The Power Of Good AGE’s!
One of the things in this photo will prolong your life – but which one is it? Hint: it’s in a jar and it’s “wet!”
I’m sharing some valuable health news I found from The Guardian.com, and bravo to them for posting this story! I will share their link later.
Dr. Michelle Davenport, 39, is a scientist and registered dietician based in San Francisco, and she focused on ways we have slow the harmless effects of aging. She argues that this can be accomplished one doing one key thing: by cooking mostly with broth and water!
There Are Years To Be Had In This Broth!
Yes, the magical elixir known as the “fountain of youth” is actually just water and broth!
Cooking “wet”, Davenport says, mitigates the creation of “Advanced Glycation End” products, or AGEs, formed when food is cooked at high dry temperatures, like over the grill or in an air fryer.
While in college, a professor very casually said something that altered the course of her career: “Everyone knows that AGEs in processed western foods are killing us.” Davenport bolted up in her seat: “I was like, um, what?”
What are AGEs?
Advanced glycation end products are a group of compounds created when proteins or lipids are exposed to sugars. People encounter them regularly in the western diet, where they are typically generated during the cooking process via the Maillard reaction, or when food is blasted over high heat. (Think: the crust on a good steak.) A lot of ultra-processed foods, like cheese puffs and breakfast cereals, are also cooked this way.
So there you have it: dry food isn’t good for you, but “wet” food is! See the whole story here:
https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2024/oct/25/cooking-with-water-health-issues
I love that because as some of you know, I LOVE wet food! So, I’m going to share some great soup recipes so you can sip some of the “fountain of youth” yourself!
Cooking With Linda Ronstadt!
What you see there is a gorgeous bowl of soup – from the iconic Singer’s cookbook/memoir!
This terrific book is a “must buy” – as the publishers says:
“In Feels Like Home, Grammy award-winning singer Linda Ronstadt effortlessly evokes the magical panorama of the Sonoran borderlands, a landscape etched by sunlight and carved by wind, offering a personal tour of the place where she came of age, built around meals and memories. Following her best-selling musical memoir, Simple Dreams, this book seamlessly braids together Ronstadt’s recollections of people and their passions in a region little understood in the rest of the United States.”
And that means one of the most under-utilized cheeses of all: QUESO!
Outside of being used in bars as a creamy tortilla dip, I don’t see it in recipe. But here is how this unique cheese is described:
“Queso fresco”, “fresh cheese”, is white, mild and easily crumbled. It won’t melt away to goo in your Sonoran cheese soup. That soup is best made with Sonora’s local cheese – queso regional de Sonora – but queso fresco will do.”
Here’s a bit of an explainer about what we are up to with today’s recipe:
Here are the ingredients for Linda’s “Sonoran Queso Soup”:
3 tbl vegetable oil
3 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 medium white onion, diced
1 medium tomato, diced
5 green Anaheim chiles – also called New Mexico chiles or California chiles
1 tsp salt or to taste
6 cups chicken broth
1 cup milk
8 oz. queso fresco, cut into small cubes
Chiltepin chiles for garnish
I have my potatoes and onions ready to cook. In a large dutch oven or heavy-bottomed soup pot, heat the oil over medium heat.
As always, dice and chop all of your ingredients before you begin and it’s a simple and fast recipe:
Add the potatoes and onion to the oil and cook until the onion is soft, about 4 minutes.
Add the tomato, chiles and salt and cook five more minutes. I like to have Linda’s music on while I stir the ingredients…”You’re No Good” is a classic that I hope doesn’t describe the finished product…
Add the broth and simmer until the potatoes are soft, then turn heat to low and slowly add the milk. Here’s a short video:
I always take it slow and easy when cooking with milk to avoid curdling it…that’s all there is to it!
Now, let’s stir this dish together:
This is so easy to serve: just put a few cubes of the queso fresco cheese into the bottom of each empty bowl then pour the soup over them.
Let’s do this!
A Simple Yet Delicious Taste Of Sonora!
This is a beautiful dish: light but hearty, with Sonoran flavors…as the book says:
“Sonoran home cook Armida says the old-fashioned way to make the soup is to stir all the cheese into the soup first, then add salt and pepper to taste and serve hot with warm flour tortillas.”
As you can see, the cheese does indeed stay whole, but it warms and softens in the soup…
Linda Ronstadt’s book is filled with terrific memories of growing up in the Southwest US. She listened to Mexican music growing up.
Here’s another great tasting soup that is very healthy as well!
This is Greek “longevity” stew – check out the entire recipe here!
As promised, I have a third recipe for good health, and it’s as colorful as it is delicious:
This delicious pea soup was so much fun to make – and so easy as well!
Click here for the entire step-by-step recipe:
If you like these stories, why not sign up to receive emails whenever I post? It’s easy to do, I do
NOT collect any information about you at all, there are absolutely NO ads of any kind, just stories about food!
You can sign up by clicking on my blog here and see the note on the right!
Sign up for recipes, food travel and more – and I you like this story please share on social media – thanks!
Categories: Bite Eat Swallow, Bite! Eat! Repeat!, Chef memoirs, Cookbooks, Eat This!, Food, Food Pictures, Recipes, Travel, Wacky Food, World's Wildest Food
Bite! Eat! Repeat! 
Mmmmm. That looks delicious. It’s so sad L.R. Lost her ability to sing.
Yes, I watched her documentary and bought her memoir as well…such class and an iconic singer who stands up for what she belies in
All the soups look delicious, but I’m a particular fan of fresh pea soup, especially with the mint.
Ronstadt has long been one of my favorites, I’ll have to look for her book.
I had never warmed up to peas that much but this changed that forever! Thanks for the comment!
I eat a lot of soups and stews. This one looks so good. I love Linda Ronstadt as a person and a performer.
Agree on all counts – I love wet food so it’s great to know it has health benefits as well – just from using it as a cooking method!
I’ve never heard that about wet vs dry cooking, but it does make sense. luckily, I am a soup lover and these soups look delicious
Beth, this article just came out and while it doesn’t give too much insight about why dry food is BAD, it does says that certain compounds that will build up in your body come from dry heat and crust, so wet food breaks it down in the cooking process…as a wet food lover, it just validates why!
I also prefer wet food and love a good soup unfortunately I cannot get queso fresco cheese here unless I want to have it sent from the US (at a cost) I am not prepared to pay ..google has said I can sub it for feta or goats cheese do you have any thoughts on that, John..the soup does sound delicious 🙂
Queso has a nuttiness that goat cheese would cover, maybe with a bit of feta in there as well! Thank you for the comment!
Thank you, John 😀
I cooked a beef casserole with red wine last night, and it was reasonably wet. An interesting article that makes me think I might have left it too late to go completely ‘wet’.
Best wishes, Pete.