Yes I\u2019m Cooking with a Cast Iron Skillet<\/p>\n
You ever know that one person who apparently knows all the answers even when you don\u2019t want them to be right? Yeah, that person for me is my little sister. She\u2019s always freaking right!!! Ok, don\u2019t get me wrong, I love and adore her, and she\u2019s right about the best things, but damn it, she\u2019s my baby sister! She\u2019s not supposed to tell me what to do! I\u2019m supposed to tell her what to do! But, once again she is right!<\/p>\n
Ok, so I have always been borderline anemic, but it got a lot worse when I went vegetarian seven years ago. Then in 2012 I started donating platelets every two weeks with the occasional whole blood donation throughout. Because of this my iron levels are always in jeopardy. Seems like whenever I eat, it\u2019s a quest to find enough protein and iron. I was doing pretty good to, or so I thought, with supplements.<\/p>\n
When you don\u2019t have enough iron in your blood you\u2019ll find you have some really annoying side effects, not the least of which is lethargy and exhaustion. You can also experience shortness of breath, dizziness, irritability and unexpected weigh loss (though I highly doubt we\u2019d complain about the weight loss!). Iron is not made in your body; you have to get it through what you eat. So if you aren\u2019t eating iron rich foods your in big trouble! You need iron for Proper immune function and it\u2019s and essential element for blood production, especially hemoglobin which gets the oxygen from your lungs through your body.<\/p>\n
I had this whole routine to keep my iron high enough so I could donate and still be healthy. I took 1-2 iron supplements a day, plus calcium, vitamin C, a multi and a bunch of other vitamins. This combined with my quest for protein seemed to do pretty good. Well, that was until I had a talk with lil’ sis. She said that I should switch over to a cast iron skillet. She said with that alone I would get all the iron I need and not have to struggle so much trying to keep my iron up.<\/p>\n
I poo, poo\u2019d her suggestion, not believing something that simple would actually do anything. Besides, cast iron skillets are hard to use, everything sticks, they get really hot so you burn yourself and they are EXPENSIVE!!! But she just shook her head and said, you really should. So I decided what they hell and decided to keep an eye open for a cast iron skillet next time I went to Goodwill. Hopefully I would find one there without spending too much. I love thrifting so it would be a win-win.<\/p>\n
Well, I found one. Rather I found a set of 4 really awesome cast iron skillets. That was 2 weeks ago. Right about the time I went in for a round of Platelet donations. At that appointment I barely squeezed by at a 13.2 iron level when the minimum is 12.6 and this is with taking iron supplements every day. I started cooking with the skillets. Yes, it was a little bit of a chore getting used to how they worked, but all in all I began to really like them. Two weeks passed, I ran out of iron supplement pills somewhere right at the beginning so to date I haven\u2019t had any iron pills for quite some time now. My bi-monthly platelet appointment arrived and I was very worried that I wouldn\u2019t have high enough iron since I was in the middle of my monthly \u2018visit\u2019 which does drop your iron reserves.
\nYou could have knocked me over with a feather when my count came back as 14.2!! 14.2 when I hadn\u2019t been taking anything? Could Abi be right? Damn it she was!! I verified by checking out a few sites and I\u2019ll be damned but she was right. According to UC Davis medical, using Cast Iron Skillets to cook with can add 80 percent MORE iron to your diet. 80 percent!!! I know, I was blown away. But I had to give my sis her props. She was right and yes she smiled a very \u2018I told you so\u2019 smile. But she had a right to. So if you\u2019re struggling to keep your iron levels high, do what I did (without being told by your little sister!) buy a cast iron skillet at Goodwill. You\u2019ll be surprised \uf04a
\nSome foods rich in iron include:
\nMeat and Poultry
\n\u2022 Lean beef
\n\u2022 Veal
\n\u2022 Pork
\n\u2022 Lamb
\n\u2022 Chicken
\n\u2022 Turkey
\n\u2022 Liver (except fish liver)
\nSeafood
\n\u2022 Fish
\n\u2022 Mussels
\n\u2022 Shellfish
\nVegetables
\n\u2022 Greens, all kinds
\n\u2022 Tofu
\n\u2022 Broccoli
\n\u2022 Sweet Peas
\n\u2022 Brussel Sprouts
\n\u2022 Kale
\n\u2022 Bean Sprouts
\n\u2022 Tomatoes
\n\u2022 Lima Beans
\n\u2022 Potatoes
\n\u2022 Green Beans
\n\u2022 Corn
\n\u2022 Beets
\n\u2022 Cabbage<\/p>\n
Some Useful Links:
\nhttp:\/\/www.ucsfhealth.org\/education\/hemoglobin_and_functions_of_iron\/
\nhttp:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/health\/guides\/nutrition\/iron-in-diet\/overview.html<\/p>\n
Method Makeup Academy, Seattle’s Makeup School<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yes I\u2019m Cooking with a Cast Iron Skillet You ever know that one person who apparently knows all the answers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,36,15,3],"class_list":["post-1096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-seattle-makeup-academy","tag-seattle-makeup-artist","tag-seattle-makeup-class","tag-seattle-makeup-school"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seattlemakeupschool.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seattlemakeupschool.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seattlemakeupschool.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seattlemakeupschool.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seattlemakeupschool.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seattlemakeupschool.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1097,"href":"http:\/\/seattlemakeupschool.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions\/1097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seattlemakeupschool.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seattlemakeupschool.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seattlemakeupschool.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}