Category Archives: food

Movie: Genetic Roulette

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I have to confession to make. While I suspected that there were Bad Things about genetically modified organisms (GMOs), especially the food we eat, I never looked into the issue in any real detail. So when I cam across the website for the movie Genetic Roulette the other day, it caught my attention.

So imagine my surprise to find that the full length movie was available on-line!

We watched it the other night and were treated to a well assembled movie showcasing the basic information about GMOs, how government regulation (at least in this country) is non-existent, and the apparent effects of high-GMO diets on both lab animals and real read-blooded humans.

Let’s just say it’s not a pretty story. But it definitely makes you think harder about the rise of inflammatory related chronic diseases, food “allergies” and immune disorders.

Unsurprisingly, the advice that you walk away with is:

  1. don’t trust the government to keep our food supply healthy
  2. don’t trust big companies to keep our food supply healthy
  3. eat organic, whole, unprocessed and unmodified foods as much as possible

There are some pretty interesting parallels between the behavior changes humans (especially children) and animals when they’re on high-GMO diets (as many unknowingly are nowadays, thanks to a lack of regulation and labeling laws).

A few places in the film felt highly speculative (lacking good scientific basis), but the speakers did not use language which tried to trick us. I’m sure some of this is due to lack of information, funding, and research. But there’s clearly an element of wishful thinking (wanting to draw connections between various observations that haven’t really been tested yet). Thankfully, the majority of the film was on pretty solid ground and was definitely informative.

I definitely recommend watching it if you’re curious about GMOs and our country’s apparent resistance to regulate them in the least.  It may also be worth buying the full DVD to support the movie and get the other bits of bonus material that come with it. It looks like it contains more of the hard science and references.

After watching this film, you’ll come away with a new-found “respect” (and by respect, I mean disgust) for Monsanto and their influence on our government policy.

Homemade vs. Store Bought

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We make the vast majority of our own food these days. I guess that makes us bad “consumers” but we’re generally trying to avoid store bought “processed” foods. When some people hear the term “processed foods” they wonder what that really means? Does it mean you can’t use machines to sort your apples and peaches? No, not really. Processed food is food that is made in a factory and includes a lot of ingredients that you’d never use in your own kitchen.

To get an easy comparison between homemade foods and their store-bought processed counterparts, check out Ingredient Overload: Store-Bought vs. Homemade. What you’ll see is that the factory-made “food” typically contains twice as many ingredients (often more). And, if you spend a few minutes and try to actually read the labels and identify the additives, you’ll realize that you don’t know what most of them are–let alone why they’re there.

Most of them are there to increase shelf-life and make food easier to transport. Some of them are there to artificially enhance the food’s flavor (either so you’ll eat more or to cover up the lack of flavor present without the additives).

Which would you prefer? Which is going to be healthier for you in the long run?

Deer Carnage, or Why You Need a Wire Fence

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Having a garden in the Sierra foothills is an interesting give and take with Mother Nature. Consider the following:

  • we have abundant sunshine and warm days but little rain, so we need a drip irrigation system
  • the hills and pine trees make our yard very scenic, however it was a challenge to find some reasonably flat land with good sunlight for our garden
  • we have tons of wildlife, so bees readily find our crops and pollinate them, but there are deer out there every night wanting to eat our plants

That last point was driven home a bit over a month ago. I ventured down to the garden while Kathleen was out of town and immediately found something wasn’t quite right.

Deer Got The Fence

Yeah, the plastic “deer resistant” fence had been broken right near a post and at least one of our “furry friends” had managed to feat upon our plants.

Deer Chowed the Peppers

What was once a bunch of nicely growing pepper plants had become mere green sticks overnight.

Deer Eaten Berry Plants

And our previously amazing tomato forrest was quite leafless and barren down low. The berry plants looked even worse!

Needless to say, I spent some time patching it up that night and we were thankful they left most of the tomatoes in place. Given sufficient time, light, and water they had a good chance of recovering and continuing to produce.

The next day I picked up Kathleen from Nevada and, after arriving home, she headed down to the graden to see the damage for herself. And wouldn’t you know it? The deer had broken in again!

Clearly we needed to take things up a notch or two. So I orded three fifty foot rolls of the tallest wire fence that we could get at Lowe’s. Kathleen picked it up that afternoon and we installed it that night.

It’s been a bit over a month now and the garden has been deer-free. Many of the plants have recovered and some are even producing new fruit. As long as the cold nights hold off long enough, we still expect to have a pretty good (though not great) harvest this season.

Lesson learned: Deer will chew through plastic fence to get to your garden. Use wire fence. There a are a few more pictures available if you’re curious.

Paleo Friendly Thai Beef Soup Recipe

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Tonight, we had an awesome Paleo friendly Thai beef soup. The recipe was inspired by our original Thai Chicken Soup Recipe and also the ingredients we have had on hand.  One of the key ingredients is our homemade beef broth which was made from the bones of the cows at Mourning Dove Ranch.  For weeks this summer, Jeremy has been making many batches of this fresh broth.  The aroma from this process has made both of us salivate as we think of grass-fed steaks!  Another inspiration has been the ingredients from our garden.  We are growing Thai basil, lemongrass and habanero in our grow camp.  Finally, the Paleo friendly part comes from our Swiss chard that we grew in the spring and the we preserved by blanching and freezing in early summer.  We tried Swiss chard in chicken soup and were struck by how the texture and taste of the chard seemed surprisingly similar to traditional noodles used in beef and chicken soups.  I knew we had an unbeatable combination to work with.

Ingredients include:

  • 2 lbs. stewing beef
  • 6 cups of homemade beef broth
  • 4 cups filtered water
  • 1 cup of frozen Swiss chard
  • 1 cup of chopped carrots
  • 1 cup of chopped celery
  • 1/2 onion chopped
  • 3 cloves of minced garlic
  • 1 tablespoon of coconut oil
  • 1 cup Thai basil
  • 1 cup cilantro
  • 1/4 cup of minced lemongrass
  • 2 habanero minced
  • sea salt

Add the broth and water to a soup pot. Bring it to a simmer on the stove. Add the stewing beef. Let them cook for 20 minutes or so. Add celery and carrots.

In a pan, brown onion and garlic with coconut oil. Add the mixture to the soup.

Let the mixture simmer for 30 minutes more. Stir occasionally. Add habenero, and lemongrass.  Add frozen chard.  Add sea salt to taste.

Serve this in large bowls. Add basil and cilantro.

We enjoyed the spices and heat of this modified Thai dish.  Try it tonight.

Healthy Pickle Recipe

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This summer, we are growing heirloom cucumbers known as lemon cucumbers.  As you might expect, they look like lemons but taste similar to traditional cucumbers.  We planted just one plant this year but now have dozens of these ready for picking.

As with other summer vegetables, they come in waves and do not last long in the fridge to eat with salads so I looked for ways to preserve them.  I found a wonderful and healthy pickle recipe in Nourishing Traditions that converts this summer vegetable into a healthy probiotic.  This recipe is also quick and easy to make.

Ingredients include:

  • 3 lemon cucumbers sliced with a 1/4 inch thick
  • 2 tablespoon of chopped fresh dill
  • 4 tablespoons of whey
  • 1 tablespoon of mustard seed
  • 1 cup of filtered water
  • 1 tablespoon of sea salt

A note on making whey:  Leave raw milk at room temperature for 1 to 4 days until milk solids separate from the semi-clear liquid (aka. whey).  Separate the whey from the milk solid by pouring the mixture through a cheese cloth.

In a bowl, add all ingredients.  Fold the mixture.  Then place in a clean wide mouth quart-sized jar.  Make sure that the vegetables are covered with fluid.  The fluid level should be one half of an inch from the top of the jar.  Close the jar lid tightly and let this sit at room temperature for 3 to 5 days.  Then move to the refrigerator for long term storage.

We have had the pickles by themselves and on top of grass-fed burgers.  We like the taste.  They have the taste of a dill pickle but are soft (not crisp like store-bought pickles).  You can use the same recipe to make pickles from other types of cucumbers (sliced or whole).

Enjoy!

Fermented Salsa Recipe

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Recently, we have been picking several pounds of heirloom tomatoes from our garden.  Many have accumulated in the kitchen.  In an effort to use them before they spoil, we decided to make fermented salsa.  Inspired from a Nourishing Traditions recipe and The Art of Fermentation, I made several jars worth or about 6 cups.

To start with, have several clean jars and lids on hand (they should all be washed with hot water prior to using them).  Next gather all you ingredients.

Ingredients include:

  • 6 ripe large tomatoes that have been skinned, seeded and diced
  • 1 medium diced onion
  • 5 to 6 diced jalapeno peppers
  • the juice of 2 lemons
  • 1 bunch of cilantro diced (stems removed)
  • 1 teaspoon of sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon of minced oregano
  • 6 tablespoons of whey
  • 6 to 8 minced garlic cloves

A note on making whey:  Leave a cup of raw milk at room temperature for 1 to 4 days until milk solids separate from the semi-clear liquid (aka. whey).  Separate the whey from the milk solid by pouring the mixture through a cheese cloth.

I started by preparing the tomatoes.  To skin them, place one at a time in filtered boiling water for 5 seconds or so.  You’ll see that the skin is bunching up.  Then remove and peel the skin off the rest of the way.  After skinning the tomatoes, I cut each perpendicular to the core and scoop out the seeds with my finger.  After removing seeds, I then diced them.  I used a combination of Yellow Boy and Purple Cherokee tomatoes.  I suggest using your favorite ones. I added the tomatoes  to a large bowl.

Next, I cut the lemons in half and squeezed their juice into the bowl.  Be careful not to get lemon seeds into your mix.

I then added the rest of the ingredients to the bowl and folded the mixture with my hands.  You may want gloves for this process since the jalapeno can sting.  Also, you may not want to use all the jalapeno seeds if you want a milder salsa.  We like it hot, so we added the seeds of 4 of the 6 jalapenos.

We put the mixture into the jars and closed the lids tight.  We put them on our window sill for five days so that the fermentation process could start.  This morning, I open the jars to see how they looked.  Mold was on the surface of the salsa for 3 of the 4 jars.  This is normal since the oxygen present at the top of the mix and the warmth of the room promotes mold to grow.  I scooped this off with a spoon and put them in the refrigerator.

I did taste the salsa from one of the jars.  It may be the best salsa I have ever had!  It is spicy hot and has a great tomato flavor.  The other ingredients are more subtle but blend well to give the classic fresh salsa taste.

Give this recipe a try and let us know what you think.

Our Visit to Mourning Dove Ranch

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In the Fall of last year, we bought some wonderful grass-fed beef from Mourning Dove Ranch.  We have had several wonderful meals with steaks, roasts and ground beef for the past 9 months.  We stopped by again yesterday to pick up some beef bone from which we will make bone broth.  Since Scelestia Cook and her husband, Gary, were in town, Jeremy and I sat down ask them more about their operation.

Both Scelestia and Gary are animal lovers.  They enjoy horses, cows and dogs.  At times, they have also rehabilitated animals and enjoy the nurturing process..  The cows are raised in a natural herd environment on picturesque pastures.  A pond, natural springs and giant oaks cover the area.

When the cows reach approximately, two years of age, they are humanely put down.  The cows are never stressed by transport on a truck.   They are not treated with antibiotics.  They are not fattened.  Gary has some previous experience with feed lots and feels that the stress on the cow is both inhumane and  affects the quality of the product that eventually gets to the consumer.  They are both committed to raise and treat the cows humanely from the beginning of their lives to the end.

Scelestia and Gary have an interesting and complimentary combination of experiences.  Scelestia was originally trained as a culinary chef in San Francisco.  Her and her mother purchased pasture lands in the Sierra Nevada Foothills and then leased it out.  Gary grew up on a ranch in Mendocino where he learned how to raise cattle.  When Scelestia and Gary met, they decided to combine their resources and started Mourning Dove Ranch.  Today, they work together on the Ranch and provide wonderful beef.

They are planning to expand their efforts using similar principals to raise pigs, turkey and chicken.  If you are interested in learning more about Mourning Dove Ranch and their products, contact Scelestia or Gary Cook at 209-962-7331.

More Garden Production

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While Kathleen is out of town this week (more on that later), I wandered down to the graden to see how things are doing…

Wel, the tomatoes are getting even taller (some are 8 feet now!), some strawberries were ready, a second eggplant is coming along, and our berries are starting to ripen.

Japanese Eggplant

 

Strawberries to Pick

The next 4-6 weeks should be quite a bounty of food!

When food doesn’t decompose, it’s not food…

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Sometimes a picture is worth 1,000 words. And when you string enough pictures together you get a video that tells the story. In this case, it’s the story of a McDonald’s hamburger and fries left out to rot for 180 days.

It never really got to the point where it started rotting.

If the bugs and bacteria don’t want to eat it, why should anyone else?

A Calorie is NOT Just A Calorie, according to new study

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It’s good to see more mainstream research coming out to reinforce what many of us already know…

Boston, Mass. – A new study published today in the Journal of American Medical Association challenges the notion that “a calorie is a calorie.” The study, led by Cara Ebbeling, PhD, associate director and David Ludwig, MD, director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center Boston Children’s Hospital, finds diets that reduce the surge in blood sugar after a meal–either low-glycemic index or very-low carbohydrate–may be preferable to a low-fat diet for those trying to achieve lasting weight loss. Furthermore, the study finds that the low-glycemic index diet had similar metabolic benefits to the very low-carb diet without negative effects of stress and inflammation as seen by participants consuming the very low-carb diet.

And, surprise, surprise, they’re finding just what I’d have expected.

The study suggests that a low-glycemic load diet is more effective than conventional approaches at burning calories (and keeping energy expenditure) at a higher rate after weight loss. “We’ve found that, contrary to nutritional dogma, all calories are not created equal,” says Ludwig, also director of the Optimal Weight for Life Clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital. “Total calories burned plummeted by 300 calories on the low fat diet compared to the low carbohydrate diet, which would equal the number of calories typically burned in an hour of moderate-intensity physical activity,” he says.

Read the full news release from Boston Children’s Hospital.