Breakfast Time!

I Wish You Could Smell This!
I promise no one will miss the cold cereal when you serve up a breakfast like this one! Butch and I worked together to bake/blend/mix up this delicious meal! I made the Cinnamon Bread Sticks, and Butch made the scrambled eggs and the Fruity Yogurt.



Cinnamon Bread
Start with half a batch of basic soaked dough.



Knead a rounded teaspoon of Real Salt, and a rounded teaspoon of baking soda into the dough.



Butter your stone and roll out the dough evenly. Spread a thin layer of butter over the dough, and then a thin layer of Sucanat.



Sprinkle cinnamon over the whole thing and then bake at 350 for 25 minutes.



Let it cool for a few minutes and then use your pizza cutter to slice it into squares. Big Guy calls these squares "sugar cubes!"

Fruity Yogurt



I poured 1 quart of my homemade, raw milk yogurt into the blender. (If you're not making yogurt yet, don't worry! Dannon makes a great plain yogurt. Just be sure to buy the full fat kind, not low-fat. Brown Cow is another brand that is pretty easy to find.) Butch added 3 bananas, 5 frozen strawberries, and a 1/2 teaspoon of pure vanilla. Whiz that until it's well blended. It will be a little soupy. He poured the Fruity Yogurt into bowls and then I sprinkled a few teaspoons of Sucanat into each bowl.

What a great way to start the day!

Homemade Breakfast Cereal Recipe

There was a time, not too long ago, that a big chunk of our grocery money went to purchasing cold cereal. To tell the truth, I was a cereal addict! I enjoyed a bowl for breakfast and then once the kids were in bed I would enjoy another bowl. (OR TWO!) In the back of my mind somewhere I knew that it wasn't the most nutritious thing we could be eating, but I had lots of reasons why I felt justified in eating it. See if any of these reasons sound familiar. Just for fun let's do a "Top 10 Reasons to Eat Cold Cereal For Breakfast" list!

10. "It's magically delicious!" (Lucky Charms!)
9. The bus is going to be here in 10 minutes!
8. "It's part of this nutritious breakfast."
7. I got it on sale!
6. The kids really like it!
5. I don't have time to cook breakfast!
4. It's the "Breakfast of Champions!" (Wheaties - my favorite!)
3. I only get the kinds made with whole grains!
2. It's fortified with vitamins and minerals!
1. It's SOOOOOOOOOOO easy!

I have said all these and more at different times in my life! Here are a few quotes from a great book, Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon.
"Boxed Breakfast cereals are made by the extrusion process, in which little flakes and shapes are formed at high temperatures and pressures. Extrusion processing destroys many valuable nutrients in grains, causes fragile oils to become rancid and renders certain proteins toxic. For a new generation of hardy children, we must return to the breakfast cereals of our ancestors."

Also from Sally Fallon's book - "In 1960, researchers at Ann Arbor University performed an interesting experiment on lab rats. Eighteen rats were divided into three groups. One group received cornflakes and water; a second group was given the cardboard box the cornflakes came in and water; and the control group received rat chow and water. The rats in the control group remained in good health throughout the experiment. The rats receiving the box became lethargic and eventually died of malnutrition. But the rats receiving cornflakes and water died before the rats who were given the box - the last cornflake rat died on the day the first box rat died."

The truth, and this was VERY hard for me to swallow, is that bagged/boxed breakfast cereals do more harm than good. If you need any further proof, look at the ingredient list. Sugar is almost always the number 2 or 3 ingredient.

SO! Knowing that they have no place in our diet, we are left with a few questions that were mind boggling to me. WHAT THE HECK DO WE HAVE FOR BREAKFAST? YOU MEAN I HAVE TO COOK ANOTHER MEAL? EVERY DAY? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Let's all take a deep breath at this point...

Here's another truth. Yes, we need to cook breakfast each morning for our families. (I remember being a little angry at this.) The good news is that it's not that hard, once you get in the swing of it. You know you can trust me when I say this because I was once hooked on cereal and now we never have it and I know it's possible! With a little planning and a little preparation the night before, breakfast can be quick and easy. Not as quick as opening a box, but still pretty easy!

Here is a list of our favorite breakfasts.

Oatmeal (See my previous post on how to make REALLY good oatmeal.)
eggs
muffins (see my post about soaked dough for muffins)
fruit
yogurt with fruit
biscuits (see the soaked dough post for biscuits)

I mix and match these things to keep breakfast from being boring. We have oatmeal about 3 times a week. Every once and a while I make granola, but not very much. (Have you ever noticed that you get a case of the "toots" after you eat granola? That's your body telling you it cannot digest those unsoaked oats!) My kids are a lot better behaved in the mornings since we stopped eating cold cereal. The reason is that a bowl of cold cereal is digested and out of their systems very quickly! My breakfasts now are power packed with complex carbs and good fats that take time to be digested. My little ones usually need a snack a few hours later (smaller tummies) but my older kids and myself are usually not even hungry until lunch time!

I am so far off topic now! I started this post to give you a recipe for homemade breakfast cereal and instead I've stepped up on my soap box again. I will say just a bit more and then I will give you the recipe!

Just because we stopped eating cold cereal doesn't mean I don't still get cravings to sit down and enjoy it's crunchy taste. I think in my mind it's comfort food. I've read in the last few months about different homemade cereal recipes, but I didn't think they could possibly taste good so I never tried. Silly me! I finally made some this week and it turned out so good! It tastes to me like Raisin Bran! When you try this remember that learning to cook with REAL FOOD takes some trial and error. The first time I made it I had to do a few things differently than the recipe called for. The second time I made it I burned it a little. Just keep trying and learn how to make it work for you!

Drum Roll Please...

HOMEMADE COLD CEREAL
Makes about 10 cups

6 cups ground wheat
3 cups milk (raw is best)
1 cup water
1/4 whey, buttermilk or yogurt
2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 cup butter, melted (not in the microwave!)
1/2 cup honey
1 tsp salt
1 TBLS pure vanilla
1 TBLS cinnamon

Mix flour, milk, water and whey/yogurt in a large bowl. Cover and let sit overnight. (If you are not using raw milk you don't need to leave it overnight or use any whey/yogurt. Processed milk will rot whereas raw milk will culture. The culturing milk and whey will make the nutrients in the flour more friendly and absorbable. See my posts about raw milk and soaking grains if you need to learn more about this.) In the morning or in the afternoon, when ever you have time, add the rest of the ingredients. Mix until you have a pourable batter. I usually have to add a cup and a half of water to this or it's too thick.

Preheat the oven to 350 and butter two 9x13 inch cake pans. Pour the batter equally into the two pans. Bake for about 35-40 minutes. Don't let it burn! When it's done a toothpick will come out clean from the center and it will feel springy to the touch. Let it cool. Get out two cookie trays and your blender. With a big spoon scoop out your cake-like cereal and process it in your blender in small batches until it's crumbly. Pour the crumbs onto the cookie trays. (This is the most time consuming part.) Turn your oven down to 200 or 250 degrees and put the trays in. You are going to keep them in the oven until the crumbs dry out completely. I do mine at 250 and it takes about 2 hours. Check it and stir it and taste it often so you will know when it's done. write down how long it took so you'll know next time!

When it's out, let it cool and then transfer it into some kind of sealable container. When you are ready to eat it add raisins to it and pour some (raw!) milk over it. It is so good and so worth the effort!

No Microwave Popcorn!

One of my kids told me a while ago about how workers at factories that make microwave popcorn have to wear full-body protective suits because the chemicals in the "butter" flavoring are toxic. Needless to say we cut that out of our diets. (This was before we retired our own microwave.) I found an article today that says basically the same thing. It talked about how the companies making it said they took the toxins out several years ago but now studies are showing that the stuff they replaced it with is just as toxic! Some workers at these plants are filing lawsuits over it!

I KNOW it tastes great and it's fast, but it's TOXIC! You can buy an air popper for $10 and a bag of popcorn kernels for about $1.50. Pop your own and drizzle melted butter and real salt over it and YUM!!! An inexpensive, healthy snack! Get that toxic crap out of your pantry and into the trash ASAP! An easy thing to do to improve your family's health right now! Don't tell me it's extreme to toss it out or that I shouldn't believe everything I hear. Sometimes you HAVE to be extreme in order to keep yourself and your family healthy. Research it yourself and see what you find. I would love to talk about it!

Why I Changed My Mind About Cheese and Milk

When I went almost vegan 7 years ago I was convinced that all animal products were bad for our bodies. I cut out all animal products from my cooking and thought that our low-fat diet was the way to go. Not too long after that I read a book called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price, DDS. He told the story of his quest to find out why his American patients had such rampant tooth decay and other health issues. He decided to travel around to little isolated towns and villages throughout the world. Places where the "modern" Western diet hadn't been eaten. The book documents his findings with written words and pictures of people in these isolated places. What he found was that people who ate their native, traditional diet had strong bones, no tooth decay, no tooth crowding, no diseases, etc. The diets they followed differed a little from town to town, but they all basically ate what they grew from the ground and the animals they raised. They all ate animal fat, grain, veggies and fruit in their season and most of them ate dairy products.

What really caught my attention was that NOT ONE of these healthy populations ate a vegetarian diet. There was something in the animal products that contributed to the great health of these people. Dr. Price called it Activator X. I decided then to add eggs and a little cheese into our diet, and even some skim milk. We had maybe one serving of dairy a day. We still kept to a very low-fat diet. I mostly used olive oil and vegetable shortening when I cooked. I rarely used butter. I kept a few sticks of it in the fridge for buttering toast or putting on popcorn. My theory was that milk was meant for turning a 100 pound calf into a 500 pound cow as quickly as possible. It was not meant for humans. We are the only mammal that drinks the milk of another mammal.

As my food education progressed I learned about the terrible conditions cows and chickens were raised in. I felt even more sure that meat,milk, and eggs should play a very small role in our diet. Not to mention all the saturated fat these things contained! EW!

My food education took a huge detour when I really started to read and study Dr. Price's ideas and the books written by Sally Fallon. (She, by the way, is the president of the Weston A. Price foundation. They have a great website, check it out! I'll put the link at the bottom of this post.) The idea that people have been living healthy lives eating traditional foods for thousands of years really made me stop and think. I had to throw out my milk theory because I saw how plain silly it was. If you want to get crazy with that theory you can. We shouldn't eat eggs because they are potentially baby chicks who deserve to live! We shouldn't eat any meat because animals have rights! We shouldn't eat honey because it is stealing from the bees who work so hard to produce it. Do you see what I mean? What about the theory that a loving God created these things to sustain and nourish us? That's the theory I feel best about right now.

I also feel strongly that grains and fruits and veggies should make up the bulk of our diet. In a minute I'll give some sample menu plans I follow. The thing is, we need to be very careful about our FOOD SOURCES! We need to get our food from our own back yards as much as possible and then after that look for ways to get food that has not been doctored up with hormones, chemicals, and antibiotics.

I also feel strongly that a low-fat diet is actually BAD FOR YOU. That is why I am okay with the cheese and butter and milk. We have to get fat in our diets. If you go walk around the grocery store on a Fat Hunt, what will you find? Fat in peanut butter (hydrogenated), fat in cookies (hydrogenated), fat in processed oils, ie. canola, safflower, LIGHT olive oil, (rotten and bleached!) vegetable shortening (hydrogenated) processed milk products (DEAD and full of hormones and chemicals, eggs (from confined chickens fed a corn & grain based diet - not natural to their species), meat (from animals raised in confinement and therefore dosed with hormones and antibiotics, not to mention the poor diet they eat!) SO... where can we get healthy fats?

Here's my list:
Olive Oil - NOT the LIGHT variety - it's processed too.
Raw Milk
Pasture fed meat
Pasture fed chicken eggs
Raw nuts and raw nut spreads
Cheese
Butter
Sour Cream

This is why I'm okay with cheese, butter, and sour cream:
I would not buy my local store's brand of cheese or sour cream. I use Tillamook cheese. It is made from cultured, natural, no hormones added milk. We don't eat tons of it, but I use it almost daily to jazz up what I am making. I look for the best quality butter I can. Butter is a simple fat that is easily digested by our bodies. Butter is real! While I have not been able to find any made from raw milk, butter is a better choice for cooking and flavoring than the hydrogenated shortenings and the newfangled oils that are SO over-processed and just plain bad for you. I'm still trying to learn more about butter. I just can't cook everything in olive oil! I buy Daisy sour cream. The ingredient list is short - Cultured Cream. Sour cream is great made into dip, in soup, on pizza, I LOVE it! Someday I will have a few cows and make my own cheese and butter. In the mean time I'm just trying to get the best I can.

Bottom line:
We need fats in our diet. I'm going to use the fats that are naturally occurring on the earth, that are not processed and that have been valued as a healthy part of diets for thousands of years. I feel good about my choice.

A Few Sample Menus:

B - Soaked oatmeal w/ cream, raisins and apples
L - Pizza: soaked whole-wheat dough, organic pepperoni, tomato sauce, cheese
D - Chili: soaked beans, spices, home-canned tomatoes and soaked dough rolls

B - Scrambled eggs, fruit, and milk
L - Raw milk smoothies and soaked dough apple muffins
D - Soaked dough cheese sandwiches

B - Soaked dough muffins, fruit and milk
L - Soaked rice, zucchini(fried in butter) soaked rolls and carrots
D - Roast beef, veggies and soaked rolls

I try to have chopped veggies or air-popped, buttered popcorn for snacks. I also try to set out lacto-fermented pickled beets or pickles with the meals. Butter and cheese are not a big part of the meals. The raw milk and grains are. I use raw milk to culture buttermilk for the soaked dough, so we get it there too.

This has been a really long post!! Thanks for reading it. This topic has been rolling around in my head and I REALLY needed to get it out! Please ask me questions if there are any I haven't answered.

Here's the link for the Weston A. Price Foundation.
westonaprice.org

Questions About Making Oatmeal

My amazing sister-in-law asked me two really important questions about making oatmeal the way I do. #1 was why use full-fat yogurt and #2 was why take the time to soak and cook the oats when you can microwave them in a few minutes?

Before we answer the first question we have to toss out the notion that a low-fat diet is a healthy diet. In this day and age low-fat foods are all around us and we are bombarded daily with the message that low-fat is the way to go. This is simply not true. Our ancestors valued fats for their nourishing properties. Most of these fats were saturated fats. Saturated fats come to us naturally without having to be processed. I highly recommend reading Sally Fallon's books, Nourishing Traditions and Eat Fat, Loose Fat for a detailed lesson on the truth about fats.

Getting back to the yogurt question, look at the ingredients on the back of a low-fat carton of yogurt. You will find high fructose corn syrup, cornstarch, and a few things you can't pronounce very well. If you look at the ingredients on a carton of plain, full-fat yogurt you find one thing - cultured milk. It's not hard to pick which one is REAL FOOD.

To answer the question about preparing oats we really need to address two things - the benefits of soaking grains and the idea of tossing out your microwave. First, in the bran of grains there is something called phytic acid. Our bodies have a hard time breaking down this acid making it hard for our bodies to digest and use all the nutrients in grains. Soaking your oats and other grains in a cultured product like buttermilk, yogurt and also whey for 12 - 24 hours breaks down the phytic acid. It also makes the nutrients in the grains easy for your body to use as well as breaking down starches and upping the vitamin content. Wow!

Second, everyone should stop using their microwave ASAP! We gave ours up for good in March of this year. I got a toaster-oven for my birthday and between that and the good old fashioned stove-top I have found I don't miss my microwave at all. Now it takes me 3 minutes to melt my butter for popcorn instead of 30 seconds. I can wait an extra 2.5 minutes to ensure that I'm not dumping chemically altered butter on the food I'm about to serve to my kids. I know, I know, add this to the list of things that make Tara a nut! Google "microwave oven safety" and read the articles that come up with an open mind. What it comes down to is that microwaves alter the protein molecules of the food we cook. I don't really want any altered proteins in me. I've got enough to worry about as is is!

All of this really comes down to preparing foods in ways that our bodies can best use the good stuff in them. Soaking grains ensures that you will get the most nourishment out of them. NOT microwaving foods ensures that your food stays in its proper form.

p.s. I can just see some of you rolling your eyes and saying cooking like this takes too much time and aforethought. It kinda does. I guess it all depends on your attitude. I must confess that for many years I was a cold cereal addict. I could eat Frosted Mini Wheats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A huge chunk of my grocery money when to cold cereal each month. (Me, my hubby, and 6 kids chowing down every morning! Can you imagine?) I got heavy into couponing for a while and I had about 50 boxes of cold cereal in my basement! When the number of cereal boxes dipped below 20 I started to panic! What will we eat for breakfast!? Mornings with 6 homeschooling children need to get started quickly and easily. Nothing is easier than opening a box of Shredded Wheat! When I really got serious about no processed food and stopped buying cold cereal I had a major mental shift. I started planning my meals out ahead of time and preparing the night before. It was like a whole new world opened up before me. THERE WERE OTHER THINGS TO EAT FOR BREAKFAST BESIDES COLD CEREAL! Now our breakfasts are nourishing and made of REAL FOODS. Yes it does take a little extra time, but it is SO WORTH IT!

Dairy and Fat

Now that I have convinced you all to switch to raw milk (tee hee!) let's talk for a minute about other dairy products. Butter and cheese are on the top of my list and I am going to focus on them today. For many years butter and cheese were used VERY sparingly in our house. A little butter on toast or popcorn and a little cheese sprinkled on soups or maybe a little in a sandwich. After all, butter and cheese are full of saturated fat and everyone knows saturated fat is bad for you, right?

Let's look back in time several hundred years. How did our ancestors get fat in their diets? Families lived on farms and worked the land. They kept chickens, pigs, and cows for meat, eggs, milk, cheese and butter. They grew acres of wheat and oats, and gardens for produce to supplement their diets. Pretty much all the fat they ate came from animal products in the form of saturated fat. They never used any kind of oil in cooking. Mothers saved bacon grease and used animal fats in cooking.

The saturated fats they used stayed stable/solid at room temperature. They were not processed at high temperatures or changed in any way. They milked the cow, made the butter and ate it. The so called healthy oils, like corn oil, we are told to replace butter with today are processed at extremely high temperatures. They are rancid (rotten) at that point and so the manufacturer bleaches the oil. What sounds more appealing, rotten, bleached corn oil or fresh, REAL butter?

Saturated fat is actually a blessing! Are you a little shocked by that? I know! It took me a long time to accept that as truth. But it makes so much sense to me now. Our ancestors ate saturated fats and heart disease and cancer were rare. When we were told to go "low fat" and avoid all saturated fats heart disease and cancer rates went through the roof.

SO! Put butter and cheese back on the menu. Just be sure that you get good quality products. I use Tillamook cheese. It's the best quality cheese I have found. Right now I buy butter, and the cheese, from Costco. The price is excellent. I use butter in my bread, on rolls and muffins, on popcorn, saute veggies in it, etc. I like to also use olive oil for a few things, but mostly I cook with butter. Kids will eat their veggies gladly when you add a plop of butter and Real Salt to them. Cookies and other treats just taste better with butter!

p.s. I do think there is such a thing as too much butter and cheese. Just use good judgement!

Real Milk?

Let's talk about raw milk. The idea that milk is actually good for you was the hardest thing for me to accept. Living in the Land of Vegetarianism for so long had me convinced that milk was evil and the root of many health problems. I was partially right. The milk you buy at your local grocery store IS a major source of health problems. It is DEAD! Fresh milk from a local dairy, where the cows are pasture fed and well cared for, is ALIVE and the health benefits you can obtain from it are many. I could write pages and pages about WHY raw milk is best! I'll sum it all up in a few sentences and strongly encourage you to do your own research to understand it further.

Here's the deal - the milk you buy at the grocery store shouldn't really even be called milk. The cow that milk came from was raised in confinement and fed food that is in no way natural to the species. She is injected with growth hormones and antibiotics and forced to produce way more milk than is good for her. The milk she gives is tainted with those hormones. The milk is then processed in ways that kill the good stuff - the enzymes. The enzymes in raw milk actually help you digest the milk. When the enzymes are dead you have trouble digesting and TA DA!, health problems!

How to get it:
Finding raw milk can be a challenge. It's not impossible though. I would recommend going to http://www.realmilk.com/. They have lots of good suggestions. You can also look in your yellow pages under "dairy" and start calling around. If there is a dairy close to you, or even not so close, go visit them and see if they have any. Even better, try to find a neighbor with a few cows.

How I use raw milk:
1. Drink it!
2. Make cultured products from it like buttermilk (used to soak grains), and yogurt.
3. Make smoothies. So good with frozen bananas and strawberries!

Milk was valued by our ancestors as an essential part of their diet. When the cows are well taken care of the milk they produce is fresh and healthy!

What Is REAL Food?

This is a very interesting question! The best answers to this question I have found come from the book Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. I read her book about 7 years ago, but wasn't quite ready to accept the principles she laid out. I spent the next 7 years cooking lots of healthy vegetarian meals for my family and felt like all was well. Last March I picked the book up again and felt like my eyes were opened to a whole new world! Throughout the book Ms. Fallon presents evidence that true health comes from eating REAL foods. Let's take a quick look at a list of real foods:


1. Raw milk and milk products

2. Fruits and vegetables - fermented, cooked and raw

3. Whole grains - soaked or sprouted

4. Meat - pasture fed

5. Eggs - from pasture fed hens

6. Raw nuts

7. Honey, sucanat, or other unrefined sweeteners



Pretty short list, right? Feeling like I'm a little crazy? Maybe I am, but stay with me for a minute. While this list is very short, the possibilities of what you can do with these items is ENDLESS! Let's do a few comparisons to help me make my point. Go grab a box of cereal. Read the ingredients. Pretty long list? Where was sugar listed? Number two ingredient? Now grab your canister of oatmeal. I know you have one in the back of your pantry! Not instant oats, real oats! Look at the ingredients. OATS!! Real food. Grab your box of fish crackers. Read the ingredients. How many ingredients? Can you pronounce the names of all the ingredients? Now grab an apple and a handful of raw almonds. Two ingredients. Real food. I'm sure you get my point.

Real health, real happiness comes from feeding ourselves and our families real food. Over the next few weeks I will go into detail on my list of real foods. I'll talk about how to prepare them, where to find them, and WHY we should eat them. I would love to hear your feedback! Please comment on any questions you have that you would like to see answered in upcoming posts. In the meantime, go through your cupboards and pantry and read the labels on your food. Toss out that stuff you know is garbage! You can do it!