Feb 17, 2011

A Practical Lesson of Evolutionary Nutrition:

Imagine a small, early history, hunting gathering village of people; our earliest known ancestors.  They gathered nuts, seeds, roots, berries, grasses, greens and herbs on a daily basis.  Often they had a small amount of game meat to eat.  They didn't salt their food, they didn't sweeten their food, they didn't add oil to their food.  They ate the food as it came out of the earth.  Raw, fresh and the truest sense of organic.  They worked hard gathering, walking and hunting their game, then cooking and making camp.  Now imagine centuries later, a small faming village.  They still gather what they can but they also cultivate their own vegetables and raise animals, like goats for milk and meat.  The goats eat their natural diet of grass and herbs.  They walk everywhere they go.  They are all strong and healthy, even the old.  When a villager is deficient or has a disease they increase a certain food, or add certain herbs to increase health and wellness.  No one craves sugar, or salty snacks.  They eat to live.  They eat moderately and mindfully of what will be available in the future.  This is how our bodies evolved and were meant to survive.
  Imagine many, many centuries later, people spend much of the day sitting.  They need food so they go to a grocery store where they can buy endless possibilities. The food is processed to the point where it's origins are uncertain.  They purchase nothing that is in the same form it grew in. Meat is from farms where the animals don't ever see the light of day, are sickly and given high doses of medication and they eat grain and feces of other animals.  Then they purchase milk from equally sick, medicated and undernourished animals.  They are fat but lack the proper nutrition to produce quality milk.   The isle of sweets is filled with the high calorie, nutrient deficient cakes, cookies and candies.  Each single serving containing an entire day or weeks worth of sugars to our early ancestors.  People trying to avoid the high calories go for the artificially sweetened products. These are products produced to allow people to eat endless amounts of sweet satiating, nutrient deficient delicacies.  With out even knowing where the food came from or what it contains the carts are filled to the brim with food that is high in calories, fats and chemicals and is practically void of any real nutrients that your body needs for energy on a cellular level.  An occasional few make it to the produce section where they buy genetically modified vegetables and fruits, that are twice the size they are meant to be and half as ripe.  They are laden with unnatural chemicals to increase shelf life and destroy diseases proliferated by under nourishing the soil and thereby causing disease in the plants.  They have absorbed the chemical pesticides or have a layer coating the outside that is not water soluble and cannot simply be washed away.  They go home and eat the sweets first and let the vegetables sit in the refrigerator until what little nutrition was contained in them  is destroyed.  They can't figure out why they don't have energy to make it through the day and they can't figure out why they are so overweight or suffer from headaches or chronic diseases.  It may not be obvious to all, but people were not meant to eat the modern day diet.  If you go to the source of our food it is clear that our animals and crops are just as vitamin and mineral deficient as  we are.  Our ancestors did not count calories.  They did not watch their carbohydrates or worry about how much protein they were getting.  They may not have been as lucky to have the sanitary and comfortable conditions we have now but they certainly had more energy to work harder and did not get the cancers and chronic conditions we face today.  If we are not feeding our cells with energy to repair and replicate we will feel very run down and unenergized.  Our cells are not looking for calories in and calories out.  They are looking for vitamins and minerals that are from plant sources, making it easy for our bodies to digest and use them.  Feed your body what it has cleverly evolved and been created to eat.  Not Wonder Bread...  Not Chips Ahoy...  Not Dunkin Donuts...  Not baked potato covered in sour cream, bacon bits and cheddar cheese...
-V

Feb 8, 2011

Micro Recipe: Brownie Pudding

There are a few reasons I came up with micro recipes.  For one, it's  great way to have portion control.  For another it can be cooked in the microwave, but the namesake really comes from how small the recipe is in terms of volume.  This recipe is an adapted version of my mom's 9x13 pan size.  This one can be done in the microwave in literally 1 minute!  It can also be cooked in the oven the good ole' fashioned way.  If you have ramekins you can make lots of little individual servings. I just cook mine in the microwave in a really big mug.  If you only have small mugs, I would recommend using 2 mugs or you run the risk of it boiling over the sides.  Put a plate under it, if you are unsure. 
4 TBL all purpose flour
3 TBL white sugar or splenda
1 tsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
Mix above dry ingredients
add to above
2 TBL milk, almond milk, soy milk or water
stir into a nice batter, and divide into 3 ramekins 2 regular mugs or 1 large mug

Then mix
 3 TBL brown sugar
1 TBL cocoa powder 
7 TBL hot water 
pour over the batter mix equally.  

For the microwave, microwave each mug 1 minute or until it bubbles to the top of the mug about to spill over.  Bake in a 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, until the batter rises to the top and has fully cooked.  Eat it warm and gooey.  It is easy and yummy, yummy delicious.  I have made this recipe a million times in the oven and you cannot tell the difference from the oven to the microwave in terms of taste and texture.  No, it's not healthy but sometimes it's mentally healthy to have a treat!   
-Val

     

Kicking Against the Pricks

I honestly don't even know what a prick is, but it sounds uncomfortable to kick.  This discomfort is something I have been experiencing most of my life.  I am very impatient, especially when it comes to life moving along.  I don't like transition periods and I don't like that stagnant period between transitions. I suppose the only period I tolerate is when things are on the up and up.  Enjoying the journey, as they say, is something I've only recently adopted.  It certainly doesn't come naturally to me to enjoy waiting for the next exciting and new thing in life to come along.  But alas, at least I have learned it, as infrequently as I follow it.  There are 3 things in my adult life that have been consistent and ever present that I enjoy.  In no particular order they are cooking, silversmithing and natural health studies.  I am almost 30 and I stay at home with my kids.  I know that my kids wont be home forever and therefore I do not intend to be a house wife forever either.  I feel it is very important to stay home with my kids and raise them.  I certainly don't want to miss any important moments.  Yet sometimes it is hard.  I find myself getting down in the dumps, depressed, BORED.  I try to keep myself busy and my mind active with activities here and there.  Crafting, learning, watching hours of BBC classical period dramas...  
The outside world on the tv is continually telling me to get a career and be successful.  Oh do I ever want to be successful.  Here's the thing about being successful.  It is like being skinny, it is all relative.  Relative to whom you ask, whom you live by and where you live.  To a 500 lb woman struggling to loose weight, I bet 350 lbs sounds sweet.  To that 350 lb woman I imagine 180 lbs would be fantastic.  To that 180 lb woman 145 would be great!  To me 145 lbs is fat and I'm sick of it!  So it goes success.

When I look at my mother though, I see success.  She never had a fabulous career or made a lot of money or was super skinny and fashionable.  She raised 7 kids!  She is still married to the same man after 4 decades!  She reads every book before I even know it exists.  She helps everyone around her and is always charitable.  She is smart and sturdy little lady who just keeps on going and learning and doing.  I know that according to "the world" she is not much of a fantastic success, but if I could just be half the woman she is by the time I am her age I would feel successful.  There is no denying she is a successful human being.  Yet here I am "kicking against the pricks" trying to accomplish things I know will largely make me successful in others eyes and not my own.
My sister and I had a conversation this morning about how I am frustrated that I cannot find a decent school and degree combo that I want.  One school has the program I want but is not accredited, the other school may have the accreditation but does not have the kind of program that I can believe in.  I have been searching for the right school and the right program for years.  I didn't even know what I wanted to do exactly until very recently.  Still I am not completely certain how it will all pan out.  My sister implored me to stop kicking against the pricks.  Just enjoy what I am doing right now and when it's time to go to school the stars will align.   Sometimes I want to kick the pricks to spite my foot. I suppose I will always have the personality that will kick the pricks occasionally to make sure they are really there.   Then I will look at my sore foot and remember that life was much better before I started kicking said pricks.  Thank you sister for reminding me that I have to enjoy the journey and work toward my goals at a more patient pace.  That I cannot want something and receive it at the same time; there is little to learn if there is not some adversity along the way.  Thank you mother for your shining example of a well adjusted, successful mother who tells "society" what for instead of letting society determine your worth.
-Val

High Protein Peanut Butter Chocolate Smoothie, No protein powder

This smoothie recipe has NO protein Powder.  Protein powders contain very high amounts of free glutamate (MSG) and they make a lot of people...