Would Everyone Stop S#!t-Talking Larabars Already?!

How I wish that I could have some prepackaged real food right about now.

Although I'd like to admit otherwise, I have not been enjoying packing lunches lately. Everyday seems to be some alternating version of ham, salami or AB and J with some chopped up veggies and whole fruit, perhaps the occasional pickle. Thing 1 does not have access to a microwave to heat up dinner leftovers, but even if he did he wouldn't necessarily eat them. School lunch is included in the cost of his tuition and he would rather eat the junkier nutrition-light fare that the school serves. Since we end up wasting alot, I wish (at the very least) that lunch was easier to prepare. I wish there were more ready to eat, individually sized foods that met my high standards.

One such product that I continually buy is Larabars. Larabars are ground date, dried fruit and nut combinations that are easy to carry for snacks, always get eaten and can be thrown into a lunch box at 9:30 PM with virtually no thought. Larabars are a product I trust. They use only Non-GMO ingredients, contain no sweeteners at all and they always get eaten no matter what the school is serving.

There are many foodies and bloggers who LOVE Larabars because they are all real food and they taste great. But I continue to read those that just s%!t-talk Larabars. The main complaints ate that the bars are prohibitively expensive and too calorie dense.

Yes, Larabars are pricey when you consider what they are. At $1.69 or more per 200 calorie bar, it can really add up, especially when you have more than one child. We do not eat Larabars every day. They are a special treat. So I will buy 4 or 5 a week and we will all have one or two. The Things will even accept Larabars as dessert which is proof that they really do see them as a treat.

I have made Almond Date Truffles, as I like to call them, before. My version is heavier on nuts than Larabars but essentially they are the same thing. My almond-date balls took almost an hour to make and roll and, because I used organic everything, cost probably as much or more than an equal amount of Larabars. Normally I would assume that any homemade version of a prepackaged item would cost more, because we would use better quality ingredients. But I don't worry about the quality of the nuts and fruits in Larabars and we do not eat 100% organic. I have made the truffles a couple of times, but I didn't feel that the extra money and all the extra work involved were justified when Larabars are so easy and right there.

And of course, people downplay Larabars because they are calorie dense, i.e.- fattening. Now that really is some s#!t talk! Yet I can't really deny it. For their size, Larabars have alot of calories. However this is where we have to use our brains. Just because something is real food doesn't mean that you can pig out on it and eat 12 with no consequences! Yes, dates (the main ingredient in all Larabars) are extremely high in sugar. However dates are also a source of potassium, magnesium, Vitamin B6 and they contain countless other vitamins and minerals in smaller quantities. Dates are also an excellent source of dietary fiber. (Check out the nutrition data for dates.) Usually I break a bar in half and split it between the kids. They are so sweet that they never ask for more. And because they are made from real food, there are no manipulating added favors or sugars to make them feel addicted.

Because they are pricey and high in calories, Larabars are not an every day snack for me or my children. BUT, I am not so sure there is any one food that we eat every single day. We strive for varied balanced diets. And Larabars certainly fit into that balance. I am happy that they do not contain wheat, since my kids seem to be bombarded with wheat wherever we turn. If you haven't tried Larabars for either of these reasons, consider cutting them in half. Try them for that 4 PM slump. Stick them into your kids lunchbox to know that they'll be full until school let's out. And definitely try the chocolate ones, because what other chocolate-y bar on the market can boast all the antioxidant benefits of unsweetened cocoa with truly zero added sugar? And to the Larabar company, if you like what you read, would you mind sending me a free box? Please??? Haha, just kidding!

Enjoy!!

Mashed Potatoes and Celeriac: This Doesn't Even Qualify As A Recipe

I am mentally prepared for winter this year. Last year I balked at winter vegetables. Rather I longed for tomatoes and strawberries and fresh baby spinach. I admit I ate fewer vegetables during the fall and winter than I should have. Not that that is such a big deal, but I feel better when I eat 5 fruits and veggies a day. Getting to that number between November and April can be a challenge for me.

This year I plan on working on that. I won't be perfect. Winter veggies take longer to prep and I can say with confidence that aside from carrots my children don't eat veggies that grow in the winter. But this isn't about my kids, this is about me accepting winter veggies for exactly what they are...fiborous and tough and maybe slightly delicious.

As a going away present, my CSA gave us 3 bulbs of celeriac in our last delivery. Celeriac is also known as celery root. Celery root is funky and rooty and severely ugly. I can't say I really know what to do with it, though I have thrown it into stock and vegetable soup. But vegetable soup is a shameful cop out for any proud veggie. How does one eat celeriac so that it shines in a leading role? Sheesh, I don't know.

Someone mentioned to me to mash it. But the flavor, like starchy celery, didn't appeal to me. So instead I boiled it alongside some purple potatoes. I added cream and butter and salt, mashed them and I was in heaven. The texture was lighter than my normal dense mashed potatoes. The celery flavor was delicate and nicely matched with the earthy potato. All in all I have to say...I think I like celeriac mashed potatoes even better than regular mashed potatoes. I think someone somewhere is turning over in their grave. Someone....somewhere....

Definitely try this. I think I will even buy celeriac in order to keep making this dish. One winter vegetable down and many, many left to go

Enjoy!

This post is shared with Simple Lives Thursdays

When I Stopped Eating

Friday's post brought up alot of emotion in me. The emotion was in part from defending myself and in part from some self conscious concern over whether all my interactions with my kids have been positive. I want my desire to eat healthy to be just that, healthy eating. I DO NOT want this journey to be just another type-A orthorexic hissy fit. The whole point is to heal what we eat and how we eat, not to be excessively controlling and evangelistic.

After writing Friday's post, I thought maybe it was time to tell you all about where I have been and how eating real food has changed my outlook. I touch on it a little in my very poorly formatted first post. But I suppose I need to go into more depth. I spent much of my early childhood overeating. I especially loved junk! Fritos and potato chips, Dr Pepper and cookies, you name it, I loved it. Down South, Fried is just the fifth food group and I took any chance I got to eat anything that was deep-fried.

I began to struggle with my weight around age 10. I was a heavier kid just because I liked to eat alot. I got a few glances from people over my food choices at times. But my parents generally stayed quiet. They had some mild food limits (no more than three cookies at a time) but it was nothing excessive. I do not know if that was because they saw nothing wrong with my eating or if they didn't know how to tell me that I was overdoing it. Also, parents are routinely encouraged not to chide a child for their eating habits since often kids do eat more to prepare for growths spurts. Perhaps my parents didn't realize how much junk we were eating during that time in our lives. Whatever the reason for their silence, I packed on a few pounds because of the choices I was making.

I never really was FAT. To say I was fat would be an insult to those who really struggle with their health and diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure among many other things. I actually was preparing for a growth spurt in 1992(she says laughing)but it was a growth spurt three years in the making. AND I prepped for it by drinking Dr Pepper and eating Cool Ranch Doritos. And yes, people noticed. And yes, people told me what they thought about me. I hated junior high school. If you were to ask me what my darkest days were, I would say 91-93 without a doubt. 7th and 8th grade, where social competition is cut throat and the playing field isn't even thanks to the different players' biological schedules. Some girls look more like women, whereas I looked more like a child. Words like 'fat' or 'ugly' from my peers left me unable to defend myself. And if I had only been able to shut my mouth and not fight back so loudly I probably would have been better off. But I played into the game unwittingly and made my own plight worse by boiling over with anger. I have never been a shrinking violet. Still, it always came back to weight, self worth equaled weight. And If only I could eat less!! Less was the only answer. But hunger would always return, and eating felt good. And no one was telling me to stop.

My parents seemed pretty unaware or perhaps just unsure of what to do with this riled up emotional little girl. All the turmoil at school seemed to go unnoticed. I found out in March of 1993 why they seemed so preoccupied. Divorce.

My parents began divorce proceedings when I was 13. It was a hit during an already difficult time. My parents divorce forced another character trait in me to the surface, determination. Stressed from all the upheaval and change, survival kicked in. In order to cope with the stress, I threw myself into school and extra-curricular activities. Thanks to non-stop work, I received better grades during the spring of 1993 than I would ever see again in my school career. I got straight A’s during the period right after my parents separated. Until that point in my life I never knew that I reacted to extreme stress by working harder. I find I still do so today.

I started high school in the fall of 1993, which was a better environment. In a new school of 2000 kids there were more groups of friends to find, there was more distance and more opportunity for me to find my own voice without the ghosts of past mistakes to haunt me. I discreetly slipped away from the friends I had had the previous years. My parents continued to argue about their separation and how to handle it. In the state of Tennessee there is a year waiting period between the time that you file for divorce and when things become finalized. I suppose the thought was, to some conservative southern law makers, that a waiting period would give hot headed couples a chance to reconcile. But all it did for my family was put off the inevitable and delay the healing process. We were all on hold for an entire year.

Meanwhile I was still obsessed with food, and the nation as a whole was too! So much new research was coming out showing a correlation between fat and well being FAT. Low fat everything was available! Low fat cookies, low fat ice cream, yogurt, fanciful food science concoctions! Everyone was talking about low fat everything. Soda was even okay because there was no fat!

But I was on the sidelines of the low fat debate with a different motivation. While my parents and friends weren't looking, I took a brief hiatus from eating.

In the Fall of 1993 I simply stopped eating meals where no one was watching me.
It started the week before school began that August. It wasn’t a conscious decision, or one that I toyed around with. I was about to start high-school and with my parents’ divorce proceedings taking up so much time and energy, I started to have a lot more alone time. I remember toying with the idea of eating less. Then one day I got the urge to bake lemon poppy seed muffins, of all things. When they were done, I began to eat one and I suddenly felt so full. I felt disgusted that I was eating when I was already full, stuffing my face like a pig. I looked at the muffin, and I thought, ‘what would happen if I just didn’t eat this food?’ Would the earth begin to crumble if I wasted one morsel? Could I possibly say no to this tender combination of white flour and white sugar? I threw the muffin in the garbage and it began.

As school got underway I experimented further with not eating. I was unsupervised during breakfast, so instead of eating a full breakfast, I had a slice of bread. Then after some time, I cut the slice in half. But I didn't want to draw attention to myself, so I would throw away the other half slice. I would have my half a slice of bread with a glass of water at 6am, then get ready for the day. Some days I could skip lunch. But being at school you are never alone, so most days I would eat some small sandwich or lettuce that I had packed from home because someone was around, but no chips. And I eliminated snacks completely. Those snacks which had once been Fritos and Velveeta cheese and potato chips and cookies now completely disappeared. I remember being hungry, but not like before. Once I stopped eating the hunger went away. Furthermore, my heart was hurting so much from the stress at home that I wasn’t interested in enjoying food. It was easy for me to cut out that once loved sensory experience. In my mind I reduced food to a caloric experience. I knew I wanted to lose weight, and so I rationally ate less.

But I didn’t stop eating completely. Dinner was supervised, so I would have to eat a normal meal. Weekends were largely supervised, so I would generally cut myself some slack. But I wouldn’t allow myself seconds or foods deemed fattening. And snacks were still out of the question. I didn't want to draw attention to myself. I didn't want anyone to catch onto me for fear that I would be spoken too. I knew that what I was doing was not healthy. I had heard about Anorexia, though I know now that I was far from it. And the last thing I wanted to hear was that I needed to wait out some stupid assumed growth spurt. No one was going to tell me that I had to eat! This was my body and I was damn well going to do with it what I wanted!! Besides what other options did I have? The only nutrition information I was getting in school was the grain heavy USDA Nutritional Pyramid and a stern lecture about not eating potato chips and cake. I didn’t need to be told what NOT to eat. I needed someone to tell me what TO eat!

I was smart, I was determined and I could out-think many people. As long as I was chipper and upbeat, no one thought any differently about my losing weight. My mother was never the wiser. She was too wrapped up in her own Prozac cloud to worry about 10 or 15 lost pounds in her daughter. In fact eventually she did notice that I was looking slimmer and she was proud of me. I even remember her saying to me that she had been right all along, I was going through a growth spurt and the extra weight was just going away. She never knew about the mornings at 6 am in the dark house where I stared down that half a piece of bread to give me all of it secrets with none of its evil. I was convinced that food was evil. Its only purpose was to make me unhappy and overweight.

But suddenly, as I was growing inches taller and shedding pounds, everyone seemed to approach me differently. No one was rude to me any longer. Many of the people who had once taunted me in such a cruel way faded into the background, no doubt moving onto easier prey. In my hunger I found strength. I found will. I found control. At this point in my life, being thin was about being in control and having dominion over all my actions. Unfortunately, all of my focus was about eating LESS. The focus was never on WHAT I was eating, always how much. Of course I ate more lettuce and celery, the diet foods of the time. But I knew precisely nothing about vitamins and nutrients, so all food was to be feared. Especially fat. I meditated a lot on gluttony during this period in my life, as though thin people were somehow morally in control of themselves while overweight people were sinners. Which is of course not true. Still, the process of losing weight, looking differently and living in this new unfamiliar and newly beautiful body was fantastic. Of course I loved the new way people treated me. I loved seeing how boys treated me differently. I began to see myself differently.

But do you know what inadvertently happened? My self-worth now became tied to my body. As long as I was thin I believed that that was what people liked about me. My personality, heart and mind were just accompanying the real deal, a slim figure. I did of course want people to discover the 'real me'. But I assumed that no one ever would want the inside me without the outside package. That's how it worked right? That was what other people valued right? Never mind that I never judged my own dear friends on anything but their good hearts and intentions. I had an impossible double standard going on in my mind. One set of standards where other people's value was measured in their goodness and the kindness of their actions and my own value which was largely measured by my outward appearance and whether I could keep my hunger in check and weight in line. This warped viewpoint continued for at least a decade until I met my wonderful husband.

I have not experienced a similar period of non-eating in my adult life. There have been very stressful times, like after my mother's death, that I have been unable to eat normally. But never where I specifically stopped eating to lose weight. More so in my adult life I have struggled with my inability to stop eating. Before I eliminated processed foods, I was hungry all the time. I snacked often and bought tons of what I now consider to be junk. Saying no to a bowl full of office candy was nearly impossible.

The only thing that has helped my relationship with food has been the real food mentality. When I identified all the non-food ingredients in processed food, I found it much easier to say no. Then when I started eating more fat, more fiber, far more vegetables and fewer grains, I found I was no longer hungry. I don't snack all that often now. And when I do I know that it is because I didn't eat enough lunch, or because I am bored at work (yes, everyone snacks because they are bored). I am finally in control, not the food. My food mentality is not just about what needed to be eliminated from my diet, but what needed to be added. In fact I would say that what we have added to our diet have been more influential than what we have taken away. Maybe because all that junk we always ate wasn't giving us the nutrients we needed. Now that we are so full of good food we don't want any of the junk. Whatever it is, I finally feel like I can say no to an Entenmann's cake or even a snickers bar. All that junk just isn't...good enough for me anymore.

This post is shared with Fat Tuesday, Simple Lives Thursdays and Fight Back Fridays

How Do You Talk To Your Kids About Food Without Making Them Crazy?

I appreciate all of my readers comments. That isn't just lip service. A 'way to go' does alot to brighten my day. And I rarely counter a negative comment because if someone is motivated to tell me off then they probably had a pretty good reason. As a blogger (and intelligent human being), it is my responsibility to be open to listen. We can all grow and learn from constructive criticism.

Last week I posted about a conversation I had had with Thing 1 on junk food. The conversation was precious because he freely shared information with me, which I always love. And because he was in such a sharing mood, I asked a few questions that I thought were harmless. And Thing 1 answered them happily. I received several interesting comments which gave me some perspective on our family's struggle with the omnipresent junk food monster. And then, I received this comment:

"Honestly, anything that is preceded: "Because it's OK if you did...you can tell me" is a TRAP! This is true in marriage, parenting, etc- not that it isn't OK for them to tell you, but obviously there will be consequences if the asker does not receive the answer they want.

I mean, he's what- three? Four? How many times a day, for how many days of his life, are you going to make what he eats an issue? If it were me, I would learn to lie just to avoid another barrage of questions. He may end up feeling paranoid with how insistent you are to know what he's putting in his mouth 24-7- and hey, it's your prerogative as a parent.

But since you're asking for feedback, I will tell you that I think you are setting your kid up to hide candy bar wrappers in old shoe boxes in his closet because he doesn't want to disappoint you.

Lay off a little bit...You can be an advocate for your children to eat healthy food, but sometimes when you try too hard to push them into a mold (even for good, solid reasons- like health) you end up getting the opposite reaction because, well, you'll end up coming off as obnoxious. I don't think I'd want to be asked about ANYTHING when I come home from a long day as much you've asked him about his food in the above conversation. By saying "It's OK if you did" and then asking 20 follow-up questions about what he ate suggests to him that his initial answer wasn't satisfactory to you and he's obviously trying to avoid the subject by "looking off into space"- this is learned behavior that is supposed to signal, "Jeez lady, drop the darn food thing already..." "

Well then. Okay. I kept the comment in my inbox for several days. I reread it a few times to soak in the author's intentions and perspective. I think there are some valid points to be had here. First and foremost, trusting your child and involving him in family decisions is paramount to building a strong relationship with him. Also, pushing a child into a tight mold doesn't always work and can strain one's relationship with their child and possibly even eventually alienate him from you in adulthood. Wasn't that the overarching message of Tiger Mom?

But one other point in this comment leaves me frustrated. The very idea that eliminating or at all limiting junk food from my child's diet would drive a wedge between my child and I is completely preposterous. I write this blog to share my experiences with other parents who have similar beliefs and share information that supports my beliefs. And what I have found is that there are many many other parents searching for the same thing, a safe food environment for their kids. Our food Nirvana is one without food coloring, chemical preservatives and excessive sugar. I want to give my kids good food, and in writing this blog I have connected with other parents who want to do the same. Isn't that what a blog IS? In spite of the shortness of the junk food conversation with Thing 1, if my strong relationship with my child hasn't come through in the post then I have to assume that my writing was sub-par. I admit this particular article was hastily written. I take full responsibility.

But the commenter brings up a good point on which I have been meaning to touch. Does talking to your kids about healthy food versus unhealthy food create anxiety in your child? Will this dialogue lead to eating disorders like hoarding, binging and even anorexia?

Dietitians and nutritionists LOVE to tell us not to label foods healthy or unhealthy for fear that the general public will not be able to cope with our guilt when we do indulge. Pediatric nutritionists also sound the warning call about creating anorexia and bulimia in our children. But at their core, eating disorders are anxiety disorders. In certain cases, I can imagine the extremely high standards of perfectionist parents can create anxiety in a child. I have seen it happen and I imagine you have also. Especially when there is more than one area of a child's life where perfection is expected like food, academics and sports. All the stress to perform can manifest in a food related anxiety disorder like anorexia. But often the food itself is just the tool of the anxiety. In the fascinating book Drinking A Love Story, Caroline Knapp writes of only sober period as the year when she traded alcoholism for anorexia. For a time starving herself was her way of coping. Once she started abusing alcohol as a coping mechanism again, the anorexia was no longer needed and disappeared. The topic of anorexia is complex, it goes way beyond a fear of food and often incorporates fear, anxiety and control issues. Anorexia often surfaces in a young person who feels powerless. One's diet is something over which one can execute considerable control.

Telling your four year old that potato chips are junk will not create anorexia in you child. Such a statement would be a trite insult to those suffering with such a debilitating disorder. Furthermore, placing limits on junk food will also not cause binging and hoarding. And if you explain yourself, as parents should in order to teach their children, your children can begin to understand WHY you might choose to limit junk food.

Of course intention is key, telling your child that junk food is unhealthy for them is a very different message than junk food makes you fat and it is bad to be fat. It is also different than constantly berating them or cruelly reminding them that junk food is unhealthy. Be sure, my conversations with my kids are occasional and center around feeling strong, growing tall, managing their hunger and having energy. I don't tell my kids that it is bad to be fat, every child carries weight differently as they move in and out of growth spurts. And weight or appearance is something over which a child has very little control. Inferring that a child would be unlovable if they were overweight might indeed create anxiety in said child. I would love my kids desperately no matter what they looked like.

In fact I believe that if you are eating real food, your body will do what it needs to do to and be what it needs to be. Eating real food and not processed garbage has gone a long way toward helping me to accept my own body. Eating real food has also helped me not fall to pieces when I indulge in cake or potato chips. Truly, a piece of cake can be part of a nourishing and healthy diet, but in order to say that first you have to have a truly nourishing and healthy diet. I don't advocate perfection. And anyone reading this blog for any length of time has seen me post about my family's lack of perfection.

In light of that comment I wrote The Grinch That Stole Halloween and tried to clearly articulate all of the above. I wanted to communicate that the holiday was fun, that we were excited to participate and even have some candy! But that I had issues with the focus of the holiday being JUST candy and gluttony. That is like Christmas just being about the presents, and most people seem to agree that there is more to Christmas than presents. Remember too that Halloween was a precursor to All Saints Day where we remember the saints who have all passed on. It is a time of year to honor the dead. Born out of an older pagan ritual, people would dress up in costumes the night before so that the awoken spirits would not recognize them. And so that they could do mean things to others with impunity. The candy thing is a modern alteration.

Then I got this comment...

"Between your interrogation of your four about what he eats everyday, and this trick or treating thing...I have to conclude that I am extremely happy you aren't my mom! Aren't there better, greater things to worry about than if your kid eats a few Butterfingers one day a year? Your house sounds like no fun."

Okay. The first comment I took to heart. I thought it was important that I truly examine my interactions with my children when it comes to food. Also I would hate to alienate a regular reader, I value you guys. But after the second comment...well...I had to ask myself does this person even regularly read my blog? This is a non-processed food blog. It is a blog about feeding one's kids REAL food, not convenience foods. It is a blog about challenging the accepted notion that we should gorge on sugar and fat whenever we get the chance. Has this person read any of the other stuff I have written against sugar? See here and here and here--those links are ALL different.

Seriously, if you can't imagine giving up candy, I have to question what you are eating. Candy tastes terrible. My homemade pizza, creamy sausage pasta, marinated steak, buttery mashed potatoes, crispy pork tacos in homemade tortillas and homemade maple granola all taste better than the crappy Kraft caramel I had this week that had a grainy texture and flat flavor.

What about Allergenic kids? Do they grow up angry with their parents because they cannot eat peanuts, gluten or whatever they are allergic to? What about children brought up as Kosher? Do they feel like their parents have deprived them of pork and shellfish? What about them? Is there a greater risk of binging and hoarding among those kids? No. Because they are given a logical reason why they cannot eat those foods. My kids can choose as adults if they want to follow this way of life or not. It will be there choice at that point.

All I am saying is that I am giving my kids real reasons why we eat this way. We embrace fat because we understand that it is important in appetite control, proper cell function and even brain function. We eat pastured animals because they are healthier, resulting in meat that is higher in Omega-3's which are heart healthy, as opposed to CAFO meat which are higher in Omega-6's. We avoid sugar because it is implicated in cancer and heart disease, obesity and Diabetes, degenerative diseases. Hell, sugar is even implicated in Restless Leg Syndrome.

My kids NEED to know about food. It is not some little part of our lives. So they get fewer lollipops growing up than I did. Why is that important? Our children's generation is the first in the history of our nation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. I damn well better be doing SOMETHING to help my children have a healthy life with food and without sugar, or else I can't say I have done all I can as a parent. This isn't about weight or looks, it is about health.

And lastly, comments like this do alot to intimidate us as healthy parents into not speaking our minds about the way that we raise our kids. And I for one will NOT be intimidated into raising a child that eats the Standard American Diet. If you don't like what I am feeding my kids, you can go read someone else's blog.

This post is shared with Fight Back Fridays and Fat Tuesday and Simple Lives Thursdays

4 Working-Mama-Tips For Making Chicken Bone Broth

When I think about all the changes we have made to our diets in the last couple of years, a few stand out as more important than others. Switching from highly processed soybean oil to more stable, less processed fats like coconut oil, butter and lard is on the short list. Also making homemade stock or bone broth has been a game changer for me.

In the beginning I said that I would never make my own stock. I really did!! I was so anxious about the inconvenience of making stock that I clung to my bouillon like Thing 2 to his favorite train. I had made stock before and the result was a weak broth that needed so much salt to taste good that I figured it was easier to keep a couple of cubes on hands. That was until I was introduced to the technique of making bone broth.

To make bone broth one must take bones and simmer them for hours with aromatics like onions, celery, carrots and black peppercorns. Chicken bone broth must be simmered for a minimum for 4 hours. Beef bones must be cooked for closer to 10 or 12 hours. The resulting liquid is a dark colored, cloudy, meaty, gelatin filled elixir. Bone broth is a far cry from all those half assed recipes that call you to cook a whole raw chicken in a pot of water for an hour. Quick broths tend to be clear and even slightly bitter tasting in my opinion. The reward for all those hours spent tending to the pot is a broth so thick with nutrition and protein that it is an excellent support to otherwise meatless meals.

I have made chicken bone broth many times now. And I have done so with everything from a leftover roast bird to raw backs and necks. But my favorite chicken part to use is chicken feet. Chicken feet produce hands down the most flavorful and gelatin rich of all chicken broths. I have finally found a source for feet that is local, pastured and organic. Pastured chickens generally cost around $8 per pound. But the feet are sold off at a slightly lower cost. And fortunately the farm from which I buy my feet will sell a whole bag of feet, so I don’t have to buy a $45 bird just to get two feet for stock! My feet are approximately $6 for one and one half pounds. And that makes about a gallon and a half of stock.

Properly made bone broth should gel when cooled overnight in the refrigerator. If you have followed all the directions here and your broth does not gel then it just has a little too much water in it. Chances are when you use it to make something, like soup, it will gel up nicely after you have cooked with it. When cooking with feet, I have been told that clipping off the nails is super important. However, I generally dump the feet in frozen with no additional prep. I figure they will boil for 6 or so hours and whatever buggies the nails would have would stand no chance. Also, be sure to commit the full time and boil the feet until they are really beginning to break up and fall apart on their own. If your feet still look like they did when you dropped them in, you are throwing away a lot of goodness. If the skin looks ragged and the joints are beginning to come apart, then you have reached the zone. Keep going, it takes at least 4 hours of stovetop simmering to get there and you can easily boil them longer than that. There is no sense in throwing away nourishment!

Bone broth is super easy. But that isn’t why you aren’t currently making it right? You don’t make broth because it takes too long or you aren’t home for long enough periods of time, right? That is certainly what I struggle with. So how does a busy mama work something as simple as bone broth into her already maxed out schedule? I have a couple of tricks to share that make it easier for me to keep this important foodstuff around the house.

1) Save your vegetable scraps in a plastic bag in the freezer. Bone broth requires aromatic vegetables be boiled with the bones. But who wants to take great fresh {expensive} veggies, just boil them and finally throw them away? Now I freeze my scraps. When I chop a carrot, the nibs and ends go into my freezer bag instead of the garbage. Same with celery and onion ends. You can even throw onion papers in there. You will end up straining it out so there is nothing wrong with the papers! My freezer bag is where I throw all of the uneaten carrot sticks that come home from Thing 1’s lunch box! I generally save celery, carrots, onions or celery root. More good things to save would be ginger, garlic or garli scapes, leek trimmings, scallions or lemons that you have squeezed. They will of course flavor the broth.

2) Break up your time. Often I am busy or away from the house during the day, even on weekends. So I will start a pot of stock at 6pm and let it boil until 9pm. Before I go to bed I will stick the whole pot in the fridge. The next night I will repeat until the stock has boiled enough. When it comes to stock I am not concerned about the heating and cooling rules that apply to uncooked meats or leftovers. Stock is a food that is boiled at a high temperature for a long period of time. In the cooking phase I don’t worry much about it, and it helps my schedule to where I can make stock on a weeknight!

3) Freeze stock in smaller portions. At the end of the process I will freeze the stock into smaller 2 and 4 cup containers for longer storage. That way I don’t end up thawing and refreezing great blocks of stock. And then I can bring out exactly how much I need, a 2 cup portion for making gravy or rice or a 4 cup portion for making soup. Soup only takes 20-30 minutes with previously prepared broths, yet they taste like they have been cooking for hours! I will use 1 ½ to 2 gallons of water to boil 1 ½ pounds of chicken feet. That yields enough stock for my family for 3 to 4 weeks.

4) Put your crock pot to good use! I do think the stovetop is best. The heat is higher and so the stock bubbles. The bubbles agitate the bones and veggies making them break up and enrich the broth. BUT…I have made great bone broths in the crock pot when I don’t have enough time for a stove top job. I have even started a batch of broth at 9pm and had it cook until 5 or 6am. Then it is waiting for you when you wake up!! I don’t get as gelatin-y of a broth with the crock pot, but finishing it on the stove top might be an answer to that.

Using the above tricks I have managed to keep bone broths regularly on hand and the junk filled cubes out of the house! Considering the extreme cost of ethically raised meats, bone broth is a wonderfully nourishing addition to your diet. Plus the taste is so rich that I can always count on Thing 1 eating whatever veggies that I boil in them. When he takes a hot thermos full of veggie soup to school I always know that he is getting a healthy and nutritious lunch. I am truly thankful that he likes soup as much as he does.

If you are a stressed out lady {or fella} with too many obligations and not enough time to nourish yourself, consider making time to make bone broth. Using the tricks I mention will help to fit the task into your crazy schedule, and the nourishment will support your health!

Enjoy!

This post is shared with Traditional Tuesdays and Real Food Wednesdays and Simple Lives Thursdays and Fight Back Fridays

'Mommy, There's Chemicals In My Food!'

It has now been two weeks since we started our new school and daycare routines. And I gotta tell you. I am beat. Like crazy beat. Like blind and ready to feed the kids pop-tarts. Okay, maybe not that tired. Though more than ever I totally get it. Most people aren't too lazy to cook. They are just way too tired to cook from all the other stuff they have to do to keep their lives in balance.

We have been managing well enough with school food. I have packed a healthy lunch, a bottle of water and a whole fruit everyday for Thing 1. The routine of preparing lunches in the evening is getting easier. Now if I could just same the same about the morning routine!! For the most part, Thing 1 eats my food and not the school's food. He does drink the juice that the school provides almost every day. That is something I do not buy at home, so it's a huge treat!! I have not checked if their juice is additive free, but right now it is a peace keeping measure. So while I assume that there might be some yuckies in there, I can't possibly take his juice away.

I have asked several questions of my biggest Thing every day after school. Did you like your lunch? What was the school serving? What didn't you like in your lunch? Were you full enough? Many days he comes home with about one third to one half his lunch uneaten. But that's the thing about whole foods, whole grains and full fat foods, they are filling. We are so accustomed to overeating in our culture that to see a child with an already small tummy eat real food, well it can seem like they are only picking at their food. My kids could down a whole bag of potato chips in one sitting. But give them an egg and raw cheese on whole wheat and they won't finish it. It isn't because they don't like it, it is just that real food is filling. Give the kids good foods and they will figure out how much. We as caregivers can't be swayed to give them junk foods just to see them actively eat.

On the third day of school Thing 1 brought me home a present. A single serve bowl of Malt-O-Meal Berry Colossal Crunch Cereal. This sweetened corn and rice cereal contains both natural and artificial flavors. Oh joy. The cereal contains only 12 grams of sugar. There are 6 grams of sugar in each teaspoon of sugar. And since those 12 grams include any natural sugars from the corn, 12 grams is on the low side for sweetened cereals. I was surprised enough to check the ingredient list for sugar substitutes. Nope, none. Then I thought...since the serving size is only one ounce (or three-quarters of a cup), sugar still makes up a sizable portion of the total cereal. You see, one ounce weighs in at slightly over 28 grams. This one ounce of cereal has 12 grams of sugar, so the cereal itself is around 43% sugars by weight.

Thing 1 brought home the cereal because he said he had had it for breakfast and he liked it. He said it was a present for me. So sweet. He has begun to bring home little cups of juice and other treats for DH and me. I need to do better about consuming these gifts. I don't want to hurt his feelings, but I also don't want drink artificially colored juice.

This brings me to the next part of this post. You might be asking yourself 'If you don't want your kid drinking colored juice and fake food, why not just put your foot down?' That is a valid enough question. In the first few days I told Thing 1 that he was free to choose the food he ate. He ate some food from school and some from his back pack. I didn't like the trend so much, so I had a talk with him during the weekend. I told him that Mommy would not be mad at him for eating the school food. I wanted it to be his decision. But that I wanted him to look at certain things as treats, like that cereal, as opposed to every day meal items. And then I dropped a bomb on his impressionable little mind. I told him that some of the school food has chemicals in it. And I would prefer that he eat the food that mommy makes from scratch.

I define the term 'bully' as a person who is mean because they can get away with it. A bully is someone who picks on people who are smaller, weaker or otherwise not in a position to fight back (I am sure everyone knows an office bully who hides behind some trumped-up title). I have questioned, was I bullying my child by telling him that his food had chemicals in it? On one hand, I really wasn't. The Malt-O-Meal cereal contains artificial flavors, synthetic vitamins and BHT to name a few. That cereal does indeed contain chemicals. Do I know for certain that all the food the school serves contains chemicals? No, I do not. I did notice that after our chat, far less school food was consumed. On the other hand, I know that Thing 1 does not fully understand what it is to eat food containing chemicals. Does he believe that there is cleaning solution in his favorite grilled cheese sandwiches? Does he believe that there is lighter fluid in the juice? Even the average educated adult can't explain the difference between chemicals we know are bad for us even in small doses (think posion control) and the items that the FDA says are Generally Regarded As Safe in the doses they prescribe. I certainly can't. I just know I don't want to eat ANY chemicals if I can help it.

I want my kids to want to eat clean food too. My search for a better meal isn't just about ethically treated meat, or local foods, or even pesticide free foods. There are dozens of chemicals that seep into our food supply in myriad different ways. I simply want as many of them out of my chow as possible. And I want the same for my kids. Did I resort to scare tactics when I exploited my young child's impressionable mind? I suppose I did because I didn't give him the full story. I haven't told him yet why there are chemicals in our food, how they got there or who put them there. How can he make an informed decision with only half the story? In this case I am a little too much like the New York Post.

But while I negatively motivated Thing 1 into eating clean last week, I did not accomplish the ultimate goal. I do not want my kids to be afraid of processed foods. I want them to be confident and empowered to eat clean, fresh, healthy foods. I don't want them to feel guilt when they will undoubtedly be faced with Cheetoes and Coca-Cola. I want them to have a varied experience. And while I want them to ultimately choose to eat ethically sustainable raised clean foods, I want them to choose it because it is what they want. That is true empowerment.

Of course I do still intend to TALK with them about their food choices. My children are a captive audience for me. While I want them to make good choices for themselves on their own, I do fully intend to sell my viewpoint. And considering that I work in sales for a living, this is a deal I fully intend to close. Though I promise to not be too judgemental if they grow up to be men that eat McDonald's every other day and drink Coke with every meal. Right now I think Thing 1 is squarely in my camp while Thing 2 might end up in the food industry's camp. Time will tell...I promise to keep fighting the good fight.

This Post is shared with Simple Lives Thursdays and Real Food Wednesdays

Humble Spuds: How to Perfectly Roast a Potato

When I was a brand new mama, I had to completely relearn how to cook. I realized that pretty quickly. Was it that the only food I ate for the first week of Thing 1's life was cheezits straight from the box? Or was it me in the kitchen trying to mince and sweat onions in a dutch oven while my little red baloney-loaf screamed his head off in the bouncy seat? More than one night ended with both of us hungry and in tears.

It was for this reason that I found 'the walk-away'. 'The walk-away' is when you put something on to cook and instead of sticking around to futz with it you simply...walk away. Don't mess with a sausage frying in a pan. Don't check on boiling or steaming veggies. They really don't need you until they need to be strained. Chicken baking in the oven doesn't need you except for maybe one baste. Just walkaway. Go and nurse the baby, fold the laundry or in my case, put your purse away, change clothes and spend some quality time with the kids. 30 minute meals are awesome, but 45 minute meals with only 10 active minutes are way better.

Granted, the 'walk-away' does require medium heat otherwise you might burn something. I always loved how Emeril Lagasse used to pull the knob off his oven on his Food Network show and tell the audience 'You know these come with knobs for a REASON!!' Medium heat is really the best for the stove-top walk-away.

Now all this leads me to the humble baked potato. Steaming. Buttery. Starchy. Filling. I LOVE baked potatoes. But before I had children I don't think I had had more than two baked potatoes in the prior ten years. Post motherhood I began eating them several times a week because they are the best hot walk-away meal! When I would get home from work I would get Thing 1's dinner together and pop my potato in the oven, maybe with a chicken breast or maybe not. By the time the little bugger collapsed in sleep my spud would be fully cooked and I could start my evening. I have tried lots of different ways of making a baked potato. But I am an exacting lady. I am always looking for the absolute best way to cook simple food. I believe I have perfected my potato baking techniques.

How to Perfectly Bake a Potato

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

First, select a good medium sized potato, one that is longer than it is wide. A good baker is one that feels heavy for its size. I also like potatoes that have a uniform shape, so that it won't be raw on one side while overdone on the other. There is little in life that worse than underdone potatoes. Flat tires maybe, mornings without coffee definitely.

Scrub your potato. I sometimes use soap and even a rough cloth or clean sponge to get it seriously scrubbed. After all, I eat the potato skin. OH! I should have mentioned that sooner. If you are just eating the inside of your taters and tossing the skin then you are missing out. Potato skins are a tremendous source of fiber. But I eat them because they are so delicious. Interesting....In researching this article I discovered that according to The Straight Dope (a website), potato skins contain toxic compounds called glycoalkaloids. Green potatoes especially have these compounds (so don't eat those). But, you have to eat alot to suffer consequences. I have certainly not had any adverse reactions and I have eaten alot of potato skins. While not all the nutrition of a potato is locked in it's skin, they are really tasty. And they do contain lots of billing fiber!!

Take a fork or a sharp knife and poke a couple holes in your potato. It doesn't have to turn into a crime scene. Seven to ten pokes is more than enough to let the steam vent.

Next pour a teaspoon of olive oil into your hand, then massage it into potato. Lastly pop him in the oven and wait 45 minutes or so. Check the doneness of your tuber by squeezing. The outside should be crispy and crackly while the inside should give and feel soft. A larger potato will need an hour and possibly more depending on size.


When your potato is done, eat it right away or else the super crunchy skin will soften and be significantly less delicious. Favorite toppings? Butter, full fat greek yogurt and plenty of sea salt and cracked black pepper (as seen in all the pictures). But also chili and cheese is sublime. I have even been known to whip up a cheese sauce and soften some vegetable up in there. Cheese sauce, green beans and broccoli to smother a perfectly baked potato? Delish.

Definitely try the walkaway. And definitely enjoy your potatoes!

This post is shared with Traditional Tuesdays and Real Food Wednesdays and Simple Lives Thursdays

'Hoarding Food' or '5 Ways to Stock Up for Winter Even If You Don't Have a Garden'

Indooring gardening failures aside, I am quite concious of the challenges that await me during the winter months ahead. Last year we had trouble eating locally and seasonally during the off season. The winter was long and punishing. By January we were seriously tired of winter vegetables. By February our Winter CSA share was over. And by March I had virtually given up. Deeper into the season, it seemed like every vegetable we bought was from California save our apples, onions and potatoes, oh and the occasional butternut squash. Pastured meats and milk are available year round, but instead of a 50/50 farmer's market/ grocery store split to my food spending, it ended up being more 25/ 75. I prefer to buy local, but that wasn't the biggest issue. It was that in an attempt to eat more local, we ate fewer vegetables overall. Winter veggies are hard to prepare. They require chopping and peeling and boiling. And insanity or not, I felt some guilt buying things that were technically out of season for my locality. But eating locally just wasn't working for me 100%.

So this year I am trying to take action now. I only have one fridge and in it a moderately sized freezer. I store all our meat in the freezer which doesn't leave a ton of space for frozen vegetables but I am trying to stock up on items that I know we won't have in a couple of months.

1-Frozen Greens I have mentioned it before, but we have gotten alot of greens this summer at our CSA and I haven't quite gotten through all of them. So I have chopped and frozen much of the kale I got this year. I have made pesto from the basil and spinach. And I have heard that one can even make pesto from swiss chard. I have to try that since I have two bunches of chard on hand and I am going on vacation soon. Pesto freezes so beautifully! That'll be delightful on a pizza in mid winter.

2-Chicken Feet Pastured chicken is a truly seasonal item, available only in the summer and early fall. I have mentioned before that we just don't eat as much chicken these days. Chickens are expensive to raise ethically. I find the pastured varaities for around $8 a pound. That's high, but then you have to buy a 5 pound bird? There you have a special occasion, $40 meal. Then consider that much of the bird is inedible, even if you make stock from the bones. That's the reason we are eating more pastured beef. Beef is cheaper and I can buy a pound at a time as I like. But chicken feet are a wonderous thing! The dairy farm that provides my milk also raises pastured chickens. And while the feet would be throw away parts for many producers, they make the BEST chicken stock! I regularly buy up all of her feet. And at $6-$7 for a bag of feet that produces 4 quarts of stock that stands up as thick as jello, I'd say that's a bargain. But the chickens will only be around a few more weeks. So I need to stock up on feet if I want them during the winter.

3-Pasture Butter I normally buy Organic Valley's Cultured Butter, a great product. But every summer they produce a green foiled Pasture Butter. It became available in June and when I first bought it, I noticed the difference right away. The smell is sublime and the color is a deep yellow like egg yolks when the butter is melted. I don't have access to pasture butter year round. My dairy does not currently produce butter. And while I could make my own from the Milk Thistle cream, $8 for a half a pound of butter seems especially steep when I consider the effort expended. I mean, I do have a full time job and two kids. If I ever win the lottery maybe I will start making my own butter. But until then I don't think it is a viable solution. Even the local butter by Ronnybrook Dairy (another exceptional dairy) is only okay. It is good, but I happennto like the OV Pasture butter better. Since it is a seasonal product I have been slowly stocking up all summer. I currently have 7-8 pounds of butter in the freezer. We go through about 1/4-1/2 a pound of butter every week (who am I kidding, 1/2 a pound) so I figure I have 14 weeks of butter. I think I'd like to get just a teensy bit more. Thank goodness my ice cube maker isn't working because that has freed up space for butter storage.

4-Sweet Corn Corn is such a wonderful thing. This summer it has been especially plentiful and exceptionally sweet. Our CSA has been providing 4-5 ears per week. That's enough to feed our need for corn on the cob, but not enough to store. So I hve started to buy extra ears at the FM. I plan to take the corn, cut it off the cob, blanch it in hot water for thirty seconds and then cool it, bag it and freeze it. So far though all those extra ears of corn have just gone into my family's bellies.

5-Dried Herbs Fresh herbs have been so wonderful to have around this summer! I have enjoyed dill in my potato salad, hottttt cilantro and jalepeno salsa and basil and kale pestos. But all good things must come to an end. So slowly I have been trying to dry the inexpensive bunches of fresh herbs that I can get at the farmer's market, dill, basil and even chamomile. I have saved some small glass spice jars for storage. Though it has been tough. Drying the herbs means that I can't just eat them fresh.

So there you go! 5 Ways that even a city girl with an itty bitty freezer can store local foods to get ready for the winter. Thus far my husband has been very supportive of my 'crunchy' eating habits, but he has been unwilling to buy a stand up freezer to compliment the tiny one we already have. His biggest problem? That the freezer won't fit in the kitchen and would have to live in the living room. Well...I guess he has a point!!

This post is shared with Real Food Wednesdays and Healthy 2Day Wednesdays and Simple Lives Thursdays and Fresh Bites Fridays and Fight Back Fridays

Wanna Know My Weekly Grocery Budget?

I probably went grocery shopping every week with my mother until I was 12 or so. I have always loved grocery shopping. A store full of food is like a blank canvas of possible meals. An endless array of choices that combined can create family harmony and culinary art. Oh and uh, there are treats there and sometimes samples. I always really loved the samples and getting my mom an itty bitty cup of coffee with two packets of non dairy creamer when I was a little kid. As a young adult I was too poor to go shopping for clothes so the grocery store became my marketplace outlet. If I couldn't get my fix on pretty shoes I could delight in buying a nice cheese.



I have always shopped with a budget in mind. My mother always did. In the eighties my mother fed a family of four on $80-$100 a week. During the years when my mother stayed home that covered all our breakfasts, lunches (except for my school age brother) and dinners, seven days a week. I am fairly sure that my brother got school lunch, but I think my dad brown bagged it. I don't recall eating out that often. And by not that often I mean a couple times a year. Restaurants were more for vacations and roadtrips. Even fast food was only very occasional. By the time I went to school my mother was back at work though our budget didn't change that drastically. The budget still covered the breakfasts and dinners, but my brother and I were both eating lunch at school. When my mom returned to the workforce, she did not pack a lunch every day, she really loved Taco Bell. Like really loved Taco Bell.



Fast forward to today and my food budget covers a similar amount of meals, well sort of. My food budget covers breakfasts, lunches and dinners for me and the kids seven days a week. I eat both a home packed breakfast and a home packed lunch at work every day. I only buy myself a lunch once every other week maybe. DH eats breakfast and lunch at his office Monday through Friday. Food (and I use that term loosely) is provided to him for free. We all eat the same dinner every night and of course DH eats his daytime meals at home on the weekends. And every week I try to keep to a budget of....oh Jeez...$200. I am a little embarrassed to admit that. It seems like so much money.



That $200 covers all food and drink. It sometimes includes paper products, tin foil, plastic baggies and the like. It sometimes covers soap. I say sometimes because I buy all that stuff at my grocery store, Fairway, and sometimes our bill is right on and sometimes it runs over. I don't like to include it in the number, but truthfully it isn't like I have a separate budget. The $200 does not cover booze. Ha! That'd be a travesty, we'd starve.



I split the weekly budget into two parts. I take out $100 in cash and use that at the farmer's market and the other $100 or so I spend at Fairway. At the farmer's market I faithfully spend every week about $28 on our amazing whole milk for 2 gallons, $10 on a big pound and a half turkey sausage, $9 on two dozen free range eggs and $15 on apples and other seasonal fruit. Beyond that it is whatever is in season and whatever I need in the house, honey, broccoli, cream, etc. At Fairway it is much more open to whatever we need that week, sprouted bread, nitrate free ham or salami for the boys, Organic Valley Raw cheese that our boys flip over, wild caught fish, hummus or olives, and of course a weekly bag of coffee beans. What we buy at the grocery store varies week to week. I feel really good about what we buy and eat at this point. I am finally happy in all our products and I feel like we have found some good quality brands. I am happy with how our food dollar is spent.



But, that isn't really everything. I also participate in our neighborhood CSA. That costs us about $500 a year for 22 weeks of vegetables and 10 weeks of fruit. And in addition to that I spend $60-$100 a month on grass fed meat which I order online once a month and pick up frozen. I could buy meat week to week, but I have found that the local grass fed beef that is sold at the farmer's market is slightly more expensive that my CSA connection. I love the quality that Lewis-Waite Farm offers so I continue to shop for them for virtually all our meat. So there you have it, all told I spend slightly over $12,000 a year on food that we prepare at home. That doesn't include any take out that we might order, or lunches that I buy out or going out to dinner with friends. I classify those dollars under "entertainment" because that is what that is for me. To admit to all of that here, publicly, it seems like an awful lot of money.



Over a year ago when Thing 2 was still nursing and eating baby food and Thing 1 wasn't eating much of anything and DH and I were eating passable junk we spent about $150 a week. We bought alot of organic items, but we sought out cheaper options and didn't ask a lot of questions of our food. We certainly didn't look for raw and unprocessed or other buzz words. If I was looking for organic peanut butter I looked for the CHEAPEST organic peanut butter I could find. I wasn't worried about the little yucky additives or added sugar that might be hiding amongst other wholesome ingredients.



So what are we spending an additional 33% of our original budget on? First off, local foods My local milk costs TWICE as much as Fairway's milk. Fairway offers grass fed organic milk, but it is a standard pasteurization method and it is homogenized. And that is fine, but my local milk is low temp pasteurized and non homogenized. I like that. Fairway makes fine milk, I just happen to like Milk Thistle's better. But it isn't just milk. Local meat and eggs and produce all cost 20-50% more expensive when I purchase them at the farmer's market. But when I buy local products my food dollar goes upstate to reinforce my state's local economy. I think that is pretty damn important. So as long as I can afford it, I am going to buy local.



The second thing that has been costing us more money, fat. Choosing to eat more healthful fats definitely has increased our grocery bill. Choosing organic oils has added some considerable expense just as buying pastured or cultured butter has. Coconut Oil is a pricey new staple in our house. But also eating more of these fats just means that we need to buy more of them and that also raises our costs. I am reevaluating that thought process. I am not sure that I really need to eat MORE fat than I used to. I think now that I have gotten the kinds of fat right MORE fat in my diet is just being stored as well, fat. It isn't like I sucked down fat free everything or that I used to be afraid of fat.



And lastly, buying organic has cost us more money. Where I used to buy organic items haphazardly, now I truly search them out. I try to buy organic everything from oils and fat to dried beans to spices. But that has raised the price of our grocery bill considerably. I am still torn on whether I am getting my money's worth buying everything organic. Even the EWG has a guide to what produce you should buy organic and what isn't necessary. But their guide is for pesticide exposure. I am concerned for more than just pesticide exposure. I am concerned about what fertilizers do to the quality of the soil and the quality of the produce's nutrition. I am concerned about farm workers exposure to chemical sprays. I am concerned about the larger environmental impact. While I appreciate the EWG for coming up with an easy guide to avoiding pesticides, it doesn't really cover the whole issue.



So, that is what I spend in a nutshell. It is a lot of money but we really waste very little and there are virtually no treats in the budget. I have gotten pretty good about freezing foods and actually eating them later. The kids do well with leftovers. And while I would love to spend less I worry about trading out the foods that we love, that we believe will keep us strong and healthy with cheaper less nutritious items like grains. And I keep thinking back to my mother's budget. That was 25 years ago and there are still families spending less than $100 a week!! Houses are 4-5 times what they were 25 years ago, even a can of coke costs twice as much. Why haven't people's budgets changed? Well, they haven't because average personal wealth hasn't changed. With the cost of everything else going up while wages remain the same, guess what gets cut? I really don't know how families are spending less than $100 a week on food? And don't say Extreme Couponing. That show is crazy. I don't know why anyone should have 56 bottles of barbecue sauce just because they only cost 15 cents each. That sounds like wasted money to me!



Mortgages payments and rent are the same every month. Phone bills are generally the same too. So are cable bills and car payments. Food is adjustable. And in this age of monthly contracts and payments for everything from Netflix to bank service, food is one of the last things that can fluctuate, that you CAN spend less on in a month when your paycheck is a little short. Yet food is so important. Foodies get flak for suggesting that people spend more on food. They have been lambasted as elitist and out of touch. But I don't think that is what they mean. I think they mean stop buying crazy amounts of crappy food and instead buy less, just buy better food. Maybe the average Joe could spend the SAME amount then but just eat a little less and be a little more healthy. Why doesn't anyone stand up and offer that as a solution?



This post is shared with Real Food Wednesdays, Healthy2Day Wednesday and Simple Lives Thursday and Fight Back Fridays and Traditional Tuesdays

Final Conclusions on Soaking Grains

When I started this blog I envisioned my search for truth in food. I imagined my trying out recipes, some working and some not working. But most of all I saw a community of people commenting and giving me tips of what to look and where to look.



When I posted my article last week, Do I Really Need to Soak My Grains? I was kind of nervous. I even weighed whether I should share the heretical post on the normal Real Food Blog Hops that I participate in. But...over 350 hits later and I think I discovered that I am not the only one who is confused.



Usually when one finds bits of information that seem contradictory it is normal to assume that some are true and some are false. Sorting through the true and the false takes time, but makes sense in the long run. But what happens when there are many bits of information that are contradictory but they are all true? What then? In my opinion you have on your hands a good old fashioned mystery. One must find the one situation in which all pieces of the story are in fact true. I LOVE mysteries. But rarely do they get solved in 48 minutes of airtime like on my much beloved Law and Order. In the case of soaking grains, much of my information was obtained from blogs like mine. I love reading blogs, but one must understand that they are opinion based and usually written by people like myself who really have no academic background in the science on which they write. The only thing that qualifies me to write about food is that I got a '5' on my AP English exam 14 years ago and I think I write a damn good research paper. But even I do not spend the time I need to get the fully researched picture all the time. And I assume that other bloggers are the same. That is why no writer is any better than the sources that they quote. Blogs that correctly quote lots of good articles are sure to rise to the top of their game.



But back to my conundrum. In the case of my soaking grains, what was I to do? Let's consider all the information.



* Substances like Lectins, Phytic Acid and other anti-nutrients reside mainly in the bran of the kernel of grain. These substances keep us from accessing all the available nutrition. These substances can also lead to severe gastrointestinal distress in sensitive people and minor gastrointestinal distress is others.



* Most people, about 85%, digest grains with no problem.



* Rates of gluten sensitivity and celiac disease have risen dramatically in the last 50 years, as have most other degenerative diseases and cancers. This has been proven by testing stored blood from 50 years ago. The rates of potential celiac among the stored samples was far lower than folks living today. Here is the Mayo Clinic article that details where and when the study took place.



* Despite what anyone else might tell you, celiac disease is presently found in approximately 1% of the population. Gluten sensitivity, or a more mild form of the disease, is found in an estimated 10-15% of the population.



* Soaking or fermenting grains for 12-48 hours in warm water, water with whey or an acidic liquid like keifer and yogurt does increases the digestibility of the available nutrition on a grain whether the grain is whole or refined. (I am citing Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon)



* Soaking grains diminishes the celiac reaction in many sufferers. Some report that while they cannot eat traditionally prepared breads they can have 'soured' or soaked version like sourdough, etc.



* Sprouted grains and flours have some of the highest lectin content available because as the plant begins to grow it produces more anti-nutrients that discourage you from eating the plant.



* My great-grandmother and likely her mother and grandmother would never have left a bowl of pancake batter sitting in yogurt overnight on her counter top. Why doesn't the step of soaking (as it is presented today) survive in any recipes? And if the rates of celiac were so much lower 100 years ago, why? Why did so many cultures eat refined white bread daily and not experience the same amount of degenerative disease that we are experiencing today?



* I am not sick. While I have imagined that I have gluten sensitivity in the last couple of years, I only experience symptoms when I eat huge quantities of wheat, like 4-5 servings a day. I am likely just one of those people for whom gluten-free is a fad.

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I asked many of those questions in my post last week. And I have to thank everyone who responded and commented and in general just read the post. Everyone who commented helped me gain more insight. And everyone was so supportive! I imagined being railed against for my heresy. But that didn't happen at all. And this wonderful community of people has given me links and suggestions. You all really added value to my search. And I definitely feel like I am not the only one who is confused. I think if more people were confident about the topic of soaking grains I would not have gotten the immediate traffic bump. Clearly people are confused by the contradictory information.



Writing this post has been a learning experience. Honestly, the topic of soaking grains annoys me. I feel a little criticized, like someone is wagging their finger at me telling me that I have been doing it wrong all these years. I have eschewed most store bought bread, yet I keep getting the impression that my additive free, organic, high-quality sprouted bread is still silently killing me and my ignorance...maybe I am over-internalizing that just a tad. Still, how could all of the above things be true? Surely some of them had to be false. Either soaking wasn't worth the effort or I was damaging my gut by eating improperly prepared food. And what about this so called 'traditional preparation'? It is nothing I have ever heard of before I got interested in food...or had I?



Ruth at Ruth's Real Food posted a very interesting post at her blog last week, just when I was open to hearing about proper preparation of grains. Her take was that modern factory produced bread was allowed to rise only 5 hours, not enough time to properly breakdown the grain for digestion. Add to that additives and dough conditioners and food coloring and you have one scary loaf of bread. EUREKA!! This was the missing link for me! I have heard of the modern bread preparation on the wonderful blog Fooducate, they wrote a post about it last spring. And incidentally, they just published an amazing article on gluten and cealic disease yesterday. Thanks Fooducate!My great grandmother surely would have made bread at home and she surely would have allowed it to rise, probably taking all day. This was starting to make sense. Maybe the step of soaking was hiding in all those old recipes under rising time.



I also in the post lamented my inability to find a good online post detailing the process, what do the bad anti-nutrients do, and what does the soaking, fermenting and sprouting do for them? Why is there little good information for an exacter like me? Am I wasting my time soaking? Then my dear friend Sara commented that she had recently read a great post from Mark's Daily Apple that questioned whether traditionally prepared grains were healthy. Mark details exactly what is IN the grains that makes them bad, then he details what different preparation methods do to reduce the effects of the antinutrients. His information is invaluable. Go and read the article. His conclusions? Sprouting does little to mitigate anti-nutrients and gluten, fermentation does a heck of alot more. But the preparation doesn't do enough to make him want to eat grains (he is one of those Paleo People).



Elizabeth also commented that there are such a thing as Overnight Pancakes. And yes, I did find some recipes online. Although mostly these recipes are to alleviate busy morning schedules, the soaking seemed like it would be helpful. But...since they are all refrigerated there is no fermentation. I don't know how much anti-nutrient eliminations these recipes would offer. But you got me thinking Elizabeth (see tomorrow's post).



And lastly to bobsgirl, I hear you. She commented something many of us are thinking "while reading your post I thought about reports from several years ago on how unhealthy the populace has become from eating 'white' bread/flours ..the answer and improved health we were told, came from eating whole grains. My question; how could so many have improved health and less disease from whole grain consumption if there are so many 'bad' things in it for us?" I haven't done adequate research on this, but my bet is that people who are interested in eating whole grains also are interested in eating lean meats and lots of fresh vegetables. Overall whole grains as part of a larger healthier diet might make it look like whole grains were the catalyst for health, but my gut says no. My gut says that if everyone just changed their hamburger buns and pasta to whole wheat and made no other changes to their Standard American Diet that our national health would be largely unchanged.



MY CONCLUSIONS??



So now, after reading all these posts, what do I do? Do I soak? Not soak? Do I worry? Do I throw caution to the wind? Well, I think it is yes, maybe, no and sort of.



I do think after reading all this information that it is worth it for me to try and soak my grains more often. I have...gulp...started a sourdough starter. Which is a huge step for me. And I am not sure if my marriage can handle more jars on the countertop. (Haha, just kidding). But seriously, I have two jars of kombucha, keifer, a jar of fermenting pickles and now a sourdough starter sitting on my counter? My husband thinks I am a loon.



But...I agree with Mark from Mark's Daily Apple, reducing grains is one of the best things you can do for your health. They are not really a fantastic source of nutrition and they crowd other healthier things off the plate. And I think we waste alot of time and energy grinding our own flour and hemming and hawing over 'whole this' and 'organic that', when our time would be better served adding another vegetable to our dinner plate daily, eliminating overly processed oils and sourcing grass fed meat. Reducing grains is not a small thing or a 'little tweak' to the Standard American Diet. Reducing grains is what helps people get OFF the SAD. So if I forget to soak the flour to the pancakes that will be my only grains in a day? Screw it. I am making pancakes anyway. And if I feel like having croutons on my salad lovingly made from in house baguettes from my dearest Fairway Grocery Store? Screw it, I am going to enjoy my croutons.



BOTTOM LINE: If grains are not a huge part of your diet, and you generally take care to properly prepare them, don't feel guilty about eating some unsoaked muffins. Save your worries for what is going on in Washington and on Wall Street.



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Do I Really Need To Soak My Grains?

Several weeks ago now I had the pleasure of staying up until an obscene hour with an old dear friend and talking like a couple of girls who didn't have to wake up at 6 in the morning with four kids between us. I love food, MS loves food. We both agree that the best food is real and non-processed.



Admittedly, while I just preach about real food of the mostly non-chicken nugget variety, MS really lives it, organ meat and all. Living abroad in a country where most milk, meat and vegetables are grass fed and organic by default because the local farmers are too poor to buy feed and fertilizer, MS takes non-processed to the max. It is quite inspiring. MS is quite versed in soaking her grains and flours but as we talked, I lamented my inability to soak my own grains. I understand why one soaks grains, to make them easier to digest. But every morning I wake up ready to make some baked oatmeal (or mmmmmm oatmeal blueberry muffins) only to realize that I have forgotten to soak the oatmeal the night before. I know I could just go ahead and proceed, but I really want to try the soaking. It seems exotic to make soaked flour pancakes. And many texts have lead me to believe that there are no redeemable qualities to unsoaked grains. They are all gut damaging, blood sugar spiking beasties.



But, I have some issues with the idea that grains are useless unless soaked overnight. It just doesn't all add up to me. If soaking grains is so traditional, how come it doesn't survive in a single recipe that I have come across? Everyone still soaks dried beans because just cooking them from their hard state takes forEVER. And if you want to try it for shits and giggles, improperly soaked beans will make you quite the gas machine. Sadly, I have that issue everytime I eat beans in a restaurant. Just about every restaruant out there cooks their beans too hot and too quickly. And while they feel edible on your tounge, they will leave your bowels (and possibly your personal pride) ravaged. But while soaking beans is pretty common from Maine to Mexico, I don't know of any great grandmother that left flour mixed in yogurt sitting on her countertop overnight. Please, my great grandmother had probably never heard of yogurt. And yes I have heard stories about Quaker Oats long ago coming with the instruction to soak the oats overnight. But never have I heard of a text confirming such a story with some first hand account. This soaking thing is really a new concept to me.



I am NOT being difficult, I promise. I just wonder why I haven't heard of the traditional practice of soaking flour until now. The whole premise is that soaking whole or ground grains (better known as flour) in warm salt water or an acidic liquid like keifer, yogurt or even just water with whey sort of pre-digests those nasty lectins or antinutrients and phytic acid found in grains. These antinutrients are substances within the grains that inhibit you from digesting all the nutrition that the grain has to offer. This phenomenon is a defence mechanism of the plant. The seed does NOT want you to chew it up and digest it. It gains nothing from that. So the plant gives us a reason to not want to eat it at all so that it's seed can stay intact. When you eat the grain, it upsets your tummy a little and you get little if any nutrition. This is quite true of raw grains. You would never eat a grain raw, gross. It is worth noting that these antinutrients are found in the bran, which has been removed from white flour. White flour has easily been produced since the mid 1700's, so it is possible that any recipes that included soaking have long been lost (see my post A Brief History of Refined Flour). But the truth is...I don't know. The typical Western diet is not high in these lectins and phytic acid because the typical Western Diet is not high in WHOLE grains. White flour doesn't need to be soaked because it does not contain the bran, which contains the problem antinutrients. So no research has really been done here.



But while you might never eat a raw grain, what does regular ole' cooking do for grains? I certainly don't get an upset tummy from eating a slice of bread made from flour that has not been soaked. The collective opinion is that standard cooking renders some of the nutrition in whole grains available, but not all. Soaking your flour in some acidic medium is said to render more if not all of the nutrition available because the antinutrients are 'pre-digested'. BUT...my biggest issue is, no one seems to know how much nutrition we are really getting with either preparation method. Are you digesting only 30% of the available nutrients of the unsoaked grains and over 90% of the soaked variety? Or are you getting 80% of the available nutrients of the unsoaked grains and 95% of the soaked ones? Does anyone actually know? (By the way, that is not a rhetorical question, if you do think you know, will you please comment?? I am truly interested.)



All I am saying is that I have had a hard time remembering to soak my grains and an equally hard time quantifying how much this soaking will benefit me. And if I didn't obsess about these pithy details, why on earth would you read this blog?



Then recently, to add to my confusion I recently read a blog post from another blogger (who I cannot find now) that explained that the calcium found in fermented dairy products inhibits your ability to digest the nutrients found in flour. This blogger suggested that one should soak their flour in only warm water with a little salt. Then to add even more feul to my fire, Dr. Mercola recently published an article that stated that sprouted grains had some of the highest lectin content out there. He was challenging the notion that sprouting or soaking grains is really worth it. He states, "The sprouts of grains such as wheat, maize, and rye are increasingly being consumed as health foods, and are also used for the production of dietary supplements. However, sprouted wheat actually contains the highest amounts of wheat lectin (WGA)—which is responsible for many of wheat's ill health effects! And that's not all. These sprouts (wheat, maize and rye) also contain benzoxazinoids (BAs). Benzoxazinoids are part of the plants' defense system against pests, and are actually toxic components..." Dr. Mercola does admit that there isn't enough evidence to state that sprouted grains are actually dangerous. And I will continue to buy sprouted grain bread.



Add to these articles, author Rebecca Wood recently published an article in her interesting monthly newsletter that came largely to the conclusion that I have. In her great article Best to Soak Grains? Wood details why one would soak their grains but also the textural changes that grains will undergo as they are soaked. Oatmeal left to soak overnight become more gummy and soft. Some people may love such a texture, others not. Wood states that there are many great reasons to soak one's grains, all of which I have mentioned here. But she also says, "Possibly the advice of some contemporary food writers to soak all grains, seeds and nuts—and even their flours—is a tich overboard. There’s no precedent for soaking almond flour. Taking one bit of information (soaking is best) and carrying it to a time intensive and new-fangled extreme has a fundamentalist ring to me."



It has occured to me that to obsess over the proper way to soak grains may be missing the point. Many of us have been guided to traditional foods because they offer a way to eat intuitively. For me, shunning processed foods has helped me to eat more nutritious foods, but also to stop obsessing over numbers and nutrition panels, Vitamin D content and antioxident availability. I know that when I eat non-processed whole foods I can trust that the natural combinations of vitamins will be right in order to help my digest my food. When I choose whole milk that has been only minorly pasteurized I know that there will be enough fat to help me absorb the Vitamin D. Whole foods have evolved over time to have the most natural chemical structures with nutrients that work together. When we isolate individual vitamins and take them in excess, such as in supplements, we might find that they may not work as well, or that our bodies don't absorb them at all. Worrying about soaking, or becoming preoccupied with the VERY best way to soak one's grains to make them as close to 100% digestable as possible is actually just as obsessive as worrying about saturated fat and counting calories. In eating whole foods I should be able to simply trust that the food is right. Or that it is just as it should be.



Soaking does render the grain more easy to digest. But while soaking grains may be good, unsoaked grains aren't a waste of your time. If you do not suffer from some compromised digestive disorder and you are not a candidate for the GAPS diet, your gut can digest cooked, but unsoaked grains and flour, it just doesn't get as much nutrition from them. And I don't buy into the idea that the vast majority of the population has a digestive sensitivity to grains. Numerous websites all agree that only about 15% of the population is sensitive to the most allergenic grain, wheat. And every now and then I come across a blogger that tells their mass following that wheat is bad for everyone. That is so not true. If you have some health problems wheat intolerance and digestive health is worth considering. But if you are healthy like me, wheat is probably not causing you any trouble at all.



That being said, grains, even soaked grains should not be the foundation of our diet. Regardless of whether it is wheat, rice or corn, two servings per meal with some extra in between isn't a good idea for just about everyone. I feel best when I have 1-3 servings of grains per day. They give me some great energy, so no grains often leaves me feeling tired and unenergetic. But too much makes me feel run down and strung out. Soaking may be good for the digestability, but it doesn't transform grains into something that you should be eating all day every day. Grains simply have their place in our diet behind protein foods and fresh vegetables. So I will try my damnest to soak my flour and oatmeal. But when I forget to soak my flour the night before, I will probably still wake up the next morning and make my muffins.



Also read : Soaking Grains, Healthbanquet.com



Gluten Sensitivity, Wikipedia



UPDATE, August 4th, 2011: I just read a very interesting post at Ruth's Real Food. She mentions the rise of Celiac Disease in the last 50 years, and she quotes an actual study, something I appreciate. Ruth mentions that factory produced bread is given less than 5 hours to rise, when traditional sourdough is given 12-24 hours or more. I get that. Rising times are techinally soaking times. Perhaps that is the missing link in my thinking? Even basic bread recipes from the last 75-100 years that include little packets of yeast include 1 or 2 lengthy rise time that can equal 8-12 hours. While my great-grandmother wouldn't have left pancake batter sitting on the counter top, she would have allowed bread to rise twice before baking it. I don't believe that yeast is the devil, but I do think factory produced bread isn't worth the money spent on it. Maybe it is the rising time that is the key?



More food for thought....



UPDATE AUGUST 11th, 2011: My wonderful readers and commenters gave me so much to think about that I have written a follow up post. I bring it all together in Final Conclusions on Soaking Grains.



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