It seems that deciding to gravitate our diet more and more in the natural unprocessed direction has consequences. Specifically, when you don’t utilize chemical laden products, you start to begin to be able to identify them by taste. I sort of wish I was kidding.
An example. I’ve been trying really hard to curb the use of anything with artificial coloring. Not entirely, but as much as I feel comfortable. One of the things that I’ve delilberately stopped buying in that department is Kool-Aid. Gosh, I love that stuff. Love it. It’s also a very inexpensive drink to have on hand for hot summer days. I’ve also really reigned in on buying the kids sweets, sugary colored cereals, we don’t buy fruit snack type things anymore. Even popsicles, I’ve been buying whole fruit bars. The result is that I can actually taste when food coloring is added. In a big way, not in a cherry jolly rancher candy way. I made cupcakes for Abigail for her birthday and added just a few drops of yellow and pink food coloring to make a light peachy color. I had a hard time eating those cupcakes- all I could taste was the food coloring in the frosting. Which was a shame because they were completely homemade peach cobbler cupcakes with frosting. Red Velvet cake? That’s a shame, but thank goodness it usually is paired with cream cheese frosting to cover up the flavor of the red food coloring.
Another example. (And the real topic of today’s post.) It’s summer. I’ve been baking very little and cooking with very little fat in our diets. Not on purpose, it’s just summer, so we grill a lot and eat salad a lot. I’ve also been reading a lot about healthy fats vs. unhealthy fats. One day, not too long ago I pulled out the bottle of plain old vegetable oil to add some to a recipe. It smelled off to me- it smelled rancid. I used it anyway, and while I didn’t taste any effect in the finished dish, I couldn’t get over how that bottle of oil smelled. I’d read a long while back that many of our vegetable oils are actually rancid when produced, and manufacturers bleach them and put them through a process rendering them “usable” for our purposes. I couldn’t stop thinking about this.
The more and more I read, and the more and more I researched, the more I couldn’t stop thinking about the fats I was cooking with. For the most part, I’d already committed to using mostly butter or olive oil for most things, but I still used Crisco for pie crust and regular old vegetable oils for baking, frying and other things. (Not that I fry often, mind you.) There is so much conflicting information out there about good fats vs. bad fats. For years we’ve been told that the “good” oils include sunflower, canola, peanut and something else that is escaping my mind at the moment. Stay away from shortening and corn oil, we’ve been told, and we’ll escape heart disease. Also, add trans-fats from margarines to your naughty list.
But all of those oils- and the standard vegetable oil which is a blend, still go through a seriously lengthy process to become the oils that sit on our pantry shelves. Olive oil, butter and sesame oil are the only oils I regularly have on hand that are as close to natural as possible while sitting in the bottle. I was really feeling conflicted, and felt extremely guilty making my family a cherry pie using hydrogenated shortening in the crust.
But a blog I’ve been following for some time is really good about pointing out deals and sales on various websites for grocery items. I laugh at myself, because I follow the blog, glean ideas, but there is seldom anything I make from there. It’s just too crunchy for me- I don’t care to grind my own flour at this point, I don’t care to make all my baked goods with whole wheat, and I still don’t have a problem using regular sugar in baked goods. (Though sugar must be C&H from Hawaii made with sugar cane only, thankyouverymuch.) On one of these days, this blog advertised a killer sale on virgin coconut oil through Vitacost. I’ve used coconut oil before, and had been seriously considering getting it again to try incorporating more into our diets.
So I took the plunge. I bought the virgin coconut oil. My initial idea had been to use the coconut oil in place of shortening in my pie crusts. I wanted to eliminate the vegetable shortening in my pantry, and this seemed like a good place to start. My coconut oil arrived, and when I opened it up, I was a little dismayed to find that it actually smelled like coconuts. Not everyone is a fan of that flavor, and I decided I didn’t want to use it in pie crust after all. I was a little disappointed until this same blog also advertised a deal for Palm Shortening from Tropical Traditions. A-ha! I’d forgotten that I wanted to try that also. So I ordered that as well.
The thing about both the Virgin Coconut Oil and the Palm Shortening is that these are natural fats- they are very, very minimally processed, and close to what you could get yourself out of the coconut and palm fruit if you tried yourself. Studies done on native diets where these fats are exclusively consumed find little to no evidence of heart disease- which we are told here in our country come from the fats we consume. There are also essential acids found in the coconut oil which can contribute greatly to whole health. When I ordered the palm shortening, I also received a book titled Virgin Coconut Oil. The information in this book was eye-opening, as to the health benefits from adding coconut oil to one’s diet. The caveat being that it MUST be virgin coconut oil. Coconut oil can be processed, but the virgin or extra virgin coconut oils are as little processed as possible. (By the way, there is no difference between virgin or extra virgin.)
I’ve been using the coconut oil for everyday cooking. I used it in stir-fry, though I used a little too much, as there was an undertone of coconut to the stir-fry. The palm shortening I promptly used for a batch of pie crusts. Last night, while enjoying a fresh apple pie, Andy and I both agreed that the palm shortening worked beautifully in the pie crust. The crust is flaky and tasty. I didn’t even feel it needed some added butter for flavor. The palm shortening is a huge success. Sometimes when you sub in something natural for something processed, the end result is good, but you wish you could use the processed thing instead. Not so here. There is no discernible difference between my Crisco shortening, and the one made with the palm shortening. In addition, both the coconut oil and the palm shortening have high smoke points, so should I need to fry something (like the occasional egg roll), I can use either of them.
I threw out my bottle of vegetable oil.
I still need to figure out the right places to use the coconut oil. It worked great for stir-fry, and I’ve used it a few times for cooking. I’m looking forward to trying it out in baking as we are beginning to cool down here in Wisconsin.
Overall, I’m very pleased with this direction I am taking with my cooking. I don’t cook with a lot of fat to begin with, but now at least I know that when I do use it, I’m not poisoning my family with something not really meant for human ingestion. This is especially important to me as Andy and I just celebrated 14 years of marriage yesterday. He also turns the big 4-0 this year, and I want to enjoy having him by my side for 80 more years, at least. With a history of heart disease in the family, he needs to pay attention to his diet, and I believe that switching completely to these heart-healthy fats is the way to go. Now if I can only convince him to stop hitting up the drive-thrus and the convenience stores, we’ll be making progress…