Brooks - SuperVeg: the joy and power of the 25 healthiest vegetables on the planet

SuperVeg celebrates the power and flavour of plants by shining the spotlight on 25 of the most health-giving vegetables on the planet. In this heartfelt homage, vegetable expert Celia Brooks sets out to change the common misperceptions of these mainstream SuperVeg by exploring their formidable nutritional benefits and providing a wealth of supporting information including selection, preparation and cooking techniques. Over 100 creative, health-enhancing, everyday vegetarian recipes cover simple flavour pairings through to more substantial offerings, and bring the joy of powerful nutrition, deliciousness and versatility to your home kitchen.

The Joy and Power of SuperVeg

Hello reader. Im so glad youre here. Youll find my unbridled passion for vegetables vibrating through every page of this book, and you are the reason for it. Its laid bare here in words and pictures for you, to inspire you, to enchant you into the kitchen and, most importantly, to feed you and those you love. It will nourish you and enhance your life force with the natural power of the nutrients of vegetables, the elixir of life. Which all adds up to joy.

The Joy

The joy starts here, I hope, with the reading: absorbing my thoughts, experience and passion. It then extends to motivating you to source the vegetables and appreciate their beauty and value in the flesh. Next youll be engaging with them in the kitchen, and enjoying producing delicious food to share with those you love. The added joyful bonus is that this food has the power to make you feel good and enhance your health.

The Power

Health crazes come and go; scientific research proves and then contradicts; but one truth that is indisputable is this: plants should make up the bulk of our diet to sustain a healthy life . Eating plants protects us from the dangers of the environment, as well as the potential for disease already within us, and supports every essential bodily function on a molecular level. The 25 SuperVeg in this volume are the most powerful of all (see more ).

I forged a career in food by accident. All of a sudden, for the first time around age 20, I discovered what a creative process cooking was and I didnt want to do anything else. Vegetables were the first ingredients I fell in love with and have always been at the heart of my obsession. Vegetables are natural, beautiful, creative materials that are fun to transform into delicious food that makes people happy. So, thats what Ive been doing for a living for nearly 30 years: cooking, teaching, writing, creating recipes and waxing lyrical about food, mostly vegetables. In the last 12 years Ive been growing my own vegetables on a small rented patch of urban land in London, which has extended my vegetable love to a new dimension. My whole experience has been driven and cultivated through authentic passion, and this volume conveys the summation of my vegetable wisdom to date. Long live the SuperVeg, and long may you live too!

Celia Brooks

Vegetables the elixir of life

Each of us is a miraculously complex and unique bundle of trillions of cells. Each cell is on a coded mission to live, doing its allocated job in harmony with the others. Certain brain cells have the essential job of triggering the excretion of hormones that drive our consciousness towards food. Once we figure out how to breathe air first thing out of the womb, our mothers breast milk is the very next fundamental. We need the nourishment as well as the nurture.

Over time, as we grow, our unique composition develops partly by code, and partly by responding to the environment, to survive. Just as we build our lives and character in relationships with the people who nurture us and who we nurture, we build a relationship with food because it nurtures us daily. We are irrepressibly driven to it and, if we are fortunate, we are able to make choices that satiate our hunger according to our desires. Ideally, we develop a loving relationship with food, just as ideally we boundlessly love our nearest and dearest, but relationships are complicated.

STRENGTH + PROTECTION = FITNESS FOR SURVIVAL

Winning the battle of biological survival depends on being the fittest, based on two core strengths: A) the ability to fight and B) good protection. Fulfilling our cells demands so that we function enables the warrior within. Our protective armour works against outside factors to defeat the enemy disease. We are constantly bombarded with toxins, bacteria and viruses that threaten us, and we must keep on the right side of vulnerable every day of our lives, until we finally and inevitably succumb.

What we eat is the crucial essence of both core strengths, and makes us either well adapted or at risk. A core maintained mostly on plant foods gives us an advantage. Plants provide inner strength and balance in the form of carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, fats, fibre and even protein. While it is possible to attain all the necessary protein for a healthy diet from plant foods alone (nuts, seeds, beans and legumes), non-vegans will supplement their protein intake with animal products such as dairy, eggs, fish and meat. For the defensive armour, plants are the best food source of all, providing phytonutrients (phyto = plant). These nutrients are not essential for us to function, but they are essential for defence. They endow us with the power to fight off disease. Plants produce phytochemicals to fight off predators and pathogens from themselves. When we eat the plants, the chemicals become powerful defensive nutrients for us. Thanks plants!

There are over 25,000 different types of phytonutrients, with many different benefits, including repairing damage inflicted by toxic environmental factors and boosting our immune system, heart health and eyesight. Some are antioxidants, which repair cell damage from free radicals, others are anti-inflammatories, reducing inflammation the root of most disease, including cancer and heart disease.

Plant foods of course include grains, beans and legumes, but here we are celebrating vegetables, and some fruits that we think of as vegetables. SuperVeg are the 25 greatest vegetables of all for the power of their nutrition, but also for the joy of their flavour and the act of cooking them. See for the reasons why I selected these 25 SuperVeg.

SUPERVEG SUPERPOWERS

At the beginning of each chapter, there is a nutritional excellence section, highlighting each SuperVegs most potent power its superpower and also which nutrients it has high levels of, both for essential function and for disease prevention. There are many more nutrients provided by each vegetable at good, moderate or trace levels, I have not listed all of these, but they are still wonderful and beneficial.

RAW VS. COOKED