Hi everyone! Since I’ve been posting sparsely recently, I decided to just make this an official “hiatus.” I’m up to my ears in a couple of other projects, and all of my energy is going to them for the moment, so I think it’s easiest if I simply press the pause button here instead of beating myself up for not posting.

Don’t worry, though, because this blog is in no way ending. I’ll start posting again soon, probably sometime in mid-August.

Consider this my summer “vacay,” and when I return, I promise to do a “what I did on my summer vacation” kind of post, ok?

Hope you are having a good summer. Talk more soon!

Last weekend, a friend came to visit. It was wonderful to see her, and a few of us did the usual thing you do when a friend comes to stay: we went out one night to a fun bar, spent a day and night with drinks & movies & chatting into the wee hours, and spent another day at the beach & ate at a fabulous Greek restaurant at the end of the day.

In other words, fantastic time, but not much concern for real food (or moderation).

Well, ok, that’s not entirely correct. I talked real food with my friend quite a bit. She’s very interested in it, and she has inspired me to create a couple of things for this site (more on that to come later this month!). And she was perfectly ok with me making eggs & bacon for breakfast each morning, of course. So the days started with good food. But as the days went on, all bets were off.

And now I must recover.

Since everyone’s body chemistry is different, everyone will have different reactions to various food additives. Things that bother me won’t bother you, and vice versa. What I do know, what has become clear over time, is that MSG is one of the toughest additives for my body to deal with. It isn’t even the bloating or swollen fingers, which I don’t get very often anymore…it’s the cravings!

We’d ordered Chinese food not once, but a couple of times from our favorite local place (which means 3-4 actual meals from it!). It was incredibly tasty, as ever. So good, in fact, that I keep wanting more, even though I know it’s the chemical making me crave it. While my friend was here, we had Greek food, and it was fantastic, but I’m not craving more of it. We had a 3 a.m. Denny’s jaunt—I think their food tastes best at 3 a.m.—but I’m not craving more of it. All the other non-real things I ate were good, but they left me with the “wow it was yummy to enjoy those things, but I’m eager to get back to real food.” All except the Chinese food. Just writing this has me thinking how good it would be tonight for dinner…

You may not react to MSG the way I do, but I bet there are a few “trigger” foods that set off intense, hard-to-deny-cravings for you. Try to make a list and narrow it down:

1. What foods do you regularly crave? What are your top 3 “indulge” foods/dishes? For me, it was always Chinese food, salsa con queso, and potato chips (especially Doritos).
2. Do any of these foods have anything in common? For example, are they fried or cooked a certain way or contain chocolate or come from a certain restaurant? For my list, I know it’s MSG. I’ve tried natural salsa con queso, and while good, I don’t crave it like I do the Frito-Lay stuff or the stuff in restaurants. As for chips, I used to eat entire bags in one sitting…not because I was ravenously hungry, but because they were so good that I wanted the high I was getting off of them. The brands that affected me the worst all had MSG in them.
3. How do you feel after eating these foods? For me, I began to slowly realize that I felt horrible after eating any of this stuff. Everything from vicious mood swings to headaches to swollen joints to general bloating. It took awhile to recognize various symptoms as being related to what I’d eaten, but once I started to wonder at it, I could experiment: Eat some, note how I feel. Don’t eat it for awhile, see how I feel. Eat it again, note reaction. That’s how I became sure of the culprit.

I think the lesson here is twofold: one, it drives home the lesson that chemicals in food do indeed affect our brain (if that was ever in doubt!), and two, identifying your trigger food(s) is is key to figuring out how best to deal with them when you inevitably eat them again.

I’d never say to completely eliminate your trigger foods from your life, because as soon as I feel like I can “never” have something, I want it all the more.  Thankfully, most things I liked that contained MSG are available without it, so it was easy to phase almost all of it out and not feel like I was losing anything. But Chinese food is Chinese food…I have to accept that I’m going to eat some MSG when I indulge in Chinese*.

As for this recent indulgence, I’d gone long enough without eating additives and had been eating so much nutrient-dense food that I didn’t have the really bad reactions I used to have (no mood swings or headaches, for example). What affects me now is the cravings.

Knowing this, I can make a plan to deal with it. This is the real-food equivalent of a hangover remedy. It’s similar to knowing you will feel horrible after a night of heavy drinking, but you want to go nuts for [insert crazy celebratory occasion here], and you learned years ago how to best recover from a hangover. You get your remedy ready, and go enjoy the party.

Here’s a general approach to recovering from an indulgence in your trigger food(s). This has worked wonders for me so far, although the longer I continue on my real food journey, the more this list will grow and develop:

• Get back to eating real right away. Lots of good fat, butter, eggs, veggies with butter, pastured meats, raw milk, etc. Get the nutrients flowing back into your body.
• Have bone broth every day. I swear, bone broth is so wonderful and so healing that I call it my “magical elixir” or “pot of gold.” (A post coming soon on all the wonders of bone broth—promise!).
• Get moving. Daily exercise will help your body flush things out faster.
• Don’t beat yourself up. I talked about this in my last post, but it bears repeating. Don’t be hard on yourself for eating “bad food.” It was good, at least at the time you ate it, and you enjoyed eating it. Maybe you enjoyed it with friends. It’s ok that you enjoyed it! Remember, the body is an amazing healing organism. Eat real most of the time, and you’ll equip your body to be able to deal with the times that you don’t eat real.
• Other ideas: You’ll undoubtedly come up with other ways to recover. Maybe long, hot baths or getting a massage. Anything that helps circulation & relaxes you will be beneficial. I like to take liver-supporting herbs, both in tea and tincture form. You’ll learn as you go what things best support your body.

Was the food good enough to be worth all this? I’m not sure. But I am sure that after a few months go by, I’ll forget how irritated I was to have had these cravings and will be up for some Chinese food again. I am thankful that my reactions to MSG are not as severe as they used to be, and I attribute that to eating real 99% of the time. My body is better able to deal with the additives when it’s been getting lots of nutrients and has shored up its defenses.

Do you do anything specific to recover from eating your favorite “bad” foods? Please feel free to share!

* I could find a Chinese place that claims not to use MSG…but I’m pretty sure they all use it, just in other forms. I’m going to look into this and do a post on all the hidden ways MSG is still used in food, even when it’s supposed to be “MSG-free.”

You don’t want to end up like this, but if you do, it’s ok.

There is a lot of information on the web (and on this site) about how to switch to real food, how to make better choices, and the like. For a different take, here are some things not to do if you’re newly on the real food bandwagon:

• Don’t change everything at once: Do it in baby steps or you’ll get overwhelmed and end up like Alfred Molina’s character, the Comte de Reynaud, in the movie Chocolat—passed out amid the remains of your binge after eating an entire display of candy (see screencap, above).
• Don’t expect too many obvious physical changes right away: While you’ll undoubtedly start feeling better fairly soon, and have more stable moods, it’ll take time for your body to get used to all the good stuff going into it and to change itself accordingly. Don’t think of real food as a magic pill; think of it as a long-term investment. You’re doing this to have a healthy and vibrant 100th birthday, not to look good in your bikini next month.
• Don’t talk about your switch to everyone within hearing distance: Chances are, they don’t care about what they’re putting in their mouths, so they really don’t care about what you’re putting in yours. Think about it, did you care six months ago? A year ago? Don’t be a that annoying person who tells people (who aren’t asking) that eating Twinkies is a personal subsidization of big pharma (even though it is). Better to lead by example and explain only when asked.
• Don’t worry about it when you indulge: Not “if,” but “when.” No matter how strong your real food convictions are, at some point, you’ll eat something that couldn’t qualify as real food even if it had a passel of Hollywood spin doctors working for it and making it commercials claiming it’s natural & healthy because it’s “made from corn.” That’s ok; chill & enjoy. Sometimes you just need to indulge (says the girl who sometimes can’t resist a big order of Chinese food, or wings from Hooters, or a local-made Cuban sandwich). I sincerely believe that if you’re eating real food pretty much all the time, some junk food here & there won’t hurt. Well, you’re gonna feel crappy after eating it, which will limit how often you indulge. But the more you’re feeding yourself lots of nutrients, the more your body heals, and the better it can deal with future inputs of less-than-quality food.
• Don’t be hard on yourself if you find it hard to make the switch: If your head is fully on board with wanting real food but your body is fighting tooth and nail to keep you feeding it bad stuff—you suffer from monstrous cravings, vicious mood swings, headaches, and the like—please, no matter what, don’t criticize yourself! It’s not your fault; the bad foods are created to be addicting. All those chemicals and additives react in our bodies in such a way as to create the feeling of insatiable need, and that can be very hard to resist. It’s easier for some people to switch than others, but that has to do with individual body chemistry and is not a judgment of personal worth. If it’s hard for you to change, don’t tell yourself you’re a failure; instead, make teensy changes and praise yourself for every effort you take to eat better, even if all you do is to not eat Twinkies on Monday even though you eat them Tuesday through Sunday. Be happy with every good food choice you make. Take it in super-duper-tiny-micro-baby steps, and remember that this is a lifelong journey.

This post is part of Fight Back Friday for June 25, 2010.

Continuing from my last post about the 7 steps to switching to real food, here is a more detailed look at one way to switch: this is the basics of how I did it. Please take my ideas as just one way among many; doing these steps in this order may or may not work for you, and you might need to switch things around to find what works best. I hope that this list gives you a few ideas of how to go about switching if you are thinking of doing it.

1. Start reading all labels. All of them. Every time. No matter what. This was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” for me, because seeing just how much crap is put into food became the burr under my skin.
2. Identify what you see listed often. Look them up, read about them, and decide what you want to cut out first. Take it one (or a few) things at a time. It might take time to find alternatives to your favorite foods.
   1. As an example: One of my first cuts was high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). I used to like Oreos as a treat; one look at an Oreo ingredient list stopped that habit cold. But I found a great alternative: the brand Back to Nature, found in my grocery’s organic section, makes an oreo-type sandwich cookie that uses no HFCS and much better ingredients overall. It was the perfect alternative at the time.
3. Cut out the worst offenders. This will probably happen in stages. Pick one at a time (I think HFCS and MSG are the ones to start with), although you can cut them all at once if you’re ready. Here’s what I cut out and in what order, cuts that took a couple of years all together: peanuts (due to allergy), high fructose corn syrup, MSG in all its guises & names, partially hydrogenated oils, artificial colors/additives, excess sodium, refined sugar, fake sweeteners, soy in all forms,  prepackaged & processed food.
4. Make a list of nutrient-dense foods you like; this is key. It doesn’t matter how good liver is for you if you don’t like eating it. Find a list here on the Weston A Price site. Having a list gives you a starting place to work from when you’re wondering, “What should I eat?”
5. Examine your food budget, and decide which nutrient-dense foods you can add in (ideally, use them to replace junk foods). For example, grass-fed butter is extremely nutrient-dense, but it’s going to cost more than factory-farmed butter or margarine/fake spreads. But butter is really doggone good, lol, so adding it into your diet isn’t difficult. Try buying just enough to add onto veggies/breads daily as you get used to eating it, and see how much you consume. I find that I eat a lot more of it now than I used to eat, but I can balance out the additional cost by not buying something else:
   1. I go through about two blocks of Kerrygold butter each week; that costs $7 where I live. I used to only use about 1 stick of butter/margarine a week, if that; a big pack of four sticks at my local store was about $4, and would last me about a month. So I figure ok, I’m spending $6 more per week just for butter, but I also cut out soda around the same time, and that was costing me about $4 per week. So I ended up adding only $2 per week to my food bill, which is less than a magazine. Find a way to make switches in your budget to lessen the impact, but also remind yourself that money spent on food is a form of health insurance. More money on good food now is meant to equal less money for health issues later.
      1. A note on Kerrygold: Kerrygold is Irish butter, i.e. is imported from Ireland. The reason so many real foodies love it is that Kerrygold cows are allowed to graze on good grass, resulting in much more nutrient-dense (and delicious) butter. While I am a staunch proponent of local sources of food and eating as close to home as possible, I have yet to find a local source for butter that I can afford. Right now my main concern is healing myself and providing my body as many nutrients as I can; I am deeply grateful that Kerrygold butter is available here. My ideal is to nourish myself and support local economies at the same time, but if that’s not possible, I nourish myself first. I can support my local economy in other ways in the meantime.
6. Don’t worry if you can’t consume all the nutrient-dense foods on your list; do as many as you can, knowing that incorporating just a couple of them into your diet will make a difference. Most of us have been so nutrient-starved for so long that just adding pastured eggs and grass-fed butter daily will make a significant positive impact over time.
7. Unless you plan to be in full sun for an entire day, stop using daily sunscreen so that you can up your Vitamin D production. Don’t burn, obviously, but regular exposure allows our bodies to make vitamin D. We need the D! And it is better to get as much as possible naturally. Also, if you get enough during the summer, then you should be fine with getting less during winter; our bodies are used to this rhythm. See this recent post by Dr. Lipman about the value of letting your body make its D.
8. Add nourishing herbal infusions to your regular weekly diet to boost mineral intake.
9. Switch to real Celtic sea salt to boost minerals.
10. If you aren’t yet, get into the habit of cooking once a day. Pick an easy recipe that you can learn to make fairly easily/quickly, and incorporate it into your regular eating habits. An easy one for this is making eggs every morning; try different preparation methods, different herbs, etc. The idea is to get used to cooking every day, really cooking, in that it involves using a pan or pot, the stove/oven, and washing up afterwards. So many of us are so out of this habit that it will take time to develop it. It certainly took me a couple of years to really get in the habit of cooking just breakfast!
11. Find out which local restaurants use real food ingredients. This is handy information for times when you can’t cook or haven’t yet expanded your recipe repertoire enough or are caught off-guard and need to eat.
12. Pick another nutrient-dense recipe/food preparation method and make it often. The best thing at this point is to learn to make bone broth. It’s really pretty simple but it yields incredible rewards. You want this recipe/method to be one of your staples that you can make without looking it up and without a second thought.
13. Start getting in the habit of buying staple foods instead of recipe ingredients or pre-made individual meals. As you budget, think more about “I can afford 1/2 lb meat per person per week, and only 1 lb of potatoes for everyone, and 1 lb of onions” and then learn to cook from those limits. Some butter, 1/2 lb of meat, a pound of cooked beans, a potato, onion, carrot, and spices can be combined in all sorts of ways to make a delicious meal. Don’t cook with ingredients you don’t use often unless your budget can stand it (mine can’t, except on special occasions/holidays).
14. Start learning how to make extra food each time you cook so that you have an extra meal or two already made for the next day. This gives you “breathing room” in your cooking schedule.
15. Start budgeting more money for the most nutrient-dense foods and less money for empty calories. As an example, I am willing to spend more for grass-fed butter, raw milk cheese, raw milk (when available), pastured eggs, and good meats.
16. Pick another recipe to master, and another, and so on. Keep building your cooking skill base and your recipe base, figuring out what is easiest for you, which ingredients are affordable, what you like best, etc. Lots of experimentation here. You want to build your familiarity with cooking enough so that you can provide food whenever needed without “needing” convenience or fast foods.
    1. If you aren’t already, start replacing “fake food” recipe ingredients with real food as necessary. For example, if you’ve got a favorite recipe from your mom that includes things like vegetable oil or Crisco or refined sugar or whatever, go online and find out what to switch those out with and how much. Pretty much any recipe is adaptable. My challenge later this year? Adapting the ubiquitous Thanksgiving green bean casserole!
17. Cook all your meals using real food and refuse to waste money on industrial fake foods. At this point, you are able to either make whatever you want to eat or you are confident enough to try making it. I jumped to this stage with a very limited cooking skill base, but I was willing to wing it and learn as I go. It helps if the food situation makes you angry enough to spit nails…
18. Reduce sugar consumption drastically. I did a very low-carb/ketogenic diet once that helped me lose weight, and while on it I realized I felt really good eating less sugar. The diet was insanely tough, but after the worst was over I realized that I wanted to keep out sugars. I feel better, my moods are stable, and I’m much happier. I do eat natural carbs like potatoes, yams, carrots, and homemade breads, but I eat them all with lots of fat, and I believe that’s the best way. I very rarely eat any sugar or natural sweetener. The more I read, the more I’m becoming convinced that sugar is one of the worst diet offenders out there, and I’ll write more about this soon.
19. Eat seasonally and locally. This one I’m working on this year. I’m currently figuring out my local options for meat & dairy, preparing to grow hopefully all of my produce & herb needs, and I’m only buying what is in season. I’ve only just begun to learn what my local options are, so I know this will take time.

Last but certainly not least, know that you are making the best food choices possible no matter how small your movements forward. Know that every change you make is a step in the right direction that can stave off a lot of possible future health concerns. Of course we can’t predict the future, and even if we ate “perfectly” (if there is such a thing) we could still end up with who-knows-what disease. But doing the best we can right now with what we know is the most positive, proactive way to take charge of our health and well-being and invest in a better future.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays for June 23, 2010.

With all the talk about real food these days, I thought I would offer my version of making the switch. Of course, eating more eggs, raw cheese, grass-fed beef, nitrate-free bacon, and grass-fed butter is easy, right? Well, sure, eating the good stuff isn’t a problem; it’s eating the good stuff all the time and not eating the bad stuff is the more challenging part.

The basic idea

Generally speaking, I conceive of “the switch” as going in 7 steps, like this:

• STEP 1: Read labels and stop eating additives. These are things like MSG, high fructose corn syrup, artificial anything, preservatives, added color, lab-created soy ingredients. Essentially, ingredients that you couldn’t go out and hunt/pick for yourself. These are the things that can damage organs and have been shown to cause all manner of disruptions in proper body metabolism, digestion, and maintenance (see a list here). This means reading labels all the time…seems like a pain in the arse, and it will be, at first. But the more you do it, the more you’ll see just how much crap is in processed food, and you’ll get better at recognizing good food from bad. By reading labels you’ll also be able to find foods that don’t use additives, and you can eat them with confidence. As an example, if you love Oreos, try this. First, read the label. Then see if a store near you carries the brand “Back to Nature” (Publix carries it); pick up a box of their oreo-like cookies and read the label. Then buy ‘em and try ‘em. Delicious! Eliminating additives does not mean eliminating flavor.
• STEP 2: Eat more nutrient-dense foods. This is the easy part (unless you’re a vegetarian, but that’s a whole other ballgame). Eat more grass-fed butter, high-quality eggs, nitrite-free bacon, grass-fed meats, organic & local veggies, raw milk cheeses, raw milk if you can, coconut oil, etc. These are the foods that Weston Price identified in his work as the ones creating vibrant health, and subsequent research has confirmed that they give us the most bang for our nutritional buck (see a full list here).
• STEP 3: Learn to cook. Hopefully, the more good foods you eat and the less additives you eat will make you want to do more of both. This will mean learning to cook—it isn’t that hard, no matter how busy you are!—and learning to plan ahead a bit. But the payoff, in the form of darn good meals, will be worth it. The payoff in improved health is even more worth it! The more you cook, the more it becomes a habit. Stop eating fast food, and start getting into the habit of making your own food to have on the go (once you get used to eating real food, which is so incredibly full of flavor, you won’t want to eat the flat, tasteless garbage that is sold as “fast food”). You won’t even want “snack foods” anymore, or rarely, because once you add good fats into your diet via real food, you won’t want extra food in between your delicious meals!
• STEP 4: Eliminate most sugar. Sugar, even natural sweeteners, can wreck havoc with your blood sugar and the ripple effect in the body is toxic. Especially if you’ve been eating the “standard American diet” for a long time, you’ve been ingesting way too much sugar. It’ll take time to wean yourself off of it, but as you do, you’ll feel so good you won’t find it difficult. Happily, as you eat more good fat, you’ll find that the carbs you take in from natural sources (potatoes, yams, carrots, etc) will be filling enough. Just be sure that when you do eat natural carbs, you eat them with plenty of fat. Whenever you need a sweet fix, try something like a slice of homemade, long-fermented bread slathered in butter and with honey on top. One of my favorite ways to feed the craving!
• STEP 5: Eat seasonally & locally by supporting small farms. This requires getting to know your area and what grows when, meeting farmers and growers, and questioning food stores so that you know exactly where all of your food came from. Your local supermarket probably carries a few local fruits & veggies, but local farmer’s markets are better places to buy from. Support the family directly! Also, when you’re ready to switch to only grass-fed beef, you’ll have to get to know local farms, as that will probably be the only way to find grass-fed meat. Grass-fed isn’t a farming method that is used in mass-produced meat, so forget buying national brands. You might think there isn’t anyone near you offering grass-fed meat, but you’d be surprised. I recently discovered a farm in southern Georgia that delivers all the way down here to west central Florida! I do have closer options, but it’s good to know that there are more people than I’d thought doing it all the right way. Also, by patronizing local farmers and growers, I feel that I can be more assured of a quality product; big national companies can, and do, put out inferior products and/or sicken people with alarming regularity. A small local farm? If they do that just once, they’re out of business. Small operations are much more committed to giving you a quality product, earning your trust, and hopefully earning your repeat business.
• STEP 6: When eating out, learn what’s an acceptable compromise and what isn’t. At some point, you’ll need to (or want to) eat out. If you’re like me, you’ll do the “eating crap just this once won’t matter” routine, eat the crap, feel like crap for days after, and swear not to do it again. After I did that the first three times, I decided to figure out what I should & shouldn’t eat when I eat out, and now I can go out with friends and have a good time without being “that girl” who won’t eat & drinks only water. I’ll post more about this topic in the future, since I think it’s something people struggle with, as I did.
• STEP 7: All real food, all the time. This is the ideal to work toward, and obviously requires a complete commitment to your health and a shift in thinking about food and our relationship to it. It forces us to slow down and plan ahead, two things we’ve been trained out of doing. (Warning: this stage might start to alter your perspective on more than food.)

So that’s it in a nutshell. I’ll write next about a more detailed switch plan, but for now I hear some bacon & eggs calling my name.

Stink bugs enjoying their daily meal.

In some ways, doing things organically is easy, such as buying a better product. In other ways, it’s really fraking hard, such as growing your own food, especially when your garden is irresistable to insect life.

I planted 9 tomato plants of various types. So far, I think 5 or 6 cherry tomatoes have been harvested that are edible.

Oh, quite a few tomatoes have grown, and quite a few are “on the vine,” so to speak. Lots of lovely fruit growing, lots of red bursting forth from among the green. It’s all so lovely, actually, that stink bugs moved in, and they’re eating every tomato that tries to grow.

How does one deal with this problem? Well, from what I have found, you pretty much have to do it by hand. Get a coffee can, put in soapy water or honey or something to trap the suckers, and flick them off one by one into the can, and dispose of as you will. Besides the fact that I really dislike killing things (yeah yeah yeah a bit pathetic in this case, but it’s true), I simply don’t have time every day to hunt through all the plants and pick off bugs. So I’ve sort of left them to it, grateful that they’re not eating the peppers or blueberries or herbs.

This experience has taught me a few things. First of all, it has taught me that gardening isn’t as simple as I’d used to think. My mom always had a veggie garden and made it look so easy; I’ve always only had flower gardens, and their care comes naturally to me, so I figured veggies would be just as easy. But when a lush vegetable garden starts to be undermined by all manner of insects—plants start to wither, turn yellow, look sickly and chewed up—the sense of helplessness is real. What can I do? Not much, for a part-time gardener. I can’t spray something on the plants to get rid of all the insects; I don’t want anything that can kill on my food. I can’t spend all day removing pests. All I can do is try to learn what I can about preventing the problems next time, and move on.

Which brings me to the second thing I’ve learned: organic farmers must be descended from gods. I’m a hell of a lot more appreciative of them than I was before, and I was really appreciative before! People who deal with things like insects invading their crop and needing to save a harvest and growing enough to feed themselves & thousands more and everything else farmers do have my utmost respect, admiration, and love. I am so beyond grateful that they do what they do that I’m almost fangirlish about it.

And the third thing I’ve learned is that while wanting to be more personally independent/self-reliant is a great idea in theory, the truth is that there is only so much we can do for ourselves, and that’s ok. It’s ok that we’re dependent upon each other. I look for the things I can do more self-reliantly, such as using self-powered devices and less electricity, but other things I’ll always rely on others for, such as food, but that’s ok—I just need to rely on people I trust to provide it. “It takes a village” and all that, and I want to build a village I feel secure in. In order to do that, I buy food I trust, real food, from companies I believe in. From the organic farmers I treasure.

So while I’m a bit saddened every day when I’m in my gardens and see the bugs feasting away, I remember that they’ve actually taught me to be more grateful for the real food community that’s out there. I don’t have to do this alone, and that’s an incredibly comforting thought.

Ok first off, sorry for being MIA to this blog for so long! My only excuse is that during spring and summer, I tend to blog less as I’m occupied elsewhere. So forgive me if posts are few & far between between now & fall.

But I had to write today my quest for a butter bell. What’s a butter bell? It’s an ingenious little ceramic crock that sits on a counter and stores butter. Yes, stores it on the counter. As in not in the fridge. A bell-shaped area is attached to the lid, and you put the butter in that, then invert it back into the crock that holds fresh water. The water creates a seal and keeps the butter fresh—the best part is that it keeps it soft and spreadable. Mmmmm.

I love this idea; I’m taken in by all the ways that people did things before things like refrigerators. I don’t like being so totally dependent on a refrigerator, an appliance that costs so much money to buy, to operate, and to fix/replace. We think of these things as “necessary” for life, but people lived for millions of years without them (and plenty still do). I often wonder how I might live without one (because I’m odd and I think about such things). Part of my simplifying and looking into homesteading ways includes considering how I might do without things I have been conditioned to think I can’t do without.

Little “gadgets” like butter bells are one way. I’d wanted one a few months back, but for varying reasons ended up forgetting about them. But then today the (awesome) blog Chickens in the Road posted about them, and my interest was renewed. Must. Have! Admittedly, I want one if for no other reason than to shock and surprise friends who come over…first they’re always surprised that I bake my own bread daily, but then to top that off by offering them butter that’s stored right there in the kitchen, not in the fridge…*cue maniacal laughter* I can see the expressions now! Priceless! Perhaps I should learn the words to the Sweeney Todd song sung by Mrs. Lovett, “Worst Pies in London,” so I can sing it while I offer bread and butter bell butter…hehehehehe.

So I went to buy a butter bell on Amazon.com, and oy.  There are lots of butter bells out there! Egad. I had no idea. I was going to get the one that Suzanne blogged about, since it’s inexpensive, but then as I looked I found not one but THREE that I like. Goodness, how to choose?

There’s the plain, inexpensive one, which is lovely and rustic and would do just fine…

Then there’s the adorable one marked “butter” and comes with its own spreading knife! Now that’s really cute. And there’s no mistaking what’s in it:

But then there is the Le Creuset model. In case you didn’t know (and I’m not sure I’ve blogged about it on here, actually), I love Le Creuset. LOVE it. I’m slowly collecting it as I can. So I almost have to get this one:

But…but…this one is three times the cost of the plain one. LE sigh.

Whenever I do finally make a choice and get one, I’ll be sure to blog about my experiences with it (including any guest reactions when they first see it…hehe).

I love this Cornishware lard jar! I gotta get one for my kitchen. Pic from this site (but sadly I cannot find one for sale, anywhere! Must keep searching…).

One of the first things I learned on my real food journey is that far from being the cardiac danger that the mainstream health experts would have you believe, saturated fat is a vital ingredient of vibrant health. I’d like to share what I’ve learned so far.

The background as to how and why saturated fat has been villified has been covered very well on many sites, so I won’t go into detail about that. The basics are this: In the 1950s, a researcher named Ancel Keys discovered what he considered to be a link between saturated fat, cholesterol, and heart disease. His theory came to be known as the “lipid hypothesis.” Since then, many more studies have been carried out, and despite years of health headlines to the contrary, no link has been found between saturated fat and heart disease. Indeed, when traditional populations are studied, such as what Weston A. Price did for his landmark study Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, their diets are found to contain an abundance of saturated fat, and the people are hale, hearty, and healthy. The fact that the lipid hypothesis continues to be promoted today can be attributed to the fact that sales of many drugs and fake foods are quite dependent upon it.

The “French Paradox,” the observation that the French eat all the stuff Americans think is “bad” yet have very low occurrences of heart disease, is no paradox at all; it is merely proof that saturated fat is our friend, not our foe.

What is saturated fat?

To sum it up crudely (apologies to any real science people who read this!), “fat” is one of the macronutrients of our diets (along with protein and carbohydrates). Fat is made up of “fatty acids,” which are chains of carbon atoms attached to each other with hydrogen atoms attached to each of the carbons.  ”Saturated” fatty acids are those whose carbon atoms are attached to each other via single “bonds” and then all the rest of the available space on each carbon has hydrogen atoms attached to it. The carbons are “saturated” with the hydrogens, making them very stable. “Monounsaturated” fatty acids have one pair of carbons that are bonded twice and thus each lack a hydrogen (they’re attached to each other a second time instead of picking up another hydrogen atom). “Polyunsaturated” fatty acids have two or more pairs of carbons doing the double-up game. Confused? Understandable. Check out this page for a better explanation and diagrams.

All edible fats are made up of combinations saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Our bodies use them all for various functions. However, getting too much of one and not enough of others causes all sorts of problems. So how do we know how much to eat of each? Simple: eat real whole foods as they come to us from good ‘ole Mother Nature (in other words, not industrial vegetable oils or fake butter-like concoctions or Crisco). She knows how to balance it all out.

What does saturated fat do in the body?

Saturated fat is vital for so many processes in the body. Here’s a brief list:

• Saturated fat is needed to absorb nutrients; they act as carriers for fat-soluble vitamins. This is why getting vitamins via food instead of taking them in pills results in your body actually being able to use them. This is also why you get much more nutrition from vegetables if you put butter on them—the saturated fat in butter allows your body to absorb most of the nutrients. As an example, fat is needed for the body to convert the carotenes in carrots into Vitamin A; without the fat, the carotenes are unusable. You do not get nearly as much nutrition from plain vegetables as you do from those eaten with saturated fat.
• Saturated fat makes up at half or more of all cell membranes, allowing them to maintain the interrelations of the cell to its surroundings. The role of saturated fat in cell biology is incredibly complex, and for a short explanation of some of it, see this post on the Weston A Price site.
• Saturated fat helps control potential problems from other types of fat. Nora Gedgaudas, author of Primal Body, Primal Mind, says this: “Saturated fats, by virtue of their saturation are inherently resistant to oxidation and serve to protect delicate polyunsaturated fats from oxidation and help both to transport them and utilize them more effectively… 80% of what clogs arteries isn’t saturated fat or cholesterol at all, but, rather, rancid unsaturated/polyunsaturated fats that then stick to the arterial lining (like shellac) and generate irritation and inflammation.” She goes into a lot of detail about saturated fats in this post.
• Saturated fat is necessary for calcium to be absorbed into bones; take all the supplemental calcium you want or drink lots of milk, but if you’re not getting enough saturated fat in your diet, your bones won’t get the calcium.
• Saturated fat has been shown to protect the liver by reducing the buildup of fat in the liver. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is on the rise, and while it is a result of too much fructose in the diet, the link between saturated fat and less liver fat is telling. A liver stressed by too much fructose is even more stressed when it lacks saturated fat, thus paving the way for disease. From what I’ve seen of people around me, those who over-consume fructose usually under-consume saturated fat.
• Saturated fat feeds the brain; the brain is made up of fat and cholesterol, and skimping on saturated fat can slowly rob your brain of nutrients it needs to function properly. Think of all the problems people have today that are related to brain issues, from Alzheimer’s to depression. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
• Saturated fat lowers Lp(a), a substance that has been found to contribute to heart disease.
• Saturated fat supports metabolism. Saturated fat is used as a source of energy and slows down nutrient absorption, which keeps you feeling fuller longer.
• Saturated fat nourishes skin. Fat is what keeps skin & hair healthy throughout life, and while putting on oils and creams can have short-term benefits, nothing creates lovelier skin like feeding it from within.

…and there are plenty more. What all of this means is that saturated fat plays a crucial role in maintaining every part of health.

What happens if we don’t get enough saturated fat?

While the body can and does make saturated fat from carbohydrates, that is not the same kind of saturated fat that it gets from dietary sources. A lack of dietary saturated fat has been linked to almost every modern lifestyle disease we have. Look at the above list of what saturated fat does in the body…and then imagine what happens when those processes are interrupted due to lack of saturated fat. Even if you have only a basic understanding of body systems, you can see that problems are inevitable without saturated fat.

What are good sources of saturated fat?

Happily, eating enough saturated fat is easy and delicious. Fat gives food flavor and makes us want to eat it, thus giving us all the nutrients our bodies need. This is why food flavoring companies have spent billions upon billions in their secret labs trying to recreate the full flavor of fat-laden foods. Of course, most of us know that the fake stuff can’t even remotely compare to the real deal. There is a reason for that…your body knows when you’re trying to fool it. It knows when you’re trying to give it stuff it can’t use. Feed it actual fat, though, and you’ll feel that amazingly satiated and satisfied feeling you can’t get with anything but real fat.

So what are the best sources of saturated fat? You could probably guess most of these:

• Butter from pastured, non-treated cows and preferably a deep yellow color
• Real cheeses, cream, whey, raw milk
• Egg yolks, preferably from wandering, free-pecking hens
• Coconut oil
• Duck fat
• Ghee
• Lard
• Olive oil
• Chicken fat
• Other fatty cuts of meat such as bacon

If saturated fat information was wrong in the past, what makes it correct now?

All the science behind this can be confusing and frustrating. Back in the 50s, they thought they knew what was going on in the body, and gave out recommendations. Years go by, new illnesses appear, more research is done, new recommendations come out. The new stuff naturally contradicts the older. Why believe any of it? Who’s to say who is correct now?

For me, the best way to deal with such thoughts—and oh I’ve had them—is to look back at how people have eaten, and thrived, for millinia. Look at the above list of saturated-fat foods; these have been diet staples to all peoples throughout history. Many people subsisted on more fat than anything else, because it makes you feel full, and when food is scarce, you want to feel full. Whether you think of remote tribal peoples or Native Americans or the pioneers or even a couple centuries back in Europe, people subsisted by eating entire animals—including fat & organ meats—and added variety with a few grains and vegetables as they could, sometimes going entire winters living off of fat and meat. If saturated fat led to heart disease and death, humans would not have made it this far; a child brought up on such fare would not have lived too much past his/her teens, let alone thrived long enough to carry on the species so abundantly. Also, consider that the incidence of heart disease began to rise with the decline of saturated fats in American diets; before the early 20th century, heart disease was rare enough to be considered an anomaly. The 20th century saw a massive increase in the study of how food affects us and gave us all sorts of “eat this not that” recommendations. These caused us to stop eating all sorts of things our ancestors ate and to start eating all the newfangled fake foods meant to be “healthier” than what nature provides. A multi-billion dollar industry was born…and look around. The consequences of all that is painfully clear. The more we tinker with food, the worse off we get.

While the 20th century might have given us cures for the diseases that killed our forefathers & mothers, it also took out of our diets too many necessary nutrients and has given us new diseases to take the place of the ones we cured—plus a few new ones to boot. One step forward, two steps back. But I think of it this way: as we come to understand and respect the wisdom of the past, we can combine it with our current knowledge to create a vibrant future of truly better health.

Starting with a daily helping of saturated fat.

Sources & Links:

• Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig
• Full Moon Feast by Jessica Prentice
• Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A Price (full text here)
• “7 Reasons to Eat Saturated Fat,” excerpted from the wonderful book The 6-Week Cure for the Middle-Aged Middle by the Drs. Eades (posted on Tim Ferris’s blog)
• “Saturated fat and heart disease: Studies old and new” by Dr. Eades
• “Two major studies conclude that saturated fat does not cause heart disease” by Dr. Briffa

Sorry for the poor picture quality; I wasn’t really ready to photograph this recipe! I’ll take better pics when I make it next and will update this post accordingly. But at least you can still see the yumminess…

Happy Easter to those who celebrate it!

Since I stopped eating candy or sweets, I must say that all the commercials for such things held *no* appeal for me this year. Most of it I can’t eat due to my peanut allergy; the rest is unappealing when I read the ingredient list. Blah! And since I stopped eating “sweets,” as in regular consumption of them, I gotta say that I just don’t miss them. I do get “sweet” cravings every so often, and raw honey does the trick amazingly well. Actually, my favorite indulgence is…ready for this? Eating little dabs of butter with honey drizzled on them! Yes, just butter and honey! No bread, lol! The fat and sweet combination really hits the spot. But as I’ve said before, I tend toward the weird side…

As I thought about Easter, though, and indeed about Valentine’s Day that recently passed, what I realized is that I don’t miss gorging out on cheap candy; I miss the specialness of having “treats.” I would rather happily enjoy a few rich truffles than a whole basketful of bland, mass-produced candy. But since I hadn’t even begun to think about where to find a real-foods-type of truffle or other treat, and didn’t have any recipes on my radar, I just pushed the thoughts to the back of my mind for later.

But then I came across a wonderful post by Raine of Agricultural Society. She’d made some scrumptious-sounding, truffle-like, real-food treats for a friend’s birthday party…what a great idea! My roommate’s birthday was coming up, and these treats were the perfect answer for what to make instead of cake! My roommate had been asking if she’d have a cake this year, but knowing my aversion to crappy ingredients, she asked with trepidation, as if I was going to stomp all over her desire for a birthday cake with my pronouncement of its deadly effects on those who eat it. Well, I did pronounce typical birthday cakes deadly, heh. What else can a real foodie do? But I told her she’d still have birthday goodies, although I refused to tell her what they were.

Her birthday is next weekend, and in an example of perfect timing, she went out of town this weekend. So I had time to test the recipe before her birthday…and look at that, I could try it on Easter weekend. Yay for special-occasion goodies once more!

Yesterday I went and got the ingredients. A bit pricier than what I used to pay for making sweet things, but that’s ok. The idea behind a recipe like this is that it is a treat, that it only gets made every now and then, that it feels like an indulgence. The higher price should keep it perfectly in perspective.

So without further ado, here’s the recipe. I found it at Raine’s site, and she found it at The Nourishing Gourmet. I’ve added my own notes from my first attempt.

“Mounds” or “Almond Joy” Candy Bars
Makes 12

INGREDIENTS

Coconut base

• 1/2 c. coconut oil (I use expeller-pressed, not virgin, so there isn’t any coconut taste in the oil; it is also a bit cheaper)
• 1/4 c. of raw honey (I used FL wildflower)
• 1 1/3 c. unsweetened coconut flakes
• 1 tsp almond extract (I splurged on an organic one)
• OPTIONAL: 36 almonds (I used raw)

Chocolate topping:

• 3/4 c. cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
• 1/4 c. of raw honey (more for a bit more sweetness; I added a couple more squeezes)
• 1 c. of coconut oil
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract

TOOLS

• A 12-compartment muffin tin, or 2 6-compartment tins
• A 2-cup glass measuring cup or a glass mixing bowl that can sit sturdily over a pot of water

DIRECTIONS

1. Start by testing to see if your muffin tin can lay flat in your freezer. If it can’t, use two 6-compartment tins (these should be able to lay flat); if you don’t have them, you’ll need to add more time to the making of these since they will have to harden in the refrigerator (see below).
2. Make the coconut base: Melt the 1/2 c. coconut oil and 1/4 c. honey over low heat until just melted. Whisk to combine.
3. Add the coconut flakes and the almond extract.
4. OPTIONAL: Place three almonds in each compartment of the muffin tin. Using almonds makes these an “Almond Joy”-like treat; foregoing the almonds makes them “Mounds.” (“Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t…”)
5. Divide the coconut mixture evenly into each compartment, making sure you get an even mixture of coconut flakes and coconut oil. I think I put half a tablespoon into each and then added a bit more until it was used up. I also then sort of flattened & spread it into the bottom of each compartment.
6. Best way: Place in the freezer, flat, and freeze until hard, approximately 30 minutes. If you can’t place the muffin tin flat, if you have to set it at an angle it should be ok for THIS step; there isn’t enough liquid in the cups for it to matter (this was what I did). The other option is to lay it flat in the refrigerator and give it more time to harden up.
7. While the coconut base is setting up, make the chocolate mixture: Combine all chocolate ingredients in a 2 cup measuring glass and place in a pot of simmering water. Or if you don’t have a large enough measuring cup, as I do not at the moment, use a glass mixing bowl set over a pot of simmering water.
8. Slowly heat until everything is just melted; remove from heat. Either whisk briskly or use a hand blender to combine well (I stirred it really fast with a spoon).
9. Take out the now-frozen coconut mixture and evenly divide the chocolate mixture over it; start with two tablespoons of chocolate per compartment to start, then add one more per compartment until it is all used.
10. Put the muffin tin back into the freezer to harden, approx 30 minutes. This is where laying it flat is essential! You can’t set the tin at an angle once the chocolate is added, as it will spill. So if you can’t lay it flat in the freezer, lay it flat in the refrigerator. I didn’t time how long it took for the chocolate to fully harden this way, but it was probably at least an hour, probably more. After it hardened I put the tin into the freezer to fully set.
11. Once the treats have completely hardened and set, you’ll need to use a butter knife or other implement to carefully wedge them out. They might crack or break off in pieces (see photo above!), but hey, that’s the beauty of homemade treats. I also advise “testing” one before serving to others, just to make sure you’re feeding friends and family good stuff. Yes, testing one (or two) is of paramount importance…

NOTE: Keep them in the freezer until ready to serve. Also, eat quickly after removing from freezer, as they can melt fast.

NOTE 2: These are insanely delicious. Insanely. Rich, decadent, satisfying. One is all you need, maybe two, but only if you’re used to eating coconut oil. Why? Because these are sooo full of coconut oil, and if you aren’t used to eating coconut oil, it can bother your tummy a tad (she says from experience). If you’re used to coconut oil, then you’ll have no problems. If you’re not used to it, well, I won’t suggest you eat these daily until you become used to it, even if they are a fantastic way to get more coconut oil into your diet…no, I’d never suggest such a thing. (A post on the wonders of coconut oil is coming soon.)

What I found most amazing about these is my own reaction to them—my mental reaction, that is. I felt guilty…as if I’d eaten a big sugar-laden dessert…and so after I ate my two, I went out into the yard to do some yard work because I felt like I needed to help burn off all the sugar! Then as I moved bricks around, I realized that wait a minute, I hadn’t eaten hardly any sugar! The only sweetener in these bars is honey, and the amount of honey in one of them is no more honey than I usually eat when indulging in honey. The rest of it was all “unsweetened,” and all the ingredients are real and have nutritional value. Yet the flavors were so intense that my mind was convinced that I must have eaten something far more problematic than I had.

I am thinking of experimenting with this recipe in the future; I’d like to add some other flavors to the chocolate (perhaps some chili pepper, a la the movie Chocolat?). But until then, this recipe not only hits the spot, it hits spots you didn’t know needed hitting. I do believe it’ll be a huge hit with my roommate next weekend for her birthday. And as for today being Easter…why, I do believe that’s a lovely reason to eat another one (or two)! Have a wonderful Sunday!

While I love to cook, I don’t really get into trying lots of new recipes, especially if they require items I don’t usually keep on hand. I cook based on what I’ve got in my pantry. I don’t “meal plan” per se, as I buy the staples that I can afford in a given week and then decide what to make with them. So it is that I came up with this black bean chili.

When I have less money for quality meat, I buy more dry/bulk (organic) beans. Black beans are one of my favorites; they’re good on their own, in soups and salads, and refried in bacon grease (with a side of bacon!).

I soak my black beans a long time and with whey, per Nourishing Traditions. I then bring to a boil, skim, cover, and simmer for another long time, 3-5ish hours generally (I keep an eye on them throughout the cook time, adding water as needed). Because this takes time to prepare this way, I prepare at least a pound of dry beans at a time. And you guessed it—this makes a LOT of beans! So I end up with a meal base to use for several days.

Recently I came across a recipe for black bean chili, and realized I had most of the ingredients on hand. Most, mind you. Not all. But I figured, given what I had, the result wouldn’t be inedible, so might as well try it. I’m so glad I did!

Here’s how I made it. I actually didn’t measure anything the first time around, and it came out wonderful. But for the sake of explaining how to recreate the recipe, I made it again while noting how much of the ingredients I used. Please know that you can use more or less of any of it to suit your tastes; that’s one thing I love about recipes like this, the loose & free nature of it that allows for experimenting and personal touches.

I made a printable recipe card for Simple Black Bean Chili…
Click the link to see the PDF & save it to print out.

–> VIEW & DOWNLOAD THE PRINTABLE RECIPE CARD HERE <–

SIMPLE BLACK BEAN CHILI

INGREDIENTS:

2 1/2 c cooked black beans
1 can tomato sauce
1/2 onion
3-4 cloves garlic
some olive oil
chili powder
paprika
dash of cayenne pepper
cumin
oregano
sea salt
pepper

DIRECTIONS:

1. Chop up onion & garlic as fine as you like it. Toss into a medium sauce pan.
2. Add some olive oil, enough to cover onion & garlic.
3. Saute over medium low heat until onions are translucent & everything is fragrant.
   
4. Add cooked black beans.
   
5. Add tomato sauce. You might want to start with a bit less (the first time I made this I used less, maybe 2/3 can); after you add it in and stir it around, taste it. You’ll know if you need more, or if it’s just right.
   
6. Add all spices to taste. Start w/less, then add as needed (esp. careful w/cayenne pepper!). I shook in a bit of each, then added a couple good pinches of sea salt, and only a couple twists of pepper. Stir, taste, add more if you want. Like with the tomato sauce, you’ll know when you have the right mix by tasting as you go.
   
7. Cook about 10 minutes on medium-low to medium heat, letting flavors blend. Should gently simmer.
8. Serve and enjoy!
   

A few notes…

• This makes about 2-ish servings, depending on how hungry you (and any others) are. I get two meals out of it. It’s great to make for dinner and then reheat for lunch the next day. You can easily make larger pots of it by doubling everything.
• Next time I make beans, I’m going to cook them in bone broth instead of plain water, which should enliven the taste of everything I make with them, including this recipe! Mmmm.
• I have added shredded chicken to this, and it was amazingly good. I have also put this over a big baked potato…again, scrumptious! Would also be good with beef or turkey or pork, and over rice or noodles.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays for March 31, 2010.