Gadget: Kitchen Sink Dish Drainer for Small Kitchen

Yamazaki’s “slim drainer basket” (山崎実業の「スリム水切りバスケット」)

The size of the drainer is 55.5 cm long, 16.4 cm wide and 16 cm high. The price in Japan is 2,806 yen (plus tax).

Cuban-style Chicken and Rice

Ingredients

1 lime, cut in half
4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more as needed
freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 small yellow onion, finely chopped (about 3/4 cup)
1 green bell pepper, seeds and ribs removed, finely chopped (1 to 1-1/2 cups)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup pimento-stuffed manzanilla olives, sliced
1/2 cup plain tomato sauce or canned crushed tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 bay leaf
12 ounces light (as in pale) beer
2 cups chicken broth
1-1/4 cups uncooked long-grain white rice, rinsed
a baby pinch of saffron threads

Method

1. Squeeze the juice of both lime halves all over the chicken thighs, then season both sides of the thighs generously with salt and pepper. Let them sit for a couple minutes while you prep the rest of your ingredients.
2. Drizzle the oil into a Dutch oven or another large, heavy-bottomed, ovenproof saucepan and heat over medium heat. Brown the chicken, skin sides down, for 8 to 10 minutes until golden and crisped, and then again for 8 minutes on the meat sides. Transfer them to a plate.
3. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of rendered chicken fat into a heatproof container (for saving or discarding once the fat has cooled) and then dump the onion, bell pepper and garlic into the remaining rendered fat in the pot. Cook until the veggies have softened and the onion is slightly translucent, about 5 minutes.
4. Add the olives, tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes, cumin and the bay leaf. Cook, stirring every now and then, for 3 minutes.
5. Pour the beer into the pot. Add the broth, rice, saffron threads and the teaspoon of kosher salt, and stir. Increase the heat to medium-high; bring everything to a boil, then reduce to low.
6. Barely tuck in those crisped chicken thighs, skin sides up, partially cover the pot and cook low and slow until the rice has absorbed nearly all the liquid, 30 minutes.
7. Toss out the bay leaf and let everything rest for 5 minutes. Fluff the rice with a fork before serving.

Makes 4 servings.

Source: Washington Post

In Pictures: Food of Yugen in Chicago, USA

Contemporary Japanese Fine Dining

The Restaurant

Higher Egg and Cholesterol Consumption Hikes Heart Disease and Death Risk

Marla Paul wrote . . . . . . . . .

Cancel the cheese omelet. There is sobering news for egg lovers who have been happily gobbling up their favorite breakfast since the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans no longer limited how much dietary cholesterol or how many eggs they could eat.

A large, new Northwestern Medicine study reports adults who ate more eggs and dietary cholesterol had a significantly higher risk of cardiovascular disease and death from any cause.

“The take-home message is really about cholesterol, which happens to be high in eggs and specifically yolks,” said co-corresponding study author Norrina Allen, associate professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “As part of a healthy diet, people need to consume lower amounts of cholesterol. People who consume less cholesterol have a lower risk of heart disease.”

Egg yolks are one of the richest sources of dietary cholesterol among all commonly consumed foods. One large egg has 186 milligrams of dietary cholesterol in the yolk.

Other animal products such as red meat, processed meat and high-fat dairy products (butter or whipped cream) also have high cholesterol content, said lead author Wenze Zhong, a postdoctoral fellow in preventive medicine at Northwestern.

Debate over disease

Whether eating dietary cholesterol or eggs is linked to cardiovascular disease and death has been debated for decades. Eating less than 300 milligrams of dietary cholesterol per day was the guideline recommendation before 2015. However, the most recent dietary guidelines omitted a daily limit for dietary cholesterol. The guidelines also include weekly egg consumption as part of a healthy diet.

An adult in the U.S. gets an average of 300 milligrams per day of cholesterol and eats about three or four eggs per week.

The study findings mean the current U.S. dietary guideline recommendations for dietary cholesterol and eggs may need to be re-evaluated, the authors said.

The evidence for eggs has been mixed. Previous studies found eating eggs did not raise the risk of cardiovascular disease. But those studies generally had a less diverse sample, shorter follow-up time and limited ability to adjust for other parts of the diet, Allen said.

“Our study showed if two people had exact same diet and the only difference in diet was eggs, then you could directly measure the effect of the egg consumption on heart disease,” Allen said. “We found cholesterol, regardless of the source, was associated with an increased risk of heart disease.

Exercise, overall diet quality and the amount and type of fat in the diet didn’t change the association between the dietary cholesterol and cardiovascular disease and death risk.

The new study looked at pooled data on 29,615 U.S. racially and ethnically diverse adults from six prospective cohort studies for up to 31 years of follow up.

It found:

• Eating 300 mg of dietary cholesterol per day was associated with 17 percent higher risk of incident cardiovascular disease and 18 percent higher risk of all-cause deaths. The cholesterol was the driving factor independent of saturated fat consumption and other dietary fat.
• Eating three to four eggs per week was associated with 6 percent higher risk of cardiovascular disease and 8 percent higher risk of any cause of death.

Should I stop eating eggs?

Based on the study, people should keep dietary cholesterol intake low by reducing cholesterol-rich foods such as eggs and red meat in their diet.

But don’t completely banish eggs and other cholesterol-rich foods from meals, Zhong said, because eggs and red meat aregood sources of important nutrients such as essential amino acids, iron and choline. Instead, choose egg whites instead of whole eggs or eat whole eggs in moderation.

“We want to remind people there is cholesterol in eggs, specifically yolks, and this has a harmful effect,” said Allen, who cooked scrambled eggs for her children that morning. “Eat them in moderation.”

Estimating dietary intake

Diet data were collected using food frequency questionnaires or by taking a diet history. Each participant was asked a long list of what they’d eaten for the previous year or month. The data were collected during a single visit.The study had up to 31 years of follow up (median: 17.5 years), during which 5,400 cardiovascular events and 6,132 all-cause deaths were diagnosed.

A major limitation of the study is participants’ long-term eating patterns weren’t assessed.

“We have one snapshot of what their eating pattern looked like,” Allen said. “But we think they represent an estimate of a person’s dietary intake. Still, people may have changed their diet, and we can’t account for that.”

Source: Northwestern University

Even Housework, Gardening Can Help an Older Woman’s Heart

Think exercise has to be high-intensity to make a difference to your health? Think again. New research shows that even routine housework and gardening can help older women’s hearts.

“For older women, any and all movement counts towards better cardiovascular health,” said Dr. David Goff. He’s director of the division of cardiovascular sciences at the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), which funded the new research.

“When we tell people to move with heart, we mean it, and the supporting evidence keeps growing,” he said in an institute news release.

Heart disease remains the leading killer of American women and nearly 68 percent of women aged 60 to 79 have heart disease, according to the NHLBI.

The new study was led by Andrea LaCroix, of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Her team tracked the activity of more than 5,800 U.S. women, aged 63 to 97. Each wore a device that measured their movement 24 hours a day for a full week.

The researchers then tracked each woman’s heart health over the next five years.

The investigators found that even light physical activity — gardening, going for a stroll, folding clothes — appeared to reduce the risk of stroke or heart failure by up to 22 percent, and the risk of heart attack or coronary death by as much as 42 percent.

“The higher the amount of activity, the lower the risk,” said LaCroix, who directs the Women’s Health Center of Excellence at UCSD.

“The risk reduction showed regardless of the women’s overall health status, functional ability or even age,” she added in the news release. “In other words, the association with light physical activity was apparent regardless of these other factors.”

Two cardiologists weren’t surprised by the findings.

“The findings support the American Heart Association’s recommendation to focus on attaining 10,000 steps daily, and the 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines, which is in favor of such light physical activity — even in small doses,” said Dr. Eugenia Gianos. She directs Women’s Heart Health at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

Dr. Guy Mintz directs cardiovascular health at Northwell Health’s Sandra Atlas Bass Heart Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y. He said the new study is superior to older research because those studies tended to rely on people filling out daily-activity questionnaires, which are often inaccurate. Having the women simply wear a device to track their movements is much more reliable, Mintz noted.

As for the results, he estimated that “the cardio-protective benefit of daily light physical activity in older women is similar in magnitude to the event reduction seen with statin [cholesterol] drugs,” Mintz said.

“This study represents a call to action for women of all ages to move. They do not need a membership at an expensive gym, but just a list of chores or activities, to keep busy with each day to lead a healthier and longer life,” he suggested.

It all hearkens back to a simpler — and thinner — era, he added.

“Think of your grandparents cleaning their apartments or homes — dusting, using carpet sweepers, polishing and washing windows, etc. They were a very active generation,” Mintz said.

The study was published online in JAMA Network Open.

Source: HealthDay

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