Where's the milk?

My wife recently bought some processed foods from the grocery store. For those of you who know us, this is astounding. It was for a demo and talk at the elementary school. I took the liberty of looking at the ingredients.

American "cheese": folks call this cheese, but as you can see, it has nothing to do with milk products (unless you count whey, probably not naturally produced, and isolated lactic acid).

Notice there are no natural sources of calcium. The problem with calcium supplemented "cheese" is, your body can't absorb it because it is not bonded with the proper elements, and things like magnesium that are crucial to uptake and balance of calcium are limited or nonexistent as they are in unprocessed (not homogenized or pasteurized) milk.

Now the yogurt you might think of as healthy. The live cultures are good, but it only has 2 of the 6-8 naturally occurring in real yogurt, or the 30-40 in kefir. The problem with lowfat and skim milks are that the milk fats are crucial to nutrient absorption. And, sugar (probably refined - the worst kind) is the second ingredient. Plain yogurt should be sweetened with fruit, maple syrup, and or raw honey (the stuff that doesn't squeeze or pour easily).

Today we had "fast food"

At our household, we put our cooking paraphernalia through its paces.  Dishwasher - average of 3.5 loads per day - 365 days a year.  Dishes, cookware, utensils, you name it.  We go out of our way to source foods locally - putting up foods in the summer for the winter, and specifically not buying foods you can get locally out of season.  (Bananas don't grow too well in Michigan, so we do get that year round.)

Now that you know a bit of background, and that we cook a lot, we have 4 kids - and there are almost never leftovers.  Tonight, we had tacos (left over from last night), and chicken cacciatore (from 2 nights ago).  Yummy!  Add to that some leftover summer squash (see below), and lettuce picked Friday from the ground with homemade Ranch dressing - I am stuffed!

Now we get a lot of summer squash - in the summer.  One recipe we found that is so darned simple yet so good it should be a crime:  cube up the summer squash (about 3 cups), add a diced onion, and a couple of diced hot banana peppers.  Sautee in a pan with olive oil, salt & pepper, and about 1.5 TBS of honey - dyn-o-mite!  The heat of the peppers and sweetness of the honey, combined with the saltiness - makes your mouth go zing!  Don't overcook or the squash gets mushy.  Any summer squash will work - patty pans, the long yellow kind, green kind, zucchini, you name it.  The recipe in the book also called for a leek - if you have it, go for it.  Our leeks aren't ready yet, so maybe next week.

More about cholesterol

Timely and topical. The Healthy Traditions Network recently had a Friday Night Live in Troy, Michigan in which guest speakers who are healthcare professionals warned of the lack of connection between cholesterol and cardiovascular disease - and the terrible side-effects of statins and other cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Has anyone had experience with that? I recently visited my cardiologist for a series of follow-up tests from 5 years ago. After 5 years I had gained 10 lbs (all within the last few months - I swear it's due to Lisa's pregnancy!), my LDL cholesterol levels were up (normally at low levels), and he mentioned I may want to get on cholsterol lowering program in the near future. I didn't get into it with him. I was sorely tempted, however, to buy him a copy of Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food".

Let's be totally honest about cholesterol and fat!

OK, there is, and I mean this as an understatement, a PLETHORA of information in print and on the Internet that definitively proves beyond a shadow of a doubt exactly what dietary cholesterol and fat does for you. Case in point - my wife found this article in Men's Health. I have also read about it in The Untold Story of Milk (Dr. Ron Schmid), Weston A. Price Foundation articles, and more. Furthermore, there is quite convincing evidence and argument as to the motive for driving public belief in the direction of fearing these vital nutritional components.

So, here it is. I defy any doctor or nutritionist to prove (and I mean prove - give me actual scientific evidence) that lowering cholesterol and fat makes us healthier. I can definitely give counter experiential and anecdotal evidence. Furthermore, I call upon the multiple-thousand-year history of mankind as demonstration that fat and cholesterol in our diet are not only not harmful, but healthy and necessary to maintain good physical and mental health.

What is cholesterol? A vital substance used throughout the body for such functions as repairing the walls of blood vessels, and vital to brain health. In fact, artifically lowering the body's production of cholesterol through drugs may be linked to Alzheimer's disease, memory loss, dementia, and other issues.

Shocking? Read my links - I'd love for someone to prove me wrong - because that means all the billions of dollars a year America spends on those deadly Statin drugs are not wasted. Oh, did I say "deadly?" Perhaps you also need to look at Shane Ellison, M. Sc.

Me Germophile!

That's right, -phile, not -phobe. I love germs. As I'm cleaning up from dinner tonight, I survey the jars of cucumbers and beans that are sitting covered in germy water, turning into ever-so-juicy, crunchy garlic dill pickles. Jars of milk sit out at room temperature - oh, definitely not Pasteurized milk. And in the basement, shredded cabbage sits in crocks filled with germy liquid. Mmmmm.

Of all the germs out there, my absolute favorite is l. acidophilus. That's lactobacillus acidophilus. Boy, if you want to talk germs, man, this one has a rap sheet a mile long! It's been blamed for good health, robust digestion, regularity, healing from many diseases, preservation of foods, and the death of many pathogens (oh, yeah, those are the few germs that give germs a bad name - kind of like those ambulence chasers they call lawyers). So, good old l.a. is hard at work for me, culturing milk, pickling vegetables, making kvass from beets (an acquired taste, believe me), breaking down the enzyme inhibitors in my oats so the oat meal is oh so good and doesn't sit like a rock in our tummies, and so on. I mean, this little germ is the workhorse.

I think a close second place would have to go to yeast. What a beast, that yeast - man, such delicious breads, beers, and boy, the kombucha we make I am totally addicted to.

I think because I eat so many lactofermented foods, any bout of diarrhea that lasts more than once is now considered a "major" bout - the worst I've been sick in a long time is a bit of a sniffle. Ask Sander Ellix Katz - his book Wild Fermentation is chock full of stories.

"Yum" only begins to describe it #1

This blog is kind of the opposite of Steve, don't eat it! So, I made this soup the other day, and it occurred to me that I should start a post series called "Yum" only begins to describe it.

The first installment will be about my Vegetable Beef Soup. First, you have to understand soups in our house - there is no recipe. We throw together what we have on hand, so recreating the soup would be quite a feat. No problem - every soup turns out beyond delicious.

Let's start with stock. The thought of buying stock from a store is so abhorrent, well, OK - we do make a concession for vegetable stock. We get these amazing chickens and turkeys from Steve and Jackie Good of Cloverlawn Farms, and the ultimate best beef (in the form of 1/2 a cow) in the world that is solely pastured or hay-fed from Les Roggenbuck of East River Organic Farm. Now, when you are getting whole birds and half cows, you have lots of extra stuff left over. So, we save all our vegetable trimmings and make stock from scratch.

Next, spices. We can't get them at the grocery store - oh no! Lisa discovered several years ago from some online forums about Penzey's Spices. So, she ordered cinnamon. I said, "Cinnamon? Come on, how great can cinnamon be that you have to order it on line and have them ship it?" OK, I admit it - I ate my words. There is no comparison. The more we ordered from Penzey's, the more we were hooked. Bill Penzey travels around the world finding sources for herbs and spices that grow their crops in a responsible manner, handle only the best quality, and can be personally verified. We were Penzey's Tourists for a while (visiting them wherever we travelled), until they finally opened one near us.





Long story short, I had some beef stock I had made in the freezer, as well as lots of ground beef. So, I sauteed some onions and garlic, carrots, and celery, threw in a pound of ground beef, stock, barley, a can of soup beans, seasoned it all with salt, cumin, aleppo pepper, oregano, and basil. Well, by the time Lisa came back from picking up Rachel's new glasses, the house was smelling so good that everyone was lined up at the table clamoring for me to serve up the piping hot piece of heaven. Lisa says, "Is that all we have for dinner? I want something else to fill me up." Well, she couldn't eat anything else after a bowl of that. Saturday and today, that's all they want for lunch.

Now that is my idea of soup - so good you can't resist, and it warms the tip of your hair down to the tip of your toes, and is a meal unto itself.

Boycott WAL-MART

From the Organic Consumers Association newsletter 1/25/2007:

PRODUCT PLUNDER OF THE WEEK:
WAL-MART "ORGANICS"
This week, the OCA announced a boycott against Wal-Mart for refusing to respond to formal complaints that many of its stores are placing "organic" signs next to products that are not organic. The Cornucopia Institute filed a complaint more than 60 days ago, and neither the USDA nor Wal-Mart have taken any action to fix these problems. Six months ago, the OCA called on Wal-Mart to stop selling cheap factory-farmed organic milk from Horizon and Aurora, and to increase the amount of domestically grown organic products on its shelves. Currently, Wal-Mart is selling cheap "organic" food by sourcing products from China, Brazil, and other nations, where labor and environmental standards are lax. Over the past year Wal-Mart has lost 2-8% of its USA customers. Please join the OCA boycott.
Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_3809.cfm