TCM

Nopales are from a wonderful tasting cacti (the nopal) that comes from Mexico though it can be found in other places such as in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas to name a few. They have been a part of Mexican cuisine for 1,000's of years. The nopal is also known as the prickly pear cacti. The prickly pear which is more well known outside Mexico is the beautiful red prickly fruit/flower that buds from the nopal. The paddles or pads of this lovely cacti are what we refer to as nopales or nopalitos (when prepared) and are used in many different ways. You can boil them, boil then fry, or grill them. You can eat them in a salad, in a taco, with scrambled eggs, the list is endless and once you understand the flavor I think it's really about making it your own. It doesn't necessarily have to be made in a Mexican recipe.

It wasn't a nutrition class or a teacher or even a chef who truly made me lust for beets, but rather the writer Tom Robbins in his book about the quest for immortality in Jitterbug Perfume. I read this wonderful book at some point during college and

In light of the recent swine mania that is seemingly sweeping across the planet, I thought I'd do a little PR on behalf of pigs.

While I was in school studying for my masters in TCM, one of my favorite medicinal recipes that came straight out of the Chinese Herbal Medicine Materia Medica was something almost all of you have probably had: miso soup. Yep, it's that simple. In fact all the ingredients in miso soup are in the materia medica! I'm going to get a little technical here because I find it rather exciting that something so tasty can be found in a medical reference book, and I need to add here that most of the Chinese herbs are rather pungent and not super yummy like this particular combo.