How to get off bread and sugar….and by the way it`s not your fault
If you are like most people, you`ve probably sworn off bread or sugar at least once in your lifetime. The trouble is though, that at the best of times willpower often cowers in the face of a true physiological or bacterial craving.
2) Sauerkraut
3) Kombucha
Coconut Tahini Nut FREE Granola Bars
Ingredients:
1 ½ cups quick oats
½ cup Panella or Rhapadura Fair Trade Sugar (optional)
1/3 cup Spelt Flour (Ancient Grain sold at Organic and Health Food Stores)
½ tsp unrefined salt
2 cups shredded coconut
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
½ cup coconut oil (melted)
½ cup honey
½ cup tahini (sesame paste) warm up on the stove for easier mixing.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line an 8″ x 8″ x 2″ pan with parchment paper, allowing it to go up the sides.
Stir together all the ingredients in the order listed and spread evenly with a fork into the pan.
Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until they’re brown around the edges —with a little color on the top too. They might seem soft and underbaked when you press into the center of the pan, but they will set completely once cool.
Cool the bars in their pan completely on a cooling rack. To speed this up,after about 20 minutes you can use your parchment “sling” to lift and remove the
bars, to cool the rest of the way without the pan underneath.
Once entirely cool, use a serrated knife to cut the bars into squares. If bars seem crumbly, chill the pan of them further in the fridge, then cut them cold. Wrap the bars individually in plastic wrap or stack them in an airtight container. Store bars in the refrigerator if your house is humid. You can freeze them as well.
Orange Raisin Nut FREE Granola Bars
Ingredients:
1 ½ cups quick oats
1/3 cup Spelt Flour (Ancient Grain sold at Organic and Health Food Stores)
½ tsp unrefined salt
2 cups raisins
1-2 Tbsp orange rind or 2-3 tsp orange extract
½ cup butter (melted)
½ cup honey
½ cup tahini (sesame paste) warm up on the stove for easier mixing.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line an 8″ x 8″ x 2″ pan with parchment paper, allowing it to go up the sides.
Stir together all the ingredients in the order listed and spread evenly with a fork into the pan.
Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until they’re brown around the edges —with a little color on the top too. They might seem soft and underbaked when you press into the center of the pan, but they will set completely once cool.
Cool the bars in their pan completely on a cooling rack. To speed this up,after about 20 minutes you can use your parchment “sling” to lift and remove the bars, to cool the rest of the way without the pan underneath.
Once entirely cool,use a serrated knife to cut the bars into squares. If bars seem crumbly, chill the pan of them further in the fridge, then cut them cold. Wrap the bars individually in plastic wrap or stack them in an airtight container. Store bars in the refrigerator if your house is humid. You can freeze them as well.
Simple Seed Crackers
Can’t do grains? Don’t want to have to make crispy seeds BEFORE you make crackers? This recipe starts with wet soaked seeds instead of dehydrated crispy seeds!
You will need:
1 cup sesame seeds
1 cup sunflower seeds
2 tsp salt (each added at different times)
2 Tbsp ground flax
Step 1: Soak 1 cup sesame seeds with 1 cup sunflower seeds and 1 tsp salt for 4 hours or overnight.
Step 2: Drain seeds in a colander.
Step 3: Put in a food processor and blend with 1 tsp salt plus 2 Tbsp ground flax. Process until it has the consistency of dough.
Step 4: Press the dough out with your fingers (or a fork) onto some wax or parchment paper, smooth out with a silicone spatula or put another piece of parchment paper on top and smooth with a rolling pin (the dough between the two pieces of parchment paper). Roll out thinner for a crisp cracker.
Step 5: Cut in triangles or squares with a pizza roller or other knife and then prick three lines of wholes on each cracker (think premium plus) and then sprinkle with unrefined salt.
Step 6: Bake in the oven @ 350 degrees for anywhere from 20 min to 40 minutes (depending on the thickness).You will know they are done when you can easily pull them off the paper without splitting them in half. Because some will naturally be thicker than others, I typically pull some off and then put the rest back in the oven to finish. You can also enjoy them raw by dehydrating in a food dehydrator!
Variations:
Add fresh garlic, fresh herbs, parmesan or other cheese or nutritional yeast (of which you might have to add some water)!
Breakfast Jello
Forget plain old fruit salad!
Increase the nutrient density of a simple fruit salad by making this gelatinized version before bed, or while you are making dinner for a fast food, nutrient packed breakfast!
Ingredients:
2 Tbsp Gelatin (from animals raised on pasture) ie: Great Lakes
1 cup ( ideally freshly squeezed) juice, coconut water or kefir water mixed with pureed or stewed fruit of your choice (but even 100% pasteurized juice in tetra-packs will do)
1 cup whipping cream, crème Fraiche, Kefir Milk or coconut milk
1 generous Tbsp raw honey or stevia to taste
1 cup fresh fruit or dried fruit (plumped up by soaking in hot water) of your choice chopped into bite sized pieces
Optional: 2 tsp vanilla or 1 tsp flavor extract or 2 tsp citrus rind.
Instructions:
Step 1 Juice your fruit. Or just blend 1/2 cup fruit for a puree or alternatively stew fruit on the stove and then extend with kefir water.
Step 2 Mix the gelatin into 1/2 cup of the fruit juice in a medium sized saucepan on low heat. Stir or whisk until dissolved completely. Set aside and add the whipping cream, crème Fraiche, Kefir Milk or coconut milk.
Step 3 In the meantime chop up fruit into bite sized pieces and place artfully in the bottom of a glass baking dish.
Step 4 Stir in the rest of ingredients together with the gelatin-juice mixture and pour on top of the fruit.
Step 5 Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight or until set.
Step 6 In the morning serve with a generous dallop of whipping cream or slightly sweetened crème Fraiche on top.
How I Avoided Antibiotics and a Root Canal Twice.
Photo Credit: http://blog.travelpod.com/members/houghtaling
There have been two times in my life where I was told that I needed a root canal. The first time was when I told a conventional dentist my symptoms over the phone and the second time it was advice from a reluctant, but well meaning biological dentist.
The first time it happened, I started with a toothache very late at night that hurt so freakin’ bad I was ready to take myself to the hospital because I wanted nothing more in that moment than to have my tooth ripped out…..I rocked back in forth in bed like a crazy women in a straight jacket while my husband coached me to breathe myself back to sleep (thank god, b/c who knows what path I would have taken had I arrived in emergency that night). So by focusing on my breath I somehow fell asleep during the most physically painful experience that I have ever had in my life (and yes, this is after giving birth….I’d take birth over a toothache like that anyday).
So the next morning soon after getting up, I discovered that if I held cold water in my mouth, there was no pain. So I proceeded to try to work like that until I couldn’t take it any longer and finally called a dentist, who insisted that I come in Monday morning for a root canal.
Well, I kind of flipped out internally thinking it was too odd to be diagnosed over the phone and scheduled for surgery, when no one had even looked at my tooth! I figured that since I still had a day and a half ahead of me, that I better get to the drugstore and get some advil. Once the painkillers set in and I could think clearly again, I logically concluded that if I was experiencing pain and inflammation then clearly I must have an infection, so why not work to clear the infection like I would any other? So I simply gargled with water and unrefined sea salt, took colloidal silver and applied tea trea oil to the tooth and clove oil, each at least three times a day, while taking calcium flouride tissue salt ( a homeopathic mineral salt). By monday, I didn’t need to take the advil anymore and that is in fact the end of the story. The tooth has not given me one bit of grief since. That was 9 years ago.
Fast forward 5 years later, I am in a very stressful time in my life (we are moving AGAIN half way across the country), I am in the middle of a liver gall bladder cleanse and suddenly one of my top molars starts aching….I look and I see this blister forming on my gum above the tooth. Oh shit, here we go again!
And just to add to my stress, my son and my roomates daughter both have huge cavities and gum boils at the same time as I have mine! What the?
My roommate follows the conventional advice. Her daughters tooth gets pulled and she need some other thousand dollar contraption to keep her teeth from moving inward toward the new hole.
I drive an hour and half to the closest city at the time to see a biological dentist for myself and my son. I am just not a conventional route kind a gal. By this time I’ve already treated myself the exact same way that I did to recover my tooth the first time and the pain is gone already, but the blister still there. But without pain, I assume I must be on the mend. Yet I need to know what the heck is going on with us and I seek out the most holistic dentist I can find.
We get there and this dentist is absolutely amazing in terms of the personalized service and genuine care that she exudes..I am expecting to be in and out, but she’s so lovely she’s starts by focusing her energy on developing a relationship with us-to the point that I am worried that my car is gonna get towed! So after all the fun and games, she recommends that my son and I start swishing with H2O2, that he gets a filling and that I get myself on some antibiotics and be on my way to a good old fashioned root canal. She is sure that since I can’t feel the pain anymore, my tooth must be dead!
I guess even holistic dentists don’t believe that a tooth infection can heal….I dunno. I really don’t get why every other part of the body can heal, except for the teeth (even though they are a living matrix)…it just doesn’t make sense. But still, she’s a dentist… she has got to know something about teeth that I don’t and she carries a holistic worldview. If there is any dentist I would trust, after the whole experience in her office, it would be her…..but my gut said no.
It said no to the filling for Isaiah’s gaping cavity and no for antibiotics and no to a root canal (FYI- biological dentists in general, do not recommend root canals because they can harbour infections that can later cause other health problems down the road…..but she said since I was so young and healthy, she thought I could personally handle it…she didn’t want to see me with a missing tooth).
Now listen, it is not as though I went forward in complete confidence….her strong urgings to get me on antibiotics definately rattled me…I did my research and saw all the warnings about tooth infections…..so while I was nervous about the possibility that she could be right and that I could be walking around with a dead tooth with the potential at any minute to harbour a dangerous infection, I did what any person who equally feared death, as much as they had a strong distaste for the misuse of modern medicine would do…..I bought the antibiotics and I put them way up high on the back of the shelf in the bathroon, just in case… and then I carried on with my hippy ways.
In addition to all of the above supplements, I took a MANY prong approach (and I did this all for my son too) to finally heal the gum boils:
1) I took anti infection supplements ( oil of oregano, goldenseal and colloidal silver 1 Tbsp, 3 times per day for 10 days instead of antibiotics)
2) I took herbs and supplements to boost my immune system (echinacea, vit.c and probiotics)
3) I swished with sea salt, tea tree oil and H2O2
4) I took tooth builders (calcium/magnesium in homeopathic form, plus the 12 Tissue Salts with extra Calcium Flouride (this is the form of flouride that occurs in food naturally (ie: cabbage and cauliflower) as opposed to the sodium flouride the toxic waste industrial waste by product). Plus I took lots of silicea gel!
5) I took herbal and homeopathic blood cleansers.
6) We chewed Xylitol gum which suprisingly seemed to speed things a long (but be cautious as it can cause tummy aches if overdone).
7) I looked up the metaphysical cause of gum boils and tooth infections and it turned out to be in line with what was occuring for me at the time. I journalled all of it out of me.
What happened? Within 10 days, both of our gum boils started opening up and draining. Isaiah’s gum sealed up soon after, mine took about 3 months, maybe longer while I kept up with the supplements. The tooth has given me no trouble since, save that it would start acting up again…if I ate ice cream, I’d get a 8-12 hour toothache.
But this summer I dared once to have ice cream, and guess what? No toothache!
Think this kind of approach is for you?
One must be self responsible to do this….you can’t be half ass about these kinds of things, and you have to make sure you have all your bases covered….build up nutrition, increase immune system, fight infection and keep your blood clean….deal with your emotional stuff if that resonates…..as you can see it took quite a bit of self responsibility on my part and a committment to faithfully take the supplements consistently.
But I was highly motivated…hmm take supplements or suffer root canal….fear can sometimes be a great motivator! And yes, vanity too….who wants to lose a tooth?
It takes a lot of courage and committment to heal from something, when the world thinks you can’t. Address your health challenges from as many angles as you can. If it empowers you, buy the antibiotics and leave them on the shelf…..do whatever it takes to quell your anxiety so that you can relax and heal… thinking back, I am pretty sure that I did progressive relaxation, and I know that I took New Roots Herbal Chill Pills….it was a lot of stress for me to be handling both my own tooth challenge and my son’s at the same time….worry, worry, worry…..but in the end, my instincts outweighed my fears.
Since our family has upgraded from a whole foods vegetarian diet to a traditional foods diet over the past three years, our teeth have been good.
After my son’s tooth infection healed, even though he only had half a tooth left from his cavity….I kept him on both of the above mentioned tissue salts, and the tooth did not decay any further AND I watched it faithfully for about another 2 and half years. It fell out to reveal a healthy adult tooth underneath.
I only recommend this approach to parents who are seriously committed to making sure they are doing what needs to be done, to make sure that the tooth is not decaying further. One cannot be “sorta” doing self dentistry or self healing of any kind really.
For those interested in self dentistry, here are two sources that may reveal what you are looking for:
www.curetoothdecay.com
http://www.livinglibations.com/body-care/tooth-care
I am more than willing to answer any questions that you might have about this approach. Write your questions or comments below.
Update: November 12th. We just entered the winter season and a very busy time and my tooth started feeling “off” again (first time in just about over a year ….not painful, just this empty pulling sensitive feeling, like my tooth was a bit loose and a bit “long”, plus a sense of tension in my jaw. I started my usual regimen of silver and calcium magnesium. Since I was also getting shooting pains in my ears (that cleared up with homeopathic belladonna of course), but I started to wonder if there was a connection between my tooth and my ears, and if there was an infection starting. And then it occurred to me that we just entered Kidney season in Chinese Medicine. Kidney rules the teeth, adrenal glands and ears. So I had the thought to drink licorice tea for my adrenals and it took the sensation away in 5 minutes!! I went to bed, woke up fine….after a few hours felt it starting again, and then drank more tea and it went away officially. Throughout this week, when I have felt the sensation of that empty, deficient feeling in my jaw, I just drink the tea and feel good. Today, 5 days later I haven’t needed the tea at all and everything feels well and good.
So it seems that feeding and nourishing the adrenals is another excellent way to respond to tooth troubles…..and this weekend, I am getting some high vitamin butter/cod liver oil combination which has helped many heal their teeth from cavities and such (I am at the Weston A Price conference in Dallas, Texas)!
Check out these articles at The Healthy Home Economist:
1) http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/2011/05/how-i-healed-my-childs-cavity/
2) http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/2011/10/teeth-needing-root-canals-can-heal-with-diet-alone/
3) http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/2011/06/save-a-damaged-tooth-with-no-root-canal/
Best Beef Liver Pate
Contrary to popular belief, the liver is not a storage facility for toxic waste in humans and animals. When we consume liver from grass fed, naturally raised pastured animals, the liver acts the way nature intended: as a filter.
The liver will only store toxins if it is sluggish or overwhelmed, such as in sick conventionally raised animals in confinement.
Liver is a great food for those needing to build or re-build, such as pregnant and postpartum women. It is an excellent source of easily assimilatable iron, Vit.A and Vit.D.
It provides the raw materials we need to boost the health and resiliency of our own liver…..something that many of us need with the onslaught of toxic chemicals in the environment and the prevalence of digestive issues.
In addition, special attention should be paid to the liver in adults or children who were never breastfed….or not for very long.
Enjoy this recipe! I am amazed that liver can taste well….. not like liver!
Beef Liver Pate
Ingredients:
2 lobes or lengthwise slices of pastured and compassionately raised beef livers, cut into pieces
1 small white onion, chopped
1/2 cup certified organic red wine
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3/4 cup butter
2 tsp unrefined salt
1 tsp black or white pepper
Instructions:
1) Saute the liver and onions in ample butter until the livers are browned and the onions are tender.
2) Once cooled off a bit, put in a food processor.
3)Then add the wine, garlic, lemon juice, salt, pepper and butter.
4)Blend to a smooth paste and then refrigerate in a shallow dish to firm.
5) Serve with crackers once firmed up!
Variations:
fresh herbs of your choice
1/2 tsp mustard
serve with peppercorns pressed ontop
and I must give credit to the orginal recipe (mine was adapted only because I totally wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing)….here is the recipe that I was trying to follow!!
http://farmlet.co.nz/?p=199
Please let me know if you like it!
Fertility Freezer Fudge..or a little “lovebite“ for those looking to boost their libido!
If you are low on progesterone or looking to boost your libido, you’ve got to try maca. Maca is a root vegetable that is not only nutritious, but has a reputation both for nourishing the womb and for liberating the libido! One I might add that it often Dramatically lives up to!
Fine Tune Your Fertility or Liven Up Your Libido!Maca has a very distinct taste and is best mixed in a smoothie. However, I recently came up with the idea of making myself a freezer fudge version to take along with my fermented cod liver oil (cod liver oil should be consumed with butter for optimal assimilation). I’ve been making a carob peanut butter one for the kids, but thought I would try making a maca one for myself so that I can both optimize my daily dose of Vit.A and Vit.D, AND get a quick daily infusion of maca.
The Recipe:
3/4 -1 cup pastured (or best quality butter you have access to) butter
1/4 cup maca powder
1/4 cup honey or unrefined cane sugar
1-3 tsp vanilla
Blend with a fork and taste as you go, to see how much butter and vanilla tastes best to you in combination with the maca.
Variations:
1/4 cup organic carob or chocolate
1 Tbsp espresso
1 Tbsp Teecino shot (or other coffee like alternative)
substitute coconut oil for butter
Put your fudge in a container in the freezer. I cut mine into pie shapes because I wanted a pretty picture, but little squares will be just fine too!
Enjoy and tell me your favourite variation on this theme!
Chicken Chips! I ain`t kidding
A very common belief is that chicken skin is bad for us because it is a concentrated source of saturated fat and cholesterol.
I don’t buy into this perception.
Saturated fat is a naturally occuring fat found in conjunction with other fats in both plant and animal sources. Our physiology requires saturated fat from birth. The fat portion of breast milk is 48% saturated fat, 33% monounsaturated and 16% polyunsatured.
While contrary to popular belief “Saturated fats are heart protective: they lower the Lp(a) in the blood (Lp(a) is a very harmful substance which initiates athersclerosis in the blood vessels), reduce calcium deposition in the arteries and are the preferred source of energy for the heart muscle. Saturated fats enhance our immune system, protect us from infections and are essential for the body to be able to utilise the unsaturated omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.” Dr. Natasha Campbell Mc Bride, author of Put Your Heart in Your Mouth
http://www.putyourheartinyourmouth.com/dr-natasha-campbell-mcbride.asp
What about cholesterol then? The body can make cholesterol even faster than it can extract it from food and there is good reason for this, we can’t live without it! Since this post is just about a recipe, I won’t get into it, but here is a link to learn why http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/
So now if you are the least bit brave or curious and still reading this and if you’ve known me for the last nearly 15 years as a vegetarian, then you’ll probably wonder how the heck I got to the place where I serve my children a near weekly dose of chicken chips!
It is pretty bizarre to me too, being that one of the things that turned me off from eating meat personally since I was a child, is the texture of grizzly, mushy fat!
While moving more towards a traditional diet including some animal foods, I feel that it is responsible, sustainable and respectful that we use the entire animal as best we know how….at this point with the cooking skills I have, I can use the meat, the bones and feet for broth and now the skins and soft parts for chicken chips! Next I will be experimenting with organ meats, but that is for another post.
Ok, so here are the chicken chips just out of the oven!
Still sizzling hot! My children love this local, healthy whole food snack! I am excited to have found a palatable way to serve such a nutritious food that is typically discarded in most north american homes.
And before I share the recipe, I must mention that Chicken Chips (AND dehydrated vegetable chips, such as Kale Chips!) are a way better choice than potatoe chips.
Reason being? Potatoe chips contain carcinogenic acrylamide and not to mention that since they are deep fried or baked with vegetable oils (which cannot tolerate high heat cooking) they are a source of toxic rancid oils. For more info on acrylamide and potatoe chips and french fries, click through the following link http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2009/02/24/f-acrylamide.html
How’s that for some perspective? I’m pretty sure that it is not 1 small batch of chicken chips, shared once a week by a family that we should be concerned about!
And now for the Chicken Chips recipe!
Ingredients:
Boiled Chicken skin and other soft parts from a compassionately raised pastured chicken
unrefined sea salt
Instructions:
1) Put oven on low broil
2) Put chicken skin and otherwise unpalatable soft parts on a pie plate or other pyrex baking dish
3) Sprinkle on unrefined sea salt
4) Broil for 10 minutes on each side (or until crispy, it just depends on how thick the skin and other soft parts are)!
Let cool and serve!
Transforming juice into a probiotic pop
Photo Credit: www.wellnessmama.com
Do you have a few little (or not so little!) juice addicts in your family and you wish you could get them to drink something else? Or, do you withhold juice and pop from your kids and wish that you had a healthy substitution so that they don’t feel deprived at family gatherings and birthday parties?
If this is you, then you will want to know about Kefir Juice! Kefir juice could be your answer, not only in terms of slowly introducing kefir to your family in a way that they enjoy, but also to wean them off empty calories and blood-sugar induced emotional meltdowns and behavioural issues!
While boxed juice is marketed as a healthy option, I am going to suggest that commercial juices are, in fact, more like junk food than health food and here is why:
1) Few people know that 1 cup of juice has 3 Tbsp of sugar in it!! Without the fibre, this sugar is absorbed at the same rate as it would be if you ate 3 Tbsp of sugar right off the spoon!
2) Commercial juices are pasteurized, thus destroying the life giving enzymes that are naturally found in fruit.
3) Water soluble vitamins, such as Vit.C and B-Vitamins are easily destroyed by heat. So while you may be eating the juice of more than one fruit, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are getting more nutritional value.
4) Pasteurized juice is a processed food and we want to be moving toward a diet made of real food if we want strong healthy bodies with strong immune resiliency.
5) Naturally prepared juice is:
- fresh- not stored
- raw-not pasteurized
- living-not dead
- real-not processed, pasteurized or deaerated (eliminating oxygen to make it shelf stable).
When you kefir “ize” your juice, you essentially take a denatured food product and make it a living probiotic health giving drink!
Now I know that it is not easy to take juice away from a juice addict (concentrated sugar is an addictive substance!), so I am not suggesting that you do that to your hubby or children. What I am suggesting is, that you make an addition to the diet before a subtraction, by serving Kefir Juice, as well.
Then you can slowly substitute more and more of it until the cravings for pasteurized juice subside. Eventually, you can substitute Kefir Water in for Kefir Juice (once you family acquires a taste for Kefir it won’t be hard). In our family, the kids call Kefir Water “pop” because to them it IS pop (it is sweet, tasty and bubbly)! I serve Kefir Juice, every once in a while as a treat because it is typically sweeter and more flavourful than Kefir Water (the fruity taste of Kefir Water is typically more subtle).
Want to learn more about sharing the joy (and health benefits) of other naturally bubbly beverages with your kids? Click here
* This post is part of the Probiotic Food Challenge Linky at Real Food Forager.