LABEL TUESDAY, JULY 6, 2021 Home THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD — B1 Living B Tuesday, July 6, 2021 The Observer & Baker City Herald ANN BLOOM NUTRITION: IT’S ALL GOOD Don’t let food poisoning ruin your barbecue Simple steps can prevent foodborne illnesses Summer is the season for barbecue. Perhaps the fi rst thing people think of when they think of barbecuing is tri-tip roasts and steaks, then maybe it is hamburgers. Of course, there are hot dogs, chicken and even the occa- sional pork chop or fi sh that turns up on the grill. All are delicious served with their respective trimmings — buns, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onion and condiments. And let’s not leave out the sides, right? Potato and macaroni salads, fruit salads and baked See, Barbecue/Page B3 WENDY SCHMIDT BETWEEN THE ROWS Surviving the summer doldrums Stickiness and needing a shower 24/7 seems to be the new normal. It’s only slightly better than being asleep under the grass, but you can’t call this quality living. Every living thing needs extra hydration and air circulation and peaceful coolness. Icy drinks and the enticing clink of ice in a tall glass are the next thing to erotic. It’s most defi nitely summer and the season of hot. Most of our summer gar- dens are fi lled with plants that won’t survive winter here. They’re tropical plants, whose prime growing conditions resemble our summer. The so-called “cool season vegetables” still don’t survive winter here. Many because they’re annuals, not perennials, and genetically programmed to survive only one short season. I’m thinking carrots, fava beans, beets and some greens. Then there are what I think of as deciduous or dormant perennials like artichokes, peonies (only the herbaceous kind), four o’clocks, bulbs, rhubarb, day lilies, and sev- eral others that lose all foliage above ground level, then regrow all of their herbaceous stems and leaves every spring. When planting in the autumn, be mindful of the location of these types of dor- mant plants, as they may not survive being cut into while they are invisible from above ground. Garden Chores • As garden catalogs arrive, look through them on hot summer afternoons. Ordering what you need promptly assures that you will get the things you want. Some pretty, popular and/or rare items are sold out if you wait too late. • You can plant cool season vegetables now in place of early produce such as peas and radishes which are fi nished, to extend your growing season into autumn. • Try succession planting corn to have several harvests. For instance plant more seeds every two weeks. • Hoping for a late frost, it’s possible to plant fast-maturing vegetables such as cucumbers. • Deadhead annuals to encourage blooming. If you have garden ques- tions or comments please write to Schmidt.wendy1948@gmail. com. Thanks for reading! Hillary Levin-St. Louis Post-Dispatch/TNS Homemade Touch of Grace biscuits. By DANIEL NEMAN St. Louis Post-Dispatch Talking about biscuits can get downright sensual. Even a little naughty. They’re warm, fl aky, steamy, soft, rounded, fra- grant, buttery, golden, glistening and immensely satisfying. Basically, they are everything you could ever want in a breakfast bread, a luncheon carbohydrate or even a dinner roll. They are fun to make, as well, and not too hard. The best part, though, is smelling them as they cook, with the anticipation of biting into them when they are still warm enough to melt butter and soak up jam or honey. Recently, I made dozens of biscuits in an assort- ment of styles, sizes and textures. This experience has given me insight into certain biscuit facts: • As with pie crusts and bread, the more you work a biscuit dough the tougher the results will be. The dry and wet ingredients in bis- cuits are always mixed just until they come together to form a ball. • Biscuits are leav- ened with baking powder Hillary Levin-St. Louis Post-Dispatch/TNS They aren’t necessary for making biscuits, but they sure help and are fun to use. • Biscuit cutters should be pressed down through the dough. Twisting them essentially seals the bis- cuit’s edge, which keeps them from rising evenly. • Biscuits have more calories than you think. I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped. That’s why they taste so good. Here are the biscuits I made: Homemade Cream biscuits. or both baking powder and baking soda. They are never made with yeast. But as with all good rules, there is an excep- tion: Angel biscuits are made with baking powder, baking soda and yeast. • Self-rising fl our, which is essential in many Southern biscuit recipes, is fl our with baking powder mixed into it, along with a couple of phosphates. • In the South, bis- cuits are usually made with White Lily brand fl our, which is made from soft winter wheat. Winter wheat has less protein than spring wheat, which means baked goods made from it are softer and lighter than those made from other brands. • Shirley O. Corriher, a native Georgian who is something of a legend in the culinary world, has devised a clever work- around for people who want Southern biscuits but can’t fi nd White Lily self- rising fl our: Mix together a national brand of self- rising fl our with cake fl our (which has very low pro- tein) and add some baking soda. • The biscuit cutter, which resembles a taller version of a cookie cutter, was invented in 1875 by Alexander P. Ashbourne. Buttermilk Biscuits These rose the highest of all the biscuits I made. Why? Buttermilk is fairly acidic, and when mixed with the small amount of baking soda in the dough it reacts the same way baking soda reacts when mixed with vinegar: It bub- bles. The bubbles create tiny air pockets, which make the biscuits rise. Buttermilk also hap- pens to have just the right taste for biscuits. That slight tang gives them a fl avorful warmth and hom- iness that biscuit-lovers crave. Fabulous Biscuits The name sounds a little bit too much like shameless self-promo- tion, right? And in fact, the biscuits themselves are kind of ordinary — if anything as transcendent as a biscuit could ever be considered ordinary. But just before baking, you dip every piece of dough all the way into melted butter. As a result, the cooked biscuits are the most buttery things ever. And that makes them fabulous. Touch of Grace Biscuits • “Touch of heaven” might be a better name. These lightly sweet Southern specialties are impossibly light and delicately fl a- vored. You don’t reach for them on the platter as much as grab them as they fl oat up to the ceiling. Cream Biscuits These are classics. If you close your eyes and picture a biscuit, this is probably what you see. The cream makes them rich and a little decadent. They are also the fastest and easiest to make of the bunch, if you want a hit of decadence on the fl y. See, Biscuits/Page B2 Cool, sweet and healthy: watermelon is the ultimate summer treat Experts say the fruit is a rich source of vitamins and other nutrients By MICHAEL MERSCHEL American Heart Association News Whether they’re serving as snacks at a family reunion or props in a late- night comedy act, water- melons and fun just seem to go together. But how does watermelon hold up health-wise? Smashingly, you might say. “I’m defi nitely impressed by its health benefi ts,” said Tim Allerton, a postdoc- toral researcher at Loui- siana State University’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge. Fruit is always part of a healthy diet. But water- melon’s combination of nutrients makes it special, Allerton said. It’s a rich source of min- erals such as potassium and magnesium. It’s also a good source of vitamins C and A (plus beta caro- tene, which helps produce vitamin A), and it has fair amounts of vitamins B1, B5 and B6. You get all of that for only 46.5 calories per cup. Befi tting its name, watermelon is about 92% water, which suggests why ancestral watermelons were carried in Africa’s Kalahari Desert as long as 5,000 years ago. This is a treat with a lineage: Mod- ern-looking versions are depicted in ancient Egyp- tian tombs. Where watermelon really stands out is in its concentration of certain antioxidants, which reg- ulate cell-damaging free radicals in the body. “Our body has its own antioxi- dant system, but it helps to get a boost from our diet,” Allerton said. “And water- melon is a good source of those antioxidants.” Lycopene, which gives watermelon its reddish color, is one of those anti- oxidants, along with vita- mins C and A. Lycopene also works as an anti-in- fl ammatory and has been linked to lower stroke risk. It is most abundant in cooked tomato products, but watermelon’s lyco- pene levels are about 40% higher than raw tomatoes. Watermelon also has glutathione, which Allerton called a “versa- tile, global antioxidant.” And watermelon is high in an amino acid called citrulline, which has been a focus of Allerton’s research. “Watermelon is pretty unique because not a lot of foods are high in this,” he said. In a small 2013 study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, citrulline in Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times-TNS Watermelon is not only sweet, but experts say it’s also healthy. watermelon juice was credited with helping relieve sore muscles in athletes. Citrulline also is linked to the production of nitric oxide, which is important for the health of blood ves- sels. Several small studies suggest citrulline in water- melon extract could lower blood pressure, although those eff ects were seen in people eating the equiva- lent of more than 3 pounds of watermelon a day for six weeks. That’s a lot of water- melon. But aside from the general idea that overin- dulgence in anything is a bad idea, Allerton said there’s no downside to enjoying it. Even though it has nat- ural sugar and a high gly- cemic index — a measure of how fast sugar enters the bloodstream — it has a low glycemic load. That means its actual eff ect on blood sugar is small. And it will fi ll you up faster than, say, a bowl of cookies. All nutrition and sci- ence aside, affi cionados of the fruit just enjoy the taste. Superfan Mark Twain wrote, “It is the chief of this world’s luxu- ries, king by the grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat.” Allerton prefers his straight up, but he adds that watermelon juice retains many of the ben- efi ts of the whole fruit because so much of the fruit is water already. That makes watermelon work well in smoothies. Or you can turn it into a fruit salsa. Experts agree the secret to fi nding a ripe one is to look for a creamy yellow spot from where the water- melon sat on the ground. If the spot looks more white than yellow, then the melon may not be fully ripe. Weight also is a sign of quality – the heavier the better. But most experts say you can’t learn much about a watermelon’s ripeness from thumping one. So you can probably leave that to the comedians. 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