Welcome to 21 Days of Detoxing! Whether you are one of our amazingly motivated participants or just interested in eating clean, whole, real food – boy do I have some recipes for you! From now ’til May 21st I’ll be featuring a delicious detox-friendly recipe each day. (And if you want to get in on the detox magic I have a Do It Yourself version available – right here.)
I first heard of daikon when I saw Haruki Murakami speak at MIT. Have you read any Murakami? Crazy stuff. Anyway, he talked about carrying a daikon home from the market and how it was so big it stuck out the top of the bag. Random, I know.
The next time I heard of daikon was in a macrobiotic cookbook. Macrobiotics is just one of the dietary theories that I studied at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and while I don’t subscribe to it 100%, they sure have some cool ideas. As for daikon, it’s known to aid digestion and help clean the body and is used quite a bit with macrobiotics. Really, it’s just a type of radish. So don’t be afraid!
Maybe Murakami was making something like this dish the night he carried home his daikon?
(By the way, find daikon at Whole Foods in the produce section.)
Ooops I did it again like Britney Spears. I ate too much of the wrong stuff over the holidays. Eh, who didn’t?
The snowstorm didn’t help. Instead of driving home on Sunday, we skidded through New Jersey until finally getting off the Turnpike and finding a lovely Days Inn to wait out the storm in. Our only option for food was chinese takeout. Lo mein, eggrolls and sesame chicken is not exactly the best way to top off a weekend of holiday eating!
Luckily we’re home safe and sound. And we have much less snow down here. By less, I mean none. Maybe the south ain’t so bad after all. It was downright warm yesterday afternoon as I ran some errands. (One of my errands included picking up a diaper bag. That’s right. Now that the holidays are wrapping up, baby prep is in full gear!)
So to give my digestive system a much needed post-holiday pick-me-up, I’m turning to greens. Of course! Over the long weekend I had carrots and green beans and tomatoes, but I sure missed my dark, leafy friends. They keep things moving smoothly, if you know what I mean. Plus they’re jam packed with nutrients and happy, light energy.
Judging from my last post, it seems we should spend a little more time getting acquainted with my good friend miso.
A brief and likely inaccurate history of our friendship:
1997 – I try miso soup for the first time at random sushi restaurant. I like, but think nothing of it.
2005 – I spot Christina Pirello on TV adding something brown and thick to her soup and talking about how it’s good for digestion. My interest is piqued and I end up buying Jessica Porter’s book, The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics. It changes my life.
2006 – My then boyfriend/now husband gets interested in asian cooking and decides to make miso soup at home. Our cat ends up on the counter eating dashi from the open bag, but otherwise it’s a success.
Yesterday I cooked for three hours straight, which by my standards is a helluva long time to be standing in the kitchen. I don’t know about you. It was worth it – but I’ll save that recipe for a future post.
The point is, sometimes cooking takes awhile. But sometimes you can make a homemade something to eat in just a few minutes. Those are my favorite! I think I posted about this particular recipe years ago, but that means you’ve all had time to forget about it anyway, right?
Going off dairy was the very first change I made to my diet. And boy oh boy was that a difficult decision to make! No dairy? Ohmigod what am I going to eat?
I remember it well. But I was suffering from tremendous sinus infections and something had to be done. I heard that dairy could contribute to that sort of thing – plus, I had a sneaking suspicion that it was milk that caused my stomachaches.
It took a little getting used to but going off dairy made me feel so much better, I didn’t care. My digestion started functioning properly and the sinus infections lessened, then went away. Of course, I also started cleaning sugar and other garbage from my diet so that helped. But dairy…that was my first bold move.
Cut to some years later and you might be surprised to see a half gallon of (always organic!) milk in my refrigerator. It’s funny, after my stomach healed I could tolerate milk again. And in moderation as part of a clean diet, I’m not getting those sinus infections. (Fingers crossed!)
So what gives? Is dairy good or not? Should you go off it?
Well, that depends. Milk, especially raw milk from grass fed cows, is very nutritious. But when it’s pasteurized, heated to crazy high temperatures in the name of killing bacteria, many of the nutritious qualities are lost. Most proponents of milk are specifically talking about raw milk. If that’s something you are interested in, check out RealMilk.com for more information.
Milk is a build-up food. It’s meant to grow big, strong cows, or goats, or humans. Need to lose weight? Probably want to cut back on dairy. Too skinny? Maybe quality milk is just what you need.
Milk is advertised as a great source of calcium. But it doesn’t quite add up – in a country that consumes great quantities of milk we have high rates of osteoporosis. In China, traditionally milk is not part of the diet at all. Yet rates of osteoporosis are low. What gives?
If you’re worried about calcium, look to whole foods like dark leafy greens, almonds and anchovies for calcium. And avoid caffeine, which leeches calcium from your bones.
When I drink milk – and I do, now – I always buy whole, organic milk. That’s a whole food. Skim milk is a partial food. I believe in feeding my body food in its most natural state possible. Plus, whole milk tastes amazing. I mean, if you’re gonna do it, do it right! That said, I usually limit my intake to a splash in my tea in the morning, something like that.
Milk replacements? Eh. I drank soymilk and felt virtuous for awhile. But then I read the label and realized it’s full of sugar! I switched to unsweetened. But then I learned about phytoestrogens and all the reasons to lay off consuming so much darn soy. Hmmm. Now what?
Almond milk, oat milk, rice milk? Maybe. It’s all processed, to a degree, if it’s being sold in the supermarket. I mean, you can make almond milk yourself. But you know what’s even easier? Banana milk. That’s what the video above is about because it’s something I use several times a week. It’s fast and about as natural as it gets when it comes to a white, milky substance for your morning cereal. If you’re like me, morning cereal means Uncle Sam’s or another unsweetened brand, or a whole grain porridge or something like that. Banana milk lends a litttle creaminess and a little sweetness. What’s not to love?
Oh, and the blender in the video is the Magic Bullet. It rocks. Makes a great gift!
Are you a vegetarian? Vegan? Carnivore? Omnivore? Raw Foodist? Macrobiotic?
Good.
As long as you’re eating real, whole food, I don’t have much of an opinion about whether or not you should eat meat. It’s really, truly, up to you. And I have more news: you don’t have to stick by your diet the way you do a religion. You can change! Every day if you want. It’s ok. What is your body telling you today?
Here’s my meat story.
I always ate meat of all kinds growing up. My mom made a great meatloaf, paprika-sprinkled chicken legs and thighs, and breaded pork chops. (For awhile in 3rd grade we were studying dinosaurs and I began to regard my mother’s steak dinners as “Stegosaurus” dinners, which ruined me on steak for a brief period. But that’s neither here nor there.)
Fast forward 10 years. In college I ate meat and lots of it. It kind of goes hand-in-hand with eating out, because when your food comes from restaurants you won’t find many vegetarian dishes. I ate a lot of chicken fingers, hamburgers, etc. You get it. I also ate a lot of Italian meats because my boyfriend at the time had a mother with a fridge full of gobbagool. God did my stomach hurt.
It was post-college that I started getting dizzy spells and feeling extremely exhausted. I don’t blame meat, but my diet certainly left something to be desired. Living alone, I sometimes cooked up my mom’s meatloaf recipe and ate it for a week as leftovers, and sometimes dinner was a pear and a piece of gorgonzola cheese.
I started doing yoga, finally. Why did I wait so long?? My yoga teacher talked about his raw vegan diet and the Italian grandmother in me thought, “No wonder he’s so skinny.”
But I started reading and thinking about my diet. Jessica Porter’s The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics got me onto whole grains and off dairy. Then John Robbins’ The Food Revolution got me off meat with its account of factory farm conditions. The China Study nudged me even further from animal product. It was simple. I did not want to contribute to my own poor health, I didn’t want to support this crazy meat factory industry, and heck – brown rice is a lot cheaper than steak!
That lasted for awhile and my health greatly improved. But here’s the thing. I don’t think it was because I stopped eating animal products – it was because I started eating real, whole, organic food.! Had I substituted my hamburgers with Boca Burgers and my ice cream with Soy Delicious, I don’t think I’d have had the recovery I did. Instead it was whole grains, dark leafy green vegetables, sweet root veggies and the like that brought me back to life, quite literally.
After learning about Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions I started reincorporating some meat into my diet. Sometimes it was with great intention – a small piece of grass fed beef purchased from a local farmer. Sometimes it was completely random, like bacon wrapped scallops hors d’oeuvres at an office party. Because they are SO good.
Basically, the pendulum swung back to center. It felt good to be able to enjoy food with my friends and not order the special vegetarian meal all the time. It felt good to enjoy meat again. And, well, I felt good. So here I am. I eat a little meat. And I try to make it the best quality, grass-fed or pastured stuff I can afford. That’s where I’m at.
Where are you?
For the omnivores out there, especially those who have found a grass-fed beef source, I encourage you to try this Beef Burgundy recipe. It’s so perfect for this time of year. If you haven’t had red meat in awhile, you’ll be shocked by how good grass-fed beef tastes. It’s better for you, better for the animals, better for the environment, and better for your local economy. So if you’re gonna do beef, do it right! It’s worth it. And if you don’t want to do beef, don’t. I have plenty of vegetarian recipes too. Every body is different!
Beef Burgundy Recipe from The Nourished Kitchen
I used whole wheat flour instead of sprouted grain flour, and I doubled this recipe in a gigantic pot. It was great. Thanks Jenny!
It’s funny to me that every animal on the planet drinks water and then humans come along and we’re bored with water. It makes up over 60% of our body and covers 70% of the earth’s surface. Man, water is like, SO BORING!
So we drink our sodas and our lattes and our purple-flavored juices and I guess this is more interesting? Well, yes, it is actually very interesting…to read the ingredient labels!
Yikes. What is this crap and who decided it was something people should drink? Have you ever tasted a Pepsi that’s warm? It’s horrible. The ice-cold soda phenomenon works in part because of the numbing effect the cold has on our taste buds. It’s the same reason that cheap beer is advertised as “Ice Cold” but artisan crafted brews are served cask conditioned at a warmer temperature. So you can actually taste it.
Maybe this is a test of what we should and shouldn’t drink: Does it taste ok warm? Water, yes. Juice, sorta. But soda? No way.
Anyway, I usually recommend herbal tea as an alternative to drinking water. But now I have another trick – Water kefir!
Have you heard of kefir? It usually refers to a milk product similar to yogurt. But it is possible to make your own water kefir and get the same living probiotic benefits for a healthy digestive system. This has been my project for the past few weeks.
I started by ordering water kefir grains from Cultures for Health. They arrived in a dehydrated state so I had to rehydrate them in a bath of sugar water for a few days. Then they were ready to rock.
To make kefir you basically combine water and sugar, then add the grains. The ratio is 1/4 cup sugar to 4 cups water. Then, the mixture sits for 24-48 hours and the grains consume 80% of the sugar. You are left with a slightly sweet, sometimes bubbly drink that can be flavored in endless ways.
I like that you can decide what type of sugar to use. I’ve tried using Sucanat, which is the darker liquid in the jars pictured above. The molasses-y flavor of Sucanat works well with vanilla flavoring. Our favorite water kefir flavor so far has been lemonade, shown above on the right. For this we use organic evaporated cane sugar which has a more mild flavor. After the kefir is done fermenting, I add the juice and rind of 1 organic lemon. It’s a snap.
So already we have a number of great reasons to try kefir: probiotic benefits, control over ingredients, low in sugar, and lots of flavors to try. But what I really love is that once you buy those grains you can have a brand new yummy drink option every day or two for just pennies. It’s a really healthy and cost-effective way to banish the water blues. Learn more about water kefir here.
Finally, just a note on flavor and the fermenting process. If it tastes weird but good, that’s good. If it tastes and smells weird and bad, that’s yucky and don’t drink it. Happy fermenting!
Here’s a story about pain:
The joints in my toes hurt from years of wearing high heels and dancing in pointe shoes.
Here’s another story about pain:
When I drink coffee or eat white flour products it makes my stomach hurt.
And another one:
Anxiety attacks keep me from doing things I love.
These are 3 stories about pain that I ignored for years. I just suffered. Hello, victim! I was a person who had feet that hurt and a belly that was always angry. I was a person lying down at home in the middle of a sunny summer day because my anxiety was too powerful to let me go anywhere or do anything. I was trapped.
Sounds ridiculous, right? But what are your stories – what causes pain in your life? Maybe, like me, there are things you do every day that continuously hurt you. It could be food you put in your belly, or people in your life, or thoughts in your mind.
Can you imagine a pain-free existence?
I talk a lot about making healthy food choices and nourishing our bodies. It’s true – you ARE what you eat. So eat well and be well. But what about the rest of our lives? I have tried so many diets…I’ve given up sugar, coffee, white flour, heck for awhile I gave up cooked food! I’ve tried eating vegetarian and vegan and macrobiotic…and the experimenting finally worked! Now I eat real food, not processed stuff. And I can go all day – everyday! – without a bellyache. But you know what was harder than all of that diet stuff combined?
To stop wearing high heels and start wearing supportive shoes.
AUUUUGHHHHHH!!!! No way! I could eat seaweed and dust for heaven’s sake but I was NOT going to wear ugly shoes!!!
So, see? I chose pain.
I wore my heels, or maybe dinky little flats. And with every step the pain got worse but I was not willing to give up *gasp* – my shoes!
It tooks years before I walked into the Walking Company practically wearing a disguise. How embarrassing I thought, to be so young and trying on shoes like this! But as soon as I sank into a pair of Earth shoes I understood that this was a choice I had to make. Pain vs. No pain.
Earth shoes not only relieved the pain in my toes, they also let me lower back relax in a way I didn’t know existed. I started with one pair, then another and another. Recently, I found another brand, Sofft. Sofft makes some cute styles that are 100x more supportive than my old shoes.
Pictured above is some of my new footwear. I just bought a pair of heels from Sofft that do a great job keeping weight in my heels instead of toes. I can wear them comfortably for a few hours, like this past weekend I wore them to a wedding. But then I’m back to my clunky heavenly Earth shoes.
So if you see me and you think my shoes are ugly…well, it took years but I finally don’t care! I’m living without pain.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays because I believe we can nourish ourselves with every choice we make.
Ok I know what you’re thinking. Bathing suit season is here and the LAST thing any of us needs is more fat.
But, I’m here to tell you that yes, that’s exactly what you might need.
Let’s start at the beginning, which for me was in high school. When I started attending my private high school, all the girls were worried about eating fat. For lunch they ate a plain bagel and drank Snapple. These were all skinny girls. So, to my 14 year old mind, the no-fat plan made sense.
I started refusing to eat anything that had fat grams on the label, much to my mother’s chagrin. What about olive oil, she said? Olive oil is healthy!
I said, “Mom, olive oil has 14 grams of fat per serving.”
She said, “There’s no fat in eggs! Eggs are good for you!”
I said, “Moooommmmm, there are 5 grams of fat in every egg! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I was irritable, as most teenagers are. I also got sick a lot. When I went away to college, my digestion went from bad to worse. I had fainting spells and we wondered if something was wrong with my brain. Tests were always negative. I was fine, according to doctors.
After college I had a conversation with my mom about how I was feeling. I told her that I just didn’t feel healthy, even though the doctor said I was. I didn’t feel hearty. I was weak. My mom asked if I was eating well. I said yes, but I felt like no matter what I ate it just wasn’t being absorbed. I could drink water all day and still feel dehydrated!
I was totally functional through all this. It’s not like I was lying in a hospital bed. I was working and going to the gym and by all standard measurements…I was fine. Except I was so NOT.
Skipping ahead a number of years, I’ll just summarize by saying that I’ve cleaned up my diet a whole lot. I started eating whole grains and lots of vegetables. Processed food got the boot. Duh, I mean, you’re reading this blog so you know that.
But fat? I still didn’t want to be fat. I kicked sugar and was happy to cook with just a drizzle of olive oil.
And then came weekend 3 at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Sally Fallon (author of Nourishing Traditions and founder of the Weston A. Price foundation) was our guest speaker. I had heard about the work of Weston A. Price and admired his research. If you are unfamiliar, dig into the WAP website, pronto my dears!
Basically, Dr. Price found that people from indigenous cultures all over the world ate very different diets but had common health characteristics. They did not suffer from the diseases we see in the West. When people from the villages moved to industrialized areas and were exposed to processed foods for the first time, THAT’s when they got sick.
What does this have to do with fat? Well, as Sally explained, traditional diets ate meat – with all the skin, organs and fat included. Some cultures ate little meat but plenty of milk – whole, raw milk. In short, naturally occurring fats were an important part of their daily diets.
You’re probably thinking, yeah, but I don’t run after yaks all day. Those people burned more fat than I do. That’s why they could eat all that stuff.
Maybe. But the truth is, our bodies require a certain amount of fats to function. Here’s an excerpt from Nina Planck’s Real Food that struck me so important I just have to share it with you:
The vital role of fat in digestion is illustrated by an obscure condition called rabbit starvation, caused by a diet exclusively of lean protein…the symptoms are lethargy, nausea, diarrhea, weight loss, and eventually death. Without fat, digestion literally fails and you starve – even if you’re eating plenty.
Bingo! That was me! But there’s more.
Did you know that your brain is 60% fat? And that mother’s milk has a greater proportion of fat to protein than cow’s milk? Fats are clearly very important for human development. Not only that, they’re important for fertility too! And I’m not just talking unsaturated fat here…I’m talking full-on saturated animal fats. (From healthy sustainably-farmed animals of course.)
But heart disease is our #1 killer? How can we eat fats knowing that they are going to clog our arteries?
Let’s refer back to Weston A. Price. His findings very clearly showed that natural, traditional foods led to good health but processed, modern foods were to blame for a sharp decline in a population’s health. So, is it really about saturated fats being bad for us? What about our man-made hydrogenated margarines that have proven far more deadly than any fat that comes from nature?
Sally Fallon told us that she eats half a stick of raw, organic butter in her oats every morning. She said that the fat in dairy products is essential for absorbing vitamins and calcium. That low-fat dairy products leave the body questioning where the rest of the whole food is…leading to ice cream cravings!
I did a little experiment. I started adding butter to my oats. A tablespoon, not a stick. Boy was it gooood! And within days, lines I had begun to accept in my face started to disappear. I’ve gained no weight and I’m now cooking with butter at almost every meal, along with other naturally occurring fats like coconut oil, olive oil and sesame oil. I’m avoiding man-made modern fats like margarine and canola oil. This all seems to be in line with eating organic produce – it’s like getting back to pre-industrialized times in the food supply.
Turns out that of course my mom was right. I’ve been trying to convince her to enroll at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition because she’s a natural.
If you don’t believe any of this talk about fats, just consider the past 20 or 30 years and the plethora of low-fat/no-fat products in the supermarket. By now, Americans should all be very slender!
But we’re not, are we? Shoot. There goes THAT theory.
I hadn’t meant to go on such a raw food kick lately, but I planned my last cooking class a few months ago, thinking it would be warm by now. Raw foods are so excellent in the summer months when the temperatures are high and the vegetables are fresh from the farmers market.
But no. It’s been cold and rainy in Boston. At least the vegetables are fresh and delicious like they should be! And since we sprouted some wheat berries last time, now we’re gonna use ‘em.
Before I go into the recipe, let me first answer this burning question: What’s the deal with raw foods?
This is basically what my friend Leigh asked at last week’s (Un)Cooking Club and I’m glad she did because sometimes I forget to explain WHY I eat the way I do. So here goes.
Raw food enthusiasts eat a plant-based diet never heated above the temperature at which the live enzymes die – around 118 degrees. I have experimented with raw foods and learned some cool preparation techniques, and I appreciate the value of eating living foods. On my 2 months of raw food last year I gained a ton of energy, cleaned out my digestive system big time, and felt amazing. But it wasn’t something I could keep up in social situations, nor was it something that felt appropriate for me as the weather cooled down in for a Boston winter. Anyway, it felt like an amazing detox.
Raw foods contain the necessary enzymes to break themselves down during digestion. Therefore, it’s a very efficient process and your body does not need to do as much work. That, combined with eating so much fiber and so many nutrients…well, heck. It feels pretty darn good. I lost about 9 lbs. in the first few weeks I ate raw. That was not good because I was getting married soon and wanted to fit into my dress! But I will say, I never felt hungry, I ate all I wanted and still lost that weight. Interesting.
So maybe it’s adding a salad to dinner, or learning to make buckwheat crispies for breakfast. However you do it, adding raw food into your diet could be a very good thing.
Last Sunday I held an (Un)Cooking Club where we made an appetizer, main dish and dessert all from raw, living foods. And they were delicious! And inexpensive. Sweet.
For the main dish recipe I’m sharing today, you need to have sprouted wheat berries for a few days prior. You could also use sprouted barley, kamut, spelt or whatever you like. And if you’re like “forget it, I’m not sprouting anything!” then you can use cooked whole wheat berries. This salad will come out great either way.
Mediterranean Wheatberry Salad
2 cups wheat berries, sprouted
1 tomato, chopped
1 can black olives, sliced
3 Tbl. fresh basil, sliced
1 tsp. fresh oregano, chopped
5 sundried tomatoes, chopped
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
juice of 1 lemon
4 Tbl. olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste
Mix everything together in a big bowl. Serve cold or room temperature.
I help busy people find balance in their over-worked, over-stressed lives. Trust me, it's not an all-or-nothing situation! A few shifts in diet and lifestyle can rock your world like they did mine. Read on
