Feeling Virtuous

Here's what's happening in my kitchen:

Beet kvass is fermenting. Beet kvass is really healthy! It's a digestive aid, cleanses the liver and is good for kidney stone producers (me). All it is is a couple of large, organic chopped up beets soaked in 1/4 cup whey, 1 T sea salt and 2 quarts filtered water at room temperature for 2-3 days. It's popular in the Ukraine. I've never had it. I hope it tastes good. It is very pretty but I can see that if the kids like it, they'll have to use covered cups. I think it will stain like nothing else.

Yogurt is draining for production of yogurt cheese and whey. I need the whey for other fun fermented things such as gingered carrots.

Milk is heating in the slow cooker for more yogurt because we're yogurt monsters rather than cookie monsters.

Sourdough starter has been fed today; only one more day and I can make bread.

I put leftover pork shoulder in the freezer and posted a freezer inventory so we don't forget what's in there to eat.

Successful Yogurt and a Horrible Way to Wake Up

The yogurt-in-a-crock-pot method works great! I left the crock pot wrapped up in towels out overnight, leaving it out unintentionally 8 hours longer than suggested in the directions. It didn't matter at all (I didn't think it would but I thought we'd end up with tarter yogurt). The yogurt is still pleasantly mild and it set up beautifully.

Pregnancy leg cramps have begun. I woke up in agony from the worst calf cramp ever. It's amazing that a muscle cramp can be so painful. Week 25 is a little later than cramping started with the other two I think, so I guess that's positive. Most of the cramping I had with my other two pregnancies were hip cramps. I don't think I have a preference on the location--none would be nice.

Yogurt in the Crock Pot

We've been making yogurt for many months by sterilizing milk in mason jars in a water bath on the stove, cooling it and then adding starter and incubating in a yogurt maker for several hours. Today I thought I'd do something different since I'm using the yogurt maker to keep the brown rice that I'm soaking warm. I learned that you can make yogurt in a slow cooker! Here:
http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/10/you-can-make-yogurt-in-your-crockpot.html

This method doesn't include any thermometer-watching, just clock-watching. The only down-side I see is that I'll have to transfer the yogurt from the cooker to smaller containers when it's done.

Nourished Kitchen Real Food Challenge Week 2

Challenge 8: Fats for High Heat--I haven't done this yet but I'll make some clarified butter and order some coconut oil. We don't do very much high heat cooking and use olive oil and butter for moderate heat. We'll have to eliminate these when we have clarified butter and coconut oil.
Challenge 9: Fight Against GMOs--got the shopping list and read the blog
Challenge 10: Fats to Eat Raw--I make salad dressing regularly either with walnut oil or olive oil. I can switch to coconut oil and ghee for sauteing.
Challenge 11: Sourdough Bread--I didn't make any bread as I have just started making the starter. I'll try in a week.
Challenge 12: Finding Real Milk--We found some at two groceries but hope to find a farm-direct source.
Challenge 13: Get Good Bacteria--We eat yogurt everyday as well as cultured butter.
Challenge 14: Evaluate

What we've found most difficult so far is the thought of the amount of money we will need to spend to eat pastured poultry, beef and to buy raw dairy. One of the articles at the Weston A. Price Foundation web site addresses budget concerns and we found that helpful.

I've researched and found several farms where we can buy pastured poultry, fresh eggs, pastured lamb, beef and pork. I know of two groceries where we can get raw milk but will contact the closest Weston A. Price Foundation group leader to see if there's a farm-direct source we can use. I think that we'll probably not buy all raw milk as it may be cost-prohibitive but as a compromise we can buy raw milk for our drinking needs and buy single-pasteurized milk for yogurt. So far we've bought two half-gallons of raw milk as two different stores, pasteurized cream (no raw to be found), pasteurized non-homogenized milk and vat-pasteurized homogenized milk. We buy UHT cream at Costco and make butter with it. There isn't any non-UHT cream around that isn't really pricey. Phil wonders if culturing the butter helps offset the fact that the cream used is UHT. Anyone know?

What has been fairly easy is incorporating fermented food into our diets. We were already eating yogurt and fermenting oats for breakfast proved successful. We soaked some ww pastry flour in buttermilk for pancakes this morning and the kids loved them. I plan to try to make gingered carrots this week.

We're both really enjoying reading and learning what's shared in Fallon and Enig's Nourishing Traditions book and I've been spending an inordinate amount of time on the computer reading articles on the Weston A. Price Foundation web site and finding real food bloggers.

We're enjoying all the foods we've added since starting the challenge--raw milk and fermented grains as well as sprouted grain bread. I've started some sourdough starter and have a batch of almonds soaking for crispy almonds for snacking this week. We are eating organic eggs now and I'm incorporating a lot more raw vegetables and fruit into our meals--offering them with cheese in addition to our normal lunch and dinner rather than just as snacking food. The kids haven't noticed anything different about raw milk, maybe because we've always given them full fat dairy. We feel better about giving them raw rather than pasteurized milk though. We're having our first try at pasture-fed beef for our main dish tonight--a sirloin tip roast.

The challenge has been fun and it's inspiring to find all the folks out there already successfully eating this way or working to get there.

Nourished Kitchen Real Food Challenge Week 1

I joined the challenge a week late but I wanted to share my progress on the challenge now anyway.

Challenge 1: Clean out the cupboards
This is a challenge that we failed. I am so thrifty that I just can't throw out everything that is processed. We are not a family that eats a lot of processed food anyway, so what we are going to do instead of throwing away or setting aside all the processed food is to use them up and not replace them--this includes breakfast cereal, crackers, white sugar and sugar-free syrup. We are going to make quite an effort to eat almost exclusively the Real Food way for this month.
Challenge 2: Choose wholesome food
This challenge was super easy as we already had all the suggested items: extra virgin olive oil, butter and full fat dairy. We also checked out the local food coop and whole foods market for other food recommended in Nourishing Traditions. Giant gleep felt when we saw the prices.
Challenge 3: Improve your grains
I made oatmeal porridge to supplement our normal breakfast of eggs and sausage. The sour smell of the fermented oats was a little off-putting but the final result was fantastic. Everyone loved it especially with a little butter, cream and maple syrup.
Challenge 4: Start sourdough
I got to this late--I just started it today. Hopefully it will turn out okay although I am using rye flour from the food coop--not milled by me.
Challenge 5 and 6: Sprout grain and mill it
A couple of things kept me from doing these--I don't have the equipment for drying and milling the sprouted grain so I didn't see the point of creating sprouts and all I have to sprout is old brown rice and old pearl barley. Not sure those will work. Nourishing Traditions talks a lot about sprouting grain but the recipes are all soaked grain recipes--I think this is what we will probably do more often than not. We did find an internet source for milled sprouted grain and we bought some sprouted grain bread. My better half thinks he'll order some milled sprouted grain and work with it.
Challenge 7: Relax and evaluate

Nourishing Traditions

Phil and I are both enjoying perusing the cookbook Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig. We've been eating a more "traditional" diet for some time now (getting away from refined carbohydrates and eating more animal protein) but we have some ways to go to achieve the way of eating promoted in this book. It's by no means new fangled. It's a return to old, traditional ways of eating that primitive cultures thrived on (i.e., fermented foods, animal fats, raw dairy) and away from modern, processed food. Whole food prepared in the ways that this books suggests should promote optimal health. We've already been practicing some of its advice for many months--making homemade yogurt and taking cod liver oil, for instance. I don't know how much we'll adopt of the principles and practices in this book but I hope we can do quite a bit as we both agree with its basic tenets and we need to provide our family with the best quality food we can. We won't go so far as to move and make a small homestead complete with chickens, a couple of cows and a giant garden but it's tempting given how expensive pastured animal protein, raw milk and organic vegetables are.

Here are some foods that we have now in our larder that we're just not going to buy when they run out. Thrifty me is not willing to just throw out everything processed. So, here are some things we are not replacing:
Crackers
Vitamin water (I know, I know...I only bought it in the first place because I am pregnant and a medical professional suggested I drink it.)
Non-sprouted grain bread
Breakfast cereal
Soda pop (I virtually never drink it but Phil does.)
White flour
Sugar

Our first steps toward Real Food/Traditional Diet way of life:
We're soaking grains/flours before using them (in buttermilk usually that is a by-product of Phil's butter making).
We make our own yogurt.
We're looking for local farms where we can buy eggs and pastured beef and chicken.
We've started buying organic eggs and have sampled raw milk (but at $6-7 per half gallon, we wonder how we can make that work--we drink a lot of milk and eat a lot of homemade yogurt).
We've checked out what products are available at PCC and Whole Food Market and started looking online for sources.
We made homemade chicken stock from several chicken carcasses we've been collecting.
I'm making a batch of nuts prepared in a way that makes them more digestible--soaking them in salt water and then dehydrating them.

My biggest concern right now is how we can possibly afford organic eggs, raw milk and pastured beef and chicken. I think that may work itself out. Maybe when we stop buying convenience and processed food completely, the better quality food won't seem so expensive.

Catholic kid

Right now Leah is using pretend oil to bring her stuffed animal children back to life so they can come to her birthday party.