanks to a generous neighbor, I ate my first dragon fruit. Here are two photos & a bit of information about it found on http://www.naturalfoodbenefits.com.
“The Pitaya is more commonly referred to as the dragon fruit. It is an extremely beautiful fruit that has dazzling flowers and an intense shape and color. The dragon fruit is usually a dark red color, although some types of this fruit are pink or yellow. The skin of the dragon fruit is a thin rind. The skin is usually covered in scales, and the center of the fruit is made up of a red or white, sweet tasting pulp.
“Dragon fruit does have a small amount of fats because there are so many seeds in the edible part of the fruit. There can be literally thousands of the small black seeds in any given dragon fruit, and like most seeds and nuts they have both fats and protein in them while the flesh of the fruit itself has virtually none. Many fruits we eat have the seeds removed, like apricots, peaches, apples and the like, so we tend to think of fruits as being completely fat and protein free. It would be literally impossible to remove the seeds from dragon fruit unless you pressed it through a strainer, as the seeds are very small and mixed evenly in the flesh. Fortunately these are mostly the healthy mono-unsaturated fats as, of course, they are not processed in any way and therefore are none of the dangerously unhealthy trans-fats seen in most junk food and processed foods.
“Dietary fiber is an important nutrition factor for everyone from young to old, and the best way to get dietary fiber is to eat fruits and vegetables including fruits like the dragon fruit. As you might expect, like many fruits, dragon fruit has lots of dietary fiber with almost 1g of fiber per 100g of the fresh dragon fruit. Of course, the amount of dietary fiber in dragon fruit which is dried on a gram for gram basis is much higher than the amount of dietary fiber in dragon fruit as the fresh fruit.”
“The health benefits of dragon fruit fiber are just one other example of the reason that eating natural sources of nutrients is superior to getting them from pills and supplements Dragon fruit nutritional benefits also include the levels of dragon fruit antioxidants – the antioxidants in dragon fruit are numerous and varied.”
It was an interesting taste. The initial appearance of the inside with all the seeds came as a surprise. They reminded me of re-hydrated chia seeds. The fruit had very mild pear/kiwi flavor, was juicy & quite satisfying. I learned it was also high in antioxidants so it was good for my body too.
Two tablespoons of Chia seeds also have a respectable amount of antioxidants, fiber (7 grams), protein (4 grams) and calcium (205 milligrams). Chia seeds are hydrophyllic – that hold around 10 times their weight in water.
Chia in water. I keep a refrigerated bottle of chia in coconut water all the time & take a sip when I’m feeling extra hungry. This is helping me curb my appetite & giving me the extra antioxidants I need.
“Never despair, keep pushing on.”-Sir Thomas Lipton
“Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.”-Abraham Lincoln
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”-Confucius
Miscellaneous & Recommendations 