Michael Swarm

Tamales are Mexican steamed corn dumplings. Traditional for Christmas and parties. Very flavorful and not boring.

Potato Filling

• 1/2 onion, diced
• 1 poblano chili, chopped
• 1/4 cup corn
• 2 cups mashed potatoes
• 1/4 cup potato water, vegetable broth or other liquid
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp cumin powder
• 1/4 tsp salt

Bean Filling

• 2 cups black beans
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp salt

Wrapping

• corn husks, soaked, or banana leaves

Dough

• 1/2 kilo masa (from tortelleria) or 3 cups corn flour + 2-1/2 cups water
• 1 guajillo chili, toasted
• 3/4 cup vegetable broth
• 1 tsp not chicken spice mix
• 1/4 tsp salt

Soak and trim the corn husks, or banana leaves. Brown the onions and chilis until soft. Mash steamed potatoes and add cooked vegetables, spices with liquid to help mix spices into filling mixture. Blend whole beans with spices in blender or by hand.

Over comal or stainless steel pan or pot, toast chili with tongs. Allow to cool and cut into pieces. Into blender add toasted chili pieces, vegetable broth, spice mix and salt, and blend. Into mixing bowl or pot with masa, add wet mixture and kneed together by hand. The result will be smoother and wetter than tortilla masa, to be easy to spread onto corn husks or banana leaves.

Into bottom half of wrapper, spoon and spread tamale dough mixture. Add spoonful of any filling. Fold sides over middle and fold top half over bottom. Stand up in steaming pot. Steam low heat 35-55m, depending on moistness of tamale dough.

Tips

• Make whatever kind of filling you want.
• Taste it and make sure it has flavor. If you like the taste of the filling, you will like the tamale.
• Tamales can be savory or sweet. Chilis are traditional filling. Try banana or mango tamales!
• You can use a few ceramic plates at the bottom of a large pot to make your own steamer.
• Put a glass or cup in the middle, and arrange the tamales around the outside, to help the tamales stand up while cooking.

Living a whole plant lifestyle benefits you 2 homes in your lifetime.

• 1 home in food costs
• 1 home in medical costs

Estimated for 1 person over entire lifetime. The earlier you practice, the more you benefit. Multiply by the number of persons in your family. The larger your family, the more your family benefits.

Start Early

Chronic disease and death is usually not a concern of young adults. But the accumulation of lifetime wealth certainly is. Who wouldn’t want 2 additional homes? The best time to adopt is a young couple starting a family. You have nearly your whole life ahead of you. And your children can start life with maximum advantage.

Cost of Living

Cost of living is primarily food and housing, and medicine later in life. Control your food costs, provide for your housing, and avoid medicine costs. Why two houses, instead of money amount? Because it’s a concrete and real world example. Independent of national currency, whether dollars, peso, euros or pounds. And independent of currency inflation and depreciation. It’s a good example and it’s true no matter when or where you live in the world.

Last Chance

Waiting until chronic disease is diagnosed, near end of live, is the last chance to adopt a whole plant lifestyle. The benefits are primarily in reduced suffering and longer life. But come too late for to save most food and medicine costs. And too late to pass on to family and children. While never too late, your last chance is nearly the worst time to adopt a whole plant lifestyle. The worst time is never.

How Many Vegetables

• How many fresh vegetables do you regularly use?
• How may frozen vegetables do you use?

Weekly

1. Onion
2. Celery
3. Carrot
4. Cucumber
5. Tomato
6. Zuchini
7. Lettuce
8. Spinach
9. Brocolli

I buy these every week. They are always in my refrigerator. They are used in everday recipes. Vegetables are primarily used for flavor. They make the base of soups (vegetable soup, tomato soup, split pea soup) and sauces (marinara sauce). Sometimes feature vegetable side dishes (steamed spinach, Chinese stir fry vegetables). Sometimes salads.

Occasionally

10. Beet
11. Cabbage
12. Cauliflower
13. Pumpkin-Squash

I buy these every couple of weeks for specific recipes (sauerkraut, root salad, white sauce, pumpkin squares).

Frozen

14. Peas
15. Corn

Keep these on hand for soups, stews, flavored rice and fillings (vegetable soup, Spanish or Mexican rice, tamale filling, samosa filling).

Starchy Vegetables

• Potato
• Sweet Potato

These are moderate energy staple foods, principally starch. I don’t consider them vegetables because of their use as staple foods.

Know your chilis. Chilis are foundational to Mexican foods. But have been adopted in many other cuisines, particularly Asian cuisines like Indian, Chinese and Japanese. All chilis come from wild ancestors in America, particularly central Mexico. Bell peppers are actually the mildest of chilis, and dried ground red bell peppers as paprika have been adopted in Middle Eastern, African and European cuisines like Spanish, Turkish and Hungarian. The English word for paprika comes from Hungarian. The Spanish call it pimenton. Before chilis, black pepper, originally from India, was the primary spice for adding heat. That’s why English chilis are called peppers. Chilis are one of the many culinary gifts of Mexico to world cuisine. How many chili types do you know and use? These are 10 common chilis that I use all the time.

FRESH

• Pimenton (used as vegetabe for color and flavor, not heat)
• Poblano (used as mildly spicy vegetable in Mexican vegetable dishes)
• Jalapeno (used in mild salsas)
• Serrano (used in spicy salsa)
• Habanero (used in hot sauces)

DRY

• Ancho (poblano)
• Guajillo (key ingredient in enchilada sauce)
• Meco Chipotle (extra smoked jalapeno, brown)
• Morita Chipotle (smoked jalapeno, key ingredient in adobo sauce, dark red)
• Arbol (used to add heat without much flavor in Asian dishes)

USES

• Besides fresh and cooked salsa for chips and tacos.
• Key ingredient in Mexican sauces like enchilada and adobo sauces.
• Mix and match to make your own chili powder, or chili paste.

If you don’t live in Mexico, you can find these in Mexican groceries, or order online.

7 Reasons WFPB Tastes Better

• Fresh local ingredients. Best ingredients. Know how to pick and chose for ripeness and flavor.
• From scratch. Know what’s in and what’s out.
• Whole foods. More complex flavors.
• Time. Slow cooking. Develops flavors. Fermentation, etc.
• Aromatics and vegetables. Vegetables are base of flavor. Know way more about vegetables now.
• Herbs and spices. Depth of flavors. Know way more about spices now.
• Aligns with personal tastes.

Made choice to make WFPB taste better than previous SAD (gourment junk). Invest time and effort into research and practice kitchen skills. Search, record, adapt and adjust recipes. Cook 3 meals a day from scratch, 1,000 meals a year, for more than a decade. Only so much taste range in biology of human nature. But amazing taste for good food. More enjoyment from food. Depth of experience of ingredients, recipes and health.

• Must be fun to be sustainable.
• Expect learning language to take years. Not months.

Language Parts

• Vocabulary. Common words (depth).
• Grammar. Complete sentences (accuracy).
• Fluency: Speed, pause, memory (speed).
• Accent: Pronunciation (clarity).

Vocabulary is one part of language learning.

Babies and Kids

• 2 years: 300 words (vacation)
• 3 years: 1,000 words (flashcards)
• 4 years: 2,000 words (Duolingo: 2,000-5,000 words, A2 speaking)
• 5 years: 5,000+ words (no frustration, B2)

It takes kids years, not months, to learn their mother tongue. Why should it be different for adults? Vocabulary learning is continual, occurs at every level, using every tool.

Adults

• Native speakers 20,000-35,000 words (C2)

My Vocabulary

• My Spanish Vocabulary is probably ~15-20k words. With different tests I’ve achieved 5,000, 17,000 and 20,000 words.
• I’m watching TV series and reading novels in Spanish.
• Comprehension reminds me of grade school, when learning to read, and I didn’t always know every word.
• I don’t stop to look up words, unless they are reapeated, and seem important.

Vocabulary Tests

17 Minute Languages

• https://www.17-minute-languages.com/en/Spanish-placement-test/
• Good for beginners. Not very good for repeat tests.
• Type of test: Yes-No Spanish (honor system). Basic, Intermediate and Advanced words.
• My vocabulary: 5k words. Suggest C2, but suspect that’s an exageration.
• Javier’s (8yrs) Spanish: 4,400 words
• Violet’s (9yrs) Spanish: 3,800 words

ARealMe

https:/www.arealme.com/spanish-vocabulary-size-test/en/

• Difficult test for beginners.
• Type of test: Synonyms and antonyms. Spanish to spanish multiple choice. More uncommon and rare words.
• My Spanish vocabulary: 17k words. Top 8%. “Professional white collar level”.
• My English 30k words. Top 0.25%. “Shakespeare”. (Average US 20k)
• Javier’s (8yrs) Spanish: 3,522, Last 39.35%, “Your vocabulary size is like that of a 4-year-old kid in Spain!”

Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language (Spanish) and Ghent University (English)

• http://vocabulario.bcbl.eu (Spanish) and http://vocabulary.ugent.be (English)
• Difficult test for beginners. Good for repeat tests. New words each time.
• Type of test: Real or fake words. Don’t guess yes. Wrong yes answers punished. Requires keyboard.
• My Spanish vocabulary: 20,000 words. (36% of 60,000 words. Not as bad as it seems. 60,000 * 1/3 = 20,000 words) “Este es el nivel de una persona no nativa con un nivel alto.”
• My English vocabulary: 45,000 words (76% of 60,000 words. Not as bad as it seems. 60,000 * 3/4 = 45,000 words) “This is a high level for a native speaker.”

Adults are better test takers than kids. We understand much better the rules and psychology of tests.

• For many people, the cause of noncommunicable diseases is a mystery.
• Assume future discovery or medical breakthrough.

Revolution

• Cause already known. But not integrated into science and medicine.
• Knowledge and practice is fragmented and uneven.
• Reversal already practiced by small minority.

Discovery

• Food dominates all causes. Proven reversal with food alone.
• Multiple diseases reversed with common food.
• Diseases share common biological mechanisms and pathways.
• Small growing minority of clinics offer successful dietary interventions.
• Small changes slow disease. Large changes stop or reverse.

Science of Reversal

• Cardiovascular: Ornish (RCT) and Esselstyn (study)
• Cancer: Ornish (RCT) and T Colin Campbell (lab)
• Diabetes: Barnard (RCT)

Work of last 40 years. These people should recieve Nobel Prize. Commonly people have more than one condition and medication. Most common diseases and risk factors caused and reversed by food.

Sources

Dean Ornish, International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention, 2022

A New Unified Theory of Lifestyle Medicine

• Full references
• Requires account (free).

Dean Ornish, Plantrician Project

Unifying Theory on Lifestyle Medicine

• Video for professional audience.

• Almost 75% of deaths globally. Not even close.
• 0.4B in past decade, 41M per year.
• Has been last 25 years. Billions.

Noncommunicable diseases have been top killers in Industrial countries for last 150+ years: UK, US, Germany, France, Canada, Australia, etc. What is new is developing countries last 25 years: Mexico, India, Brazil, etc. Infectious disease and malnutrition are receding as issues.

Not viral respiratory disease, fatal only when underlying noncommunicable disease (99.1%).

Source

WHO: Noncommunicable Diseases

• 41M deaths per year, 74% of all deaths globally.
• Cardiovascular, cancer, chronic respiratory, diabetes (over 80% of total)
• Diet, exercise, tobacco and alcohol (pleasure trap)
• Noncommunicable disease = chronic disease (vs communicable disease = germ)