Apple: The Alkaline Fruit

Continuing strong with our articles about specific alkaline foods, the fruit for today is Apple. After having discussed 2 veggies over the past 2 weeks, I find that a fruit is the necessary sweet required to maintain the balance.

Apples are amazing fruits, I like many things about them. Firstly  that they are sweet, secondly that they have almost no seeds (seeds are in the center and can be thrown away), thirdly, they make excellent additions to salads and are my favourite.

Here are 3 fantastic ways to use apples in your alkaline diet, again, keep in mind that these ideas are for daily usage, not to give you an exotic usage idea that you will never use, the objective is to eat alkaline.
1) Cut Slices
2) Snack
3) Salad Additive

Although some of the items may seem redundant, bear with me, they are awesome.

1) Cut Slices: At a pH of 8, apples are amazing for a dish when cut and served with some chat masala(ground spices powder). While an apple alone may not serve to be a meal, it certainly plays a role in making a good portion of the meal.

2) Snack: If you're familiar with my eating schedule, you'd know that I eat a small portion of salad for breakfast, a large portion for lunch and brown rice with curry for dinner. Having lunch at 1-2pm and having dinner at 9pm creates quite a large gap. I find myself getting very hungry during the 6-7pm time. To get over the feeling, I simply eat some almonds(5 max), or bite on an apple. Unlike watermelons, apples can be eaten any time without the need for a big cutting procedure. An apple serves as a snack very well.

3) Salad Additive: A salad without apples is incomplete for me, I rarely have salads without apples. Apples form a significant portion of my salads every single day. I like all alkaline foods, but the problem with cucumbers and neutral tasting foods is that they don't satisfy the taste buds at all, in that case, I add something like an apple or dates to make the salad taste better.

This post is a quick read, ask questions if you've got any.

Apples are alkaline, and are great to eat.

Your questions are welcome.

Stay Alkaline, Stay Healthy.

Cheers,

Prithvi

Cucumbers: The Alkaline Food

Continuing with the theme of the month of alkaline recipes, the veggie* for this week is the cucumber. Alkaline inside and out, cucumbers make for awesome alkaline foods. They are light, fill your tummy and they are alkaline, what more could you ask for? Well, before you say 'taste', let me accept the fact that cucumbers don't taste all that great, but they don't taste all that bad either, they are simply neutral.

Let's dive into ways we can use cucumbers in our alkaline diets.
1) Cut Slices
2) Cut Slices in Salads
3) Cut Slices as a side dish

Yes, you read it right. The famous cucumber is best used as cut slices. Let's go into some details about how we can use them to the best possible way.

1) Cut Slices: The most common and easy way to eat a cucumber is to peel it, slice it and serve on a neat plate. It will be ready in 2 mins, best for a snack, in the initial days, cucumbers were my breakfast and lunch. Over time, newer dishes have come up in my menu. If the plain cucumber is too bland for your taste, add some chat masala (spicy & tangy powder), although chat masala has non alkaline ingredients, since we are adding them in minuscule quantities, it's alright.

2) Cut Slices in Salads: As you may remember from some of the pictures of my salads, cucumbers are a daily feature in my salads, sliced up a little differently than usual, cucumbers make a great filling, they are cheap to buy and one cucumber is often enough to fill up nearly half of the salad.  The important thing to remember if you're one of the people that can't eat cucumbers directly, make sure you add some fruit that can add some sweetness to the salad to neutralize taste factor of the cucumber. This is a big one for me.

3) Cut Slices as a Side Dish: Cucumbers are present in every restaurant, and many times they are just placed as starters before the meal and the best part is that many times they don't even charge for them. A note to over eaters, cucumbers are the way to go if you want to eat less of junk. You have only 1 stomach, you can either fill it up with salads, with soup, with starters, with biryani*, or with ice cream. But the end result is that your stomach will be full after a while, and if it's full with cucumbers, you've put on no weight whatsoever, if you're full with biryani, you've put on 1500 calories.

Note: The satiety reflex, the reflex of the stomach that tells you you're full is triggered faster when you eat healthy, That means that if you're eating healthy foods, you will eat less and still have all the energy you need.

True, the list above is small, but  it's not list that makes the difference, it is the application of the list in your daily life. I eat cucumbers in the way I mentioned above, it makes a huge difference to the quality of my life. I feel phenomenal, very necessary element to balance out acidic foods.

Keep this in mind while using cucumbers from now on.

Please post your experiences with cucumbers, and let me know about anything you'd like to hear more about.

Regards,

Prithvi

* in India, we refer to cucumbers and tomatoes as vegetables.
* Biryani is steamed flavoured rice that often includes Non Veg.