Coleslaw for Health

Dear Gentle Reader,
Do you make New Year’s Resolutions? I’ve made only one this year, and I hope I can remember to keep it: NO EGGNOG next December! Contrary to my usually pretty wholesome diet, I managed to consume two quarts of this combination of fat and honey/sugar between December 24 and December 25. In retrospect, it seems likely that my indulgence--okay, overindulgence--probably contributed to a head cold that began two days later with a sore throat. I’d best write this resolution on the December page of my 2006 calendar, along with the rationale. (Resolve seems to diminish with the passing of time, or women would only bear one child!)

Returning to culinary sanity, this noon we’ll be having homemade coleslaw, half an apple, and a dish of plain yogurt sweetened with honey. Although he’s like many men in that he has never been "into" nutrition, this is now one of my husband’s favorite meals. And healthiest, perhaps. Studies show that people who eat cabbage or other cruciferous vegetables are less likely to get certain kinds of cancer, including colon and bladder.

The first part of the coleslaw recipe provides a high-fiber seed-and-nut mixture as suggested by Dr. Sandra Cabot in her book, The Healthy Liver and Bowel Book. She recommends grinding flaxseed, sunflower seeds, and almonds in a coffee grinder, and adding 2-3 tablespoons per serving. (She suggests other seeds you could add—psyllium, pumpkin, alfalfa.) But it's faster to chop up the almonds, sunflower and pumpkin seeds in a food processor if you have one, and then grind only the flaxseeds in the coffee grinder. If you make a batch using 1 cup per ingredient, you’ll end up with 4 or 5 cups that you can store in the refrigerator or your freezer and the mixture will last through quite a few meals.

Then you just need to chop a carrot and some cabbage.. Until a couple years ago I’d never owned a food processor (aside from a Bamix, a wand device with a small bowl) and thought them too extravagant. Then my neighbor inherited one and passed it on to me. It has made such a time-saving difference in chopping up vegetables and nuts! I really appreciate it, and when it gives out (it’s pretty old), I will definitely replace it.

Also, you’ll probably want a dressing for the coldslaw, right? This is the one that we like. (I avoid "store-bought" dressings because of their hydrogenated fats with trans-fatty acids.)

Dressing for two servings
3-4 tablespoons cider vinegar
2 tablespoons honey (in preference to sugar)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon ketchup (or catsup, if you prefer)
pinch of sea salt

The rain is falling. As I write this, I’m watching the Rose Bowl Parade and, despite the brave smiles of the marchers, the festivity looks pretty miserable. I feel so sorry for the band members, who must be drenched—352 band members in one case. Initially, I wondered why they didn’t have the parade on January 1 as in the past but just learned from an interview that their policy has been to postpone the parade if New Years Day falls on a Sunday. Certainly that practice must have sprung from the idea that a secular celebration should not take the participants away from Sunday worship services. In this era of commercialism, it’s amazing and commendable that principle has withstood pragmatism.