Angela Forbes is a
Health Education Extension Agent based in York County.
Angela thanks for coming down today.
You do things
in several counties. What sort of programs are you
particularly interested in putting on? Well I work
with the diabetes prevention program and I also work which
is a program to help people.
There are certain people and certain criteria, but it helps
people prevent the developing diabetes. Okay! People who are
who are predisposed to it, I guess you could say. But I also
teach hypertension control program, which is for
folks who have already been diagnosed with hypertension. So,
that's two courses that I
teach. But additionally, I get asked to do everything under
the sun, nutrition from a label reading to how do
you know, how do you prepare healthy food, to
budgeting, shopping for food that you know just anything to
do with food and nutrition. Everything has to do with food.
Yeah, yeah, so,
it depends on the group.
All right! Well, today you've told me that you say
eating fruits and vegetables is important yes and so we thought
we would talk about the fact that in South Carolina, people
are growing all these wonderful fruits and vegetables. Maybe we
can give people some ideas on how to use them a little
differently. Yeah! Oh, yeah! And fruits vegetables and
we were always trying to encourage people. And that's
been my mantra. Because so many people like, 'We can't eat
anything. Everything we
eat healthy tastes bad, which is so,
so wrong. With so many good things out there,
and fruits and vegetables play
a major role and some cancers, prevention of some cancers,
hypertension, diabetes, type two diabetes,
and heart disease and obesity play a big role in
the development of these diseases in your what
you're eating. If you're not eating enough fruits and
vegetables, you're probably eating a lot of other stuff.
Okay, let's talk about some way we can
eat more of them in kind of unusual ways.
I have a daughter who's become a vegetarian. And you know in
South Carolina, squash, when squash is coming in,
you have a lot of squash.
And so I found this recipe and it's really really simple. It
starts out- Not deep fat fried? right!
No, it's not! Boy I have to admit.
Put a lot of oil in the pan.
And then I cut this up relatively small. And I like
using the two colors because I think that there is a pretty.
And then you just dump that in.
And, I've also got
some garlic. And you cook it on low. And you just
do something else in the kitchen and you just stir it.
Don't put any water in it. Squash has a lot of water.
Yeah! well and then at the very end
what you want to do is
you get some fresh basil.
And the easiest way to cut basil is just to
to, you know, just cut it with the scissors. And
it's going to cook down. So you use kind of big pieces
and then you put Parmesan cheese in
and you stir it up. And so I've got this ready.
I've already cooked the noodles and the recipe said use a large
noodle that it will stick to better,
not regular spaghetti noodles.
I was thinking spaghetti noodles. Yeah!
And so you just toss that up
and then when you serve it, put a little more.
Keep those trusty scissors handy.
A little more basil on the top.
And a fair amount, a little bit of cheese. Awesome.
And then if you don't,
can't find basil, then put the parmesan cheese on top.
and you if don't have basil, you can get
balsamic pesto. Yeah. Oh, yeah!
Basil pesto and it's already got the parmesan cheese in it.
And that gives you the exact same flavors.
Yeah.
So very easy. Gosh that smells good.
And so this is something that you'd serve hot.
Yeah, okay! And that could be, that could be as your
daughter is vegetarian that could be the meal but that
could also just be a side dish. For those folks
that want to have a piece of chicken or something.
And then since we have all these wonderful
watermelons and things, coming in I think you got
a fun salad for us. Well, I do and I got actually got my
watermelon from a local farm, up where I'm from.
But this watermelon, I just want to show you is a seedless
watermelon. And it's orange when I cut it open. I was like, 'Oh
I was so expecting it to be pink. Talking about colorful.
Yeah, so it calls for a small-That's really fun.
-small watermelon.
And it's really good.
It calls for a small watermelon and it also calls
for a pint of cherry or grape tomatoes, whatever, whatever
flavor you want to use
and then it called for -
you can slice it or dice it, but it called for about a medium
size purple onion. Purple onion to me is a little
stronger and it's pretty.
And this is real onion here. If you don't like all that
It's sweet and the onion flavor-
Yes, yeah- gonna be great mixed together. You could cut that
back, yeah if you wanted to.
So I thought I'd have a little fun with this and I'll tell you
in just a second but it called for a half a cucumber. So
I bought a small cucumber
so it would be able more hopefully it'll be a little more
tender because personally I don't like really big chunks.
But that's me
and then you want to mix this up. And I'm gonna tell you what
else I did. Because with salads you can add whatever you want.
You could add
peppers and personally I didn't want the bell pepper
flavor the green bell pepper
so I bought the Zsa Zsa at the farm. And I never tried a
Zsa Zsa pepper. But this is a sweet pepper. And look how
pretty that color is. Yeah it's Clemson orange.
And Ms Zsa Zsa Gabor, because is the mother. Right,
right, right, exactly!
you just toss it together and then I also thought I'd have
a little fun and I bought some blueberries
And as you say, when you're doing these things don't
feel like you have to just use the ingredients that somebody
else used. Feel free to experiment.
Yeah! Don't you think that
having a variety of fruits and vegetables instead of every
night having a sweet potato and some broccoli, you would
encourage us to
run the gamut and have lots of different colors
and textures and things in making those selections.
Would you? Yeah And I like that she said textures
because it also calls for-
The different fruits and vegetables have different
vitamins, different minerals, different phytochemicals or
anti-oxidants which are found to help in cancer
prevention, helps in this preventing the stale
growth. Yes.
And every vegetable every fruit is unique.
But the texture is so - That's a really good point
because I think it's good to get a variety of textures
I think it's I think that makes it more interesting and
more likely to eat it you know for a lot of folks.
It's good for internal digestion as well. Yes it is. Yes.
Now you've got a
wonderful looking salad dressing. Smell that?
Oh, my my!
This is so good it is just a little honey.
It's a little bit of. It calls for red wine vinegar.
Hold that thought. It called for olive oil and
I cut back the olive oil just a tad. It was a fourth cup and
I thought it was a little bit we oily.
But that was just my
opinion, but I used the white wine vinegar with the grape
must in it. It is so good. That grape must
adds a sweet flavor. And a lime, it did not call for it.
but you can't go wrong. So personally, I can't stand it.
Lime in it just you can't go wrong with this. And that and
the dressing also has mint leaves just like you
said. I didn't cut mine. I just tore them up. But it
was in the dressing so you'll want to throw
a little bit more in there. And honestly
I think that the recipe says to mix baby spinach with it.
But I think would be better to put in refrigerator let it
marinate. And then put it on top of baby spinach
or whatever kinda of lettuce you wanna use, some color lettuce
Don't feel wedded to the recipe,
exactly according to what's in season,
what you're growing in your garden
and what your family, what their personal
preferences are. But do this is a good way to introduce
it to people to it. If you don't like cucumber you can
put that in there. The person who didn't like it
can pick it out.
Sometimes they're going to try it because it's in there
and all the other flavors are so good.
Yeah. I think it's a good way to introduce people
to new things is when you can mix them.
How many fruits and vegetables should we aim for a day?
Well, it you know it depends on the person's age,
their activity level
and their sex, men or women. Because men
typically men can eat more calories. But what I love to use
what we used to say was the five a day
for better health program.
It's not called that now but it's just an easy,
easy, easy way to help people. I think as a registered
dietitian I worked in the community a long time and I'm
trying to get people to
make fruit vegetable consumption more important
because it is so important for health.
If you could just remember five: two fruits, two vegetable
measure doubles a medium sized piece of fruit or half cup cut
up fruit or vegetable cooked or raw. And then-
Not huge servings. No! And leafy would be a cup. If it's
spinach or lettuce or whatever it would be. A cup.
And it's so so easy to remember that. If we can get everybody
doing that
I think it would you would see a lot of difference in people's
health. It was a simple way to remember it. Alright, well I'm
going to hold my hand up
and say stop to some of the things
that I shouldn't eat
and say go for the things that are good for us.
Thanks for sharing these tips for us. Thank you, I appreciate
coming. I'm want to have some now.
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