Cool Video!!

I've always equated learning about the REAL food movement and the Matrix movie.  Hope watching this was informative and awakening in a Cartoon Channel kind of way.

Awesome Pumpkin Bread

Last night I baked an incredible Pumpkin Bread; it was moist and sweet and the kids loved it!  I packed some for their lunches today, along with some homemade bone broth chicken soup.  I just love that feeling of sending a bit of home and my love with them to school.  It may sound corny, buy I bet they have a better day (energetically speaking) just by having all those good vibes pouring out of their lunch boxes.   I don't always pack a lunch with so much homemade effort as today, but today's lunch got it right.

My Pumpkin Bread is made without yeast, by the way.   It is made by leaving spelt flour and yogurt (Seven Stars brand is organic, all natural, and full fat) in my warming draw, which has a proof setting, overnight.  Leaving a dough in a warm place overnight helps to make the bread more digestible; grains are a tough one for our bodies if not treated this way.  Not only does it make the bread  more digestible by leaving energy for our bodies to attend to other things, like thinking and staying healthy, it allows the nutrients in the flour (especially if it is freshly ground flour) to be absorbed more easily.

The next day you simply add the rest of the ingredients and bake--easy!  Then I spread on some homemade cream cheese and raw honey and kissed my fingers in that French kind of gesture.

Homemade cream cheese is procured by taking raw milk and leaving it out of refrigeration for a day or so until the milk divides itself into whey (the yellowish liquid) and curd (the cream cheese solid).  The whey I use for fermenting veggies, like pickles and sauerkraut, and the curd/cream cheese is what I spread on the Pumpkin Bread.  The cream cheese from raw milk can be a bit bitter, for my taste, but by adding just a bit of honey, it was delicious.

Making your own food the traditional way is a bit like science.  That alone can be beneficial for the kids, plus they are getting the best food on the planet.  Enjoy the recipe, and leave me a comment!

3 c           Spelt Four
2 c           Yogurt, Kefir, or Buttermilk  (keep them full fat for better results and taste)
3              Eggs
1/2 c        Maple Syrup
1 tsp        Sea Salt
2 tsp        Baking Soda
2 tsp        Allspice
2 tsp        Cinnamon
1 tsp        Ginger
3/4 can    Pumpkin
4 T          Melted Butter

Mix and soak flour and yogurt in warm place atleast 24 hours.  Blend in remaining ingredients after soaking and pour in buttered/floured casserole pan.  Bake at 350 approx. an hour.  Test with fork or toothpick.

Use your own judgement on spices--more or less to your liking.  Enjoy!

Sometimes, the Truth is Sweet

By now, you've heard that Princeton has come out with a scathing report on the effects of High Fructose Corn Syrup (something my friends and family are surely tired of hearing me repeat....for years now).  Yes, HFCS can cause you to GAIN weight, as if eating those Twinkies and washing it down with Sprite weren't enough!

What kind of sweeteners would be a better idea, you ask?  That's what I'm here for:  To give you the best darn advice I can find.   So let's just explain, briefly, why I don't recommend anything other than the ones I will below.  White sugar, Florida Crystals, Raw Sugar, Turbinado Sugar, and others like these are simply white sugar with a bit more brown sugar in them.  The problem with them is that they have been denatured, or rather, stripped of their natural nutrients.  Yes, sugar actually can be nutritious; you just need the best sugars.

These sugars won't let you down, and with some fat (good animal fats) in your diet, they won't bring you up--your blood sugar, that is:

Maple Sugar:  Pure maple sugar, Grade B is the best.  You can find this on Amazon!  Good stuff.

Molasses:  The natural by-product of white sugar.  Just get the unsulfured versions.

Honey:  Raw, unheated, unprocessed is best.  Some health food stores have them, or on-line.

Rapadura or Sucanat:  These are unrefined sugars that have all their yummy nutrients still intact.  Look for them in most health food stores or, again, Amazon.

Stevia Powder:  They are now selling this in supermarkets nationally.  I'd still look for the health food versions, just to be on the safe side.

Date Sugar, Maple Sugar, Rice Syrup, Sorghum Syrup:  All in the health food stores or on-line.

All of these are traditional sweetners; in other words, they've stayed the test of time.  Anything made by man/industry is usually a messed up thing to put into your body.  Especially into the growing bodies of our children.  Keep them safe and healthy, and go for the natural sweetness Mother Nature has provided.

My Girl Sally!

Just caught this video on Sally Fallon Morell's visit to the UK.  For those who are not aware, Sally is the founder of the Weston A. Price Foundation which is a non-profit organization dedicated to the education of the public on traditional diet principles rediscovered by Dr. Weston A. Price.  

Dr. Price wrote his book back in the 1930's during a time when non-modernized people, not yet exposed to modern foods, still existed.  He studied them to find answers to why their health was so robust; they had no tooth decay, their jaws had room for all the teeth (no braces), they were free of degenerative diseases, and they were...happy!  Yes, they were free of depression, ADD, ADHD, and every other capital letter we can gather together to explain our newest fun malfunction of the human psyche.

I have been studying the invaluable information of Dr. Price and Sally for several years now, but I always pick up something new when I give a listen to one of Sally's lectures.  I hope you feel the same after listening....and I encourage you to do just that.  It may be the best hour you've spent in your life!

Wise Traditions UK 2010 - Sally Fallon Morell Part 1 from Wise Traditions UK on Vimeo.
 

Feed Our Soul

Last night, I caught an episode of Bill Maher.  One of his guests was Alice Waters, who is famous for creating the edible schoolyard, wherein children grow, eat, and learn about vegetables they grow on the school yard.  In fact, I had helped my daughter, Chloe, plant one at her school last year....not realizing who had influenced this back-to-nature goodness we were participating in.

Alice is also owner of a very well respected restaurant, called Chez Panisse, in California.  Her restaurant's website tells her story, books reservations, and sells her many cookbooks.  www.chezpanisse.com   Although all this seems a few years new to me and others who are now seeing a flurry of books on the subject of REAL Food, Alice had her epiphany about food on a trip to France in the summer of 1964!  A pioneer to the movement, I would say.

She is a very relaxed soft spoken person, and in this age of sound bites spit at infomercial speed, Bill Maher seemed a bit perplexed waiting for her thoughts to brim to the surface.  Oddly enough, even with the limited outflow from Alice, she made a point that was the most poignant one I've heard.  We need to bring the soul back into our food.

There is a reason we join together for meals:  Our food feeds us on many levels.  It is a social gathering; when else do we have time to smile, listen, and laugh with our families?  Our food feeds our bodies for growth, sustenance, and healing.  However, there is another level not discussed often:  Our spiritual connection to our food and each other.

My husband comes from a big Iitalian family.  I always admired how the family came alive around the food in his home.  It was more than just something to consume....it was a party...always.  The food had been cooked mostly from scratch and all Italian.  Lots of meats and fish and cheese.  I'll skim over the fact that there was white pasta served, because that was the way and did not detract from this soul filled food.

My own family was partly German.  We had a Pot Roast that cooked all day to tenderize the meat and add incredible flavor.  That was my families "party" food.  It always felt special to me and I understood what this food felt like when it entered my stomach.  There was a sense of fulfillment that went with the connection we all had with each other and our food.

This is what Alice Waters was referring to:  A need to return to a time when food was our connection to who we are.  This only comes from food that is first filled with this kind of spirit to start with.  REAL Food is food that we have knowledge of where it came from, that is clean and fresh, and this is put together by someone with love.  Yes, love adds to the food....more than we can even comprehend.

I doubt a "Happy Meal" could ever bring that true emotion out of anyone, but that is what the corporation is hoping to remind us of.  A feeling of being truly happy from our deep connection to our food.  It is what has been missing from our homes, our restaurants, and our souls for too long.  It is what we truly yearn for when we stare blankly into the open refridgerator, or the menu at a fancy restaurant, or reach out for a healthy cookbook to help us feed ourselves and our families.

A small simple statement with enough impact to open hearts and minds.  Yes, feed our body, all the healthy REAL Food we can get our hands on, but once again...Feed Our Soul;  this is what our senses are really asking for.

Fresh and Sour Is Only For REAL Milk

Just heard something on the radio on the way home this morning about a couple of blokes in England that thought up a cute new gimmick for milk cartons:  They will show the words "fresh" and "sour", accordingly.  The announcers were thrilled, but it made me think:  That's not accurate!

To use those terms, fresh and sour, it would need to be REAL raw milk.  Fresh milk, in many countries, means unpastuerized milk.  There's truth in that, as that's the freshest milk you'll get!  Check out imported cheeses....if it says "fresh", it means unpasteurized, or raw, milk.  And the usage of sour is incorrect, as well.  Pasteurized milk goes RANCID!  All the live enzymes (and basically everything else that makes milk a health food) is lost when you pasteurize milk.  It no longer can naturally change into a soured milk...which is another wonderful transformation of REAL raw milk.

Only REAL raw milk sours;  pasteurized milk becomes...garbage.  Fresh milk is raw milk.  The white stuff you buy in Stop and Shop is a milk food--just like Cheese Wiz.  Perhaps that will be the next new gimmick for milk.....milk in a can?!   Perish the thought.

Check out www.realmilk.com for info on raw milk!

Post Bunny Blues

Now that the Easter Bunny has gone into hiding again till next year, it's time to clean up our gut from the calamitous forage into white sugar's grip!  Ooh!  Like that!  Let's add some good ole' probiotics and enzymes to our digestive track to eat up what the Easter Bunny left behind.

Too many candies and sweets can really wreck havoc with our immune system, starting with our intestinal tract that, by this time, is screaming for some assistance!  Give it some helpful kefir (pronounced ke-feer) to do the trick.  A good yogurt is also a an option, as is any fermented unpasteurized drinks (like kombucha) or fermented veggies or chutneys.  These products eat up sugar fast than you can chow down on a 12 oz. chocolate duck!

"Nourishing Traditions" has many recipes for fermenting vegetables, fruits, and chutneys, and even drinks. If that just sounds like too much work after cooking for an army of people this weekend, most health food stores carry an array of fermented products.  Try to keep it organic with few additives, and your system should be up and running....purring, in fact, in no time!