Quinoa is an oddball superfood.  Most of us think of quinoa as a type of cereal grain; however, quinoa is not a grain at all, but the seed of a plant more closely related to beet and spinach than to wheat and oat. Being the oddball isn’t necessarily a bad thing – quinoa is one […]

Lentinula Edodes is a mushroom native to East Asia, which is now cultivated worldwide for culinary and medicinal purposes. This mushroom is usually referred to as Shiitake, which is its Japanese common name, based upon the “Shii” tree that the mushroom grows on. Shiitake has been cultivated for over 1000 years. During the Ming Dynasty […]

There are few fruits more enticing than the jewel-like arils (seed casings) of pomegranate. Adding to the allure of pomegranate are its incredibly versatile culinary applications and its amazingly powerful medicinal properties. The fruit we know as pomegranate comes from the deciduous shrub Punica Granatrum. The Pomegranate is native to Iran, the Himalayas and northern […]