Tasty Bytes

Whew! The house these days kind of smells a bit acidic – not just from the Kombucha tea but my new obsession with fermentation – lactic acid not alcoholic  I’m working through Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions chapters on fermenting. So far I’ve made Dill Pickles, four quarts of Beet Kvass, and a batch of Sauerkraut is in the works. P got into the fermentation frenzy as well and put up two quarts of Ginger Peach ‘Beer.’ Which should be ready for a taste right about now…  

I’ve been so busy – not just with work – but with my new house guests. Making extra space, ensuring they are comfortable and well fed is lots of work! Problem is that they are multiplying faster than bunnies and becoming permanent fixtures.

It all started at the Four Fold Path to Healing Conference where at one of the lunches we had Kombucha Tea … not to be confused with the Japanese green pumpkin – kabocha. Kombucha tea is a fermented tea chock full of lively gut friendly bacteria and nutrients.

Wow! What zing! So refreshing!

It happened that my nutrition instructor, N, from Bauman was also attending and I remembered that she made her own Kombucha tea and frequently had extra mushrooms. So I arranged to pick up a ‘baby’ or two.

After getting very detailed instructions from N and reading Betsy Pryor’s book on Kombucha I was ready to grow my own tea. N gave me two mushrooms so I started with two batches. Now, each mushroom makes a baby that you can use to make additional batches. I figured, why not make a few more batches so two became four

…then… P got into the act and figured that we needed to have in production six batches to keep us going with a pint a day. Off P went to get two more bowls. On the way back from the store P thought, hey no we need eight batches. My god, at this rate, in a few weeks we’d have 64 bowls of Kombucha fermenting away in the house! We’d need to make more shelves and probably buy tea and sugar in bulk, cases of bowls? I felt like my head was spinning from some kind of Kombucha tea high… maybe too many toxins were being released in my body. Luckily, before things got too carried away I had a gooseberry moment and snapped back into reality.
“That’s it! we’re stopping at 6!” I declared. Turn’s out P’s calculations were a bit off but it was an honest mistake.

Starting today we now have a steady supply of K-Tea to keep us both detox’ing away.
I encourage you to try it out – there are a few bottled K-Teas out there – I’ve tried GT’s Kombucha (stocked near the Kefir at Berkeley Bowl) and it was quite good.

To your health, Cheers!:)

It’s been awhile since the last post. I’ve been busy as usual – my brain though was totally blown into a different reality a few weeks back at the Four Fold Path to Healing Conference in Oakland. Dr Tom Cowan is a total visionary when it comes to the healing arts. He re-examines and questions what we have been taught about health – how our body works and reframes healing into a very dynamic fluid and participatory lifestyle. Dr. Cowan, along with Sally Fallon and Jaimen McMillian put on an amazing and educational conference. I am still trying to process it all.
I spent the most time with Sally Fallon  in her seminars on nutrition modeled after traditional diets as researched by Dr. Weston A. Price. In a nutshell, our modern health woes are directly related to our modern diet of refined foods. But – even further, Dr. Price’s work and that of Sally Fallon (and Dr Mary Enig) asserts the modern premise that saturated fats are bad for our health is dead wrong – we need quality saturated fats from animal sources to maintain good health. Dr. Price’s research, spanning 10 years and studying dozens of cultures, illustrated that people following traditional diets of whole foods had less disease.
That’s food for thought and worth lots of research hours. The biggest thing I took away from this conference is – feed your inner curious cat – question the establishment and find out what is really the truth when it comes to maintaining our own health and the health of our future generations. Let’s stop giving our health away to others – come on’ take back your health!
Just think about it – over 70 years ago (when heart disease was relatively rare), scientist and doctors told us that butter and animal fats were bad and we needed to switch to vegetable oils including the new fangled hydrogenated fats. As you recall from earlier posts, hydrogenated fats are THE source for trans fats in the modern diet. Today, the National Academies of Science’s Institute of Medicine states that there is no safe level of trans fat in the diet.
So really, what do we know for sure? It seems we’re just a big bunch of guinea pigs… 

When it is made into a beverage that for every 12 fl oz is 270 calories (more than 10 % of a 2000 calories per day diet) and has 46 grams of sugar (3.25 Tablespoons). Top it with whipped cream and you’re looking at 360 calories, 3.4 Tablespoons of sugar and 12 grams of fat.  
We know green tea is good for us – full of antioxidants and beneficial minerals but don’t let the marketers fool you. Our good foods have been hijacked – looks good on the surface but scratch below and it’s not quite what it seems.  

Monday’s can be difficult to fit in breakfast but I eliminated a few unnecessary activities this morning (like surfing on the net) to carve out the time to make breakfast and eat it. 
This morning I grabbed a corn tortilla – warmed it in a skillet topped with a few bits of cheddar, topped that with some leftover black beans, topped the beans with a fried egg and to be a bit decadent finished with a dollop of sour cream. This took less than 10 minutes. This take off on heuvos rancheros and a few pieces of fruit will get me through until well after noon.  

I have a little more time on Sunday mornings so:  

Our modern diets these days leave most of us deficient in nutrients – most notably minerals. 
What’s a modern diet you ask? Packaged and processed foods, foods that have been lying around for awhile (most any ‘fresh’ food at a grocer store), conventionally raised foods, foods that consist mostly of ‘empty’ calories (ex. baked goods from refined flour), foods that deplete the body of nutrients (ex. soft drinks) and foods that contain substances that disrupt important body functions (ex. trans fats, msg). 
What’s so important about minerals? One that we all know is iron – we need iron to help transport oxygen to all the cells in our body. Then there is calcium which we need for our bones but calcium is also important for your muscles to work properly (along with magnesium) and in maintaining the proper pH in our blood – without the proper pH, we’ll see ya on the other side. Our skin needs selenium and zinc otherwise you might experience dryness and cracking – ouch. And copper isn’t just for pennies – we need it to build healthy collagen. In fact, just about every enzyme in our body needs one of dozens and dozens of minerals to function. 
So what can we do? With a few adjustments we can put those handy minerals back into our lives. Here’s a few tips: 
Replace as much soft drinks and coffee with mineral rich teas. Ideally we’d eliminate both but we have to have our treats. Pretty much any kind of tea is great – green, white, rooibos, mint, chamomile, Red Zinger, etc. Just don’t load them up with sugar or artificial sweeteners. Use honey, agave syrup, stevia, xylitol or even fruit juice instead. 
Eat lots of fresh organic fruits and vegetables. There are numerous studies that show organic fruits and vegetables have up to 25% more nutrients. Green leafy vegetables are a good source for calcium and iron. I know organic can be expensive but do what you can afford. Remember though that local and fresh trumps organic. It’s much better to purchase a locally grown peach from 20 miles away than an organic one from 3000 miles away. 
Avoid processed foods as much as possible. Eat whole foods. For example, instead of white rice enjoy brown rice. Instead of packaged cereal have a bowl of oatmeal (though not instant!). Instead of a cookie have some fresh or dried fruit. 
Add nuts and seaweed to your diet. Nuts make a great snack – but in moderation. Say 10-12 pieces is a good serving. Seaweed is great sprinkled on salad, rice, soup – just about anything. I even posted a granola recipe a little while back that includes seaweed. 
Enjoy mineral broths. What the heck is a mineral broth you ask? Basically it’s soup or broth made from either all veggies or veggies and chicken or beef or pork or lamb or fish bones. When you simmer all these goodies in a pot of water you extract the mineral from said ingredients. What a tasty and nourishing way to get your minerals. Limited on time? You can still get a dose of minerals from already prepared broths – organic of course and preferably low sodium. 
And most of all – Variety! I figure variety is good not just so you don’t get bored of the same ol’ thing but this way you have a better chance of getting all your nutrients. 
I’ll post recipes for broths in a few days. 
Remember, food is our body’s fuel and building blocks. Good nutritive rich foods = a healthy strong body.