Red Fish, Blue Fish, Good Fish!

Are you a fish eater?? I never was growing up unless you want to count the square fish I ate in the cafeteria in elementary school, but even then I avoided it like the plague! But what if my parents would have fed this really picky eater wholesome, delicious fish - primarily salmon? Would my eyes be better? Would I be smarter? Would I have better overall health?
Research suggest the consumption of salmon, which contains omega-3 fatty acids, is an important part of our diet that we have strayed from in our evolution as homosapiens. So what are the benefits of omega-3's? It can decrease platelet aggregation, preventing excessive blood clotting. Reduce inflammation throughout your body. Lower the amount of lipids (fats such as "bad" cholesterol and triglycerides) circulating in the bloodstream. Reduce the risk of becoming obese and improve the body's ability to respond to insulin by stimulating the secretion of leptin, a hormone that helps regulate food intake, body weight and metabolism, and is expressed primarily by adipocytes (fat cells). So overall, omega-3's help reduce depression, help prevent heart disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes!
So, why is this super food not flying onto our dinner tables and helping everyone's overall health? Because fish takes work! It's not cheap for a good piece of wild salmon (the kind that is best for us), it's not simple to cook (ie: the good stuff is not microwaved), and most Americans that do not eat fish are spoiled and picky. However, even I am learning to really love fish! I have purchased some frozen marinated salmon from Sam's Club before and while it's delicious, I am trying to lean towards whole un-preprocessed foods . So I purchased some salmon yesterday from the commissary that was caught from the wild, then I marinated it myself and pan grilled it. It was delicious! Matthew liked it and he is pretty picky himself about fish and fishy kind of dinners. Aidan loved it - she is a good eater and eats pretty much whatever I put on the table. And of course Thalia will benefit from it in so many ways! I think as apart of our whole foods lifestyle change, we are def going to be putting more fish into diets and other foods that are high in omega-3's. I sprinkle flax seed meal on our breakfast every morning and I do try to take a fish oil supplement - but it's also pretty cool to eat it at its source! It's a feel good brain food and I need all of that I can get!
So - give good delicious fish a try! It's how our ancestors grew such lovely, healthy, large functioning brains! Plus our brain is a large percent of fat and it needs good for you fats to continue to grow and work properly! So outsmart your body and enjoy some salmon!

Say CHEESE!!

Cheese is delicious!! I have had the benefit of living and visiting a few different countries in which cheese was an art form. The French know their cheese, as do the Italians, Germans, and Austrians just to name a few! Some of the best cheese I have tasted lately is not of commercial, industrial or foreign origin, but straight out of Kentucky!!
When I went up to JD Country Dairy in Russeville, KY at the first of the week, I purchased some cheese they had in their store. It was by Kenny's Farmhouse Cheeses and it's delicious! Even my sweet husband whose pallet is by far the pickiest, loves the Asiago. And yes we have had some of the best Asiago cheese in Asiago, Italy! It's not the exact same, but it's pretty darn good. (The fresh Asiago cheeses we had truly melted in your mouth and were divine!) We have also tried the aged white cheddar, garden herb Havarti, and aged Gouda.
One of the best things about Kenny's Farmhouse Cheeses is that it is made with fresh raw milk! From their site: "Because the milk is so fresh, pasteurizing is not necessary. The heat and the cheese-making process preserve naturally beneficial enzymes in the milk, aiding digestion of lactose and absorption of calcium. Just as important, raw milk cheese has a much richer depth of flavor. " http://www.kennysfarmhousecheese.com/
Why is cheese so good for you? It is full of calcium, proteins, vitamins, minerals and good fat (the kind that helps your cholesterol). Plus if you eat full fat cheese - real cheese not the stuff that is a single in a plastic envelope, it helps keep your appetite at bay. Plus, it also helps with bone health, dental health and hypertension! Just don't fall for that low fat or fat free cheese - it tends to lack the good stuff that helps you feel fuller and better. I know low fat and fat free is the "in thing", I have even fallen into it in the past as well. But sometimes you need to eat fat to lose fat - but that's a totally different post! Until next time....

We ate out today....

First off - "Happy World Breastfeeding Week" (insert bells and whistles here)!!! Take a moment to celebrate the most perfect and nutritionally complete baby food in the world! It comes in pre-measured, pre-warmed, pre-sterilized form with lots of great antibodies, amino acids, vitamins, Love and much more!
We were in Nashville today during lunch, so we decided to eat out. Sometimes it's just not feasible to take an entire meal on the go. We are not anti-eating out, but we used to spend about $150 a week in addition to groceries! That's a significant and embarrassing amount of money to spend on fast, sub-standard and not so good food.So for us eating out once a week or every other week is a huge change!
We do try to to make good choices when we do eat out - we love Panera Bread! They make a lot of of their own breads and it's pretty tasty. I do try to stay away from their soups - granted they are delicious, but they come in a bag and I am sure filled with preservatives! So, for Matthew it was a Chicken Cesare and myself a Sierra Turkey. It was yummy and I love their chippies - potatoes, sea salt and sunflower oil - nice and simple.
We have decided to start buying our beef locally through Persimmon Creek Farms out of Cunningham. They were at the Clarksville Farmers Market one Saturday and I purchased two of their sirloins - they were delicious! I grilled them slowly and they came out soooo tender. Granted they are not the cheapest meats in the world - but at least they are not trucked 1,500 miles to our table. Plus they do not use hormones, antibiotics or animal by-products in feed. They are grass and hay feed and supplemented with natural grains. I placed a family order with them for delivery on Thursday - I can't wait to get some delicious local beef!
Later, when I finish the book I am reading (Real Food by Nina Planck http://www.ninaplanck.com/books.html), I will highlight a few of her points regarding industrial/factory meats to include beef, pork and poultry - it may change your mind on what is really in your cart! Until next time....

Success!!

YAY! My second batch of yogurt came out pretty decent - not quite as thick as I would like, but awesome on muesli! I think I will leave it in for the full 10 hours instead of 9 and see if that thickens it up a little. Plus I know that I can strain it to make it thicker - but all of this will take more practice, trial and error. The above picture is my homemade yogurt on muesli and frozen blueberries - yum!!
My first batch of sprouted grain bread came out great! I didn't start it until later in the evening, so my sweet husband generously stayed up to get it out of the maker for me (while playing the xBox - LOL!) He brought up a piece with butter to me in bed and it was better than I thought it would be!! It's a heavier bread, more for eating with something not so much for sandwich, but delicious. I got the recipe from another blog http://cookeatthink.blogspot.com and here it is below:
ingredients::
1 cup sprouted grains (I used a mix which included organic wheat, rye, barley, triticale, oats, spelt, kamut, quinoa, sesame, millet and amaranth)
about 1 c milk (see note in directions*)
1/2 c + 3 Tbsp water (tweaked)
3 c whole wheat flour (I used 2 cups wheat and 1 cup oatmeal flour)
2 Tbsp organic brown sugar (can also use honey, agave, etc.)
2 Tbsp softened butter
1 Tbsp softened coconut oil (you could also just use more butter)
2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp yeast>>optional...2Tbsp vital wheat gluten
directions::
Blend sprouted grains in a food processor until they are a course meal. Measure 1 cup of the ground grains into a large cup measure. Leaving the grains in the cup, pour fresh room temp milk over the grains to the 1 cup mark* (This compensates for liquid present in fresh sprouted grains). Place this mix into the bread machine pan. Measure the 1/2 cup + 3 Tbsp room temp water and add that into the bread machine also. Add the rest of the ingredients into the machine pan in the order your bread machine recommends. Select the wheat cycle and light crust.
It turned out great!! I have another batch in the machine right now and I added the gluten and substituted 1 cup of whole wheat flour with buckwheat flour. I am hoping it will turn out nicely again. Last night's loaf "grew and popped" as Matthew said, so it's a little flat in the middle - see below (it is a half eaten loaf though). I am curious to see how this second loaf will turn out.
I used my dehydrated sprouted grains with this loaf and added some water to rehydrate them. Sounds a little redundant, but this way my sprouts will keep longer. One of us had to get up at 2 am to shut the dehydrator off since we were cheap and didn't order one with a shut off timer. So, we are going to get an appliance timer through Amazon for it. Having a dehydrator nice - it makes awesome beef jerky as well!
So - the bread was a WIN, the yogurt PASSED, the sprouts were a GO. Now, if I just had a bigger kitchen with even more storage I could get all kinds of things started - LOL! Until next time .....

First Time Yogurt Fail....

Well, I guess I didn't mix the starter grains correctly, because I am a first time yogurt making fail! No worries, when we went to the commissary today, I got some Greek Yogurt that I am using as a starter this time. If this one comes out good, I will share the recipe and process. I am not saying what I made was bad - but it wasn't as tasty as what I am used to.
You may be wondering what has brought me to start eating Whole/Real Foods at this stage in my life. I am tired of being physically tired and overweight because of my horrible diet. I am overweight - however, I gained a glorious amount of weight when I was pregnant with Thalia thinking I would drop all of it the day after I had her because I breastfeed. I think I lost 12 lbs and the rest has stayed on for a bit. I did go back to Weight Watchers for a couple of weeks - but I just can't really cope with the processed foods and low fat stuff that is recommended. But I knew our family was just not eating the best foods possible. So I started reading about whole/real foods eating. Thus far we feel so much better! We don't suffer from the indigestion as we did, we feel better, sleep better, have more energy and enjoy what we eat without feeling like crap afterward.
I am trying different things and I am enjoying the cooking! It does take a lot of time to cook/prepare three meals a day. I have a lovely sized kitchen, but right now, I wish I had a bigger one! The dishwasher is always running - that happens when you don't eat out and when you don't eat food from a box. Our grocery bill has doubled - but we are eating good foods and eating them all! I thought it would be boring eating the same stuff - but we don't really, we try to mix it up a bit and go from there. We feel more filled and satisfied and not always hungry and starving. There are so many benefits to changing what we eat and our lifestyle!
Well, I will add pics and more updates tomorrow. Right now I have a bread maker, yogurt maker and dehydrator going. I am dehydrating my sprouts (to make flour with later), making a loaf of sprouted grain bread, and giving my Greek yogurt another try. I have plenty of milk, so I can always try it again if this go is full of "fail sauce" again - LOL! Until next time!

Homemade Yogurt!

We eat a lot of yogurt in our home and it is delicious! It's full of wonderful good for you fat and probiotics. Matthew and I love Greek Yogurt - Aidan prefers the Horizon Organic Yogurt in a Tube (not exactly completely whole foods but not filled with artificial stuff). So at about $1.25 for 6 ounces of yogurt times 2 a day for myself and sometimes 2 a day for Matthew, that adds up quickly! So, I decided to invest less than $30 on a yogurt maker from Amazon and get the starter grains for Greek and Bulgarian yogurt. Well - it's incubating and I am hoping it will turn out good! The above picture is my yogurt maker in action!
I am learning a lot more about the benefits of milk in one's diet. Even if you are lactose intolerant, you can benefit from yogurt and cheeses - especially homemade or made with raw milk products. Right now our family is drinking some delicious low pasteurized, non homogenized milk from JD Country Dairy out of KY. It's a little on the spendy side - about $9 for a gallon - but OMG!! It's sooooo worth it! Shake it up to mix the cream in and you have a wonderfully tasty delicious glass of milk. Even my non-milk drinking husband loves it! I stocked up yesterday at the Amish Country Pantry - 2 1/2 gallons so I could make plenty of yogurt after I get my serial culture up and running (when you make yogurt with a starter, you reserve a little of it to the side to produce other batches with - thus a serial culture). I will go more in depth about the great benefits of WHOLE, FULL FAT milk and even raw milk in a later post. I am reading about it now and it's pretty interesting. But one tidbit - a mammals milk - breast milk, bovine, goats milk is the most complete form of milk! It has all of the nutrients, ingredients, vitamins and everything one needs. Even though I breast feed for many reasons, I am learning what the HUGE benefits for a baby really are - brain development, gut development, antibodies, the list goes on!
Oh and a word about my sprouting grains - I have rinsed them and I am leaving them to sit for 24-36 while they sprout. Check out the pic of my new wide mouth sprout straining lids! So much easier than cheese cloth held on with an extra small hair scrunchy - LOL!

Wait With Me....

While my barley, rye and wheat berries sprout! What are these odd berries I am talking about?? Well, I am still learning about them myself, but the sprouts of certain grains, beans, nuts and seeds are very nutritious. Sprouting not only neutralizes phytic acid, which blocks the absorption of many important minerals, but it increases the vitamin content. Here is a great source of information about sprouts and other whole/real foods http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/2008/03/nourishing-practices-soaking-grains-2.html
I have never in my life had sprouts.... it's sad, but very true. But all of that is about to change! I am going about sprouts in a kind of non-green'ish food way by making into something a carb-addict can appreciate - bread!! I am sprouting barley, rye and wheat berries to make into ground flour for homemade bread. I am still researching my recipes, but I still have a bit of time since it takes about two and half days to get the desired length on my sprouts (1/8-1/4 inch).
Thus far, I have rinsed my grain berries (the rye and wheat berries were purchased from Whole Foods and the barley from the Amish Country Pantry). Now, they are soaking for 24 hours. I will then drain and rinse them and then allow them to sit in the jar without watering for 24-36 hours. From there I will rinse and put some of them in the food processor for bread making and the other portion in the dehydrator to use for later flour grinding.
Until they are ready, here is a rather boring picture of my grains soaking.... It will be a few days until I can have something of edible substance to show - (hopefully) delicious bread! Also a shout out to my friend Annette for hooking me up with a bread machine - hopefully it can handle what I will be putting in it!
Want to know how to sprout your own grains, beans and seeds?? I used this link for the info http://www.ehow.com/how_4620081_sprouted-wheat-flour-diastatic-malt.html I also picked up some new sprouting lids today! I will feature them in my next picture of my sprouts - I know you can't wait!! Until next time....