Why Food?

Photo: Microsoft clipart

It has come to my attention lately that I am a bit of a food fanatic. Some people would call me a "foodie", others call me crazy. I do a few things that might cause the average food enjoyer to shiver.

The normal things I do:
Make my own bread, make 3 meals a day from scratch, get an organic CSA (Community Sustained Agriculture) box, mill my own flour

The slightly "excessive":
buy no processed foods (whenever possible), feed my family only RAW dairy, sprout and dry my own grains, make organic jams, buy locally whenever possible...

The "downright crazy":
make my own buttermilk and yogurt, buy only meat and eggs from pastured animals, soak my oats or unsprouted grains before use, refuse to use my microwave and encourage the intake of good animal fats.

I had some serious discussion with my husband after unwittingly offending some people who are very dear to my heart. Here is his analogy:
"This food journey you've been on is kind of like a religious experience or conversion. Once you have studied it and learned all about it and then converted, it is like you are a new believer, totally excited about it and just wanting everyone else to join you in it."

Did I mention that he is brilliant and insightful?

So yeah, apparently in my zeal I have caused others to feel judged. Dang it! This is the LAST thing I want! What I want is for everyone to learn as I have learned! What I want is for people to be able to enjoy food the way it was created to be enjoyed-bringing health instead of sickness.

So why Food? A few reasons actually:
For one, food is the core of our physical existence. Without it, we would literally die. Food can be, and often is, pleasurable in the making AND in the eating. And yet, food can either sustain us, or slowly kill us. Astounding in its complexity...

The more I learn about how real food, (natural food, food that is in its original form), reacts with our bodies to create health and to not just sustain us but also protect us, the more amazed I am at the detail and love the Creator put into it. Before we had refrigerators and freezers people had to come up with other methods of food preservation. Amazingly, most of these methods actually make the nutrients in the food MORE accessible to our bodies and in many cases also make it more easily digestible. How can that be unless food was created FOR us and with our lives in mind?! I love to think about that!

It is also interesting to consider what the industrialized food revolution has wrought, in our country at the very least. Before "food" was accessible to everyone in the supermarket down the street, not only did folks eat seasonally, (in cold areas preserving the heck out of everything to make it through the winter!), but they also ate locally. It is unlikely that they would be buying beef from New Zealand when Farmer John up the hill butchers a cow once a month to sell at the market. The greatest thing about that life, tough as it could sometimes be, was that not only did you KNOW where your food came from (and what it ate or was grown in), but you also developed RELATIONSHIPS with the folks you got the food from. In fact, often you could be trading for goods and services instead of spending cold hard impersonal cash.

Now, not only do most people have no idea where their meat is coming from, it is likely that the ground beef someone just bought at the supermarket, (which was probably fed gut destroying genetically modified grains), came from more than one animal from more than one feedlot! The boxed cereal that many ate for breakfast was processed to the point that all the natural nutrients in the food have been stripped and the artificially added minerals only add to the toxicity of it as a whole. The milk that is now so readily available has been so processed that the good pathogens that are naturally occuring have actually been destroyed allowing all kinds of bad bacteria to grow, making milk generally worthless for the body's systems. And forget about knowing the farmers! The meat in CA could have come from Idaho or Colorado. How does anyone know what the feedlot looks like or how it treats its animals?

Okay, and there I went on my tirade. The point of it all is that there exists a way of eating and buying foods that is not just sustainable-Eating foods that work WITH the body instead of against it, and buying food that BUILDS relationships instead of tearing them down...or just not having them at all.
And I am all about relationships. Some of the most important relationships in my life are the ones with my children. How could I do anything less than feed them the best possible options for food? To build their bodies and their health and let them know that I want only good for them and will not feed them what I know is not beneficial. To teach them that there is a way that is different from the world, that is better for the world...How I wish everyone I love could know and understand real food...

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays hosted by the Food Renegade!

Pump the Jam

We get all of our produce from a co-op of organic farms called Abundant Harvest. We love them, wish they were just slightly more local, but haven't been able to find what we need from local farms. Our area is JUST getting on the organic band wagon and we still deal with a lot of spraying and GMO crops.

Anyway, they have just started their summer fruits and have an optional add-on of 15lbs of cosmetically challenged stone fruit for $9. I don't know about you, but a deal that good is hard to pass up. The first week, my kids ate so much I barely had enough to make a couple peach crisps!

Additionally, my friends and I started a small garden co-op this year and see that we might run into a slight abundance of things like tomatoes and cucumbers. I had never canned anything before but have always wanted to. My friend Erin however, is a seasoned jammer.

Soooooo, yesterday, with some of her materials, I took all those peaches and made some jam.
Now, we are all into that Nourishing Traditions, slow food, traditional cooking thing, so I couldn't just use any jam recipe or any pectin. I wanted to make my jams with honey, so I could feel good about my kids slathering it on their biscuits. Apparently, jams are delicate, though a pretty simple process. I don't know that much about jamming but I do know that you pretty much need pectin and that you have to get special pectin to make no sugared jams. It is nearly impossible to find organic pectin (if anyone has a resource please let me know!), so we get our natural stuff from Pomona.
These are Erin's supplies!

So here is what you need:
Fresh fruit in season
pectin
calcium water
Some smallish canning jars and lids
sweetener, honey, rapadura, coconut sugar, etc.
lemon or lime juice
a few pans for heating
a very large stock pot or roasting pan for boiling the jars

I followed the recipe on this page. So I started by peeling and mashing a bunch of peaches. I set those aside to deal with in a minute. Then I measured out just less than a cup of honey. Put it in a bowl with 1 tbsp. of pectin. Those have to be mixed together until the pectin is completely incorporated.

Next, I took all those organic lemons and made some lemon juice. I needed 1/4 cup to add to the 4 cups of peaches. Then I added 4 tsp. of calcium water (see instructions on the recipe sheet) and mixed that all together. In the meantime, I was also preparing the jars.
First, I washed all of the jars in warm soapy water, then let them sit in hot water until I needed them.
Then took all the lids and rings and boiled them. After boiling, I just turned down the heat and let them sit in hot water til I needed them.

Once that stuff was ready, I took the peaches and boiled them in a medium sauce pan. As soon as it boiled I added the honey mix and stirred vigorously for 1-2 minutes until it was well mixed. Then I let it come to a boil and turned off the heat.

Filling the jars is a no-brainer, except there has to be about 1/4 inch left from the top of the rim. Wiping the rims with a clean towel is essential for sterilization purposes, then the lids and rings go on.
I started with just my roasting pan but by the second batch I realized that I had a couple jars that would not be completely covered when I put them in, so I had to bring out the big soup pot. I used tongs, though it would be really nice to have those specialty tools for placing and removing jars from boiling water.
The jars have to boil for about 10 minutes before they are removed and allowed to cool without being touched. Apparently it can take up to 2 weeks for them to set!

I am trying really hard not to touch all those beautiful jars right now, but I am very excited for my next venture in food preservation. I would love to get to a point where all of our canned foods come straight from our own garden or local farms.

This post is part of fight Back Fridays hosted by Food Renegade!

Sprouted grains (Updated)

Since discovering the advantages of sprouted grains, I have been a grain sprouting, drying, milling, experimenting fool! I'll post some recipes soon, but I wanted to let folks know that this too is attainable for YOU!

Making seeds grow is something that my kids do on a regular basis. They find a seed, grab a ziploc and a moist paper towel, throw it all in together and tape it to a window. (Usually all before I have a say in the matter. I have tape marks all over my dining room window, since currently we only have a lemon seed growing...) Within a few days, we have plant life to watch!

Sprouting grains for cooking is just as simple and takes about as much time! Of course, it is much easier to make all the recipes I have if you have a grain mill...(which I HIGHLY recommend for healthy cooking! Check out info about anti-caking agents added to store bought flour!)

The Sprouting Steps:
1. I usually select a grain, fill my gallon jar about 1/2 full, fill it to the top with water and put the mesh screen lid on. Then I leave it overnight, or for the whole day, up to 24 hours.

2. Dumping the water takes 2 minutes, (a couple more if you dump it in your garden like I do), then the jar goes on it's side on the counter.
3. The seeds/grains get rinsed once or twice a day, (depending on how anal you are...sometimes I get so busy they don't get rinsed at all! gulp!)
4. Within a couple days, you'll see all those little seeds growing little tiny sprouts. When they are about 1/16 inch long, they are ready to be used. Be careful though, if you let them go longer they will keep growing until they are no longer a grain, but now plant life. (Makes for a much greener flavor...)

Drying Sprouts:
This part takes about as much time as sprouting.
1. Dump your jar of sprouted grains onto a jelly roll pan (a cookie sheet with sides) or on a pizza pan with holes in the bottom (I just discovered that the grains don't fall through the bottom and it gives it great air circulation!) and place in a warm oven. It is very important that the oven not go over about 105 degrees. If they dry at a higher heat, you kill all those good enzymes you just let out by sprouting!)
2. Every so often, 2 or so hours, reach in and mix em up. The oven is only warm so if it is too hot for your hand, then it is too hot for the grain.
3 After about 5-18 hours, depending on your oven's convection features and how thinly your grain is spread on the trays, you have dried grains that can now go right into the flour mill! (They should feel just like the dried grains do when they are ready to go through the mill.)

Cooking with Sprouted flour:
One thing I have found so far is that most of the time sprouted flour can be substituted straight across for any other flour in a recipe. However, every once in a while it needs just a bit less liquid...not exactly sure why.

Yeh! Found my camera cord. This last picture is of the scones that my 7 year old made all by herself!

Later, I am making sprouted hummus! We'll see how it turns out!

This post is a part of Fight Back Fridays hosted by Food Renegade!

Raw Milk at Organic Pastures

Our spring break was so exciting! In between family visits, sister weekends and driving all over the state, we got to go visit Organic Pastures raw milk dairy in Fresno, CA. Since we already buy milk from them, I thought it would be the perfect supplement to the kids' education to see where our milk comes from, literally. I made an appointment the week before our trip to get a tour and when we arrived, another family tour was just finishing up.
Kaleigh, Marc McAfee's daughter, was our tour guide. (Of course the pix I took of her are nowhere to be found!!!) She was bubbly and sweet and very informative. She is basically in charge of marketing for the company and you can completely tell that her heart is all the way in it! It will be cool to watch what happens as she becomes more and more involved.

All of the following is info we got from her. (Any error in information is my mistaken memory!)

When Marc and his family first moved out to their farm he wanted to have goats. His wife didn't like goat's milk, cheese or meat so she wanted cows. Obviously, happiness of the wife is happiness in the home so cows it was! They had never been farmers so they kind of let the cows do their thing, their way. Pretty soon, folks were coming with buckets, asking for raw milk. Initially, they just gave it away for free! Then the demand became great and they realized that to meet the demand they would have to actually venture into some bottling processes. So they started with a couple trailers, thinking it would be a temporary fix and ended up using more to make their current creamery.


For sanitation purposes they can't let people actually go IN to the creamery, but we got to look in the window to see how they bottle the milk.


Amazingly, everything that can be done by hand is done by hand! We can see now why the milk has to cost what it does! (I wish I had been able to get the picture of the guy with the mountain of butter and the scooper. He was scooping butter into the containers, one at a time!!!)


They are hoping that when they get the new creamery built (within a couple years!) they can actually streamline things, meet a little more of the outstanding demand, and perhaps even get the prices down quite a bit!

Next we got to see the cows!

Our first stop was the mama pasture, full of pregnant cows ready to give birth.
Cows are pregnant for about 9ish months, close to the same as humans. They get to be in this pasture away from milking and daily cow busy-ness for about the last month. Sounds like a dream! There were holsteins and jerseys and some mixes, mamas who were on their first baby and some who were old hats at this. At Organic Pastures they let the cows go through the labor and delivery process as naturally as possible without any human intervention unless there is some problem or the labor takes more than an hour.

(An hour!!!! Can you imagine if we lived organically in a natural environment and with little medical intervention? Would our babies come out as quickly and with such ease? I think so!!!)


Typically, the delivering cow will take herself about 200 yards or so out away from the herd and lumber around, swaying and loosening up. The calf will then come out, plop down on the ground, followed by all the afterbirth. She will eat up all the yucky stuff, clean her baby and he will wobble himself up to his feet.
See how close we were?







Then how far away from the rest?









Next we walked/ran, (this was lovely for wearing out the 3, 5, 7 and 9 year olds!), to see where they take the babies once they have their legs under them. There are coyotes in the area that will come and take the calves if they are not protected a bit.
There were little pens that they stay in for a couple weeks until they get moved to the big kids playpen









and then on to the big kid area out in the pasture. While they are here, we can pet them and let them "nurse" off of our fingers. (This is a feeling much like a human baby, just with a much deeper mouth.) They were very sweet!

Organic Pastures does not do any branding of their animals, which I love. It does, however, have its drawbacks. Just recently, they had about a hundred calves stolen. Yes, stolen. Can you believe people still do things like that? I'm not sure if they are going to change their practice on that end but I hope not. I love that these cows are so free to be truly natural.

A cow can typically live anywhere from 15- 25 years. At nearby dairies, the cows live an average of 3-4 years. This could be because the farmers give them things like gummy bears and molasses chips to make them produce more milk. (!!!!!!! Did you catch that???????? Talk about natural!!! UGH!) These cows are also kept in small pens and given no opportunities for normal life. From those cows I can understand the pasteurization practice!!!

Lately, with the pasteurized milk industry not doing as well, some of the organic dairies are coming to the McAfee family and asking them to buy their cows. When the non-pastured cows are unloaded from the truck they are a bit skittish about this prickly green substance under their feet. It takes them a couple of nervous hours before the joy takes them over. At that point they begin to literally dance across the pastures, kicking up their heels, bounding through to the boundaries of their newfound freedom. Kaleigh said she wished she had a video so she could put it on YouTube. (Get it, please!!! I want to see!!!)


After the tour, we came back to the offices where the kids ate all of the raw almond samples and had some raw milk and chocolate "colostrum" samples.
I love this dairy. I love how much they care about their products and their animals. I am so happy to be supporting them!

Pizza will never be the same

For a few years now, I have been making homemade pizza, partially to save money and partially to prove that I could be THAT good. But lately...I think I may have achieved star status. Ramiah, my pickiest eater, not only loves to help MAKE the pizza, but has proclaimed that pizza is her FAVORITE. (I suppose it is of no consequence that she wants to put all the stuff on it but even as she is grinning about eating "piiiiiizzzzzaaaaaa" she is picking all of that stuff off!)
Until last week, Asher, my allergy boy, has always had to have a separate pizza that was only his. It was always made with less sauce, (tomatoes give him a rash), and some other kind of cheese, (soy-before I knew better, almond-just gross, goat-only kinda gross). His dairy allergy always made his pizza just different enough that nobody wanted to share...
Until this week.

I now buy only raw cheeses, obviously made from raw milk. So this week, we made pizza with a raw cheddar. It smelled divine, looked even better and the taste...ah well...let's just say that dear hubby proclaimed this one to be one of the best yet. And the best part? Asher ate from the same pizza as all of us! Not only that, he ate 4 slices before I cut him off! Oh, dawn has risen and the family is whole! (Okay, slightly melodramatic, but it was a good day, a very good day.)


Asher isn't pictured, but his twin sure enjoyed it too! By the way, this is also a great way to get the kids to eat their veggies. This pizza had peppers, tomatoes, onions, and spinach on it. Apart from Miah, nobody took anything off the top! If you want my recipe, leave me a comment. :)

Real Food Wednesday Part 2 :donuts, (the good kind)

This blog is part of Real Food Wednesday.

Mmmmmmm! Those donuts were good! The recipe is on heavenly homemaker's blog. I used honey instead of rapadura and added a little flour at the end to make them rollable. I also used raw milk and 2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice instead of the cinn. and nutmeg. Delicious!

I firmly believe that kids should be part of the process...they enjoy it more that way.


Ramiah was fabulous at the egg cracking process! No shells or anything!


Adriel really got into the shaping process.

Asher is always explaining to everyone exactly what he is doing. He actually only shaped 2 donuts. His talking slowed him down.

He couldn't wait for the frosting. He wanted one right now!

Finally eating! They all loved em. Had to con them into saving one for Dad. He never gets the good stuff.
I'd say this counts as math today, right?

Eating the way God intended

Well...that's what we tell ourselves we are doing. Recently, we started getting a CSA (community sustained agriculture) box. It is basically a bunch of organic farms that work together to provide people with fresh and seasonal produce. Fortunately for us, we live in CA where the growing season goes on all year. It has been an interesting challenge to come up with recipes that will appeal to all 6 of us with some of the things that have been showing up in the box. This week we had kale, mustard greens, turnips, and arugala among others. Tonight I made turnip fries, that tasted remarkably like zucchini and greens with bacon and onions. Yum! It was so good that I am going to use the leftovers as a soup base for tomorrow's dinner...of course, I'll have to blend up the wilted greens since two of the kids made a point to gag on them tonight...sigh. They do so well normally! Well, most of them do. Right now, we are just working on teaching Ramiah to stop complaining about the food before she has even tasted it.

Unschooling and gardening

Recently, I was finally released from working a part time job that was wearing me down. I had prayed about it and then just waited to see what was going to happen. Whew! One of the reasons I wanted to stop was because I want to move on to greener pastures. Literally. I want to start a community garden mostly for young children in my area. Since we live in So. Cal. we have a very long gardening season. Plus, the amazing amount of learning kids can achieve in a good garden motivates me to no end. I am not completely sure where to start but I can't seem to get it out of my head. This is usually an indication that I should pay attention and at least check to see if I can find some open doors.
One of my inspirations right now is a little urban homestead in Pasadena, CA called Path to Freedom. Check out their website and then tell me what you think!
Additionally, I am working on a name for my nonprofit corp. (This is what I need to be able to really do the garden right!) Any ideas are welcome. I wanted it to be something like Growing Green Kids, but that is already taken. Ideas? Ideas?
Somehow, I will include organic sustainable eating, composting, measuring, colors and sorting, weather, plant identification and sustainable water and solar practices. I am so excited about this!