The Grain Controversy
Don & I hope that all is well with you - that you’re feeling vital and blessed. We’re excited about our CookWell session #2 (Individualizing Your Diet) tonight at New Frontiers, because our dear friend Greg Money, Certified Ayurvedic Practitioner, will be there to introduce Ayurveda and give free pulse assessments to help determine everyone’s Ayurvedic body/mind type. We can’t wait! And for those who miss this opportunity, we’ll again be leading session #2 with Greg in Los Osos on Thursday, August 25th (details below).
This newsletter topic, the grain controversy, took lots of time to compose. I was prompted to write it by a startling, recent article on commercial wheat as a potentially dangerous food for the brain and the heart. I then felt it necessary to shed light on a shocking new finding about the effects of eating genetically modified corn (and other GM foods). And of course, because I’m a carb-type, I had to go into the nutritional wonders of the lower-glycemic, nutrient-dense whole grains, when prepared in the ways of our ancestors. I’ve linked to lots of research and shared our personal experiences, which I hope give you some clarity and inspiration in choosing the foods that are most beneficial for you. At the end, you’ll find our recipes for perfect brown rice, carob-coconut cloud, sprouted then simmered millet & amaranth, and sweet cultured coriander cornbread.
I’ve listed the July & August schedule of our foundational CookWell classes in the beautiful demonstration kitchen at New Frontiers, as well as our specialty class schedule. Whether you want to have both Don & I, or just me (Courtney), come to your kitchen for a private or small group CookWell session, OR if you just want to show up to one of our group classes listed below, we look forward to meeting you and helping you incorporate the whole foods diet & lifestyle that works best for you. Our collaborative sessions are outlined on the “sustenance training” page of Don’s website for life path counseling: www.gingerbuddha.com. My website for solo teaching in whole foods cooking is: www.cookwell.org. And we’ve been updating our CookWell blog with past newsletter content, free recipes, and links to great articles. Enjoy!
Our Foundational CookWell Classes at New Frontiers, SLO
please RSVP with Dusty (785-0106 x125 or marketing@newfrontiersslo.com)
CookWell Session #1: Whole Foods Cooking 101
Tuesday, Aug 10th, 6-8PM
cost: $30 per person
We’ll discuss: whole foods cooking as preventative medicine, the basics of macrobiotic theory, neutralizing phytic acid in grains by sprouting & simmering, the nightshades, oxalic acid & sulfur veggies, food-based vitamin/mineral supplements, better digestibility of beans, the CookWell list of wholefoods preparation staples for your kitchen and the best cooking oils for various temperatures, the importance of drinking enough re-mineralized water daily, and blood type diet & lifestyle basics
You’ll get 4 handouts for reference:
list of whole foods preparation staples
recommended reading list
blood type basics
fantastic recipes #1
We’ll demonstrate making:
beautiful pot of adzuki beans with cayenne, sage and rosemary
sprouted then simmered whole grain millet & amaranth to incorporate with the beans
ghee to use as a stable cooking oil
dark leafy greens & seasonal veggie stir-steam
CookWell Session #3: Food Combining For Increased Vitality
Tuesday, Aug 23, 6-8PM
cost $30 per person
We’ll discuss: the importance of proper food combining for best digestion and assimilation, how to gradually eliminate refined flour & salt from your diet, flax seed vs. fish oil as supplements, nut/grain milks vs. goat’s milk/raw milk products, and deeply listening to your body to recognize imbalance & know what you really need
You’ll get 4 handouts for reference:
food combining fundamentals
fantastic recipes #3
chart of cooking times and water ratios for simmering each whole grain
chart of cooking times and water ratios for simmering each legume (beans)
We’ll demonstrate making:
curried tempe with shallots, kale, arame sea vegetable, lemon and dill
yams and portabella mushrooms with coriander, nutmeg and ginger
cilantro cole slaw with cayenne, lime and dill
July Specialty Classes in Los Osos
We hope you can make it sometime to our home in Los Osos, to eat some healing food & learn lots of new information. Our CookWell specialty classes will cover current health concerns / topics, and will include a discussion (bring notebook & pen if you’d like to take notes), a cooking demonstration, and then dinner. Our goal is that you have a great time & that all of your questions around the slated topics are answered. We look forward to getting to know you better, and you’re welcome to bring your own wine or beer.
Please RSVP for directions: 528-8837 or courtney@cookwell.org
Specialty CookWell session #1 - whole foods cooking for busy people
Thursday, July 28, 6-8PM
cost: $30 per person
We’ll discuss: how to transition into regularly preparing your own whole foods meals to eat at home or to take on the go, even with a busy schedule. We’ll apply your goals in incorporating a wholefoods diet & lifestyle to your specific needs and limitations. We’ll review the CookWell list of wholefoods preparation staples for your kitchen including the best cooking oils, the importance of drinking enough re-mineralized water daily, and blood type basics. This is our foundational session #1 - but it’s tailored for busy people. You'll get 4 handouts for reference:
list of whole foods preparation staples
recommended reading list
blood type basics
fantastic recipes #1
We’ll demonstrate making:
beautiful pot of black beans with cumin, coriander & ginger
sprouted then simmered whole grain brown rice to incorporate with the beans
dark leafy greens & seasonal veggie stir-steam
ANOTHER TEA PARTY CLASS!
Thursday, August 18, 6-8PM
cost: $30 per person
We’ll discuss: the importance of and how to grind fresh & culture whole grains such as millet, oat groats and amaranth for baked recipes, and strategies for getting lower glycemic in your diet as preventative medicine
We’ll serve blended herbal teas with Kirsten Sherritt of The Secret Garden alongside our gluten & sugar free desserts!
ginger-orange-carrot cake made with fresh ground & cultured amaranth, millet & oat groats, minced carrot & ginger, orange zest, virgin coconut oil & vanilla stevia
almond-amaranth cookies made with fresh ground & cultured amaranth, virgin coconut oil, brazil nuts, almonds, coriander, nutmeg & stevia
heavenly lavender-lemon-poppy loaf made with fresh ground & cultured amaranth & millet, virgin coconut oil, lavender essential oil, lemon zest, coriander & poppy seeds
CookWell Session #2: Individualizing Your Diet & The Wonders Of Kvaas - with Greg Money, Certified Ayurvedic Practitioner, who will give free pulse assessments to help determine your Ayurvedic body/mind type
Thursday, Aug 25, 6-8PM
cost $30 per person
We’ll discuss: practicing mindfulness as it relates to preparing healing food, the Ayurvedic body types and beneficial foods for each, maintaining proper body alkalinity through diet, protein/fat/carb ratios for different metabolic types, the pros and cons of soy, the importance of incorporating cultured foods such as amazing beet kvaas into your diet, and knife skills for safety and achieving various textures and flavors
You’ll get 4 handouts for reference:
Ayurvedic body types and beneficial foods for each
general principals re: Ayurvedic diet & lifestyle
list of tasty herb/spice combinations for seasoning
fantastic recipes #2
We’ll demonstrate making:
kichadi (extremely tasty East Indian mung bean & seasonal veggies stew)
red quinoa arugula tabouli (aka: tabougula)
beet kvaas drink (probiotic, mineral supplement, digestive aid, and liver tonic)
Announcement:
FREE HEALTH EXPO! Sat 7/23, 10am -1pm
At Cross Fit Gym in Grover Beach (226 Front St.)
Lots of Free Information, Exhibits, Activities, Vendors, Music and More! I’ll be having a CookWell booth at this great event, and hope to see you there!
July / August Newsletter Topic:
The Grain Controversy
Lately there have been several proponents for a no-grain diet. Because of the genetic modification, the high glycemic aspect, and general overuse of wheat & corn in processed foods, I agree that regular consumption of these grains (as well as the other high-glycemic grains & foods which spike the blood sugar), are major factors in the causes of the most common diseases of modern people. Thanks to articles by Dr. Neal Rosedale (Insulin and it's metabolic effects), we know that diabetes, high cholesterol & heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, thyroid dysfunction, depressed immunity, hormone & brain chemistry imbalances, depressed immune function and systemic inflammation, are all brought on by a high-glycemic diet. I believe that the other major factors in the causes of these diseases are: 1) the regular intake of refined salt, refined grains & sugars of course, and refined vegetable oils (canola being the worst) via processed foods, restaurant food, and fast food, 2) the lack of seasonal regional vegetables (especially the dark leafy greens) as at least 50% of the diet, 3) the lack of sufficient daily hydration with re-mineralized water, 4) the over-consumption of pasturized dairy and commercially raised meats, 5) sedentary to only moderately active lifestyles, and 6) the polluted, stress-filled cities we live in with a socially unbalanced, competitive, and emotionally void standard of behavior. Every part of the picture must be factored in before coming to the conclusion that all grains are bad for all people.
Corn & wheat are not healthy staple grains for most people for several reasons. Beside the fact that they’re both high glycemic, commercially grown corn is extremely bad for us because, like most other genetically modified (GM) crops, it contains pesticide. The real shocker is that GM foods have recently been found to mutate human gut bacteria to begin producing pesticide within our own cells! This startling new research is very maddening to me when I think about the billions of people who eat processed foods daily, and the thousands of women I know and have heard about who can’t get pregnant, as sterility in rats & mice fed GM foods was the first discovery about the adverse effects of GM foods. What’s worse, is that organically grown corn is often inadvertently pollinated by the winds from neighboring fields of genetically modified corn. So these days, even corn that’s labeled “organic” often contains the genetic markers of Monsanto’s GM corn. Don & I steer clear of all commercially grown corn products these days, and even drastically limit our intake of organic corn products. The other commercially grown crops which are GM and that we avoid like the plague are: soy, canola oil, zucchini, yellow crookneck squash, Hawaiin papaya, and sugar from sugar beets (not that we eat white sugar!). The next crops slated to be widely grown GM are wheat and alfalfa. Dr Joseph Mercola sends out updates on this sort of thing as well as tons of other crucial, cutting-edge diet & lifestyle info daily in his e-articles, which we highly recommend subscribing to.
One of Dr. Mercola’s most recent articles, the one which prompted all this writing in the first place, is about the dangers of eating wheat. Wheat contains 40% more glutin than ever before, due to it’s hybridization over recent decades. With increasing exposure to glutin (a protien in wheat termed “wheat germ aglutinin or WGA”), more and more of us are becoming glutin sensitive - some of us are even glutin intolerant. Glutin exists not only in wheat, but in spelt, barley, rye, kamut, triticale, and others. It’s been recently proven to not only cause systemic inflammation (which has been known for years), but is now considered cardiotoxic and neurotoxic! Each of us is sensitive to glutin in widely varying degrees, and with widely varying symptoms. For instance, if I eat a piece of wheat bread I get a bit of a bloated feeling, as if I ate too much, even though I didn’t. If Don eats one bite of something made with any gluten grain, he experiences the cardiac inflammatory response which causes him heart arrhythmia. By the way, Don lost 50 lb in one year, simply by quitting eating gluten grains! And a friend of ours can’t even have a crumb of anything made with a gluten grain, or she ends up in the bathroom all night with loose bowels. If she has a full bite of anything made with a gluten grain, her throat begins to close up and she goes to the emergency room. The symptoms vary as widely as the severity of them, from stomach pain & intestinal diseases/digestive disorders, to asthma & skin rash, to chronic pain & inflammation (arthritis), to heart arrhythmia, to infertility, to brain chemistry imbalance which often leads to psychosis.
This is scary, I know, but I want to remind you of two things at this point. First, that there are many other wonderfully nutritious, low glycemic whole grains that are gluten-free which you can you can make even more nutritious with certain methods of preparation (which I’ll get into in the next paragraph). And second, that if you are feeling healthy and balanced in mind, body & spirit, let 80% of your diet be whole foods, and the other 20% be an emotionally soothing deviation. Food has strong emotional effects, and in a stressful time we may need to just go out to eat, or have a sweet treat at a party, for the sake of preserving our sanity. When you do deviate from your whole foods diet, see it as an experience that feeds your soul, not as an unhealthy deviation. The emotions you experience while eating are as important as what you’re eating. Just say to yourself, “everything I eat turns to health and beauty”, and if you believe it, it’ll be so!
The other 80% (a whole foods diet) looks like this: seasonal, regional vegetables (with at least 1 bunch of dark leafy greens per person per day) as 40-60% of the diet, low glycemic whole grains prepared in the ways of our ancestors (details below), soaked & simmered beans, fresh raw nuts & seeds, small amounts of seasonal, regional fruit (avocado has completely replaced my desire for dairy!), moderate amounts of whole sea salts, extra virgin or “unrefined”, natural fats & oils, and consciously raised (preferably organic) animal proteins and raw dairy products in moderate amounts when needed for building strength and warmth ( ie: hard physical work, pregnancy, weakness, coldness, deficiency type illnesses, underweight, or if you are a protein-type with meat-eating ancestry, and/or slower metabolism (usually people with type O blood). Click here to take the simple test to discover your nutritional type. This is one of the basic guidelines of Macrobiotics (the Asian tradition of eating & living in harmony with nature): eat to balance your individual constitution.
The carb-type whole foods diet is what most indigenous people around the world happen to thrive on. And I mean thrive on! I’m talking about people who, well into their nineties, are strong and limber, happy, mentally acute and engaged socially from the heart. Wow right? I want that for myself and for everyone I love! What I’ve been waiting for lately, is for any of the no-grain diet proponents to acknowledge the late-life vitality of indigenous people who ate as a staple the lower glycemic, nutrient-dense whole grains - grains like millet, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat and brown rice. Did you know that amaranth is highest of all the grains in both calcium & iron, and in countries where it’s a staple, there is no malnutrition? And, when these types of grains are soaked (aka: sprouted) and simmered, OR freshly ground & cultured, they provide an easily digestible, long lasting energy source for most people (which are carb-type or mixed-types). I have type A blood and a fast metabolism (carb-type), so preparing these types of grains in this way as about 40% of my diet gives me a wonderfully high level of vitality. And, just to let you know, doing so doesn’t take as much time as you might think (see recipes below). The modern processed food industry skips these important steps, which our ancestors nearly always took, in preparing grains. Either of these steps is important because they help break down the complex carbohydrates in the grains, making them much easier to digest. When our bodies don’t have to work so hard on digestion, our internal energy is free to heal and balance other areas. Soaking or culturing also neutralizes the phytic acid in the bran of the grain, which makes it’s vitamins & minerals much more bio-available. If you’re a carb or a mixed nutritional type, I’ve listed a few of these kinds of recipes below to get you started. I hope you enjoy the process and the vitality that follows. And, as always, feel free to call or email me with any questions whatsoever. 528-8837 or courtney@cookwell.org
Recipes
Positively Perfect Brown Rice: The health benefits of organic brown rice are innumerable according to the book Healing With Whole Foods. Rinse 2 cups organic short grain brown rice and soak overnight under an inch of filtered water in the saucepan you plan to cook it in. Soaking grains for a day before cooking initiates the sprouting process, which 1) makes it more easily digestible, 2) increases the grain's amino acid profile so it becomes closer to a complete protein, and 3) neutralizes it's phytic acid which would otherwise bind with minerals in the intestine and inhibit mineral absorption. Okay, the next day, pour off the old soak water and refill the pot so that the fresh water level is about 3/4 of an inch above the level of the rice - measure it if you have to! (No ruler? It’s the length of your fore finger from the tip to the very first knuckle /joint just above your fingernail - not halfway up your finger). Soaked rice requires way less water to simmer than unsoaked rice. In fact, this 3/4 inch rule applies to every pot of soaked rice, no matter how big the pot, or how much rice you’ve soaked. Okay, after you’ve got that 3/4 inch of fresh water over the rice, bring it to a boil, reduce to simmer, and stir in1/2 tsp whole sea salt for every 2 cups of soaked rice. Put the lid on the pot at an angle so the steam can escape, and simmer for 40 minutes exactly. Comes out wonderfully fluffy every time.
Millet & Amaranth - powerhouse grains for hard workers & people with increased iron needs: Soak 2 cups millet and 1 cup amaranth overnight under an inch of filtered water in the large saucepan you plan to cook it in. The next day, pour off the soak water and refill the pot so that the water level is 2 inches or so above the level of the grain. Bring to a boil, stir in 1/2 tsp whole sea salt, reduce to very low heat, put the lid on the pot at an angle so the steam can escape, and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring twice during the last 5 minutes to make sure there’s enough water in the bottom of the pan to prevent burning. Feel free to add ½ cup or so of water if it’s all evaporated before 30 minutes. It’s better to have more water and just pour the excess off at the end, than to not have enough and have it burn. Mil-amaranth is great stirred into vegetarian chili as faux ground beef.
Carob-Coconut Cloud (a great breakfast OR dessert!): In a small saucepan over low heat add 1 cup water and 2 cups any freshly simmered or leftover grain (brown rice or millet are great!). Stir and add 1 Tbsp coconut oil, butter or ghee. Stir until melted and add ½ tsp whole sea salt, ½ tsp pumpkin pie spice OR ½ tsp each cinnamon & nutmeg, 2 Tbsp carob powder, 6 drops vanilla stevia OR 1 Tbsp maple syrup / raw honey, AND ½ cup dried coconut. Stir until mixed well & enjoy warm topped with pecans, almonds, walnuts, brazil or macadamia nuts OR fresh / frozen berries, OR both! Also, 1/4 cup juice of ripe meyer lemon, 6 drops vanilla stevia & 1 cup mashed berries makes a great, tangy-sweet topping.
Sweet Cultured Coriander Corn Bread: Combine 1 cup fresh ground amaranth OR oat flour AND 1 cup organic corn meal with 1 cup plain, cultured yogurt and 2/3 cup water (1tsp acidophilus powder OR content of 2 capsules any live probiotic mixed with 1 cup water = dairy free alternative to yogurt). Mix until just blended and let sit covered at room temperature for 24 hrs. You see, the yogurt cultures (probiotic bacteria) neutralize the phytic acid in the whole grain flour (so it can't bind with minerals in your intestines & inhibit their absorption) and they break down the complex carbohydrates which makes the grain's nutrients more assimilatable and much more digestible. Okay, the next day, in a separate bowl combine 1/2 cup melted butter or ghee, 1 egg, 3 Tbsp raw honey or grade B maple syrup (OR, for the sugar free: 1/2 tsp Nu Naturals brand liquid vanilla stevia), 2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp ground coriander, ½ tsp nutmeg, and ½ tsp whole sea salt. Mix well and stir into cultured flour mixture along with 1 cup fresh or frozen corn kernels. Pour into a buttered 8" x 8" or loaf size baking pan or glass dish and bake at 350 degrees for 20 - 25 minutes. So sweet and moist I almost called it "Corn Cake".
As always,
Don and I welcome any questions you may have via phone or email. For more information on the ancient whole foods philosophies we teach about, see "the food” page of my website www.cookwell.org.
We hope to see you sometime soon to share lots of learning, laughter and incredible food!
Namaste ~
Courtney & Don
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