Natural Cook Studio of Bend

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Seaweeds
The documented medicinal properties of seaweeds are voluminous. Sea plants contain ten to twenty times the minerals of land plants, so ounce per ounce seaweed is higher in vitamins and minerals than any other class of food. Benefits include reducing blood cholesterol, removing metallic and radioactive elements from the body, and preventing goiters. Seaweed also [...]

Did you know that there are different types of iron? Iron is a mineral essential to all body cells and is linked with protein to form the hemoglobin that carries oxygen throughout your body. Although iron can be found in a variety of different foods, how well it is absorbed by the body is determined [...]

Vinegar
For about ten thousand years throughout the world, vinegar has been an important seasoning agent, preservative, medicine, beauty aid, and antibiotic.  The word vinegar comes from the French vin meaning wine and aigre meaning sour.  Traditionally, whatever local sugar containing food source was in abundance in your region was turned to vinegar and in North [...]

Did you know onions are native to Asia and the Middle East and have been cultivated for over five thousand year. Onions have been revered throughout time not only for their culinary use, but also for their therapeutic properties. As early as the 6th century, onions were used as a medicine in India. Christopher Columbus [...]

Watermelon
No other fruit says summer like the thirst quenching watermelon. It is a classic picnic food. There is logic to the fact that this watery fruit originated in Africa’s hot and arid Kalahari region.  So when your not in Kalahari but feel like it, cool down and rehydrate with watermelon.
Technically a vegetable, watermelon is [...]

Summer Squash

Thanks to southern Italians immigrating to the US, the seeds of this welcome summer vegetable have flourished. This tender, brightly colored summer vegetable comes in a variety of fanciful shapes. Summer squash are a subset of squashes that are harvested when immature (while the rind is still tender and edible). The watery summer [...]

How many fruits does one raspberry contain? Did you know each tiny bump on a raspberry is  actually a tiny fruit, or druplet. A druplet is a fruit with a soft outside and a single, hard stone within. A peach is a druplet, while a raspberry is a cluster of 80 druplets. The history of [...]

Pistachios are known as the original prehistoric snack. We humans have been eating these nuts for some 9,000 years. They are one of two nuts mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 43:11). There history in the US is much more recent. Pistachio trees were planted experimentally in California in the 1930’s and after ten years a [...]

What’s shaped like a carrot, looks like a carrot, and cooks up like a carrot, but isn’t orange and doesn’t taste like a carrot? It the pale cousin, the Parsnip!

While not nearly as popular as its cousins, parsnips used to be quite popular with the masses. Parsnips were made into wine and jam in [...]