The Goods Are Odd

Life with more nourishing food so far has been really delicious and satisfying, it has even had plenty of variety and plenty of sweets. But it isn’t without some sacrifices, particularly in the realm of special treats. The other night my dreams were all about being at a bakery and eating sticky sugary white flour treats, and it seemed like I should give myself something to fulfill this craving rather than let my subconsciousness obsess over it. I give in sometimes, I do; but it would be really great if I didn’t have to. I would really like to go to the grocery store and find a cookie that fits my sense of a food worth eating; worth it in terms of taste, and the soul-satisfying experience of a yummy treat, and not needing my body to deplete its hard earned resources to help the food go through.

Nourishing Traditions has plenty of treats and snacks that are all delicious. I am getting the hang of a lot of the techniques, but one practice has got me stuck and stopped a lot of my baking. To really meet the nourishing standard, any quick breads are made with flour that has been soaked over night. It’s easy to just write this practice off as too much time to ask for muffins. What actually gets me is the expense of the soaking (cups of buttermilk each time) and I plain forget or don’t give myself the time (as I think the desire to bake a treat is often an in-the-moment kind of thing).

Luckily, at a particular treat-craving moment, I had all the right stuff to make totally nourishing and absolutely delicious cookies.

From the creation of our camping trail mix (see below) we had many cups of soaked-and-dried nuts (What Ms. Fallon calls “crispy nuts”). These nuts have had the enzyme inhibitor (the natural preservative that you don’t want to be eating) soaked out of it, and the crispy put back in through a long time in a warm oven; enough to make them crunchy but not to kill all of those good nutrients the soaking released. The pumpkin seeds were outrageously good as were the almonds. The peanuts just didn’t really get eaten as the flavor wasn’t great on their own. So I ground them up and used them for the base of these flourless peanut cookies.

They are made by blending all the ingredients in a food processor until you get a nice mealy dough that you will form into walnut sized rounds.

This is a cookie I have don’t think I would be able to find pre-made. The approach of nourishing traditions exists in this area between organic foodie eats and vegan/raw fare. The vegans have made cookies with the right kind of sweetener and often some kind of alternative flour that is more easily digested, but they use vegetable-based oils that are not great like soy or canola (why they don’t use coconut at least I don’t know…). Raw food teats often leaves out the flour for something like the ground up nut base, but I can’t ensure that they have actually soaked the nuts, which is sort of the whole point, otherwise you might as well use flour. The organic foodies have the eggs and milk and butter but they use white sugar and flour (organic is fine, but I want to go beyond).

The ingredient list on this cookie’s package would read like so:

Soaked and dried organic peanuts, organic cultured butter, arrowroot powder, dehydrated cane sugar (unrefined), organic fair-trade vanilla, sea salt.

Tell me if you’ve ever bought a cookie like that…

P.S. You have to let them sit to set, then they are as chewy and tasty as any other.

After over 1,000 replies (so far) to Michael Pollan’s call for NY Times readers’ own guidelines for eating, I wonder who will be left to read his planned compendium of rules. It struck me after seeing the overwhelming amount of feedback that the volume and variety of responses sort of negates the purpose of such a project and also renders it impossible. His plan is to post the suggestions on his website and “to include the best in a collection of food rules I’m now compiling”.

How in the world is he going to determine which ones are “the best” for everyone?  Are these individual rules really improving people’s lives & health or are they just maxims?

(Maybe it was just the latest interview with him in Mother Jones that rubbed me the wrong way in terms of following his approach to things. When asked about reactions to they pithy subtitle of his last book he mentions that “mostly plants” got a reaction from the Weston A. Price Foundation who he describes as “fierce in their love of animal fat. And with pastured animal fat, healthy animal fat, a lot of what they say is right. But they really don’t like plants.” Sally Fallon did write an open letter to Pollan about the necessity of non-plant foods in the human diet but there is considerable use of plants in the foods supported by her and the research of Dr. Price.)

Maybe this rules project is his attempt to flesh-out that subtitle.  Attempts to distill a way of living into a few quick truths always leaves something out; that must be why we need  so many of the quick fixes- to fill in the blanks and contradictions.

What I think is funny about this whole thing is that the amount of responses seems to indicate that enough people have their own rules about eating and don’t really need books or tv shows (or blogs) to guide them. But sort of paradoxically the consumption of information about what to eat is higher than ever.

It seems that with each piece of new information the greater the number of little contradictions and conflicting guidelines with existing information, thus people feel compelled to consume more information and opinions in hopes of finally getting it right.

I read a lot of this stuff, from books to blogs to comment sections of the NY Times. Conflicting information abound and conversations about diet (As Pollan points out in the MoJo interview) has reached a level nearing religion, with certain miracles of changes in health proving that one sect of one diet or another is the ultimate truth. Why is it that we want to consume as much information about food as they want to give? Will Americans ever form a cultural diet that is sustainable (ie healthy) so we can stop trying to figure out what to eat?

(Recent tip lists include this from The Cheeseslave, which I pretty much agree with, and an increasing number of “healthy food on a budget” lists and “eating green” that I think give minimum guidance (cooking with a microwave??!!) and maximum magaziney turns of phrase)

I realize that for a lot of people mayonnaise is a horrific subject for a photograph. But I made it and it’s delicious and it’s just an egg yolk and olive oil. Not so bad?

Homemade mayo now sits next to homemade salad dressing and is becoming one less processed packaged food we get pre-made. This change is mostly because you cannot find mayonnaise made with olive oil, only canola, though there are some new (expensive!) variations that include other healthier oils, but are still based on canola. Homemade also just means less packaging and things to buy.

This process of weeding out packaged foods always reminds me of those essentials I don’t produce. I can’t make my own olive oil and at this point I don’t have chickens. That would be an exciting next step to self-reliance.

I make this by hand, you can definitely use a food processor. Start with an egg yolk from a happy bug-eating chicken. (The Organic requirement for eggs is that they have a vegetarian diet, presumably from the industrial farming practice of feeding their dead chicken back to their live ones, which creates a closed loop system for disease. When in fact sometimes chickens DO eat other chickens, and mice, and bugs, and sometimes grains and seeds. They are vicious little omnivores like us and need a varied diet. So you can look all you want for the perfect egg at the store and finally settle on cage free organic, but you won’t get the egg with the most nutrients from the happiest chicken. Get your eggs at the farmers market and make sure to ask if their chicken eat bug. This way you know that they are out and about living their chicken lives and that the egg you get is optimal.)

Wisk the yolk and start dripping in olive oil- I start with about 3/4 cups. One yolk can really only take up 1 cup total. Starting with a slow thin stream and always incorporate all the oil before adding too much more, otherwise it will seperate. When it starts to get too thick to wisk (this cue is why I like doing it by hand) add some water. You will see the mixture immediately lighten up and get whiter.

Some lemon juice and salt can also be added. Also some whey, as it more than doubles the life of your hard-earned mayo. Actually there are endless possibilities of things to add flavor-wise. Garlic and herbs being ideal. Basil is outstanding!

With so many posts on dinners I figured a few words could be said on the food that starts our day.

I actually don’t do too much variety in breakfast because it is the time of day where route muscle memory serves well, and I don’t like to have to think too much about what I am doing. For most of my life I really relied on packaged cereal for breakfast and snacks, okay and dinners. I was a very picky eater and would get stressed out when I couldn’t manage to figure out something to eat so cold cereal was always, so to speak, on the table. Despite being expensive with too much packaging the process for making cereal just isn’t ideal. The high heat treatment of grains is akin to burning your cooking oil- rancidity and the creation of free radicals. Read about the concerns here. So in effort to get more goodness out of our morning meal we turned to porridge.

When I was eleven my parents and took a bike trip to Scotland, touring around the Outer Hebrides and staying at family owned B&B’s. At these rural cottages, if you wanted oatmeal for breakfast you would need to tell your gracious host the night before. At the time I thought that they cooked the oats all night, but now I realize they must have been soaking them. This is a great example of how traditional food preparation techniques are great resources for age-old knowledge on how to eat and cook.

All grains and legumes contain phytic acid. Traditional diets have historically processed grains and legumes to reduce this kind of anti-nutrient. Here is an explanation (for even more follow the link and learn away!)

The amount of minerals your digestive system can extract from a food depends in part on the food’s phytic acid content. Phytic acid is a molecule that traps certain minerals (iron, zinc, magnesium, calcium), preventing their absorption. Raw grains and legumes contain a lot of it, meaning you can only absorb a fraction of the minerals present in them.

Soaking and, even more so, sprouting and fermentation are processing techniques that make our food much better for us and the thing is people already have known this for much longer than we have forgotten it and many traditional diets still use these techniques even if they don’t know why)

So with all that as a foundation, we have started to start our day with oats soaked at least 12 hours in yogurt or whey.

(Mix the yogurt or whey into the oats and add 1c water for each cup oats

cover with lid and keep at room temp)

After some soaking has been allowed the oats are then boiled 1 to 1 with water for a very brief time. In addition to making the oats better for you soaking also makes cooking very quick! The result is a creamy rich slightly soured porridge that is very filling and satisfying. I only end up needing about a half cup, mixing in honey, and some whole raw milk (okay I even sprinkle a little brown sugar still even though it’s bad, I just find such delight in that combination, hopefully my power oats can trump the sugar’s depletion tendencies)

When no oats have been soaked my mainstay breakfast is an egg with toast. We are all over the danger of eggs now right? I don’t need to go into this? If you are having any reservations, or you still have some lingering doubt when you enjoy this super food read this Wellness Letter from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health (see, it isn’t even a Weston A Price source, believe me it is no longer controversial that eggs are very good for you)

The toast is from the Alvarado St. Bakery which makes all sorts of bread products from sprouted grains and are generally a great company. This slice even happens to come from the sprouted sourdough loaf (double whammy) The butter is cultured (bought that way from Organic Valley, Clover also uses cultured cream) and the jam is homemade strawberry.

This was clearly a day-off morning as I don’t usually have time for pots. But this is actually a pretty quick side dish. Cut up the potatoes (I prefer for most things the little waxy or thin skinned ones, red or yellow) into pretty small pieces like two-hole Lego piece sized. Then just saute with olive oil, salt and pepper and throw in some herbs towards the end so they (the herbs) stay fresh. I used parsely. Many would also do garlic, but I have an aversion to garlic in the AM.

The latest issue of Anthrozoos has an article which supports the viability of small scale livestock operations for more broad population food needs. The research discovered that milk yields are increased when the dairy cow is less fearful or anxious. Some of the ways smaller scale milk producers calm their herds are by connecting, cooing, and calling each by name.

It was found that those cows who were named made more milk. This was especially if named when young before milk production starts (apparently a time when cows are rather ignored). Naming is only one of the strategies used by the farmers studied to help their animals be happy and calm. Many farmers who experienced higher yields talk or sing to each animal each day and had general respect for their charges.

Cows are not unique in their tendency to produce more when happy. Discovery News describes similar studies that show how anxiety and fear inhibit chickens, sheep, pigs, and trout from growing and breeding- those things we find particularly useful about them. But finding them useful is apparently not enough, we have to, surprise, treat them well.

Contrary to the efficiency purported by those in industrial animal production such methods likely require more unhappy and anxious animals to equal the output of smaller operations with fewer calm and more productive animals that connect with the people they work with. It is also likely that those human workers had a similar trend of happiness and calm when they are able to connect respectfully with the creatures whose lives, and deaths, are in their hands. Although quirky sounding the findings in this study give a good argument to why the meeting food supply needs does not justify the huge production methods that require the mistreatment of animals and workers alike.

From these findings to the increased instances of food contamination, the industrial scale production methods have less and less ground to stand on to convince us that feeding our population means big, centralized, and anonymous food operations. Clearly, when it comes to food small is not only beautiful, it is more productive.