Over the past few months I’ve changed my relationship with these sourdough beasties I’ve befriended to leaven and flavor my baked goods. I’ve both expanded the amount and variety of goods that I can make with them and I’ve let the little things be warm and active for longer periods. That is to say by keeping my sourdough active I’ve been forced to bake more with it and have thus figured out new and varied breads that can be made as sourdough.

The whole point, for me, of baking with sourdough is to use a biologically diverse population of microbes to populate the dough I make to allow a slower rise through fermentation. This process is active and alive and breaks down the stuff in wheat that is hard on human digestion (gluten) or makes other things (like minerals) inaccessible through human digestion (phytic acid)

Percentage of Phytic Acid

Time (hours)
—- Yeast Fermentation
___ Sourdough Fermentation

For more than you probably want to know about phytic acid and the extra measures you could go to to eliminate your intake of it go here.

The fact that phytic acid is in all foods that are originally seeds (grains, nut, legumes) and that it binds to certain minerals and nutrients in the body and essentially flushes them out, doing the body little good, is a fact that is not debated. What the impact is of the amount eaten on the body’s overall health is not agreed upon. But just think of how many seeds we eat: wheat, corn, soy, nuts. Since these foods are present in practically every meal, I like to error on the side of caution and avoid the anti-nutrients as much as possible. Here is a nice outline of why a sourdough ferment of grains is good for health (In fact that blog, just linked to, is one I’ve just discovered, and it full of great sourdough recipes. I haven’t tried any yet, but plan to…check it out!)

So that’s the motivation in trying to replace as many baked-goods as possible with their (I think more delicious) sourdough versions. Once you get beyond artisan crusty bread loafs from a good bakery it is hard to find an array of true sourdough items. Even if you find something that is “sourdough” that doesn’t necessarily mean that all the flour has gone through a minimum four hour ferment, a lot of sourdough is added as flavor.

As usual the best control over health, quality, and taste is just to make it at home, not to mention the saved plastic packaging and inexpensive ingredients which may make the cost of the homemade lower (though it depends on what you were buying). Below are some of the snacks I’ve put through the sourdough process. And I should mention that the recipes for these lovely eats all come from the same book, Wild Bread by Lisa Rayner. For the most part I like her recipes, but she is vegan so she often suggests Earth Balance over butter which to me is a very unwise substitution. It just boggles me that one can be so into natural and whole foods but prefer a product that requires a laboratory to make and comes in plastic over one that can be made and eaten out in a field.

In addition to getting a new book that expanded my sense of what I could do with my sourdough, I also starting using it (the starter) a bit differently. First of all I started a whole wheat starter from my white one, so now I have two (The whole wheat is local from Massa Organics!) I keep the whole wheat one dryer (or stiffer, or to get technical, at a lower hydration- 75% which would be 3/4c water to 1c flour. 100% is an even one to one.) I also stopped putting the starter in the fridge after use. I keep some in the fridge for back up, but I keep the active one warm and fed…that way, when I want to bake I don’t have to back track the time it takes a cold starter to get going. If you keep your refrigerated tarter fed consistently you can get it going in 8hrs but it’s hard for me to remember to do so if I don’t see it. (Ofen it would be a two day process just to be able to use the thing…) Rather than get the out-of-sight-out-of-mind problem, I leave them out, which reminds me to feed them, which gets me to bake.

Crunchy whole wheat crackers:

There are fewer and fewer aisles in the grocery store I even go down at all and the cracker/cookie aisle is one of them. Even if natural or organic it’s still just plan old cooked wheat (or popped rice) and it just doesn’t do me much good. But crackers are great! For homemade hummus, tuna salad, or a sharp raw cheddar. If you already have made your own pizza dough, crackers are just as easy.

These are a 100% whole grain cracker  The recipe uses only 6oz of starter plus 8oz of any combination of tasty flours you might have such as rye, spelt, kamut. (I’ve used various mixes of wheat, rye, spelt as that’s what I tend to have on hand. The majority of the dough has been wheat though). (Also added is 2 Tbs olive oil, 1/2 tsp salt, and just under a half cup of water.)

After the dough is mixed and kneaded into a stiff ball it can sit for a few hours. (Lisa Rayner says you can let it sit for as little as 20 minutes, but that time frame doesn’t really do the fermenting job. I just let it go until I notice it being bigger…about four hours.) The dough is rolled as thin as you can manage onto a floured board and/or on parchment paper without going beyond the point that you can lift the strips onto your baking sheet. I had tried baking just the rolled out dough, figuring I could just break it into crackers after it cooked…but it ended up too uneven, not crunchy in the middle and burnt on the edges, so it is worth it to cut and cook strips…they can be a very rough cut.

This is a good opportunity to train your nose to when something is done. The crackers should be checked after five minutes and rotated and shaken around. They should get all the way to a nice caramel brown…but the tipping point to burnt is quick…so keep a careful eye (and nose!) I added Celtic sea salt and sesame seeds to the top before cutting the dough…lots of possibilities with toppings.

Everyone has these nostalgic foods from childhood that they just can’t help feeling great when they eat them. I am all for having good emotional memory with food…but often the actual substance from the past isn’t really all that great (in taste or health). I grew up in a very whole foods lacto/ovo/fish vegetarian household that didn’t include really any junk food. I could be easily motivated to do something if it involved some sort of illicit food…like a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin (though we still got it without the bacon/sausage). So, I’ve taken this childhood reward and made it the kind of thing I still want to eat.

The dough is the standard “artisan dough” in the Wild Bread book with a whopping 20 oz of starter, just about 7 oz of starter under 3 oz of water and 1.5 tsp of salt. This mixture rises in a bowl, then gets rolled out and cut to rise again as muffins.

Then the fun part! The muffins like fat pancake on a lightly buttered griddle. I ended up cooking them longer that this photo shows. In order to get them cooked through they should have a decent amount of color on both sides.

Then I cooked up an egg. This trick above doesn’t really work all that well, maybe if the ring was oiled better. The other option might be to make bigger muffins. I break the yoke after it cooks for a bit so it isn’t too drippy for the sandwich. Add some raw jack cheese, oblong fried potato cake not included and I certainly earned it!

Below shows the basic loaf bread I’ve been making on a weekly basis (give or take). It’s the same dough as the English muffin. I use a mix of my whole wheat and white starter and use either fresh ground wheat berries (also from Massa Organics), or fresh ground spelt, or just Massa’s flour which is ground fresher than anything else you can buy. This is a pretty similar recipe as the Nourishing Traditions loaf made in this post, but you can see how it’s lightened up a bit. This has to do with an even wetter dough and also a double proof, once in a bowl and once in the buttered loaf pan.

It’s a pretty nice, go-to whole grain loaf for toast and snacks. But I am pretty excited about trying this one from the recently discovered Wild Yeast Blog. I think something even lighter would do us better for sandwiches (the bread below is pretty limited to open-faced, which are delicious. Two pieces at once would be a mouthful)

This bread is a sourdough “quick bread” in that it is made from a batter and is not kneaded. But no, it isn’t quick.

A few words on the time it takes to make these baked goods: This point is related to one of Michael Pollan’s new food rules that you can eat junk food, just make it yourself. When you cook at home you can control ingredients and you don’t have access to the kind of processing or additives that happens on an industrial scale. You also find that “junk foods” take a long time to make and are energy intensive, versus simple whole foods. As I write this post I am actually taking a week without dairy, sugar, or grains. This is just a just an opportunity to eat really simply and avoid foods that can be harder on digestion than others.

I think taking a break from anything you eat a lot of is probably a good idea…seasonal variation does this with fruits and veggies and even some meats and certainly pastured eggs, but the constants can be…well just that. Really milk and grains would be more seasonal in a more locally-based food system.

I don’t know if I would go as far as saying the foods that you do the least to are the foods we should be eating. That essentially would be advocating a raw diet. I do think human digestion needs some careful processing to break down cellulose and other compounds we don’t have the stomachs for. But it is true that many of the foods you can eat “whole” are good for you and the more “whole” you eat a food the faster it is to eat it. An apple can be picked and eaten right at the same moment. Meat- well a life is made and raise and then killed, but after that it’s pretty much eaten as is. Bread on the other hand, even good, whole grain, naturally leavened bread goes through a number of steps. This isn’t a hard and fast rule by any means but the point is if we limited our baked-good intake to sourdough bread we made at home, we would probably eat a lot less bread and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

So, I’m happy to have created a system with bread that is rather self-limiting and happy to be taking a bit of a break…but also really happy to get back to baking soon. This bread below could be adapted into any number of quick bread loaf pan recipes like banana bread. I’ve just done this cinnamon raisin version and it’s lovely, moist, sour and delicious. I am pretty sure it could also be adapted into muffins, which is an experiment I am excited about and will certainly share. I’ve never seem to come across a true sourdough (that is, fully fermented) muffin recipe. I think it might involve some baking soda…but well see. Stay tuned.

                          

I had fun showing off my artisan multi-grain sourdough bread but it took three days of my visit to prepare and was gone in a few hours. Wanting mama and all to have the most nutritious bread I decided to try a more quick and dirty recipe.

I prepared a quart of my starter and then mixed it with about 6 cups of spelt flour, the recipe (from Nourishing Traditions) said to rise from 4 to 12 hours depending on the temperature. I let it go overnight, which was probably too long as it got a bit deflated. I didn’t have loaf pans, so they were kind of batard style loaves. The shap of the slice wasn’t ideal but the flavor was wonderful and went great with the raw cream cheese spread I made.

As soon as I got home I started on another batch. This time I started with spelt berries and ground the flour myself. It sounds like a job for a toiling little red hen, but it’s just an electric gadget and doesn’t take any effort, but yields the freshest flour you can get, ensuring no rancidity. Spelt is a nice grain for home grinding because its gluten level perform like an all-purpose flour, which is actually a mix of soft and hard wheat. So, unless you want to grind two different grains, spelt is a lot simpler.

In my first go at grain grinding I just followed the directions and ground the whole berries on the finest setting, which gave me two distinct layers of flour, a fibery hull and a fine powdering flour. I used it as it came for the bread, which turned out delicious and hearty. After some expert advice, on the next batch I first ground the berries on a coarse setting and then ran it through again on the smallest setting which gave me a much more even flour and more flour per cup of berries (which seems to be about 2.5 c. of flour to 1 c. berries, but it depends on your grind- I am still working out that ratio)

The recipe called for the dough to be soft and easy to work with. To knead Sally says to stretch and fold, a different kneading process that I usually use.

I have now made three batches of the bread and the best results actually came from making the dough in my Kitchen-Aid mixer with the dough hook. The pictures below are from the batch made by hand, and it turns out beautifully, but the mixer does allow a wetter dough since you dont have to add more flour to be able to handle it. This was my fist time making dough with a machine and it left me standing there watching it, sort of wondering what I should do while it worked. It was strange to not be able to feel the dough change. So, I am still a bit conflicted about the thing. I was also hesitant to do sourdoughs in metal, but apparently it makes no difference.

Cooked in a loaf pan, this bread makes a great homemade substitute for sliced sandwich bread. Not the handsomest, but probably the freshest, healthy bread you can get in your mouth.

                          

This summer I spent a lonely week with a terrible cold. I passed the time watching the first three seasons of Bewitched, the old sixties sitcom. I got through so many episodes because, as the show progressed, I felt like I was getting a different impression of Samantha Stevens than I had ever before (since watching Nick at Night as a kid, that is).

I think we now have something to learn from Samantha and her struggle with the instantaneous rewards of her magic. As a witch, Samantha has the ability to conjure up whatever she would like, anytime, anywhere. Her magic makes life fun and easy, and who would give it up? Many critiques of the show lament that in a burgeoning feminist era Samantha is forced by her husband to give up her magic, and thus her independence, to be the picture perfect suburban housewife. This point fails to give Samantha agency over her promise to stop using magic for everyday things.

As I lay on my couch sick as ever, home alone, wishing I hadn’t made so many dishes fixing myself chicken soup from scratch, I saw that Samantha (magically immune to mortal sickness) wanted to work, she wanted to do things by hand with her own skill and body. By (trying to) give up her magic she was claiming her independence from her mother, her upbringing, and- importantly, from the instant, no effort life that sixties consumer culture was selling to women.

There is an interesting mess of consequences that came from the post-war production of consumer goods and technology and the intense marketing of these products to women. This marketing, combined with women being interested in, and allowed to, or obligated to work outside the home, successfully undermined the skill of the domestic realm while also allowing women to expand outside of it (the home that is). It is relevant to us now because most of us are living without necessary skills to live a life that is not dependent on consumerism. We have to buy things from other people, usually large companies to cover our most basic needs.

Knowing the role of marketing, pushing tv dinners and touting new gadgets, in the Bewitched era I think it is commendable for Samantha Stevens to pursue a more hand-made life. Granted, at those time she back-slides and does up a whole clean house, new dress, and elegant dinner in one nose twitch, the audience was more entertained and probably reassured knowing that, while maybe eating their tv dinners, even the best wives wouldn’t do all the work if they didn’t really have to.

Is Samantha Stevens a good example of how we should live today, no. But I think she is an unexpected reminder how liberating and often positive it can be when we don’t always take the easy way in life, especially when it comes to our kitchen and our food. We are happier people when we put time, effort, and skill into basic tasks and the fact that we do very little of that puts us in an interesting mess indeed, and the history of all that is something I plan to explore/discuss further (sneak preview…new book called the Radical Homemaker, learn more here).

                          

The best and worst part of the trip was eating. Walking meant we wanted and even deserved more food than ever, yet we had the constraints of what we could carry, what would keep well in packs, could be prepared easily on our one burner and two pans, and what we could afford. On top of that we still wanted to have food that was produced with fairness and health in mind for all involved. Believe me, that narrows it down and we made plenty of compromises.

The best meals were lunches. I think because they were the most nutrient dense. Foods that are ready to eat, which also has a lot to offer your body and tastebuds, are heavier than foods that take some preparation, mainly hydration and heat. Breads, meats, cheeses, snacks. So, we sacrificed some extra weight for really good and quick lunch food. Sardines in a can, a loaf of sourdough bread, a salami, aged jack cheese. Days just coming out of a town meant more fresh foods like avocado or other fruit.

We ate oatmeal every single morning (we opted to forgo soaking, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be possible) . I would be sure to put the raisins or other dried fruit (A Sunkist medley was a particular treat) into the cold water along with sea salt to make sure it was tender and plump. Once the oatmeal was ready I would add a thick pad of cultured butter, raw honey, and sometimes peanut butter for a really dense start to the day. Instead of getting sick of this same meal, it was the one consistency in our life on the trail and I looked forward to it every morning. We would take our time to fill our bellies and drink a cup of tea before starting out.

Walking and sleeping on the ground and spending a month outside connected us to the natural world in a way we hadn’t experienced before. But we still carried civilization and modern life on our backs.  The experience of nature was closer than ever but it was still more of a shelter around us than our true environment. Everything we really needed we brought in from elsewhere. We drank water from the creeks, but always filtered. We picked out good flat spots to sleep, but always with a pad. We ate outside and cooked in the sand, but never ate food from the spot we settled. We had a few breakfasts with picked blackberries, some wild mint tea, snacked on salal berries while walking,  and we could have added wild nettles to our meals, but I was too uncertain.

Trail conversations often covered what we would eat if we hadn’t bought four days worth of food at the last town and hadn’t had full bellies from a roadside diner. Some backpackers who are out for weeks or months will use small game traps to eat fresh wild meat on the trail. I would be up for this approach and I am very excited to learn more about pack goats. Apparently a very pleasing companion, a good pack goat can carry some weight and provide fresh milk! Go out long enough and you could even have some fresh cheese. Willow-Witt Ranch knows all about it, learn more here.

We made do with what we know how to do, which is to buy the best food we can find for the money we have and make something good with it. A stay at Gospel Flat Farm in Bolinas provided us with garlic until we got to Port Orford Oregon and got more garden garlic from friends as well as some carrots for a fancier rice and beans. (Minute Brown Rice was a major winner in our book, not organic, and no Massa, but it met a need)

We had a little burner that used denatured alcohol to make a nice hot flame, but we would use a wood fire as much as we could, or sometimes as necessary when fuel got low. Every evening we would scope out a flat spot to cook, with as little wind as possible and plenty of little surfaces on which to set food and the cooking kit, and of course a rock or log on which to sit. Going up the coast meant a lot of beach camping and keeping stuff our of the sand was a big priority.

The best spots were campsites away from cars and roads that still had a nice set up for easier living, meaning really just a picnic table, and fire pit with a place for pots and a decent composting toilet. With the basics there, life on the trail was an absolute joy.

                          

Humans’ inclination to displace life’s challenges off of the body and onto a tool has shaped us from the beginning- most especially when it came to the challenge of eating.

Primatologist Richard Wrangham explains that the transition to cooking our food fundamentally shaped our bodies into what we are working with today, e.g. smaller mouths, smaller guts, punier teeth than apes. We have come to rely heavily on food processing (cooking, fermentation etc) for digestion.

So for better or for worse the human form was shaped in large part by processing our food, making digestion easier and leaving extra energy for thousands of years of other inventions, which are continuing to shape us in ways we don’t yet know. Which brings us to…the appendix!

The irony of the appendix is that it turns out to be much more functional to us than we thought, but may well be on its way out after all.

Scientists are continuing to find evidence that reveals the appendix as a useful organ, and not, as Charles Darwin assumed, just a remnant from past preference of plants. Studies from the last few years has show the appendix to be an evolved organ that houses good bacteria waiting to repopulate the gut after the system is flushed due to the presence of harmful microbes.

This use has been hidden from us since increased use of sterilization, clean drinking water and non-threatening foodstuffs has meant that survival in an industrialized world may be possible without an appendix. In fact the presence of the appendix seems to do more harm than good in clean conditions as they are finding a relationship between the inflammation of the appendix, which leads to its removal, and the fact that it is under-used.

As explained by researcher William Parker, Ph.D. (more from him here)

“Several decades ago, scientists suggested that people in industrialized societies might have such a high rate of appendicitis because of the so-called “hygiene hypothesis,”…This hypothesis posits that people in “hygienic” societies have higher rates of allergy and perhaps autoimmune disease because they — and hence their immune systems — have not been as challenged during everyday life by the host of parasites or other disease-causing organisms commonly found in the environment. So when these immune systems are challenged, they can over-react….

This over-reactive immune system may lead to the inflammation associated with appendicitis and could lead to the obstruction of the intestines that causes acute appendicitis…Thus, our modern health care and sanitation practices may account not only for the lack of a need for an appendix in our society, but also for much of the problems caused by the appendix in our society.”

So, what should we do with our vermiform organ? Use it or lose it?  “The function of the appendix could be rendered obsolete by cultural changes…” says Parker. “[Such changes have] left our immune systems with too little work and too much time their hands – a recipe for trouble.”

Cooking our food fundamentally changed the human body, and increased sanitation of food and drink seems to be on the way to do the same. But to just accept the obsolescence of this functional organ as a part of our ongoing evolution seems flawed. We can’t guarantee current conditions (not to mention that most of the world doesn’t experience such conditions) and we still are just discovering the power of the microbes in our gut as fighters of all sorts of disease; it seems hasty to just discount the thing entirely, though we often do since the appendectomy is the most commonly performed emergency operation in the world.

So, we should put it to use right?  Parker  posits that we should start challenging our appendix and the immune system generally with the tasks they are supposed to tackle. A completely great idea! However, I think he is looking to the problem for the solution…”If modern medicine could figure out a way to do that,” Parker says “we would see far fewer cases of allergies, autoimmune disease, and appendicitis.”

I think this dilemma provides a lovely analogy to the situation currently faced by the whole human body. We have these perfectly useful systems, well-adapted to deal with challenges of daily life for the last 499,950 years, give or take. Modern society has taken it upon itself to relieve us of these challenges, only to find out that they are entirely necessary!

In the case of the gut, we might try trusting our microbes to deal with the challenges they are capable of facing. Instead, we should rely on modern medicine to bottle up and feed us those very challenges it helped us/told us to avoid?

I say, start with what we have and use it as its meant to be used. Drink raw milk, dig in the dirt, eat fermented food, even get sick! Resist the obsolescence of the human body and challenge it to its fullest extent.

In that spirit, after the challenge of a long trek on foot (and embarking on the challenge of marriage) and a long break from the blog, I look forward to recounting the adventures and the lessons, along with continued thoughts from home kitchen. No longer the itinerant one below (for now anyway).

                          

Experimentation is how you learn to cook, but it can also be a frustrating exercise and I wonder if we really need as much variety as the inexhaustible amount of cookbooks would have us believe. Dr. Daphne Miller, who wrote the newest discussion of the benefits of traditional diets (a la Dr. Price but without the examinations), explained in an interview (which I wrote about here) that the best home cooks have about fourteen meals that they really know well. This gives you a different dinner every night for two weeks. That seems like plenty, especially knowing that some of our busy night dinners aren’t more than quesadillas and a salad with lot of late night buttery toast. (In fact, I wonder if I could count this on my fourteen?).

I think we underestimate the versatility of the old-standby. And these stand-bys are of course dependent on the individual cook and what meals interest them enough to make enough times to really make it second nature. According to Dr. Miller many cooks have these fourteen meals (give or take) and adapt them as needed to what they have on hand and what is in season. That is, if one of your favorite things to make requires fresh tomatoes, think about how to use vegetables that are available in other parts of the year. Also, economically, it is good to first think about what you need to use in the fridge before going to the store for the one ingredient you must have to make your intended dish.

So, in some ways keeping with stand-by dishes and making them work on a whim or in every season requires some experimenting. But I think there is a softer learning curve when you already have a sense of what you are doing. Dr. Miller uses this idea of fourteen dishes to encourage new cooks in their attempt to take control of their diet by making their own meals from scratch. With so many ideas out there overwhelming our sense of what we should be able to accomplish in the kitchen, this number seems doable. I think it is also important encouragement not to worry about making the same dish multiple times close together. I used to put off preparing a meal too many times, which is necessary to really get the hang of it, for fear of boring us at the table. But I am over that now, on the grounds of making it better and for saving time not having to learn something new when really I just want to eat!

My number one favorite standby is roasted veggies. Endless combinations, always really delectable.

Current early Spring favorite:

I also am sold on a very special California Brown Rice, Massa Organics (I actually work for them, but I was eating this rice before getting paid to talk about how great it is, and it is perfect). It has become the staple of many dinners.

This rice and beans is simple but by no means bland. These beans are cooked with a bit of fresh lard from the farmer’s market and loaded with spices. The rice is cooked with a homemade chicken stock and lots of cilantro. That is creme fraiche on top with hot sauce and avo.

So here is my current fourteen that are working well

1. Vegetable soup (often with beans, meat, rice and/or noodles)

2. Stir-fry

3. Spaghetti (with sprouted whole grain noodles, homemade noodles)

4. fritatta

5. tacos

6. miso soup (with veggies and an egg)

7. fish (Pan-fried, either battered or not- if not, make a quick sauce from the pan when finished)

8. Roasted Veggies, sauteed veggies

9. Chili (I learned to put yams in mine, and I keep it vegetarian like I learned it from my mom)

10. Pizza (but now I am been conflicted on how to make the dough, best with sprouted flour?)

11. Grown-up salad, with nuts and cheeses and various sauteed things like shallots and mushrooms, all depending on what we have and what sounds good. Always homemade dressing

12. Quick dinner with egg, either on bread, beans, leftover rice, in broth…

13. Sauce on rice; creamy stroganoff, coconut curry

14. Maybe this is the one I leave for a new thing, making time for experimentation and being ready for disappointment OR success!

These are all pretty flexible in terms of what goes in them, making them adaptable, but also consistent enough that I know what I like to have on hand. Someday I hope to be able to make these without too much thought at all, but hopefully always with inspiration and variation.

                          

Whole grains, whole fats, no refining or reduction of nutrients for convenience sake, lots of fermentation, enjoying food with others. I just heard about the book and I haven’t had a chance to read it, but apparently she includes recipes gathered through her travels that explain how various groups have combined certain foods to maximize flavor (the first concern in food) and health benefits.

Though I think this information is already out there I am happy to see additional beating of the drum that modern diets just can’t make food better for you. Dr. Miller’s observations are helpful for more people to understand that foods as found in nature or minimally processed cannot be bad per se, but that health is about more than supplements and carbs or no carbs but the whole approach to daily life and that fundamental need to eat.

I am actually very impressed overall with her presentation of this information, probably because I found it so affirming of what I go on about here and the changes I am trying to make in my own kitchen. (Yes a doctor cooks with lard)

Here is the interview:

I have been thinking for some time, especially since trying to maximize the role my food plays in my overall health (particularly important having no health care insurance), that family physicians should be first and foremost dietitians. I know from bothering various friends and family in the medical field with my questions about saturated fat, cholesterol, raw milk, etc that the amount of their training spent on nutrition is very minimal. More and more we hear the astounding idea that health is directly affected by diet! Even in the above interview is seems to be kind of revelation that what we put in our mouths does more that fills our stomach and exit later. As Dr. Miller revealed the moajority of the issues she treats as her daily practice can be traced to diet, and therefore can dealt with more effectively, less expensively, and much more enjoyably by changing what people eat! I think this book is a great beating of the Dr. Price drum, I think her next step should be trying to get this information to more doctors and students.

                          

2009! Expect the unexpected

A very happy new year it seems to be already- so many possibilities and new opportunities for change. After a few weeks of vacation from the computer and lots of reading I have some major resolutions about diet and eating. I think the goals I have set forth are logical extensions of the basic Mind to Mouth premise: eat the best food even with limited resources by being creative and having high standards. There really isn’t any way around the fact that optimum food comes from your own kitchen and takes some skill and time to prepare. This is a deterrent for many and a challenge for most but I think it is important to be honest about the fact that each step towards convenience is a step away from health.

Here’s why that is: The best food for you is higher in nutrients than energy, so you can get your daily load of vitamins, minerals, digestive enzymes without going over the limit of calories we need everyday (which isn’t much compared to the opportunities we have to consume them) So a variety of high nutrient and relatively low energy food is the right balance. High energy foods are those that are more active and alive or at their peak of freshness, this all equals a relatively fragile food. Fully ripe fruits and veggies, sprouted seeds and grains, fresh oils, sourdough breads, fermented drinks, fresh meat, fish and eggs. These are optimal foods and don’t tolerate much processing, storage on shelves, or travel time. (Well stored fats (without exposure to light and heat) and highly stable fats (saturated, like lard or coconut oil), properly stored raw but un-sprouted seeds and grains,  properly stored  root and winter veggies all are good foods that last and good foods can last longer via freezing and home canning methods.)

Why are active and alive foods best? Because food should be pulling its own weight when you eat it and adding to your body’s store of the vitamins and minerals you need to live. Foods that are not active don’t bring along with them the enzymes and nutrients your body needs to function and to process food. If food is not adding these things then the body has to use its stored up enzymes and nutrients to make up for it. Intuitively we can see how this depletes our health over time. Refined wheat and sugar have no vitamins and minerals to contribute so they pull from our bones and teeth and other sources. A diet of only cooked food adds no enzymes needed for digestion so our body has to provide those as well overworking our pancreas and under-nourishing our other organs. Whole fats have a lot more going for them then we have been led to believe and are crucial in our body’s ability to absorb vitamins and minerals. So you can understand what a mess we are in if we are giving our bodies food that deplete its stores of vitamins and minerals and additionally not eating the fats necessary to provide more. As we look at where we are generally this new year it is easy to see parallels between how we behave economically as a nation and how we eat; we want to spend resources we don’t have and don’t want to be responsible for adding to the savings.

But like with the economy our body’s balance sheets eventually catch up with us and we realize we must change.

The great thing is that we do know how to prepare foods to be active and to provide us with the right balance of vitamins, minerals, and enzymes without getting too many calories to do so. It takes the right balance of raw, naturally processed (fermenting and soaking), and cooked foods. To boot humans have been eating food optimally prepared for much longer than we haven’t. So the right diet is out there, we just have to reallocate our resources (time and money) to get to it.

I’m looking forward to sharing the strategies and practices I am learning to make sure I get the most bang for my buck in the foods I eat; not paying for food that is going to deplete me, and taking the time to get my food to the point where it can give me its full potential and of course be the most delicious! A taste of what’s brewing so far:

A half gallon of raw milk sitting with a sealed lid on my counter (!) to sour and separate into whey (used for future fermenting and activating of other food) and “cream” cheese (really the starting point for any cheese, but a little funny with nothing done to it). I’ll post that process in the next week.

A kombucha mother waiting for the right sized jar to start making fermented tea

Oats soaked overnight (and longer for tomorrow) in a water and yogurt mixture for an activated breakfast porridge.

I purchased lard from the farmer’s market and have it in the fridge for a whole fat option for frying and baking

My kitchen has seen the end of bottled salad dressing which pretty much uses exclusively soy or canola oil which are both highly processed and fall into the category of asking too much of the body rather than contributing good stuff as it goes down. Homemade salad dressing is too easy- just put olive oil and vinegar with sea salt and pepper in a jar and shake, only get fancier if you’d like. The money saved is noticeable.

That’s a pretty good start for 2009 so far I think. Stay posted and share thoughts. And for the source of my kitchen revolution start here.

                          

But how to make stroganoff? (not a necessity of life, but a craving is a craving) Soy sour cream? We aren’t much for the strategy to replace a whole food product with one with more ingredients in order to accommodate new eating habits, so I opt to omit rather than replace. I had a 1/4 lb of ground grass fed beef and a 1/4 lb of oyster mushrooms and I wanted to sop them up with creamy(ish) egg noodles. Again, I looked for vegan strog recipes (save for the cow I was using) but they all used more processed products, not into it.

What I decided to use was the base for my tomato sauce sans tomatoes. Caramelize sliced onions in olive oil to be rich and gooey, use a small pad of butter with the mushrooms because they love it. A good amount of salt, browned meat and a chopped up zucchini from the garden seemed to do the trick.

Second dairy free noodle dish that makes an easy dinner and lunch for two is based on a sauce for broccoli from Farmer John’s Cookbook.

The sauce is 1/2 c of rice vinegar, soy sauce (I use tamari), grated ginger, minced garlic, couple tablespoons of peanut oil, and a bit of roasted sesame oil. I add chili flakes to the cooking tempeh (which I start first). I also steam the broccoli (from the garden!) separately to make sure it doesn’t ovecook. Something about the oil and vinegar in the sauce together makes it so the soy sauce doesn’t stick to the pan- a personal stir fry conundrum now solved. These noodles are definitely a splurge compared to brown rice. But with four meals it works out- be sure to rinse them before mixing with the sauteed stuff (tempeh, eggplant, oyster mushrooms, carrot, cashews, etc)

                          

 (note the eggs should actually be beaten before going in, but I took artistic license)

Making pasta, I have now learned is not hard at all. It’s not convenient or fast, but it certainly isn’t hard. But guess what else it is? Cheap! Yes. Homemade pasta from local organic flour and local organic cage free eggs is cheaper than organic dried pasta from italy or who knows where.

It breaks down like this: Eggs are ¢21 a piece. The super nice local flour feels like a lot at $12 for a 7lb bag, but it comes down to ¢51 per cup. One batch of pasta can be made with 1 egg and 1 c flour. Try buying delicious fresh pasta for ¢72

Toothsome eh?

Note on the shrimp and any previous or future meals with beautiful seafood. A main purpose of the Goods are Odd is about living Mind to Mouth. This is about using your gray matter to come up with rational and creative solutions to the problem of health and healthy food being seemingly limited to those with significant income. Rational and creative sometimes includes luck. Everyone seems to have their lucky hook-ups in one part of life or another. A lot of times in communal settings there is a good deal of sharing because no one has much except what they can offer through their job or family or other hobbies. Ours happens to be a hook up with delicious, fresh, sustainable fish. Are you reaching out to those around you and sharing the hook-ups you have in possible return for others? This requires talking to and connecting with your neighbors and co-workers, or potential friends on the internet and often being the first to be generous.