About Aunty

Aunty is a new senior citizen and loving this phase of her life. Less responsibilities, less fear of being weird, able to do more of the things that I want to do! Older, yes, slower, yes, but life is even more wonderful in my golden years and I look forward to even goldener ones.

Grannie’s Yatsume zuke

1 medium head cabbage
1 medium head mustard cabbage
1/4 cup Hawaiian salt
2 T roasted sesame seed
Ajinomoto (or not)

Sauce:      1/3 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar
chili pepper to taste

Chop vegetables to 1/2” size.  Put in large container, sprinkle salt and mix well.  Leave for 30 minutes.  Squeeze out excess water, add roasted (in pan) sesame seeds and ajinomoto (or not).

Boil sauce.  Pour hot sauce over vegetables, mix well.  Let sit for 3-4 hours, then refrigerate.  Enjoy with rice.  My favorite meal is ochazuke rice, fried Portuguese sausage dipped in soy sauce and catsup, and yatsume zuke…

Green Smoothie

From Senen Pousa of ProphetMax* – a green smoothie that sounds wonderful:

1 fresh ripe avocado
1 tsp vegetable oil, cold pressed
12 oz. water and 2-3 ice cubes
1 banana
1 cup carrot juice
1.5 cups pineapple
2 inches cucumber
1/2 stalk celery
1/2 small bunch mint
2 cups spinach (substitute kale, collards, chard)
1 TB raw cacao nibs or tsp chlorella

Blend for 1/2 minute to smoothie consistency and drink to your good health!

More green smoothie recipes can be found on Victoria Boutenko’s website (requiring an easy log in):  http://greensmoothiesblog.com/recipes

*[update note:  Senen Pousa of ProphetMax is currently under investigation for his involvement in the loss of millions of investor funds, so Aunty is not recommending him in any way.  However, this smoothie does sound delicious… ]

Ko-ko (simple tsukemono)

Quarter lengthwise a head of won bok (Chinese cabbage), or regular head cabbage.  Remove the bulky part of the head if possible.

Salt sparsely- preferably with Hawaiian sea salt, but common table salt will do.  Massage salt into cabbage chunks.  Cabbage should be limp. Rinse and drain if desired (optional).

Put cabbage (should be soft from being salted) into bowl, add some (a tablespoon or more) cooked rice to the bowl.  We used to use the burnt rice at the bottom of the pot that no one wanted to eat.  Adding rice adds a nice folksy flavor to the tsukemono, and is also optional (but deliciously advised).

If using those plastic contraptions with the screw down lid, you will limit the amount of cabbage you can pickle at a time because they are rather small.  Put the slightly salted cabbage with rice in, screw down as much as you can, and cover.  Check and screw down often.

Or, use a large glass or pyrex bowl and arrange the cabbage so it is an even layer.  Turn a glass or ceramic plate upside down to press down on the entire layer of cabbage, and put a weight on the plate.  You can also use a juice bottle filled with water to act as the weight.

After a few days, you will see liquid in the bowl with the cabbage.  This is the fermenting process happening.  Keep screwing the lid tighter to keep compressing the cabbage.  After a few days you can remove the cabbage, rinse off the rice, squeeze out excess water, chop, and then enjoy with your rice!

Experiment with other vegetables such as eggplant, mustard cabbage, daikon, etc.  Some vegetables need to be cut thin in order to ferment evenly.  Remember to salt prior to putting in bowl in order to make the vegetable soft and wilty.

Pickled Mango (mouth watering!)

Just thinking about it makes my mouth pucker.  It is getting harder to find common mangoes.  Common mangoes make the best pickled mango – better than Hayden or any other variety.  We also used to eat green or half ripe mango with shoyu, rice vinegar and black pepper.  It was so ono!  Ono enough to be worth the sore stomach after.

From Hawaiian Electric – they always share really good recipes on their monthly bills.

8 cups green mango slices
2 cups sugar
1 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup Hawaiian salt
10 li hing mui

Put mango slices into a jar.  Combine remaining ingredients in a pot.  Bring to a boil; cool to lukewarm.

Pour over mangos.  Let stand for 24 hours, then store in refrigerator.

Recipe makes 4 quarts.

Aunty Ruby’s Scone Recipe

2 cup flour                                          1 block butter
1/2 cup oatmeal
6 T sugar                                            3/4 cup buttermilk  (or substitute with 3/4 cup
3/4 T baking powder                                                             milk + 2 T white vinegar)
3/4 T baking soda
1/4 T salt

Mix dry ingredients together in bowl.  Cut in 1 block of butter.  Add raisins, cranberries, nuts, or whatever.

Mix on a flour board, roll out into a circle, cut into eigths (pie shaped wedges).
Bake at 375º for 20 minutes until light golden brown.

Shoyu Pork from Aunty Gwynne’s

This one is for the measuring challenged people since it is so easy.  Kind of like Okinawan shoyu pork but SO much easier.  Put a chunk or chunks of pork butt in a slow cooker, add one can of tomato sauce.  Use the can as your measuring tool.  Add one can worth of sugar, then shoyu, then sake (wow!).  Toss in a couple pieces of crushed fresh ginger root.  Cook until soft and serve hot or warm with rice, yum…

Mrs Tanaka’s Tuna and Potato Stir Fry

Mrs. Tanaka used to make the best after school snack for her granddaughter, and my daughters would come home raving about the tuna and potato dish.  I have recreated it here:

Skin and cut raw potatoes into little logs.  Soak in slightly salted water, drain well, pat dry.

Open a can or 2 of tuna – I like the Coral brand in oil – but any brand will do.

Put a tablespoon of vegetable oil (or use the oil from the can of tuna) in a pan and stir fry the potato logs until almost cooked.  At this point you can add ginger, garlic, or whatever you want.  I usually keep it simple and don’t add anything.

Drain and add the tuna meat from the can.  Add mirin or brown sugar (about 1 TBS or more) and soy sauce (about 2 TBS or more).  Optional:  add a tsp of hon dashi or saimin base powdered seasoning.

Using a wooden spatula, mix from the bottom gently, let simmer for a few minutes.

Serve with hot rice and enjoy!

 

Ono ways to eat fresh papaya

Cut a papaya in half and remove seeds.

Score inside with a fork.

Squeeze the juice from a lemon (half or whole – up to you) into papaya.

Add dollops of Lemon Yoplait Yogurt.

Top with thin slices of apple banana and enjoy!

optional:  sprinkle granola of your choice on top of the yogurt.

Mahalo to Pat Reilly of East Oahu Realty for this quick, healthy, ono recipe!

another papaya recipe from Jan Tsukazaki (creator of Zippy’s apple naples) :

Halve papaya and remove seeds.  Squeeze fresh lilikoi juice with a few seeds into cavity.  The sweet tartness of lilikoi and the mellowness of papaya rejoice together.

Natural Health

Modern medicine is a wonderful thing.  Drugs and surgery can do wonders.

Natural healing techniques can also do wonders – usually slower, but sometimes faster, and better.

What upsets me is when people shun natural healing and call it quackery by telling me a story about somebody’s brother’s aunty who died because she didn’t go to the doctor and instead treated herself with natural stuff, so all that natural mumbo jumbo doesn’t work.  I then calmly ask them how many people they have heard of that have died under a regular physican’s care or on the surgery table, and they didn’t do any mumbo jumbo.  One man’s cure is another man’s poison, and vice versa.

I do love my ob/gyn, Melanie Lau in the Queen’s Physican Building.  Smart, funny, excellent surgeon and practitioner, Farrington grad.  She saved me from my terribly heavy menstrual periods with a well performed hysterectomy (or hysterical as my girlfriend Patricia calls it.)  I love my regular check up doctor, though I don’t go as often as recommended. Okay, too much information, but I do love and appreciate Dr. Lau’s advice, care, and expertise.

One thing I don’t like are drugs.  Prescription drugs can be a blessing on one hand, and a curse on the other with the side effects that need other drugs to counter.  Some people really do need to take prescription drugs.  I am just very glad I am not one of them.  Grand Master Hong Li has been known to help people with severe diseases through exercise, diet, and changes in their lifestyle.  He says to continue the drugs and treatments prescribed by a medical doctor.  His theories work in conjunction with them.

I use herbal preparations from Dr. Richard Schulze’s Original Clinical Formulae.  All of Dr. Schulze’s tonics, tinctures and products are made from the real stuff.  Herbs planted and harvested without toxins, prepared the way it is supposed to be prepared, and they work for me like nothing else I’ve tried.  They don’t taste good – healing herbs usually don’t.  One product that Dr. Schulze is missing from his product line is hair restoration, lol.

Go to Digestion and Elimination page and Cuts and Wounds page for those specific problems.

Good friend Starley Barley sent me this video on the importance of good eating for good health.  Super important, always knew it, but to be like a hunter/gatherer will take Aunty major baby steps and shifts away from take out and convenience.  In return, Aunty (and Uncle!) will be stronger, smarter, healthier.  Here’s a video on Dr. Wahls:

Another fine company that I do business with is Healthy Habits, LLC out of Arizona.  They do not have the same kind of professional website like Dr. Schulze’s.  Their products are not herbal and natural but I can attest to the fact that their products are great and they do work (the ones that I have tried, that is.)

Natto is one of those foods that you either love or hate.  The thing of it is, it is powerful good stuff when it comes to good health – Clot buster – Nattokinese.

Nikken products are very good.  Friend Clare used to bring me gallons of “magic water” – filtered water with mineral traces processed through an oxygenating machine (makes you burp and fart until the body adjusts to it) and I do believe it made me feel better after the initial burp and fart stage.  I love their Kenko Therm wraps – made for the ankle, knee, elbow, and wrist.  It helps heal with gentle pressure – it feels like someone with warm hands is holding your joints.  I often wear a Kenko Therm knee wrap on each knee when I am stuck on a long plane ride or seminar.

I also use magnet therapy on aches and pains.  I used to buy those little round magnets on little round bandaids in Japan and stick them over the sore places on my body.  It felt like the pain was drawn out.  Since I don’t go to Japan anymore (and it was expensive), I now use any kind of cheap little magnets, stick a piece of dermicel tape on it and tape it on various parts of my body.  As the pain or muscle knot diminishes, I move the magnet to a different spot.  Warning – don’t keep it on for more than 24 hours as your skin might start to burn.  Also, keep magnets away from computers.  [Side bar note:  before turning in your room key card to the hotel, swipe the back with a magnet.  This will erase your credit card, name, and address information from the card.]

Brain test for fun

2013-03-31_14-29-00Friend Fay and Pal Les sent me this brain test – I suppose it is good exercise for the brain.  Don’t take this test if you are tired.

Numbers will appear on the screen.  Then, the screen will be blank with circles in the spots that the numbers previously appeared.  The point of this test is to click on circles in the order of the smallest denomination number to the highest denomination.  It can get tricky and the better you get the more numbers appear.

I wanted to see what the best score is – it couldn’t be 1 or 2 years old (younger and younger with each successful screen) – so I took snapshots of the screen and then could fill in the numbers in the correct sequence to get the maximum bestest score.  Of course some would call that cheating – I call it testing the test.  The score with all numbers correctly identified in all stages gave brain age “19”.

19 might be the age when the brain is at its peak of memory ability according to the test makers – but from Aunty’s point of view, a 19 year old has less to remember than someone Aunty’s age so it is natural that they can remember everything.  In any case, just take the test and get your brain exercised in a fun and frustrating way.

Here’s the link to the test: http://flashfabrica.com/f_learning/brain/brain.html

Have fun!