Another brilliant selection of nutritional ideas! And another set of questions I am hoping you know the answers to:
maca: what does it "add"? Since it's very expensive, I was wondering whether there is an alternative or is it only used for flavour (if so what does it taste of? Sweet?)
Would you really use leek the same way you use scallions? Is it digestible raw? If so: all of the stem, or just the light coloured part?
Can't make the wrap (no dehydration oven) but have you heard anything about the problems with seaweed and heavy metals, not to mention radiation levels (around Japan recently), and if so what brands/types of seaweed to look out for (is there anything in the North Sea or Baltic sea worth thinking of)?
Your tomato on top is the cherry on this delicious post!
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I have been using raw maca powder for years, and although it is quite expensive, I absolutely adore the flavor and will continue to use it. I buy it online on iherb for a cheaper price. It has a very unique flavor, it's sweet (sweeter than most roots) and I often add it to warm almond milk in winter to make a hot maca drink. It is considered a super food due to the amount of nutrients found in it - it is known for increasing stamina and energy levels. I personally I cannot tell the difference but it's good to know that's what it does :)
I don't know of a substitute for maca, maybe some ginseng? There is an Austrian company, Feinstoff which sells it for an affordable price.
Leeks are a little milder option to green onions and the stalk is not a stalk :) I searched a couple of stores for green onions, but I guess they are out of season now. The whole leek is edible raw.
I use the seaweeds the recipes call for, wakame, or kelp for dashi. Sometimes I substitute with what I got.
I heard a lot of things and I try to not let fear dictate my decisions, if I would track every single ingredient I would go mad or die out of hunger analyzing everything in the lab and rejecting it :) You can only be sure of what you eat if you grow it yourself. And even then it had to be in an unpoluted area. Sometimes you have to take compromises to the best best what is available to you.
My mistake: leeks are all leaf no stalk at all! Maybe it's one of those plants easier to digest raw than cooked?
I know you to be fearless, but I was just wondering if you had any stats on how realistic the scare is. (Some healthfood shops are not importing seaweed from Japan anymore, I noticed recently). Indeed how far do we go in making "healthy choices"and taking reasonable risks? Always a conundrum in the kitchen!
If you are so concerned about food radiation you could always buy a geiger meter. Then again most dry spices are preserved through food irradiation. You decide how deep that rabbit hole you want to go ;) I let my body cope with the occasional food poisons. What helped me to relax was John A. McDougalls Starch Solution, where he stated that the effects of toxins in food are minuscule because of their neglectible concentration and it is far more important to focus on the macronutritient ratio. It's always a balancing act between an enjoyable life and being pathologicaly obsessed with a healthy lifestyle turned into orthorexia. Never understood how this could be a disease, now I do, thank you for enlightening me :)
Glad to be of service. Not quite sure how I was though! You seem to be the expert on all the technical details and I am curious to discover how they bear weight on your eating patterns, which seem to take extreme care of all those details (no expense spared!). Orthorexia is a terrible modern disorder but less to do with radiation levels and more to do with fitting in.