It's been so long since I've posted here for so many reasons. Our dance company has been busy. Our daughter is super-busy with school and everything else. (How did that happen?)


I admit, this blog is where I write things that can get me a bit in trouble. I have some strong opinions about food. If you've read this blog at all, you will know why. I have some good reasons.


So here is the first and probably last entry for 2014. I will try to write more in 2015!

I am listening to another program that is promoting veganism as a beneficial diet for everyone and the planet (at one point the speaker egged on a caller/cheerleader with “preach! preach!”) - and I can feel my blood pressure rising....So here it goes. I realize that so many of my friends are vegetarian or vegan, so I apologize for upsetting anyone out there. I love you all and respect your choices. I feel as if I regularly hear the vegan/vegetarian side of this discussion, and I feel as if I get a constant proselytizing media barrage in the Bay Area. I invite you to please take a look at this post. It is not fashionable (although I am happy to say that this argument for an omnivorous diet is becoming more recognized these days) but neither am I.



Food is compassion. It is home. It is where we come from. If we eat what our great-great grandmothers recognized as food, then we are probably doing well. For *most* of us, this is probably not a plant-based diet. Lierre Keith was a veteran of veganism for over 20 years and moved to an omnivorous diet when her health declined to the point at which she simply had to change. She also realized that widespread intensive agriculture is worse for the planet than the raising of pastured animals on a farm that does not rely on monocultures.  Check out her book The Vegetarian Myth for her entire set of arguments. She comes on strong, but knows her stuff. 



It is as much an economic argument as it is a nutritional and ecological one. Our economic system relies on monocultures, even for organic plant crops. Imagine if everyone was vegetarian - a huge amount of the planet’s surface would have to be co-opted into intensive plant crops. It’s not that I don’t think that intensive ranching isn’t bad. There is a huge problem with feedlots and big-box stores - I love that CostCo carries organics, but I worry about their sourcing. (At the same time, there is the expense of that good stuff from the farmers’ markets - it’s hard for us, too!) Keith, who was a proselytizer of veganism for most of her adult life, is now just as preachy for the Weston A. Price Foundation, which makes me slap my head, but that’s her. Meanwhile, she describes the massive clearing of agricultural land for organic plant crops as a form of ecological genocide in which the natural balance of life is enormously disturbed in favor of plant-based monocultures. While California’s big organic ag is maybe not so bad as the acres of Monsanto-tainted corn in the Midwest, it still rips up acres of plant and animal community that is necessary to environmental balance. 



At the same time, Salatin’s Polyface Farm, and others who are increasingly following his lead, raise many different animals as well as multiple crops in a careful dance that results in a thriving farm that uses its waste resources. Its soil stays rich and its ecosystem is self-renewing. 



There are new studies that say that plants may feel pain, which then makes the cruelty-free argument more complex than simply leaving out animal products from our diets. 
http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/sc/web/video/titles/12151/do-plants-respond-to-pain


Preparing food has some very yucky, messy stages. Raw ingredients for an excellent meal remind us that our bodies do require the death of some other organism. We should never take that lightly. At the same time, we can’t simply skip out on the responsibility of feeding our families and ourselves well. Withdrawing is a child’s response to a very large and thoughtful question. Adults need to take that on. Whenever I handle raw meat it is my job to think of how best to honor that animal, whether that is to use as much of it as I can, or to talk to our daughter about where this food came from and about how her grandmother used to cook it, how not to waste the food, to use compost, to live as waste-free as possible. How to not just cook but to eat with family, building many lives from that death, in order to give it respect. 


Then there is the sugar question. Vegetarianism is, by its nature, high in sugars, whether you are eating carrots and kohlrabi in your salads or apple honey cake. The western diet is too high in sugars. Period. Check out Peter Attia’s TED talk. He is a doctor who switched to an extremely high-fat and animal-based diet when he realized that his plant-based eating was actually causing his diabetes. Again, this is very individual and probably refers back to what a person’s ancestors ate. I can say from personal experience, and a family that tends towards insulin intolerance that I can’t live on a diet weighted towards plants. I’m sure that there are plenty of people who can. I haven’t met too many.



This leads to the argument that I do see all the time on the web, which also annoys me to no end because it fuels our cultural obsession with skinny bodies. Yes, a high carbohydrate diet, even if it’s “healthy”, will generate excess fat. Eating meat and whole, saturated fats do not make you fat. People who eat a higher sugar diet and have high triglycerides are at greater risk for heart disease than people with above average overall cholesterol count and low triglycerides. In other words, eating cholesterol does not give you high cholesterol. 



The part of the vegan/vegetarian argument that gets me the most upset, however, is a statement that I hear all the time, even from well-educated, sophisticated people. I also hear and read this constantly in medical research, which is disturbing. This is the assumption that all meat eating is inherently a feedlot-based diet and relies western menu staples, such as “meat and potatoes.” Even worse is the assumption that the hamburgers that come out of my kitchen are, by virtue of their meat content, equivalent to what comes out of a fast food restaurant. That may sound really silly, and it is, but many medical studies (I will insert one here when I can - there are dozens) simply record that a person ate a “hamburger” with no interest in its sourcing as a factor. Believe me, my hamburgers are nothing like the thing you’d get at a drive-through window.



The call to eat more vegetables is probably a good one. We have forgotten how to eat them. We have also forgotten that for many indigenous communities who do have a high plant to meat ratio in their diets, that grain porridge and roasted potatoes were NOT preferable to roasted meat, but was what they ate in lean times or between good hunts. We are not meant to eat meat only all day. We are also not meant to eat plants only all day. Every person, each dietary heritage is somewhat different as far as that balance goes, but it is extremely rare to find a truly vegan community, unless they are following the diet for specific religious reasons. (On the other hand, the Masai’s diet of meat and blood does exist.) Veganism can also be used for detox for a period of time, or, according to Sally Fallon, near the end of life when the human body simply needs less animal-based food.


I invite everyone to please ignore fashion, whether that is to eat vegetarian or to follow the trendyarianism of the moment and please check in with your ancestors to see what's good. (If there are tiny marshmallows in it, then look farther back.) If history has been lost, please read up on where your family came from and find some clues, then maybe surprise your relatives at the holiday table this season!








The Elephant In The Kitchen

It's been three years since I started the GAPS Diet and somewhat longer than that since I became acquainted with the work of Weston A. Price. It was soon after that I began to notice something that very rarely gets mentioned and seems to stick out like a two-ton pachyderm hiding behind the refrigerator door.

Food is one of those things in our lives that is way more than the sum of its parts. The relationships that we have with food, the way we get it or raise it, cook and eat it speak loudly to how we live on the earth, relate to each other, and to what are our most deeply held opinions and values. Our eating habits, rules and taboos make us part of a tribe, or not.

People like me who cook and eat along the lines of Weston A. Price/Nourishing Traditions tend to be on the right of the political/cultural spectrum. Those who are more on the left seem to be more likely to be vegetarians and appear to be in a different reality when it comes to food and nutrition. This isn't always the case, I'm sure, but so far I have, as yet, to be proven wrong. 

There. I've said it. Throw your tomatoes now, if you like. It's true. It's weird. It puts me in company that ordinarily would never share any kind of mental space with me and my ilk and visa versa. Or at least, that's what I thought before I started researching how to improve my family's health through diet. 

It's a lonely road being a political and cultural liberal with this kind of nutritional philosophy. Occasionally I hear other progressives speaking out who have discovered that current science points human beings towards pastured animal-based foods rather than a solely plant-based diet, like Lierre Keith and my original mentor, Julie Matthews. It's a relief when I do hear a voice that speaks of eating compassionately for the environment and for our bodies, that the cycle of life includes death, and a world of intensive agriculture without animal husbandry is a scary one to contemplate. It's rare, though, that I meet a liberal in person who is either on GAPS or following WAP's philosophies. Our family fills our plates with rich stews, fermented condiments and vegetables, raw milk yogurt and cheeses while just about everyone we know is avoids too much fat and feels that they should apologize if they choose to eat chicken instead of soy products. It's not fun to eat alone, even when the food is delicious. I keep hoping to find liberals who are on a similar journey, but so far that's not been the case. 

On the other hand, I've recently come into contact with a cousin that I never knew that I had. Like many folks on that side of my family (most of whom I have never met and am only now learning exist) she is a conservative and a Libertarian. She also packs her freezer with local, grass-fed beef. She cooks locally and from scratch, believes in giving her beautiful and healthy children whole fats and good food, at least as our family would know it. When I post a sharp comment on Facebook about genetically modified organisms or the undeclared toxins in commonly available toiletries she often posts supportively with all my liberal friends. We are careful not to talk politics since we're both pretty opinionated. We've made many a connection through how we feed our families and it's a blessing. 

There aren't too many situations these days in which rightwards- and leftwards-leaning people can connect like this. I am thankful for this one. 

Bleh. Babycakes NYC frosting, er, sauce.

It doesn't seem to matter how I make it, or what I substitute. It just NEVER turns out to be more than some kind of sauce. Which is what it is...and like many foods made for vegan eaters it's waaaaay too sweet, not to mention it has rice milk and rice milk powder (yuck and more yuck!) in it. So the cake was au naturel, double decker with banana slices between, but with the sauce on each piece and fancy birthday candles, it went fine. As usual, I don't get to taste it, but I had reports that it was good.

So, a good, nutrient-dense, not too sugary frosting anyone? I used to make an amazing frosting from blended dates and coconut oil, but this year Little Moo wanted pink. So pink, she got.

I have a feeling that I'll have to figure out a real buttercream thing for next year, assuming that she can eat it by then...I wonder if you can make buttercream icing out of ghee...?

Sorry - the party was completely crazy and I didn't get any pictures. :(

I'll post the images I took of them cooling last night...

Therapeutic Vegetable Curry Soup

I don't travel well, even in the best of situations. I always have to take over our host's kitchen. I've noticed in various parts of Bosnyphlwash that the water is especially toxic to me. Then it's the additional expense and effort of getting, drinking and cooking with all bottled water...which bugs me, because I just  hate how harmful all that plastic is to people's bodies and to the environment.

Speaking of which...oh, of course. Now I know what I'll do next time!
http://www.multipureco.com/h2oonthego.htm

This time, when we went away to visit family in upstate New York, it was deepest, snowiest winter, and hardly a vegetable in sight, much less an organic one. The ones we did get were shipped from so far away that they were limp and barely fresh. A grocer proudly led me to what he called "organic chicken," labeled clearly "all-natural." He was surprised when I told him that the label actually had to say "organic" on it for the meat to actually be guaranteed to conform to those standards. I couldn't get giblets. All of the available beef was from feedlot cows.

I guiltily drank bottled water for the first day or two, then stopped when I thought about all those bottles and that we didn't have recycling in our hotel. The rashes started immediately after. Later I was surrounded by cat hair and particularly heavy dust. I found myself relying on nuts (!) for breakfast and travel food. I had wind burn. By the time I came home, it was as if I wore a mask of cracking, bleeding skin on my face with hives, bumps, rashes and you name it, from the top of my head down to my belly. One of my eyes had started to swell shut on the plane home. Benadryl and cortisone made absolutely no dent in my discomfort.

Just like the good old days. You'd think I had never been on the GAPS Diet. The only thing that saved it from getting any worse was the addition of curcumin supplements that I found at a health food store there. I was craving turmeric.

Luckily I knew just what to do. I had a container of frozen chicken broth in the freezer, waiting for us when we got back. Our family downed that in about a day. We stopped out for supplies on our way back from the airport and I immediately put on another batch of broth, cooked a batch of split chicken legs, and started chopping vegetables.

I had a feeling that the best edible salve for my skin would be something with a strong curry - something with warming spices and a big shot of turmeric. I've read that eaten turmeric is too easily digested by the stomach to work therapeutically, but in my experience it actually works best in collaboration with cumin, mustard seed and coriander powder, and ingested as part of a series of fairly heavy meals eaten over a week or so with a decent amount of fat. I have taken the pills - which are pretty large doses of curcumin - without the other spices and noticed less difference.

It was to be a supper meal, so I left off the big hunks of meat and decided to add the chicken meat after the fact the next day.

This is possibly the best curried soup I've ever come up with. I think that the drippings made it so. Because we'd been so long without fresh veggies I splurged and got a few things that weren't in season. Also, the white and crimini mushrooms smelled funny so I got shiitake mushrooms and just settled on having fewer - they were delicious.

Finally, there is no ginger in this recipe because I'm allergic to it, but if you can tolerate it, and it does nice things for you, grate some into the spice mixture at the beginning.

Best Therapeutic Vegetable Curry Soup

Ingredients

1 ginormous onion or 2 small ones, coarsely chopped

3 tablespoons ghee
1/2 teaspoon cumin seed
1/2 teaspoon mustard seed
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 large clove garlic
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
drippings from the last roast (I used chicken, but other meats would be fine, too - if you don't have any drippings try adding extra fat and a teaspoon full of Bernard Jensen's gelatin for similar effect.)
about 6 sliced mushrooms (I used shiitake, but any kind will do)

1 carrot, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 halved and sliced zucchini

1 bunch of chard, chopped, or another type of hard winter greens

1/2 a package of frozen organic peas

approximately 1 quart chicken broth

Heat up the broth. Melt the ghee in a separate soup pot on medium heat. Add the cumin and mustard seeds. Right after you hear the first pop turn the heat down and add the onions. Saute 15 minutes or more until soft and aromatic. Add garlic, turmeric, coriander, sea salt and drippings. Cook until aromatic. Add the mushrooms and mix them in so that they absorb the fat a bit. Then add the carrots, celery and zucchini. When they're well blended, add the peas and cover for a few minutes to fully defrost them. Finally, add the greens and allow to saute for moment or two. Cover with the broth. I wanted a thicker broth, so I eyeballed it, but it would be good as a thinner soup, too.

Allow to simmer for about 20 minutes. It will be a nice greenish gold with lovely orange bits and peas all floating around. Serve in bowls or mugs. For a nice kick, top with chopped fermented garlic cloves.

If you partake of grains at all, it's a good topping for a nice bowl of rice or quinoa.

After eating this stuff about twice or three times daily for the past day, my skin is nearly normal again! Yay!

Work/Life/Home

I am listening to Joan Williams speak on Your Call Radio about the disjointedness between the way our economy and workforce function, the needs of families, of women and men. It's a great show. So interesting that I wanted to add my own .02 about how people and their work is valued in our country.

Women were at one time trapped in the home with no means of independent support. Her homemaking was only compensated by the protection and support of a husband. If a woman was suddenly a widow or divorced she was caught in a system that would not let her work at all outside of the home, and if she did, it was for a paltry paycheck. (The irony that a single mother's paycheck would be the lowest when it's generally her who supports the kids!). With the advent of second-wave feminism,  women went back to work in record numbers, leaving their families so that they could help support them financially. They still made less than men, but were able to contribute in some way. Meanwhile, the kitchen arts died out almost completely after all the short cuts and bad advice of the mid-20th century. There was a new term, "latch key kids," that described the children of working mothers who let themselves in after school in the afternoons. Thirty years later U.S. women have to work. Most of us have no choice. The cost of living in many places is high and health insurance costs are unreal. Too many people get sick and die simply because they can't get care. Because we have no idea how to cook real food, and because women come in tired after work at 6pm every day, undernourished, overeating people get fatter and sicker. Our public school system is depleted and sick enough to drown in a bucket, turning out more and more kids who can't compete in the workplace, and so the circle completes itself.

Jobs are few and far between if your line of work isn't in computers. Women are actually more likely than men to be in the workforce. I know two men who spent their children's baby years as part-time working, stay-at-home dads, simply because their wives were much better employed than they were at the time. I'm just guessing that a lot of these gainfully employed mothers make less than their male counterparts, that many large employers go for female employees because they know that they can pay them less than if they were male.

Meanwhile, men sit at home, waiting to hear from someone at some company somewhere to give them a job offer. This is especially true for manual workers who do not own their own businesses. Unless, of course, they want to move to China or India and take a major pay cut (not to mention that in certain lines of work they'd be in sweatshops with kids). This is also a huge issue, both emotionally and socially.

I'm certainly not criticizing mothers who went back to work in the 70s. It was a huge gain for women at a time when they were second class citizens. My complaint is with a system that took advantage of lots of cheap female labor that desperately needed that paycheck to support their families, with money and health insurance.

Then there are the Michael Pollans of the world whose writings, however insightful, also have a huge blind spot right at the point where women, their work and family have a critical disjuncture. Specifically this: how is a woman who works all day and still often does most of the domestic tasks around the home, to cook whole foods from scratch so that their families can eat every day? It simply does not work. Also, I have never met a man who is either interested or comfortable enough in the kitchen to take up that particular gauntlet (and I mean the full-on-homemaker dad who does laundry, is a member of the PTA THEN lines up his monthly sauerkraut crocks and gets his bone broth in order every week). Maybe they're out there. If you know one, please tell me, because I'm certain that he's a myth. So what is to be done?

Our labor system - the value given to people and what they do - simply must change. Anyone who takes up the domestic tasks of raising a family has to be compensated in some way. People in the workforce need to make a living wage. Someone in our government needs to grow a spine and finally take on the insurance companies.

Now I have to put my stew in the refrigerator for later and get myself to work...I won't be home until after 9 tonight, but everything's fine because the food is done and half of the laundry is folded. :)

The best gluten-free bake-book...

If I haven't said it before, it's Babycakes by Erin McKenna.
One of my two complaints, though, is that it's all too sweet and uses too much sugar. They're not bad on the fat, and they do use coconut oil, but do not specify that in order to bake at 350 and higher the coconut oil has to be REFINED, not virgin.

I think it's the vegan thing. People who don't get enough good, whole animal fat and proteins in their diets crave sweets and starches. There's also this tendency that we all have to jump onto a simple bit of information and lose all sense of context. What Michael Pollan calls "nutritionism." There's a lack of information about smoke points and detailed information about what makes food good and good for a person - people just glom onto a factoid, and discard the system that surrounds it: "blueberries have antioxidents," "spinach is super-good for you and has lots of b vitamins," and "agave is less glycemic than sugar" or "coconut oil will do everything including help you lose weight, help your immunity and organize your closets." If coconut oil is damaged in too high of a heat, (or if your spinach is unaccompanied by a good fat,) it's not doing anything good for anyone!

Our other fantastic allergy-free bake-book, which is also vegan, is the same way with the over-sugaring, but better with the nutrition information, although they've bought into the mainstream myth that low-fat is good. I always cut out at least 1/4 cup of whatever sweetener is used and occasionally remove all the sweetener and replace it with applesauce or raisins or whatever.