A note that came in today…thank YOU!

Serving raw milk on Capitol Hill after the Raw Milk Rally, May 2011

Monica,

I have been meaning to email you for over a year now.  I met you at the raw milk rally at the national mall a year and a half ago, at that time I told you how your pro-bono class you held at your son’s Waldorf school revolutionized my ideas about nutrition.   I just wanted to thank you for your work.  Seriously, that night when I heard you spoke, a light bulb went on and I said, NOW I understand.  I had always prided myself in trying to eat “healthy”, but now I understand the healing power of nutrient dense food.  While, my children have never dealt with any serious health issues, I have seen improvement as we have made simple and small changes. I usually did most of our cooking, but soon after listening to your presentation we embraced raw milk, cheese, yogurt, butter.  We dropped vegetable oils, love coconut oil, homemade stock soups, fermented pickles, salsa and KETCHUP.  I can’t thank you enough for the path you set me on.  We now enjoy raw liver, cod liver oil and robust health.

Thanks again,

A mom in Silver Spring, Maryland

Thank YOU, dear mom, for writing! I so appreciate it!!

Why I Love Tom Cowan and the Fourfold Healing Conference

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to attend this year’s Fourfold Path to Healing conference in Baltimore this past weekend. It was my second year; last year I flew to San Francisco to attend and exhibit. This year, I was asked to teach a day of pre-conference cooking classes and make pate’ for 200 or so people for the opening reception Friday night. I also exhibited and helped to be sure the food functions went smoothly, that is, WAPF style.

Here and there I was able to catch bits of Dr. Tom Cowan’s lectures, 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, and those bits made the conference worth it for me. Here’s why, and why I love this conference.

The Fourfold conference is based on the book of the same title, which Dr Cowan is the primary author. The other two authors are Sally Fallon (now Morell) and Jaimen McMillan. The book talks about just what the title says: what Dr Cowan believes are the four paths to healing-nutrition, therapeutics, movement and meditation, and the conference is built on the same. Participants have the opportunity to go deep in three of the paths with one of the authors…you guessed it: Sally talks about nutrition, Jaimen does Spatial Dynamics, and Tom therapeutics. To me, meditation, aka spirituality infuses the whole thing. That’s the point here, folks. The one that just thrills me to my core… Here is a medical doctor, looking at and talking about health, healing, wellness and dis-ease in the body through the lens of spirit. The lens he uses is called “anthroposophy“, which was brought forward by Rudolf Steiner in the early 1900s.

How cool is it that a MD is looking at the human body and what goes wrong with it and what goes right with it through the lens of spirit? Very cool. The only thing that is cooler is that 200 or so people came to hear him. And I was one of them.

Dr Cowan looks at patterns as he endeavors to discern what is going on with each patient. He encourages us to use “macroscopes”, not microscopes. He has no use for minutiae. Dr Cowan knows that the clues and the answers will be found in the big picture. This is why he asks his patients to tell him their story. In the story lies the clues to why particular symptoms are showing up in the body. When was the last time your MD asked you to tell your story?!

The lens or metaphor that Dr Cowan used was the Threefold plant. He likened the human to a plant, divided onto 3 sections-head or flowers, middle or stem and bottom or roots. (Here’s where I encourage you to read the book and get more information for yourself; remember, I was running in and out and coordinating food and caught bits and pieces. May this interpretation pique your interest and lead you to seek more. I do not claim that I “got it all” folks. This is my best rendering. :)) By looking at the characteristics of the symptoms and where they showed up, one could determine which plant remedies (often homeopathics) would help guide the person through the symptoms to relief. One thing that struck a truth chord for me was Dr Cowan’s statement that if acute symptoms are allowed to run their course, they will not turn into chronic symptoms. When was the last time you let a fever or pneumonia (the body’s cure for asthma) run its course?

Dr Cowan also talked about the Fourfold human. Unfortunately for me, I missed the beginning of the session but what I did hear was fascinating, and made so much sense. I am eager to learn more. I look forward to finding my Fourfold book and reading it cover to cover. If you are looking for a new (though based on an old-anthroposophy) way of looking at the human body, the human being, and well-being, I encourage you get a copy and do the same!

 

FYI, Dr Cowan is available for phone consultations if you are not in the San Francisco area. He also offers his own Community Supported Healthcare program. Check it out!!

Making pate’ for 200 at Fourfold Healing

So I received a call last Monday that I needed to make pate’ for about 200 people on Thursday for the Fourfold Path to Healing conference in Baltimore. I thought, “Fun! Fun! Fun!” and so it was.

After a flurry of calculations and number crunching, I extended the recipes I had. (Most people don’t know that chefs need to be mathematicians too!) Ordered 20 pounds of beef liver and 17 pounds of pork liver and everything needed, and I was off to Baltimore.

Here are some of the photos from growing those recipes. And yes, it was so much fun. AND delicious!! (“Delightful” one woman said, “best pate’ I have ever had” said another…and from Sally Fallon Morell, “really good”. Thanks, all! ) and special thanks to dear friend and “right arm”, Susan Lucas, who was with me through it all!)

My new favorite sandwich!

Yum yum yum.

I was craving liver again today. Don’t know if it was all the talk about my Liver Pate: Nutrient-Dense Nirvana class in Baltimore on February 3, or if it is just because my body needs those nutrients that liver provides. Luckily, I had frozen some of the chicken liver pate I made last. (Yes, frozen. We’ll talk more about freezing pate later.)

So I went off to the kitchen and sliced off a paper thin slice of traditional Baltic Rye, spread a hearty helping of chicken liver pate on it, topped it with a slab of grass-fed butter and sprinkled on some good Celtic salt. Mmm mmm. Ate a little homemade sauerkraut on the side. Think I found my new favorite snack. Nutrient-packed, easy to assemble and delicious. 🙂

So about freezing pate– often a batch of pate yields several servings, and unless you have a family of 6 or 8, you won’t go through it in one sitting, or even a week.  Storage options: first, I love to top my pate with a half inch or more layer of melted butter. As it cools, the butter will seal air out and preserve the pate. Sealed in this way, pate will last weeks in your refrigerator. Another option is to make up your pate in the usual way, in ramekins or mason jars or BPA-free plastic containers that have been lined with parchment. Then freeze for as long as you need to (although I don’t recommend freezing anything longer than six months. I feel more comfortable at three.) I also like to freeze my pate in one person portions… That is, the amount one person will consume within a week.

Now, how about some bread options? Don’t have Baltic Rye (which is rye, yeast, caraway seeds, sugar, water and salt)? Sourdough is best- what I call a “true sourdough”-no gluten added; made in the traditional way. Next, a sprouted bread, but check the ingredients… More and more commercial bakeries are adding in “vital wheat gluten”!!! I also love to make little pate sandwiches on soaked buckwheat-oat pancakes. Pop ’em right in your mouth. So how about those of you who don’t eat bread or grains, even fermented or sprouted? I have spread my pate on coconut flour pancakes and coconut flour bread, almond flour pancakes and heck, even eaten it with a spoon right out of the jar! …Another taste treat: add some of your homemade, fermented mustard! Yes, culinary nirvana…a taste treat that’s good for you!!

Enjoy!

out here on the road

We are traveling by car across the US yet again, and once a day we stop for lunch to stretch our legs and get some grub. The options are few out here on the highways of our great land for those of us who wish to eat sustainably-raised food, or care about where our food comes from as well as how it is raised and even slaughtered.

Oh yes, be sure, I always pack a cooler and a sack of REAL FOOD, snacks and stuff for breakfast and dinner when we stop to camp and I can cook. I even bring homemade soup we can sip cold. But the car ride gets old after a few hundred miles and we need to stop and stretch. So when we do, we always try to find a local diner or restaurant, a “mom and pop” stop among the plethora of McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Hardee’s. Sometimes we find one, sometimes we don’t.

Today we thought we found one, “The Friendly Grille” just inside the IL border. Too bad road construction blocked the road it was on and kept us from finding it.

So it was back onto the interstate, and  we traveled on down the road another 15-20 miles or so, as far as we could go before we needed to fill up the tank again. This time, a Country Kitchen. My honey was happy to see one; it had been a while. I have never seen one, so off we went. And then it was obvious: another chain restaurant. A small chain, but a chain again. Oy.

This prompted an interesting conversation about where food comes from. Another “aha” moment. I have not really seen the breadth of this prior to now. There seem to be three groups: 1. McDonald’s and Wendy’s and the big chains, 2. the small chains and 3. the Moms and Pops. To my knowledge, the big chains AND the small chains get their food from central suppliers, for the most part. I am guessing that MickeyD’s et al have their own main suppliers, and the small chain restaurants also get their food from suppliers such as Sysco, etc. These may vary by area, but there are still companies whose main business is to get groceries/staples to restaurants. So both the large chains and the small chains are purchasing the same brands, the same foods, full of salt and preservatives and lots of long ingredient labels. Yuck. Not sure about where the mom and pop restaurants get their food stuffs; probably depends upon their size and location. They, too, may use the same food distributors…so it’s all the same dead food, (enzymatically dead) the same processed food to varying degrees, the same pasteurized food, the same GMO-laden food, conventional food, pesticide-laden food…out here on the road. Ugh.

Another observation: once we were in this “small chain restaurant”, there were no good choices. Here’s what’s on the menu: a burger or steak from a cow raised on a feedlot, eating food it is not meant to eat while standing in its own fecal matter, and slaughtered assembly line fashion, pulled pork bbq from a pig raised in a cage, chicken from hens raised in cages with what Joel Salatin has pointed out “fecal particulate” in their lungs, salmon-no doubt farm-raised and fed GMO feed at the least. Hmmm. Hard to be a sustainably-eating carnivore out on the road.  Very difficult choices. What one does when faced with these bad options is, of course, a personal decision. It may come down to just how hungry you are. And as I always say, a blessing does a lot to make whatever you eat more palatable…as well as a request for forgiveness for what I call the Food Industrial Complex and some actions to help remedy the situation. Join the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund…join a CSA…volunteer on a farm…purchase your food at a farmer’s market, vote with your pocketbook…and when you are on the road, bring your own food with you. Try to research sustainable food options on your route beforehand! And if the only options you have are gas station convenience stores every 60 or 70 miles out here on the road, well, just do your best. 😉

“Real Food 101″, aka,”Real Food for Dummies” or Top 5 Things You Can Do for Your Health

I have been meeting many people along the way on our trip across the country from Maryland to Wyoming and Colorado and back again. We have passed through Maryland, PA, WV, OH,  IN, IL, IO, NE, WY, CO, SD, MN, WI, and now we are on our way to IN and MI. In addition to everyone I met and had the privilege of teaching at my Cooking for Well-Being conference in Colorado, I am having wonderful conversations with folks about real food and good health. All sorts of people are being introduced to Nourishing Traditions and the Weston A. Price Foundation, realmilk.com, the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund and the Nourishing Our Children Campaign. Makes me so happy to be spreading the good word about all this good food!

My husband Franklin Taggart calls me an “inspirer”: someone who calls people to realize what they are capable of…and shows them that they “have the goods to do what they need to do”. I must say I love to inspire people to good health, good food, and help to provide them with the tools, techniques and resources to “take their power back”: their power to eat well and be well…to decide where they purchase their food and from whom (from the Food Industrial Complex with all of its implications for the health of the people and the Earth or from farmers, farmers markets, CSAs, etc etc) …(Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm has been reminding us that we “vote with our pocketbooks” when we choose our food. Who are you/we voting for today?!)

So along the way I have had questions from friends, family and acquaintances which are really  the same question: “what can I do that would be easy *and* high impact?” So I have come up with the top 5 things anyone can do that are simply a “switcheroo”, involve no training or classes, or menu changes. Just swap what you are using now with the following, and the nutrient density of your food will go up. In my private practice with clients of all ages and in my own life, I have seen hunger decrease,  thought become less foggy, children become more focused, weight drop off, and cholesterol levels beautify. (For information on the cholesterol myth, see Uffe Ravnskov, The Cholesterol Myth as well as Dr. Mercola’s Huffington Post article on the same.)

And so, the top five:

1. Use real salt. Throw out that Morton’s salt and purchase some salt that is high in trace minerals. Celtic Sea Salt from the Grain and Salt Society is highest in trace minerals, so I use that. Just check out the label…all “sea salt” is not the same. If they can tell you about the trace mineral content on the label, you’ve got a good one.

2. Use pastured eggs. Swap out supermarket eggs, free range eggs, organic eggs, or eggs fed “vegetarian feed” for eggs from hens *on pasture*. Buy them from a farmer or the farmer’s market, or from your CSA. Chickens are omnivores; the most nutritious eggs will be those from hens that eat a good amount of bugs! (Just check the color of the yolks…eggs from chickens that eat bugs are bright, deep orange…if your yolks are light yellow or the whites runny, they *are not* nutrient dense eggs!)

3. Use pastured butter, aka, butter from cows that eat grass. Don’t rest on your laurels and think the term “organic butter” is enough. “Organic” says nothing about whether the cows ate grass. Look for “pasture butter” from Organic Valley, or Trickling Springs Farm in the DC metro area. Look for butter at the farmers market , or get some *real cream* and make your own. (Butter has the perfect fatty acid profile. Stop slurping that fish oil and pile on the good old fashioned grass-fed butter!)

4. (If you eat bread at all) Eat sprouted bread or a true sourdough bread. There are several brands on the market that make sprouted bread, sprouted bagels, sprouted English muffins. Find a baker that makes real sourdough, or make it yourself! (Be sure you slather on the pastured butter, as it will help to neutralize the rest of the phytic acid that has not been neutralized by sprouting. For more on phytic acid, see  Living with Phytic Acid)

5.Eat grass-fed meat and poultry. The nutrient profile is very different for meat and poultry that is raised on pasture. Far more nutritious for you, better for the animal and for the planet. (All meat is not the same–comparing meat from animals raised in the Food Industrial Complex with meat from animals raised on pasture is like comparing apples and oranges–)

Okay, that’s the beginning. We’ll call it  “real food for dummies” or, “real food 101”. I am not going to go into fresh, raw milk at this time, as so many people in our country do not have access to it. (To find out about the state of raw milk in your state, check out the map on the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund’s website or check out www.realmilk.com) I am not going to go into fermentation or soaking your beans and grains, or making your own stock. That’s for level 2. Take it easy. Go slowly. One step at a time.

Charlottesville in September!

Nourishing Healthy Children: REAL Food for Thriving Kids!

September 16-18

For more information and to register here

PROMO: today thru April 30!

Purchase a 3 DVD Set:  “Pulling It All Together: Fitting Nourishing, Traditional Food into Your Busy Life!” and receive a copy of Nourishing Our Children E-Book…AND be entered in a drawing to win a Bean and Grain Chart!

This 3 DVD set covers all the techniques you need to cook nourishing, traditional food. All the techniques and all the timing…not sure how to fit REAL food into your busy life? This 3 DVD set shows you how. Recorded LIVE at Wise Traditions 2010.

Check out samples of the  E-Book:

sample 2
sample 3-malnourished section

sample 4-water section

A big THANK YOU! to the Nourishing Our Children Campaign for donating the E-Book for this promo…and for all their tireless work to help educate us about how to best nourish our children!!

…and another big THANK YOU to Sandrine Hahn who offers Visual Communication for a beautiful slideshow and landing page! And to my husband, Franklin Taggart, for the musical score, “Morning Kitchen”. And to my cousin Martin for spending hours on photographs one day in March…and to all of you who allow me to continue to “Teach, teach, teach!”

be well!

I’m in the desert. The “food desert*”.

I am currently in the desert, or one of them. Stranded in Phoenix, AZ on the way to San Francisco. (Okay, “stranded” is a bit severe, but you get my point.) On my way to the 2011 Fourfold Healing Conference that starts today. One of the planes I was to be on had some mechanical issues, so there was a new plane, and yes, delays. And I landed here. In Phoenix, on the way to San Francisco. I have no problem with Phoenix, or with deserts, per se. I do have a problem with what I have been experiencing, however. A food desert. I’ll tell you more.

I woke up today in my airline voucher room feeling stranded. Stranded between two islands…or oases. I became aware of my thought that I was between two points…two places or “oases” (yes, get the visual here)…and I am. I am between my home and my destination point. I am between my home and a conference. But it is more than that. I am lost in a desert, a food desert, between my home, where I create, serve, and eat nourishing, REAL food, and a conference where they will serve and I will eat nourishing food. (Yes, locally sourced, organic, nutrient-dense, prepared traditionally so the nutrients are available to the body. At a conference!) In between, there is not much REAL food to eat! Oh, a banana or an apple or two at the airport…I even found an organic yogurt (albeit the second ingredient was organically milled cane sugar). But that was it folks. It is a FOOD DESERT OUT HERE between these two points. And I’m in it. (Temporarily, thank God.) The scary thing is, this is “what is” for the average American, and certainly the average American traveler. Heck, even those in business class are out here with me. No REAL food to be found. Or very little. NONE on the plane and the food from the restaurant at the airport in DC gave me a racing heart, dry mouth, deep thirst,  and smelly flatulence! BTW, flatulence means that your body is having difficulty digesting the food you have eaten. The smell reflects the amount of toxins your body is having to process. So if you’re smelly often, you may want to review what you are eating and how your body is digesting or failing to digest your food. :))

As I said previously, I have no problem with the city I’m in. (In fact, if I had a longer layover, I’d get to see a dear cousin who lives here.) The hotel is nice, and they will do their best to serve a lovely, typical American breakfast…continental or “full”. The folks with whom I am traveling, all seventeen of us sharing this unplanned stopover–will probably say it is wonderful, bountiful and delicious. But I am blessed and cursed with “eyes that see”…or just with “knowing” what REAL food is, and what our bodies need to thrive. I am HOPING for REAL BUTTER…but I have a feeling that even if I find it, all that I will be able to spread it on will be refined wheat products…no sourdough, no sprouted grains, no soaked oatmeal.  I am HOPING for REAL CREAM…but that is hard to find in these days of full fat fear…if I am able to find even “half and half”, bet your bottom dollar it won’t be organic, it won’t be from grass-fed cows, and it will be UHT (ultra-high temperature pasteurized). I KNOW I won’t find any ferments…I may be able to find some plain yogurt. But again, it will be from cows raised on grain, not organic, certainly low-fat or no-fat…Perhaps I’ll find some bacon or sausage–but locally sourced and nitrate free? Think again. So…what to do? Not eat? Not an option today, folks. I am living on 4 plus hours of sleep after a very choppy day of travel, with a full day and weekend ahead of me. So I have to eat something. At this point it’s just “fuel for the body” to get to my final destination point…where I KNOW the food will be nourishing, whole, REAL, and truly satisfying. Until then, I’ll do my best to pick and choose the best of what I am presented with. Until I am out of the desert.

The bigger question of course remains…how to populate the food desert between the two points with REAL food. With the ability to discern what is nourishing and nurturing food that will help the body thrive. And that, as you know my dear readers, is the point of all I do. On to the conference and back into my life to “teach, teach, teach!” and do my best to make the desert fertile with REAL food. For all of us.

*Note:  I am borrowing a term that is usually used these days to describe urban areas where there is no fresh food to be found for sometimes miles. Yes, miles. Those “food deserts” must also be addressed, and some of the efforts of “urban agriculture” are doing so. For examples, see the city of Baltimore and San Francisco. Future Harvest offered good information about urban ag at their conference this past January.

It’s time for a hot breakfast. Every day.

Make your child nutrient-dense, pastured eggs cooked in butter from grass-fed cows. Note the dark orange yolk on the right--an egg from POLYFACE Farm. Pastured eggs make a difference!

So today it’s cold and rainy. A perfect day for a hot breakfast. But so is every day, especially for the child you are sending off to school, no matter what the age. More on this in a moment.

Today I sent my 4 year old off to school well-bundled and in his rain suit. And before he left, I made sure he had a hot breakfast in his tummy…sausages and “dippy eggs” (meaning the yolk is still runny…best for nutrient value…and of course the eggs are from hens ON PASTURE) and some warm herbal tea. And I’ll do the same tomorrow. And the next day…hot, warm or cold outside, rainy or snowy or bright sunshine…I will be sure to warm him from the inside out and to provide his rapidly growing body and mind with the protein and healthy fats he needs to thrive. And he will have the fuel he needs to run and play and build muscles and to focus on the teachings of the day.

Tomorrow it might be bacon and eggs…the next day “hammy eggs” (all ham nitrate and nitrite free, from sustainable farms…no ham from confinement operations obviously!)…or soaked oatmeal with grass-fed butter, cinnamon and ginger and pure maple syrup or raw honey… or almond waffles with grass-fed butter and fermented apple butter… Notice no cereal has been mentioned. I know what I am talking about here is REVOLUTIONARY, especially in a culture that espouses low-fat, no-fat, no time, speedy not-even-good-for-you high fiber not soaked cold cereal. Once again, I’ll deflate the balloon (seems to be my job around here.) Here goes: cold cereal—organic or not—is not good for your child, and will not help him or her to thrive physically or mentally. Let’s see why.

1. Most cereal is full of sugar, whether it is called organic cane sugar, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, or any other word that ends in -ose (fructose, glucose, maltose, sucrose or any other -ose they come up with).
2. All cereals in a box from the store are PROCESSED. That means they are far removed from the way nature intended them and have undergone all sorts of processes to get it into that box. Cooked into a slurry, extruded under high pressure and heat. Heck that “O” doesn’t look anything like the oat from which it came. (And what happened to all that “whole grain”, whole oat goodness?? They can’t convince me that extruded Os, no matter what they claim on the box, has the same nutrient value as soaked oatmeal. They just can’t.)
3. Nearly all cereals, organic or not, contain grains that have NOT BEEN SOAKED, SPROUTED or FERMENTED. ALL grains must be soaked, sprouted or fermented in order to make them easy to digest by the human body. Especially if you are eating them every day! (And in this country, we are encouraged to eat grains 8-10 times a day!)
   1. The protein in the grains (usually GLUTEN) that has not been predigested can put a strain on any digestive system, and especially those of young children.
   2. Minerals in the grains will be blocked from absorption in the small intestine. (Read MINERAL DEFICIENCIES over the long term. I don’t want my child to have mineral deficiencies, do you want yours to have them?)
4. The cereals that are shapes (like Os) or flakes have been subjected to a very high heat process, which DENATURES THE PROTEIN in the grain. (I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to eat denatured protein, and I am certainly not giving it to my child.)
5. The cereals do not provide healthy fat which is needed in order to assimilate the vitamins and minerals in the grains. Okay, I can hear some of you saying, “but what about the fat from the skim milk I pour on the cereal?” (That one’s a no-brainer. Whatever you do, don’t serve your child skim milk or low-fat milk. One, they need the fat, and two, they cannot absorb the calcium in the milk without fat!) What about  soy milk? Let’s not even go there. Soy milk is a processed food, which we are trying to eliminate here. Not enough said? It is also high in anti-nutrients and phyto-estrogen, and bad for the thyroid.
   

   Soaked oats with grass-fed butter, raisins and cream

So yes, it is a perfect day to serve your child a hot breakfast. A hot, nutrient-dense breakfast of REAL food, prepared in a way that all of the goodness is easily digested and available to be taken in. Full of vitamins, minerals, healthy fats and protein that you just can’t get from a box from the DEAD ZONE. And full of course, of love. Yours. Doesn’t get any better than this.

NOTE: If you don’t know how to soak the oatmeal or other grains, come to a class if you are in the area. I am teaching Soaking Techniques for Whole Grains and Legumes/Beans  in Silver Spring this Thursday evening, October 7 from 7pm-9:30pm. If you are not in the area, order one of my handy, informative and beautifully hand-lettered and illustrated CHARTS. The Preparing Whole Grains and Legumes for Ease of Digestion and Nutrient Availability Chart has all the information you need to soak, cook, and serve nutrient-dense whole grains and legumes. For more information, click HERE.

Soaked buckwheat pancake batter