Saturday, 16 October 2010

Seed Mixture

About once a week, I grind and combine a bunch of different seeds/nuts and store it in the freezer.  This makes it easy to dole out my daily dose of healthy seeds/nuts.   I vary this weekly depending on my mood and what's on hand.  I'll list all the typical ones I use, and the amounts are what I happened to use this week.  I'll list it in grams, because that's how I measure on the food scale.  If you aren't familiar with grams, 28 grams = 1 oz., and 70 grams is about a half cup (that's approximate).

flax seeds, 130 g
chia seeds, 43
hemp seeds 63
sunflower seeds 59
sesame seeds, 23
pumpkin seeds
walnuts
mediterranean pine nuts
brazil nuts

I grind about 1/2 cup at a time in my vita-mix "dry" container.   I don't grind the chia or hemp seeds; I might just chop lightly the nuts rather than grinding.

Here's the nutritional info on today's mixture.  A 1 Tbsp serving (9 grams) has 49 calories, 1.9 g protein (14%), 3.9 g fat (68%), 2.3 grams of carbs (18.5%).  The omega-6/omega-3 ratio is 0.766.

Here's the result from a batch that has some pine nuts in it (not ground) and chopped walnuts, along with the ground seeds:





















These are good to add to everything--salads, soups, steamed veggies, smoothies. In the salads, combined with orange, lime juice, or flavored vinegar, it makes a nice nutty little dressing.

Note, you can use any combination of nuts and seeds you want or have on hand.   Here's a post I wrote about the nutritional content of nuts and seeds, and here are a couple of articles by Dr. Fuhrman on them:  here and here.