I'll be riding my bike this summer!

I went to my asthma doctor today.  I have a mild asthma that wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult, though my parents and I sometimes thought I might have it as a child.  It mostly manifests itself as a dry cough in cold weather or after physical exertion.

I finally got it “under control” with the use of a rescue inhaler as needed (rare, maybe once a month or so in the winter) and a puff of Advair on mornings when recovering from a cold or flu or an hour or two before doing exercise or heading out into the cold in winter.

That seemed ok, but I was not thrilled with the idea of taking medicine, especially asthma medicine which has a host of side effects.  I’d been interested in natural foods for a while, and believed that the right diet could improve health, but when I started getting involved with Weston A. Price’s research and raw milk and such, it sounded like really applying these principles could help me with my asthma (in addition to other health issues, but that is a topic for another day!).

See what changes I made and why I think that made me symptom free 6 months later, after the jump.*

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The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved

I just read a great book called The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved. It is by Sandor Katz – the author of Wild Fermentation. This post is part of Fight Back Fridays.  How appropriate!

This book is about food activism.  Some of it more radical than others, but virtually all of it taking place away from grocery stores stocked with cans and boxes full of food.  This book is about real food – whole ingredients, unadulterated ingredients, grown in a way that is traditional and sustainable.  Increasingly, eating outside of the industrialized food chain is becoming an act of defiance.

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A field in Gettysburg

Yesterday morning, I got up a little late.  I considered not going to the farmer’s market since I still had some vegetables left over from the previous weekend.  But as I thought about it, I realized I could not go a week without quark, the creamy fresh cheese made from cultured buttermilk.  And so, I made the journey to the farmer’s market after all.  I ended up getting some sheep milk cheese, heavy cream, and berries in addition to the quark, so it was productive.   I’m preparing a post on quark.  It is something you can make at home, if you are so inclined.  In the meantime, here are a few links that I found interesting:  some local farms I love,  a coconut milk cooking contest, misconclusions drawn from studies, nutrient deficiencies,  supplies for preserving food, and why local food is awesome.  See below for all the links.

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Berry Breakfast

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday.  This breakfast just has 3 ingredients, all natural!

At the farmer’s market on July 4th, I purchased black raspberries and heavy cream.  Put them together and you have a wonderful breakfast!  It is also quite suitable for dessert.

It really couldn’t be more simple.  Take the organic, in season black raspberries, or any berry variety (raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries), pick through them and discard any ones that have gone bad, and put them in a bowl.  Pour heavy cream over the top and serve.  No sugar needed.  I rounded out the breakfast with 2 pieces of humanely raised, pastured pig bacon.  No nitrates.  (I also do variations with 2 pastured eggs instead of bacon, but that is a topic for another day!)

What makes this breakfast so good?  Let’s break it down.

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Cobble Hill CSA Haul

I want the recipes I create and post to be recipes that can be made by anyone.  However, I realize that a lot of the ingredients I use might not be readily available.  I would recommend that you purchase them if you can.  I put them in the recipe because they are nutritionally superior or important to the taste/texture of the dish.   Many are available mail order (such as sprouted wheat flour and coconut oil).   Others can be found at organic specialty shops if you have one in your town.  But if your shipment hasn’t come in yet or you can’t get to an organic grocery store, here are some substitutions.

Ramps – Ramps are small bulbs and leaves of a plant in the onion family.  To me the taste is somewhere between a garlic and a leek.  Depending on if you want your food to be more garlic-y or more onion-y, you could substitute with a clove of garlic, a green onion, or a leek at about a 1:1 ratio.

Rapadura/Sucanat/Evaporated Cane Juice – These are just types of unrefined sugars.  Any one of them can be substituted for another.  You could also use “Sugar in the raw” or even regular white sugar.  I prefer not to use regular white sugar because of the extra refining that takes place.  The unrefined versions will have a slight molasses flavor, but other than that, there is really no difference for the recipe.  You can replace at a 1:1 ratio.

Fiddleheads - Fiidlehead ferms are highly seasonal and not available everywhere in the country, so don’t fret if you can’t find them.  Just replace with an equal amount of chopped asparagus.  The flavor and color is similar.  They even have a similar texture.

Stinging Nettles – Any green leafy vegetable such as kale, chard or spinach will achieve much of the same flavor and texture.

Sour Milk – You can only use sour milk if you buy raw milk and let it sour.  If you cannot or do not buy raw milk, you can substitute with an equal amount of buttermilk, plain yogurt, plain kefir (they sell it in some stores now – it is similar to a drinkable yogurt), or 1 cup of regular milk + 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar.

Sprouted Flour – I purchase this from the internet, so don’t worry if you can’t find it locally.  You can order it.  If you don’t have it, you can substitute for an equal amount of regular whole wheat flour.  You will not be receiving the superior nutrition of the sprouted grain, however.

Masa Harina - This is a traditional corn meal made by soaking the corn in an alkaline solution before grinding into flour.  This helps release more of the nutrients in corn to be bioavailable to you.  If you don’t have this, you can substitute for an equal amount of corn meal or corn flour.

Coconut Oil - This is an ingredient I would recommend you purchase, even if you don’t get anything else.  It has such wonderful health benefits and is so good to cook with since it can work even in high heat.  If you don’t have it, you can replace with butter.  However, you cannot cook butter on high heat like you can coconut oil.  You will either need to lower the heat or cook with ghee.

Ghee – many Asian grocery stores or organic/gourmet grocery stores will carry this.  It is clarified butter, so it can withstand higher temperatures.  If you know how to clarify your own butter (I do not) you can use that.  Otherwise, use butter (and keep the heat on medium) or use coconut oil.

Are there any other ingredients that I use that you don’t have? Let me know what other substitutions you need to know!

A quick thanks to Nourished Kitchen for featuring me a few days ago.  What a lovely surprise!  She also reviewed 6 other great real food blogs, so take a look at her post and add the rest of those great blogs to your reading list.

I have a couple of recipes queued up to share with you, but I wanted to write a review of the movie Food, Inc. I saw it this weekend and was impressed.  The movie is about the industrialization of our food supply.  It is a topic I’m quite passionate about, and the topic that lead me to create this blog.  I thought the movie did a great job of summing up many of the reasons I have chosen to remove myself from the industrial food chain. I even learned some new things! Though it won’t affect my own eating habits (because I’m already off the industrial food chain), it has made me more steadfast in my beliefs, and it is an excellent tool to open the minds of people who may not be aware of all of these issues.

The movie presented the following theses:

• Factory farming is bad for the animals, bad for the environment, and ultimately bad for us as well.
• Foodborne illnesses have not gotten any easier to prevent in this industrialized system, and in fact, the industrialization and centralization of our food supply has made it even easier to contaminate.
• Some food processing plants treat workers poorly and often exploit the poorest people or immigrants (legal or not) with unsafe working conditions, low wages, etc.  The food they produce costs less at the grocery store as a result.
• We spend less on food than we used to, but at the same time  health care costs have ballooned.  Instead of spending so little on food (and eating the worst quality food – junk food laden with high fructose corn syrup and/or trans fats for example) and spending so much on heart medications, diabetes medications, etc, we should eat properly in the first place to make those medications unnecessary.
• A lot of corn and soy are GMO – Genetically Engineered Organisms.  They are built to withstand spraying of pesticides and herbicides.  Farmers cannot save seeds and are forever beholden to the seed corporation.  GMOs are generally bad.
• Farm subsidies currently benefit large monoculture farms (farms that produce one product, such as soy or corn).  This is why soy and corn are ingredients in almost everything, and why the unhealthiest food is frequently the cheapest.

I’m sure there are a few points I’m forgetting.  But there was hope at the end of this seemingly bleak tunnel.  One of them was in the form of Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm – one of my personal heroes.  He described his farming methods that honor the animal;s biology.  Food produced this way is easier on the land, safer to eat, and healthier to boot.  He has a beautiful reason for respecting the animals biology that goes beyond the impact to the environment or nutritional value of the meat :

A society that views its plants and animals from that manipulative, egocentric, mechanistic mindset will soon come to view its citizens in the same way.  How we respect and honor the least of these is how we respect and honor the greatest of these.

The other was a case study of Stonyfield Farm, the yogurt company.  The (former) owner explained how consumers buying his yogurt propelled him to success.  The company was bought out by another multi-national yogurt company as a result.  Even the dairy buyer for Wal-Mart explained that if people demand a higher quality or different quality product, Wal-Mart will deliver.

All of the topics had excellent supporting material.  And in some cases, the audience was left to drawn their own conclusion.  For example, while large industrial slaughterhouses were shown, so was the slaughter of chickens on Polyface Farm.  Sure, there were gasps from the audience.  Killing an animal can’t be described as pleasant.  But it was done quickly and cleanly.  It was presented for anyone to make their own opinion.  Same with the piece on Stonyfield Farm.  Many people would say that it is just a part of the industrial food chain as Cheetos.  But it presented the organic industrial food chain in a way that let the audience decide of this was completely acceptable, just as bad as any non-organic major food corporation, or somewhere in the middle.

The movie left me feeling more empowered, more knowledgeable, and more passionate than ever before.  The movie is in limited release right now, but it will be made more broad as the month goes on.  Keep a watch out and see it when it comes out.  In the meantime, this passage from the companion book sums it up best.  This portion written by the aforementioned Joel Salatin:

Perhaps the most empowering concept in any paradigm-challenging movement is simply opting out.  The opt-out strategy can humble the mightiest forces because it declares to one and all, “You do not control me.”

Go plant a garden.  Join a CSA or visit your farmer’s market on a regular basis.  Read my blog (and many many more) for great recipes using real food.  Many even feature great real food on a budget.  Write to your local or federal government representatives to have them change the way we subsidize farms so that real food is more affordable.

If you want to read more about the film, I’ve linked to various interviews, reviews, and articles below.

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Hens on the farm

As much as I wish I did, I don’t live on a farm.  In fact most Americans don’t live on a farm and have become increasingly cut off from the food they consume.  Food comes in boxes or bags.  Meat comes deboned and deskinned.  Many cows are fed grain to fatten them up, and they live in crowded conditions.  Many chickens live their lives in windowless sheds.  They are packed beak to tail in this horrifying shed.  They never see the light of day.  And so on.  And because they are in so much emotional and physical stress from the unnatural diet and crowded conditions, they are more prone to infection, thus the standard feeding of antibiotics.  The products we buy from stores have gone through so much processing that they no longer resemble the food it comes from.  In fact, I’ve taken to calling much of the processed food you’ll find at a supermarket a Food Type Product.  It just doesn’t seem right to call something made with heavy machinery and chemicals food.  It makes me sick.  That stuff isn’t food.

I think we need to get that connection back to the farm.  We need to see vegetables growing in the garden.  We need to see cows out on pasture, and then connect that with the food we eat.  I also believe it is important so that we can know and approve of the conditions in which our food is made.  I want to make sure that the eggs I eat are from chickens who actually spend time foraging outdoors.  Partially because I believe that all animals have the right to be treated with some basic respect, but also because eggs that come from clean conditions, from hens who receive sunlight and are able to forage for bugs and grass and weeds in addition to chicken feed are so much healthier!

In my effort to get closer to the food I eat, I visited one of the farms that provides me with milk, milk, eggs and other homemade or farm grown products.  What I found was nothing short of delightful.

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I’m back!  Not that you ever realized I was gone!  I was gone, though.  I took a short vacation to Pennsylvania to visit a friend and a farm.  I had  a wonderful time out of the city.  I got to eat some wonderful real food, much of it grown at the house where I ate it!  I’ll have more to share about the farm I visited, and maybe some photos, but for now I wanted to share a few links.

I read quite a few blogs, and there were a lot of interesting posts waiting for me when I came back.  These are a few posts that I thought were full of good and interesting information I simply must pass on.

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Here is a good article about harvesting wild food and sustainability.  If I’m going to talk about eating wild foods and talk about how great they taste and how nutritious they are, I need to present the other side of it.  Humans have caused a lot of damage to wild ecosystems – over fishing and hunting the North American Bison down to just a fraction of what it used to be are two recent examples.

It would be devastating if those were lost to us forever, just as it would be if no future generations would be able to enjoy ramps or fiddleheads.

If you forage yourself, make sure to do so in a sustainable manner.  The article gives a few basic guidelines on how much of certain things you can safely take.  When harvesting ramps, for example, you take the entire plant, you must be sure to leave many more behind when you are finished foraging.  Fiddleheads can sustain more harvesting, but you still need to leave some behind for the plant.  Berries you can typically take a lot of.  I’m sure there are other books and websites that give more detailed information if you want to begin foraging for yourself.  There are also tours you can take with wildcrafters.  I’m sure many areas have these specialists, such as The Wild Man Steve Brill who offers tours in the New York and Connecticut areas.  His website also has great information about foraging, and he has written a few books as well.

If you purchase your wild crafted food from a vendor or farmer, talk to them.  Ask where it came from.  You don’t want something that was picked off the side of the freeway anyway, just for your own health!  After ascertaining it is safe for you, ask if it was safe for the plants.  Ask how many ramps they left behind, for example, and if this is an area many other people have access to.  Talk to them and see if they are knowledgeable about wildcrafting.  Hopefully if they are also farmers who use sustainable methods, they will apply that to wildcrafting as well.

Making Water Kefir

Everyone is talking about probiotics.  And with good reason!  Probiotics are good for us.  We depend on the beneficial microorganisms in our gut to help us digest food.  Popular name brand yogurt commercials tell us that yogurt helps regulate our digestive system and even is an important part of our immune system!  Healthy gut flora can prevent more dangerous strains of bacteria and viruses from multiplying and causing illness.  I’m sure you have all heard of yogurt as being probiotic.  Today I will discuss another one – water kefir.  Water kefir also serves other purposes – it contains vitamins and minerals, and since it tastes very similar to soda, it is a healthy way to satisfy your craving without all of the unhealthy ingredients of soda.

Water kefir is made by culturing water with water kefir grains – not grains like wheat or oats, but some sort of colony of beneficial bacteria and yeast that resemble small grains. There is also milk kefir (commonly just called kefir), which is made with similar grains put in milk.  I’ll discuss that at another time, but I wanted to mention them so you won’t be confused.

When you make water kefir, you get an effervescent drink that can be flavored with citrus, ginger, or vanilla, just like your favorite sodas. But instead of being full of sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and other nasty things, it is filled with probiotics. Soda that makes you healthier! The culture feeds off the sugar, so the resulting drink isn’t too sweet or sugary, and the process by which they do this creates carbonation. The benefits go beyond the probiotic benefits. The resulting drink is high in various minerals such as calcium and magnesium, B-vitamins and more. Read the rest of this entry »