Cooking in Community

Between Yule and the New Year, I moved in with my dear friend Lauren Bell and her wonderful hubby Bruce, and their lively, 11 year old son Ian. I’ve always dreamt of living in community, and this is my first exciting taste!

In just the first week, we sat down to dinner together 6 nights out of 7! About half the time, Lauren & I would cook together, and the other times, I would cook if she was busy, or she would cook when I was busy. The flow of getting veggies prepped, food cooked, and dishes washed, has been almost effortless between the four of us, as the boys are happy to wash dishes after dinner. Way Cool! The energy in the house feels very well balanced, as two of us are males and two of us are females.

Each time we’ve cooked, we’ve made more than enough food, so that we could enjoy an easy lunch the next day, or simply incorporate the leftover vegetables into a nice breakfast fritata. Anytime we’ve washed lettuces for salad, we’ve washed & chopped enough for about 3 more salads. We zipped up a whole quart of some awesome green garlic salad dressing, which we also poured over some black bean burgers we ate 2 nights in a row. Ian has cleaned up everything on his plate, every night, including the steamed kale and other green veggies! Yay!

Last night, Lauren suggested we make a classic dish her mom had grown up with in the fifties. Lauren has no idea what it’s called, but because we had cabbage, potatoes, onions, and turkey sausage from New Frontiers, it was a go! We saute’d two yellow onions in ghee for a few minutes, then added diced potatoes and let those cook for another five minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Then we tossed in some sliced turkey sausage, and topped everything in the pan with chopped cabbage. When everything was cooked, we sprinkled some pink salt in, and it was done! I wasn’t sure how much I’d like a dish that didn’t have any ground spices and leafy herbs, (or lemon juice), but it was simply D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S. I learned how to cook like The Old Irish, who are actually 1/4 of my ancestry!

I think the best parts of living and cooking together are catching up about our day while we’re in the kitchen together, getting to know each other on even deeper levels, and inspiring each other to expand our comfort zones around food. Bruce doesn’t usually want any avocado, and now, he’s tried both Hass and Fuerte. And everyone now loves squeezing lemon juice on their greens because I explained that it makes the iron in the greens way more absorb able.

Oh Joy! I’m in heaven, and I hope you are too, in the process of developing your joyful routine around creating amazing meals together with family, neighbors, or friends!

Emotions and Holiday Eating

The holidays are a timely season for the subject of emotions and food. Pleasure foods are everywhere, so it's helpful to know that we do get important emotional and social needs met by gathering with friends and loved ones at maybe-not-so-healthy holiday meals, potlucks, and even restaurants. Also, foods which comfort and warm us can help take the edge off holiday stress.

When we’re together with friends and loved ones, sharing delicious food, we’re usually flooded with feelings of contentment and gratitude. I say usually, because I have a real family too, and the scene isn't always joyful. But when the vibe is good, science has lately proven that feeling good emotions while eating aids digestion and nutrient assimilation, and tells our bodies that we’re safe and happy. So, when eaten while feeling these kinds of feelings, even comfort food can be transformed into building blocks for a happy, peaceful, grateful, and yes...a healthy being.

Generally, the emotions we experience while we’re eating, are just as important (and sometimes even more important) than what we’re eating. This idea comes from the study of quantum physics; that our thoughts and feelings affect everything, and that thoughts and feelings definitely have the power to change physical matter. There’s now scientific proof as to the energetically transformative effects of placing our hands over the meal we’re about to eat, closing our eyes, and giving thanks for the nourishment. Whether it’s a macrobiotic, home-made delight, or a quick meal from a food truck on the go, thought and intention can change the physics of matter into good energy in our bodies.

When I think back to how obsessed I was for so many years, about whether the foods I was eating would cause or cure cancer, that I didn’t allow myself to enjoy my favorite comfort foods (or much of the food that could have been shared with friends and family), I’m sad that I limited my experience of life’s pleasures. If I'd let this behavior continue for more years than it did, the stress of all that worry could have made me sick. And it would have definitely been socially stifling, leading to feelings of  isolation, which alone could have lead to illness. 

The stress I caused myself for many years in trying to eat only 100% whole foods, contrasts greatly with this balance and ease I now feel around the big picture of my diet. My spirit is wonderfully uplifted by spending time with people I love over delicious food, healthy or not. Eating is one of the most common social activities, so the amount of quality time and heart-connection I’ve experienced since widening the scope of what I let myself eat, has increased greatly. What a deep blessing this has been!

These days, to stay healthy and in balance, about 80% of the time I eat whole foods that I’ve made at home before my busy week starts - foods that are balancing for my body type and my changing needs. And then I let the other 20% of my diet be an emotionally-soothing deviation from that healthy foundation. Sometimes it’s okay (or sometimes very necessary!) to relieve my stress and maintain my sanity, by feeding the little girl inside of me a quality ham & cheese croissant from my favorite artisan bakery, or a big juicy guacamole burger from Sylvester’s, or maybe a piece of quality dark chocolate. 

I love my dear friend Karyn’s prayer. She says this to herself whenever she eats food that is less than ideal for health, “My mind is strong. My mind keeps my body healthy. Everything I eat turns to health and beauty.” And Voila! It is so! This spiritual wisdom is a wonderful tool that all of us can use in today’s world brimming with questionable foods. I hope you use it to go forth this holiday season, trusting in the power of your joy and good thoughts to create fantastic experiences with your loved ones, and also great health.

Duh Note: If you have severe food allergies, diabetes, cancer, or you're on a candida diet, etc, then you’ll need to prepare all your own whole, organic meals and green juices at home until you’re back in balance and feeling well again.  

     What do my Whole Foods Lunches & Dinners look like?
  
   It seems like the main proteins I usually reach for are eggs or beans. For me, both are easy to digest and aren't extremely concentrated proteins, so they help my body stay in balance. 

   In the fridge, I’ve always got a pot of beans with sea veggies, and a pot of brown rice (or millet or buckwheat, etc) to use as the base of most of my weekly meals. When I need a quick, nutrient-packed meal, it’s so easy to just mix some of this pre-made beans & grain together in a saucepan, and then warm them up on low heat while I’m washing & chopping some veggies to toss into the pan or steam on the side. During the warmer months, I’ll fix a salad instead of cooking my veggies, as raw veggies are cooling to the body.

   Right now (fall), I’ve been loving the yam, winter squash, brussel’s sprouts, green beans, and purple kale I find at my farmer’s market. I usually steam the veggies, layering the chopped root veggies on the bottom of the steamer basket to steam for a few minutes, and then adding the less-dense veggies into the pot. When they’re done, I’ll toss them into a bowl and drizzle them with lemon juice & olive oil. I’ll then eat my warm beans & rice on the side, or I’ll dump them right on top of the veggies. Diced avocado (and possibly ripe tomato) as a garnish on top of everything, is always delicious. And, about once a week, or when I'm feeling like I need some more dense protein, I’ll warm up some leftover meat to have with this, or I’ll sprinkle some raw goat cheddar on top. YUM!

   When Don & I make a dinner together, we often opt for the taco format, which is so wonderfully versatile. We’ll start by washing & dicing veggies and then cooking them into either scrambled eggs, or adding them to our pre-made beans. We use organic corn tortillas (I like Mi Rancho and Food For Life sprouted corn tortillas). Whether it’s black bean tacos, grass fed beef tacos, or scrambled egg tacos, we always prepare a big salad to go alongside our meal, and a plateful of chopped cilantro, tomato, homemade kraut, lime & avocado. Yum! Oh! And we usually drizzle Don’s amazing lemon-tahini salad dressing on top of our tacos...Double Yum!

   Over the weekend, we baked an organic heritage chicken with red potatoes, carrots, yellow onion, celery, whole cloves of garlic, and rosemary. It was delicious, and we had chicken & veggie leftovers for two more meals! We saved the drippings, and couple of days later, we warmed up this rich stock and pureed it with steamed carrot, green beans & kale for a deeply satisfying soup! We also made stock with the bones, which we then used as a base for a less-rich, butternut squash soup. Awesome resourcefulness, right? Just like our ancestors did...

   Stir-steamed seasonal veggies are another staple dish for dinner at our house. I call it a stir-steam because it’s a stir fry with about a cup of water added. This water does 3 wonderful things in a stir fry; it keeps the oil temperature lower so trans fats aren’t formed, it steams the dark leafy greens at the end, and it creates a beautiful sauce in the bottom of the pan with the ground spices, herbs, fat, and soy sauce, which can be ladled onto warm brown rice, quinoa, or millet for a fantastic flavor element! We often use organic shitake or crimini mushrooms in our stir-steams, especially when we want a meat-like richness in our meal, but we want to keep it vegetarian. The stir-steam format is excitingly versatile!

   Sometimes, when we're tired of our usual dishes, we’ll flip through the pages of some of our favorite cookbooks like The Moosewood Cookbook, Nourishing Traditions, The Self-Healing Cookbook, or a cookbook by our new favorite Japanese chef Harumi Kurihara. We’ll find a recipe we have most of the ingredients for, and we'll see if we can ad-lib the rest, which is usually a lot of fun, but sometimes the dish turns out less than amazingly delicious. It's nearly always edible, so the food is rarely wasted when we're trying something different. I believe that experimenting in the kitchen is very important to broadening our culinary skills and knowledge.

  

   About once a week or so, when we don’t feel adventurous in the kitchen or inspired, we’ll get in the car and go eat at one of our favorite, affordable restaurants like Taco Temple, or Taco de Mexico. When we do go out to eat, we don’t worry about how organic or unprocessed everything is. We make fairly healthy decisions in choosing from the menu, and then we simply enjoy our meal....deeply!

Getting Started with Whole Foods

7 vital steps

 

   Recently, a client asked me to outline the 5 most important things anyone can do to get started on a healthier diet & lifestyle. Many of us are overwhelmed with tons of healthy food information, and there are so many differing opinions available online these days, sometimes it's easiest not to make any changes at all! Most of us have lots of friends and family who don't know these basics of whole foods diet & lifestyle, so I composed this as a resource for anyone just beginning on the path.
   This wisdom below comes from the ancient philosophies of Macrobiotics & Ayurveda, as well as tips and guidelines from awesome whole food educators like Craig Lane and Dr. Joseph Mercola. I tried to keep this article brief, and just to 5 steps, but it was nearly impossible...why fight it?

1) Start drinking enough re-mineralized water daily
   Amount: Hydrate with ½ your ideal body weight in ounces per day.
   When: Drink about a quart at times other than when you eat, as to avoid diluting your stomach acids & enzymes which aid digestion of food. Up to 4 oz warm water or tea with meals is okay.
   Re-mineralize: For better hydration, re-mineralize your micro-filtered, purified, spring or distilled water with a pinch of whole sea salt, a squeeze of lemon, a teaspoon or so of raw apple cider vinegar, or an ounce of any 100% fruit juice - each contains trace minerals (aka: electrolytes) for much more efficient water assimilation.

2) Get your greens daily
   Whether it be a big pile of lightly steamed dino kale drizzled with lemon juice and olive oil, or a huge green salad with chopped dandelion greens, I feel so alive, so alert, and so much energy just from eating my greens daily. In fact, this is the very first whole foods step I took about 15 years ago when I had no energy and several health issues due to my Standard American Diet. My energy level shot up by at least 50% when I started eating a big spinach salad every day. “Greens, glorious Greens! Life-giving sustenance!”
   Seasonal regional vegetables of all kinds comprise about 70% of the meals of healthy indigenous people all over the world. You can start shopping farmer's markets for the bulk of your diet, wash & chop those colorful veggies on Sunday before you get busy, and cut way down on after work cooking time. You could even make a tasty stir-steam on Sunday to stuff into a few mason jars to take with you each day as the bulk of your lunch. I promise you'll feel more energy and vitality as soon as you start getting more veggies in. And then, there's less room in your stomach for the refined foods that may be the only foods available away from home for lunch like chips, cookies, bread/flour products, and commercially raised meats and cheeses. 

3) Choose whole, unrefined sweeteners as opposed to refined sugars
   A low-glycemic diet is now found to be preventative for not only diabetes, but for high cholesterol & heart disease, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, thyroid dysfunction, depression & anxiety. Wow, right?!?!
   Choose (or make your own!) sweets treats with moderate amounts of: rapidura sugar (aka: sucanat), barley malt syrup, carob, brown rice syrup, yacon powder, mesquite powder, coconut sugar, grade B maple syrup, organic molasses, pure glucose, and small amounts of raw honey.
   Stevia leaf extract is a natural, no-sugar, no-calorie sweetener for those on a no-sugar diet (the best stevia with no bitter aftertaste is Nu Naturals brand - their liquid vanilla flavored stevia is excellent!).  Also, Xylitol is a wonderful, non-chemical sugar alternative made from sugar alcohol that’s great used cup for cup vs. white sugar in recipes.
   Maltitol is another sugar substitute made from sugar alcohol, but it often can cause gastro-intestinal distress. Agave syrup I can no longer recommend, as it’s now found to have more detrimental long term effects than high-fructose corn syrup! True agave is thick and dark, like molasses, so the stuff you see in the natural food stores is fairly refined.

4) If you get vitality from eating grains, choose whole grains vs. white flour bread products
   Because of the genetic modification, the high glycemic aspect, rancidity of pre-ground flours, and general overuse of wheat & corn in processed foods, I believe that regular consumption of these grains, as well as other high-glycemic grains like white rice, are major factors in the most common degenerative diseases of modern people.
   Corn & wheat are both high glycemic. Commercially grown corn is also really bad for us because, like most other genetically modified crops such as soy and canola, it contains pesticide and has been linked to cancer and sterility in both men & women. Wheat now contains 40% more gluten than ever before, due to it’s hybridization over recent decades. Gluten 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 gluten in widely varying degrees, and with widely varying symptoms, the most common of which are stomach pain & intestinal/digestive disorders, asthma & skin rash, chronic pain & inflammation (arthritis), heart arrhythmia, infertility, thyroid deficiency, and brain chemistry imbalance which can lead to psychosis.
   There are many other wonderfully nutritious, low glycemic whole grains that are gluten-free. The late-life vitality of indigenous people is due in part because they eat only the lower glycemic, nutrient-dense whole grains like millet, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat and brown rice. And, you can make these grains even more nutritious with certain methods of preparation. When these grains are soaked (aka: sprouted) and simmered, OR freshly ground & cultured, they provide an easily digestible, long lasting energy source for many people (carb-nutritional-types). The modern processed food industry skips these important steps in preparing grains. These steps help break down the complex carbohydrates in the grain, making them much easier to digest, and also neutralizes the phytic acid in the bran of the grain, which makes it’s vitamins & minerals much more bio-available. Go figure!

5) Choose unrefined fats and oils for cooking, get more omega 3 fatty acids, and eat way less refined vegetable oils
   Hydrogenated vegetable oils (found in shortening, margarine, and in many processed foods) are the very worst kinds of fats for the body. The copious amounts of long chain trans fatty acids in hydrogenated oils accumulate in the arteries and form net-like structures. Trans fats are especially bad for people who also eat saturated fats (which is most modern people), because these good, saturated fats from butter, marbled meat, eggs, cheese, and coconut oil, come through the arteries and get caught in the net that’s been formed by the trans fats. Trans fats also occur when heat or pressure are used with refined vegetable oils, as in the processing of packaged foods like cookies, crackers and chips. So, we're talking about refined vegetable oils like canola, corn, soy, and “vegetable oil”....the oils we've been told are good for our heart! These molecularly unstable, refined vegetable oils are what most restaurants cook with, so you ay want to cut way down on oil-laden foods at restaurants. Also, avoid cooking with these refined vegetable oils at home.
   Smoking, not drinking enough water daily, spiking the blood sugar regularly with a more than medium glycemic diet, and lack of exercise all contribute to buildup of plaque in the arteries (atherosclerosis).
   Unrefined, or “extra virgin”, high-quality olive oil and sesame oil are wonderful oils for raw use on salads, or for very low heat cooking for short periods of time (eggs or a quick stir-steam), and should not be used in medium or high heat cooking. Whole, unrefined fats such as butter fat, palm oil, coconut oil, and lard are very stable molecularly with heat, and thusly do not form long-chain trans fatty acids which block the arteries. Use these oils for high heat cooking. Whole fats from animal sources are a very important source of bio-available vitamin A and are important for many bodily systems such as brain & nerve function, reducing inflammation, hormone balance, healthy skin and connective tissues, and of course, a natural & healthy blood lipid profile. These whole fats are what  indigenous people, and our own ancestors, eat and use for cooking, and they live very heart-healthy late into life. Note: these people don't have access to packaged foods (cookies, crackers & chips), and they eat a low glycemic diet, both of which are key for heart-health.
   It’s also very important, for all of these bodily functions I just mentioned above, to get enough omega 3 fatty acids from either good quality fish oil or krill oil. Plant sources of omega 3 fatty acids such a flax, pumpkin, or chia seed may be all you need if you’ve been on a whole foods diet for a long time, and thusly your body can easily convert the alpha-linoleic acid from these seeds into the important, hormone-like substances called prostaglandins that your body needs. Fish and krill oil are direct sources. 

Whole Food Fats & Oils Cooking Guidelines 

~To cook on high heat: ghee, coconut, animal fat, peanut, grapeseed, and palm or palm kernel.                  
~To cook on medium/low heat: olive, sesame, almond, apricot kernel, walnut, high-oleic sunflower or safflower, rice bran and avocado. Cooking w/ water helps keep oil temp lower. These oils are almost always sold in a highly refined state, so be sure the label says unrefined -  usually available at natural food stores.


6) Choose only high-quality, naturally raised, organic, or grass fed animal products
   Environmental toxins and other cancer-causing elements bio-accumulate in exponentially higher and higher concentrations, each step up in the food-chain. Bummer!

7) Good sleep, regular exercise, plenty of sunshine, and healthy relationships are huge for health - www.mercola.com - nuf said!

Here's a recent interview about the importance of eating cultured vegetables with Randol White on 
Eat Drink Explore.com...enjoy!

http://youtu.be/Ygish4QkPE4