Another breakfast idea

Image by sodahead

Isn't it funny that I can go weeks without writing, and then the next best yummy something comes along and it draws my fingers to the computer.
This week, I created a yummy smoothie for a friend who went off wheat. I was looking for more creative ideas for her to have for snacks, or just a pick-me-up when she came home from work. This morning, I made myself one for breakfast and I am LOVING it! How can you go wrong with fruit, protein and coconut!

So here we go:

Chocolate Banana Smoothie
1 banana (yes, I know, not exactly in season or local...)
1 scoop, (about 1 Tbsp), raw cocao powder
1 tsp maple syrup or honey
2 Tbsp coconut cream
1 raw pastured egg, (I wouldn't risk supermarket eggs here)
1 cup raw milk

Blend in the blender until smooth and enjoy!

This serves one person. This morning I doubled it and also fed my four kids...

I imagine you could substitute something like coconut milk if you really can't do dairy, but I haven't tried it. I also encourage you to try the raw before you write off milk altogether. As long as you know your farmer and your sources, raw milk is one of the healthiest way to get loads of proteins and nutrients.

So there you go, more of what happens in my house...

Real Cereal

I know I haven't been on in a long time, and that may happen again after this, (so much for blogging twice a week!), but after the breakfast we just had, I had to throw it out there.

A little over a year ago I stopped feeding my kids cereal. Really, we stopped buying anything that had any measure of processing and cereal was at the top of the list. Well, this instantly complicated life just a bit since now I would have to get up with my little early birds and make breakfast. I found a pretty good soaked homemade granola recipe a few months ago and made it a couple times. I just didn't love it like I loved my old tried and true unsoaked granola! So, we were back to square one.

Don't get me wrong. The breakfasts we have been having since then have been fun and so yummy! How fun to be able to have breakfast cookies or sprouted scones or just fried eggs with bacon every day! But once in a while, a little cereal would be nice...

Over Christmas I soaked and then dried some oats in my wonderful dehydrator. They were soaked in water and a little buttermilk (about 2 tsp per cup) for about 24-48 hours and kept at about 85 degrees. After drying them I had these nice crispy oats. I stuck them in a bag and left them alone until today, not quite sure what I was going to do with them...

(I imagine if you don't have a dehydrator you could dry the oats in the oven at low low temps, under 150 degrees. In case you don't know, the soaking is to break down and minimize the harmful effects of the phytic acids that prohibit absorption of certain vital nutrients.)

This morning, I decided it was high time for some easy granola. So here is what I did:

4 cups of soaked and dried oats
1/2 cup dried apples
1/2 cup dried pears
1/2 cup raisins
2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1/2 cup soaked, dried and finely chopped walnuts
2-4 tbsp maple syrup

Mixed all together in a big bowl and served with cold raw milk.

The great thing about this recipe is that not only is it fabulous, (and I am pretty picky when it comes to flavor!), but it can be infinitely modified to add whatever dried fruit and soaked nuts are in the house. I almost added flax seeds but didn't want to take the time to grind them. Next time maybe.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday.

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!

Stealing Ideas

I've decided to take my cousin Anna's idea to daily blog and, just like every recipe I find, modify it just a bit. (Check her out, she has some awesome blogs!) Practically, blogging daily is an impossibility because 1. I take way too much time on each blog, 2. I'm not nearly cool enough to have an iPhone from which I could blog anywhere, and 3. with the munchkins starting "school" next week, time will suddenly be at a minimum...

Sooo! I've decided to attempt to blog a couple times a week, with no restrictions on which days I put one in.

Blogs coming soon, not necessarily in this order:

Vacation 1- So Cal to Shasta
Vacation 2-Crater Lake to Salem, OR
Vacation 3 (what?! It was a three week long trip!)-Portland, Abundant Life Farm and Tahoe
Why Food?
Cream Cheese Ice Cream
Surgery
Scheduling unschooling
Seed Storage
The co-op

Whew! I guess I have a lot to say soon...hope you'll hang out with me as I blab..er blog.

The accidental meal success

Sometimes it is good not having a menu plan! Well, okay, maybe I won't go that far, but this made up dinner marks a true highlight in my culinary adventures, and it was all because I thawed some meat without a plan!

That morning, I pulled out 1 1/2 pounds of beef (from Organic Pastures) from the freezer, thinking that surely I would be able to make something yummy, (if I could just sit down for a second to figure out what!). Then, for breakfast we had scrambled eggs (pastured, of course), with raw cheese and 1/2 package of bacon. Bacon is just so good!

All day, I just kept thinking about that other 1/2 package of bacon...(it could be because my whole house still smelled like it...), and how I could work it into dinner. OOOOOOOH! Bacon cheeseburgers...yum...

However, 4pm rolled around pretty quickly and we have an old charcoal grill...I just didn't want to go through all the trouble of getting it going! Plus, I was out of bread, completely. So...how can I make something with bacon and beef, that won't take that long, and that the kids will devour...?

Behold, the bacon cheeseburger meatloaf!
(Sorry, I didn't think to take a picture until we had almost finished the whole thing! Even then I had to keep pushing my DS's hand out of the picture cuz he wanted more!)
Can I copywrite a recipe? Cuz this one is somethin special!

Bacon Cheeseburger Meatloaf
1 1/2 lb. pastured ground beef
1/2 lb. uncooked bacon, sliced small
1 onion minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 c. lacto-fermented ketchup (I haven't made this yet but when the tomatoes are ripe...)
1 1/2 c. shredded raw cheddar cheese (reserve the 1/2 c.)
1 pastured egg
1 c. *soaked oats (soaked with 1/4 c. buttermilk for 12-24 hours), optional: sub. 1 c. sprouted breadcrumbs (remember, I said I was out of bread?)
salt and pepper to taste

Mix everything together in a bowl really well, then throw it into a glass baking dish, (9x13 maybe). Sprinkle the reserved 1/2 c. cheese on the top and bake at 350 degrees for about 30-35 minutes. Then enjoy!!!

We had these with another made up recipe, Skillet Au Gratin Potatoes made with organic potatoes, raw cream and raw cheese(See picture at the top). I'll have to blog on that one next. Yum yum!
*Disclaimer: Okay, my oats weren't soaked this time since I was on such a time crunch and hadn't planned ahead. However, next time I make this, (and I will!), I will either use leftover bread (sprouted) or soaked oats. I have no doubt that it will still be just as good...

This blog is part of Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Cheeseslave.

The Best Chocolate Ice cream I Have ever made

Yesterday, since my folks were coming to visit, I needed to make ice cream. My dad and hubby are both ice cream addicts, so normally, they would go out on a special ice cream foraging trip and bring home lots of natural stuff like B&J's and Breyers. Of course, my dairy sensitive son can't have any so with the recent start of the Organic Pastures co-op here, I was able to get fresh raw milk and cream specifically for making the good stuff.

The foundation of the recipe is the same for every type of ice cream that we make, utilizing all raw materials to make it healthy enough for the kids to fill up on it without any qualms on my part.

Basic Ice Cream
(variations in amounts depend on ice cream maker size. Ours takes about 1 1/2 cups of each and 4 eggs.)
1-2 c. raw cream
1-2 c. raw milk
4-6 pastured egg yolks
1/2 c. raw honey
1 tsp. vanilla

Whisk all together (I use the food processor or blender) and put into the ice cream maker according to manufacturers instructions.

Chocolate Variation (when using this, omit the honey above)
In a medium saucepan, melt together over the lowest heat, (do NOT boil!):
1/2 c. honey
1/2 c. cocoa (raw if you have it)
5 tbsp. raw or pastured butter

Mix until smooth then cool completely.
Once cool, blend together with milk mixture and cool in the fridge for a couple hours.
Freeze in ice cream maker.
Option: At the last possible minute, add 1 c. choc chips (try homemade!)
Option: Even better, to make it with mint, add 1 tsp of mint extract when you add the vanilla.

I made the chocolate mint ice cream. When it was finished I had a friend try it. She said she thought about it all the way home! It is that flavor that you just want to leave in your mouth for a long long time! Yum.

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!

Pain is good?

Last week, all my expectations came crashing down around my feet.

Since February of 2008, I have been in a state of constant pain. With each movement, sharp shooting pains spike down the back of my leg. The rest of the time, it tingles like it is "asleep". Walking hurts. Sitting hurts. Playing with the kids, when it is possible, hurts. Sleeping hurts. I don't even remember what it is like to be able to live without pain.

I have read books and prayed. I have tried resting, icing, heating, exercise, stretching, and wine. After a full year of alternative treatments, last week my doctor told me that he thought surgery might be the only way to go for me. Coming from him, whom I not only trust but also is as "granola" as I am, this was quite a blow.

And yet...maybe it is not as bad as I have convinced myself that it is. In the last few weeks, I have felt like God is calling me to a state of peace in the midst of suffering. It is just so hard to give up the hope of healing! Can I live like this for the rest of my life? Can I praise him in the center of the worst of it, when I haven't slept much for days in a row, when I can't find a position that will give me enough of a release to let me rest. Sleep is a beautiful beautiful thing. As a mother, I know this truth inside and out, but now...it is more precious than gold. How can I have peace in the midst of this?!

And yet...do I really believe that God is a God of love? Do I really believe that this suffering, (compared to some it is really nothing!), is in my life for a purpose? If I believe He wants the best for me, than there is peace to be found.

And now this. Surgery on my spinal column! Sure, it is a quick surgery, but it is still ridiculously high risk! Is this how I get to heal? Or is this the way to the worst? I honestly have no idea. I have no insight into God's voice right now.

There is only one thing I know for a fact. If I do have this surgery, there is no way I am eating hospital food!

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!