If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that we have made significant changes to our eating habits in the last 6 months. I had finally gotten settled with meal preparation so it was time to create a new complete and healthy grocery list. Going wheat, kamut and spelt free, and nearly dairy free, among other adjustments had physically been pretty straightforward, although an adjustment when it came time to cook and shop. I attribute this relatively pain free transition to our switch to eating Real Food last fall, minimizing the amount of packaged foods we eat.

Going wheat free or gluten free does not necessarily make for a “healthier” grocery list.

After 2 months of examining gluten/wheat free brands, to this day I am reluctant to include the majority of them in my grocery list, let alone my diet. It was pretty difficult to replace bread products, baking, and cereals with healthy wheat/gluten free alternatives. Most packaged brands rely on ingredients like laboratory made Xanthan gum, various sweeteners in abundance, corn products, and white rice flour, rather than healthier alternatives. I’m not saying that it impossible to replace old favorites with healthy wheat/gluten free alternatives, however, gluten free products are no more health promoting that other packaged foods. This is the part of going wheat free that takes time: Finding wheat free recipes that are simple, healthy and reliable.

Healthy benefits from switching to a limited dairy and wheat free grocery list and diet are still popping up for us.

One of the most recent benefits was that Olivia had stopped picking her nails. She had picked for as long as I can remember, even until her nails would bleed, as well as other things like her blanket and Na-Na snuggle bear. Soon after we changed our diet, she stopped picking and her nails have all grown back. I knew this habit was centered in the emotional realm; however, I have underestimated truly how much food can impact this realm. Wheat has been related to many emotional disturbances such as nervousness, depression and anxiety. Since the switch I certainly feel lighter and more energetic myself, but when I saw Olivia stop her picking habit at the age of three, again I was simply amazed.

One major key to healthy nutrition is to eat food as close as possible to its original state. This means Simple, Whole & Wheat free and REAL Food. Food we recognize and ingredients we understand. My grocery list is pretty simple. Notably absent are products made with corn, soy and wheat – this also includes avoiding products that use these ingredients as livestock feed – organic or not! If it makes the animals sick, why would we eat it? We now rely as much as possible on local suppliers and ask a lot of questions. How would I describe our meals these days? Real foods, local fresh foods, organic, wheat free, reduced dairy, 50% raw and cooked from scratch.

I hope you’ll find this healthy grocery list useful. I’ve wanted to create a download for so long so I’m pretty excited to be posting today!

Join in the food revolution and share this article with others who you feel would enjoy this list.

Download your own Healthy Grocery List here!

Image credit: Bruce Turner

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Healthy Grocery List: Wheat-Free Friendly

One of the most satisfying things to come about since embarking on the “traditional foods or real foods” movement is that I have been able to source nearly all our food from the farmer, in a 100 mile radius. Although we were eating mostly local already,  many of these items were bought at our local health food store rather than directly from the farmer. Not only have I found that our food bill has decreased from “bar code free’ shopping, we also are consuming foods exactly as nature intended. This has been incredibly satisfying. So far, we know the farmers for our pasture raised eggs, grass fed/pasture raised meat, raw cheese, veggies and fruit, pasture raised turkeys, duck and chicken and even the farm where our milk comes from. Yup, even our milk.

One of the common factors in the healthy societies Weston Price studied was the consumption of whole raw milk. This has been a hard point for me to ignore. I have said before that I am not a milk drinker. I don’t feed my kids milk either because it would take a lot to convince me that milk, as it is sold in stores,  is a healthy choice for my family due to the excessive processing and heat applied to milk , not to mention ultra-pasteurizing to make milk last longer on the shelves. Any benefit conventional milk may have is lost and the result is a product that the body finds hard to digest. I would argue that conventional milk is derived from such appalling living conditions (hormones, constant lactation, lack of pasture and grain fed) I wonder if there really is any health benefit in the first place. Even “organic milk” does not guarantee that the animal is pasture raised, feeding on grass instead of grains. This whole traditional foods journey has really taught me a lot about the flaws in the “organic” brand and the importance of grass raised food.

The common argument for milk is the calcium and vitamin D factor but raw milk enthusiasts would argue that vitamin D and calcium in any digestible and abundant fashion only exists in milk from cows that have been properly raised; on a pasture and eating grass for the majority of their lives – not grain. Plus, I’m not in favor of consuming any products that have been synthetically fortified, as in the case with conventional milk. Although my vegetarian days would argue that only humans drink milk past infancy, many regard raw milk as health promoting especially in the areas of asthma and allergies, as well as regarding raw milk as sacred food. I recently read about a mother who created her own formula using raw goat milk and nourished her “failure to thrive” son back to health.

Dr. G. Z. Pitskhelauri, famous Russian gerontologist, based his book The Long Living of Soviet Georgia on underlying reasons for the super longevity of residents of Georgia, supposedly the home of more 100 year olds (and older) than any other area of the world…Startling is the word for their typical diet, which contains two main items that are almost taboo in this country: fatty meats and whole milk products, as well as native sauces, herbs, various vegetable greens and a moderate amount of natural wines (nonsulphured) James F. Scheer – Health Freedom News and quoted in Nourishing Traditions

I have sat on the fence for a few years on whether we should begin drinking raw milk. Much of my hesitation is due to the lingering fear (due to effective marketing I might add) that raw milk is “dangerous” (FDA PowerPoint) to consume. But lets remember for a moment that thousands of generations have been consuming raw milk from their own cows or the local farmer. So who stands to gain by convincing us that raw milk is inherently unsafe?

There is no way I would consider raw milk from a conventional source. You bet it should be pasteurized due to living in a degrading environment, but raw milk from pasture raised grass eating cows that I can meet myself? Although there may be risk with raw milk, there also is risk with other foods such as deli meats, spinach and peanut butter (cough cough…ahem!) In fact, according to a Point-by-Point Rebuttal to the FDA,  much of the food recalls and illnesses occur with food that has been pasteurized!

We have decided to bet our money on the healthy benefits of drinking raw milk. Is raw milk sustainable for the majority of the population? Probably not, but I resent the fact that the government is at my kitchen table, infringing on my rights by telling me what I cannot eat plus making small credible farmers criminals. The sale of raw milk is currently illegal in Canada and why I referred to the current fight over food.

In The Untold Story of Milk, Ron Schmid, a Naturopathic physician and raw-milk advocate, writes that as city populations skyrocketed in the mid-1800s and pasture for cows in urban areas became scarce, dairies began feeding their cows waste grain from local distilleries. The cows quickly became diseased and emaciated, producing poor-quality milk that, coupled with inadequate sanitation and refrigeration, caused a host of health problems, mostly in young children, and created a scandal around the milk industry. Pasteurization was seen as a solution to what was known as the “milk problem.

A few weeks ago we finally bought shares in our very own cows! We searched for real milk in our area and thankfully found a farm nearby. Then we went to the farm to meet our new Jersey cows. Each week the milk from our cow is delivered on rotation by the members in the cow share program so we deliver about once every 8-9 weeks. Blossom and Daisey now provide us with delicious rich milk from which I can make butter, whey, yogurt and Kefir (recipes to follow). Pretty nice to have fresh milk delivered to our door! I have been lactose intolerant my whole life, probably another reason I chose to stay away all these years. Amazingly I have no lactose issues from our fresh milk or raw cheese (world class Gouda!).

I spoke recently with a former employee at a popular Canadian dairy. While they worked at the dairy, they never drank the  milk “because of the unsanitary conditions” they witnessed. Many conventional dairy farmers would say that milking a cow into a clean open bucket is unsanitary but this person brought up the point that conventional milk is milked into miles and miles of pipes. They often saw the caked interior of the tubing, the udders not being washed, and cows standing in piles of their own feces because they are hooked up all the time. I can’t think of anything more unsanitary. I can’t think of anything harder to clean than mile and miles of pipes! I’ll take a clean bucket and glass jar like my grandparents did.

Kelly the Kitchen Kop has written some great posts regarding raw/fresh milk for those of you who are interested. She is a seasoned traditional/real foods activist who I refer to often while we are getting used to eating the Weston Price way.

Raw Milk Benefits and Raw Milk Safety- Even if drinking raw milk is not for you, this is a good read to familiarize yourself with the industry of milk in general

Image credit: kthread

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Raw Milk: Bringing The Farm To The City

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Homegrown Revolution: Radical Change Taking Root

One thing that has become painfully clear (or at least a big reminder) in the last month is that the industrialization of food is killing us . The studies by Weston Price, including photos that are hard to deny, make it obvious of the need to eat nutrient-dense foods. He found that foods that have been stripped even partially of their nutrition cause physical and mental degeneration within one generation of eating poor quality food.

In the name of trying to be “master” over our environment we have abandoned nature for science and technology. These days I can barely walk through any grocery store, let alone a health food store, without looking at all the boxes and cans and muttering…crap, crap and more crap. Who cares if the puffy cereal is organic and made with kamut if it is highly refined and practically indigestible anyways? Besides, even the most “natural” products are injected with synthetic hormones these days.

To add to the excitement, we watched Food Inc on the weekend. Ugg, this film represents all the reasons why I became vegetarian so many years ago, in utter protest of what we do in the name of food. But being a vegetarian is not the answer. The massive industrialization of food is the problem – meat, grains, veggies and fruit. I dream of the day people stick it to “big food” by consuming traditional foods again and supporting the local farmer who, interestingly enough, has the lowest profit margin of all! Yup, Doritos turn a hefty profit for nutritionally void crap that they are.

Each time I follow the rabbit trail down to why it’s all gone wrong, it comes back to the control of money and the control of food. I urge you to watch the film. We are slowly watching our food rights slip away. Even the beloved “organic” industry is on the radar of the multi-national food corporations, all happening behind the scenes of coarse. If you want to imagine the fight of your life, imagine fighting for the right to consume food produced by honorable farmers in your local community. The fight has already started. People really need to take a stand by reevaluating the food they eat – or we might find the availability of real food is hard to come by.

Food Inc featured Joel Saltin, farmer and owner of Polyface Farm.  The following is written by Joel as a foreword to The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights by David Gumpert.

**(bold sections are mine)

The Raw Milk Revolution book cover I drink raw milk, sold illegally on the underground black market. I grew up on raw milk from our own Guernsey cows that our family hand-milked twice a day. We made yogurt, ice cream, butter, and cottage cheese. All through high school in the early 1970s, I sold our homemade yogurt, butter, buttermilk, and cottage cheese at the Curb Market on Saturday mornings. This was a precursor to today’s farmer’s markets.

In those days, the Virginia Department of Agriculture had a memorandum of agreement with the Curb Market that as long as vendors belonged to an Agricultural Extension organization such as Extension Homemaker’s Clubs or 4-H, producers could bring value-added products to market without inspection and visits from the food police. The government agents assumed that anyone participating in the extension programs would be getting the latest, greatest food science and therefore conform to the most modern procedural protocols, which created its own protection.

As the Virginia Slims commercial says, “We’ve come a long way, baby.” These conciliatory overtures to maintain healthy and vibrant local food economies exist no more. Today I can’t sell any of those things at a farmer’s market, and even if I take eggs some bureaucrat will come along with a pocket thermometer and, without warrant or warning, reach over and poke it through my display eggs to see if they are at the proper temperature. If they aren’t, no amount of pleading that those are for display only can dissuade the petulant public servant from demanding that I dump those display eggs in a trash can on the spot. I don’t sell at farmer’s markets anymore.

In 1975, when I graduated from high school and began plotting my farming career, I figured out that I could hand-milk ten cows, sell the milk to neighbors at regular retail prices, and be a full-time farmer. This was before most people had ever heard the word organic. But selling milk was illegal. In those days, we didn’t know about herd shares or Community Supported Agriculture or even limited liability corporations.

As a result, I went to work for a local newspaper and became the proverbial part-time farmer—working in town to support the farming passion. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over the fact that the government arbitrarily determined to make it very difficult for me to become a farmer. That seems un-American, doesn’t it?

Isn’t it curious that at this juncture in our culture’s evolution, we collectively believe Twinkies, Lucky Charms, and Coca-Cola are safe foods, but compost-grown tomatoes and raw milk are not? With legislation moving through Congress demanding that all agricultural practices be “science-based,” I believe our food system is at Wounded Knee. I do not believe that is an overstatement.

Make no mistake, as the local, heritage, humane, ecological, sustainable—call it what you will (anything but organic since the government now owns that word)—food system takes flight, the industrial food system is fighting back. With a vengeance. By demonizing, criminalizing, and marginalizing the integrity food movement, the entrenched powers that be hope to derail this revolution.

This industrial food experiment, historically speaking, is completely abnormal. It’s not normal to eat things you can’t spell or pronounce. It’s not normal to eat things you can’t make in your kitchen. Indeed, if everything in today’s science-based supermarket that was unavailable before 1900 were removed, hardly anything would be left. And as more people realize that this grand experiment in ingesting material totally foreign to our three-trillion-member internal community of intestinal microflora and -fauna is really biologically aberrant behavior, they are opting out of industrial fare. Indeed, to call it a food revolution is accurate.

But revolutions are always met with prejudice and entrenched paradigms from the about-to-be-unseated lords of the status quo. The realignment of power, trust, money, and commerce that the local heritage-based food movement represents inherently gives birth to a backlash. By the time of Wounded Knee, Native Americans no longer jeopardized the American reality.

But to many Americans, these Natives had to be crushed, extinguished, put on reservations. Would America have been stronger if European leaders had listened to wisdom about herbal remedies and consensus building? The answer is yes. But to Americans, the red man was just a barbarian because he didn’t govern by parliamentary procedure or ride in horse-drawn stagecoaches along cobblestone streets. In fact, he was considered a threat to America. Just like giving slaves their freedom in 1850. Just like imbibing alcohol in 1925. Just like homeschooling in 1980.

The ultimate test of a tyrannical society or a free society is how it responds to its lunatic fringe. A strong, self-confident, free society tolerates and enjoys the fringe people who come up with zany notions. Indeed, most people later labeled geniuses were dubbed whacko by their contemporary mainstream society. So what does a culture do with weirdos who actually believe they have a right to choose what to feed their internal three-trillion-member community?

The only reason the right to food choice was not guaranteed in the Bill of Rights is because the Founders of America could not have envisioned a day when selling a glass of raw milk or homemade pickles to a neighbor would be outlawed. At the time, such a thought was as strange as levitation.

Indeed, what good is the freedom to own guns, worship, or assemble if we don’t have the freedom to eat the proper fuel to energize us to shoot, pray, and preach? Is not freedom to choose our food at least as fundamental a right as the freedom to worship?

How would we feel if we had to get a license from bureaucrats to start a church? After all, beliefs can be pretty damaging things. And charlatans certainly do exist. Better protect people from those charlatans—bad preachers and raw milk advocates.

But what does a society do when the charlatans are in charge? In charge of the regulating government agencies. In charge of the research institutions. In charge of the food system.

That is a real conundrum, because if health depends on opting out of what the charlatans think is safe, we are forced into civil disobedience. When the public no longer trusts its public servants, people begin taking charge of their own health and welfare. And that is exactly what is driving the local heritage food movement.

Lots of folks realize they don’t want industrialists fooling around with something as basic as food. People like me don’t trust Monsanto. We don’t trust the Food and Drug Administration. We don’t trust the Department of Agriculture. We don’t trust Tyson. And we don’t think it’s safe to be dependent on food that sits for a month in the belly of a Chinese merchant marine vessel.

This clash of choice versus prohibition brings us to today’s Wounded Knee of food. The local heritage-based food movement represents everything that is good and noble about farming and food culture. It is about decentralized farms. Pastoral livestock systems. Symbiotic multi-speciation. Companion planting. Earthworms. It is about community-appropriate techniques and scale. Aesthetically and aromatically sensual romantic farming. Re-embedding the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker in the village. And ultimately about health-giving food grown more productively on less land than industrial models.

Certainly some of this clash represents the difference between nurturing and dominating. The local heritage food movement—the raw milk movement—is all about respecting and honoring indigenous wisdom. The industrial mind-set worships techno-glitzy gadgetry and views heritage food advocates as simpletons and Luddites. Or dangerous criminals.

In this wonderful exposé The Raw Milk Revolution, David Gumpert employs the best journalistic investigative techniques to examine this clash from the raw milk battlefront. Be assured that the same mentality exists toward homemade pickles, home-cured meats, and cottage industry in general. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the food system, but it is harassed out of existence by capricious, malicious, and prejudiced government agents who really do believe they are doing society a favor by denying food choice to Americans.

The same curative properties espoused by raw milk advocates exist in a host of other food products, from homemade pound cake and potpies to pepperoni and pastured chicken. Real food is what developed our internal intestinal community. And it sure didn’t develop on food from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and genetically modified potatoes that are partly human and partly tomato. Long after human cleverness has run its course, compost piles will still grow the best tomatoes and grazing cows will still yield one of nature’s perfect foods: raw milk.

One of our former apprentices has just started a ten-cow herd-share arrangement with our customers. Here is a young, entrepreneurial, go-get-‘em farmer embarking on his dream, serving people who are enjoying their dream of acquiring unadulterated milk. Can any arrangement, any relationship-between farmer and cow, cow and pasture, customer and producer be more honorable, respectable, open, and trusting? Everything about this is righteous, including respecting the individual enough to let her decide what to eat and what to feed her children.

Let the revolution continue.

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The Fight Over Food

One of the first changes we have made since reading Nourishing Traditions is making  a homemade stock each week. Now I understand why my Grandma always made the best soups, forget that, the best everything! The secret was in her stocks made from chicken, beef and fish. Stocks not only help create dishes that are talked about, there is much health wisdom in this centuries old practice.

Why is chicken soup superior to all the things we have, even more relaxing than Tylenol? It is because chicken soup has a natural ingredient which repairs and calms the mucous lining in the small intestine. This inner lining is the beginning or ending of the nervous system. It is easily pulled away from the intestine through too many laxatives, too many food additives…and parasites. Chicken soup…heals the nerves, improves digestion, reduces allergies, relaxes and gives strength. Hanna Kroeger – Ageless Remedies From Mother’s Kitchen.

I think homemade stocks are a lost art in many modern families. Although I observed a simmering pot of stock many times while growing up, the wisdom of why they are so beneficial unfortunately did not get passed down. And perhaps even if it did, I overlooked stocks simply because whole grains and legumes (as opposed to a meat dominant diet) have made the majority of our meals up until this point.

I mentioned that I was vegetarian for almost 10 years so another roadblock in making stocks is simply due to my lack of knowledge and experience in handling meat. I am now relearning how to cook with meat and making some big changes in the type of meat we eat – but I’ll save that for another article.

The basic stock recipe I am using is from Nourishing Traditions which advises to use vinegar to the broth to help pull the nutrients form the bones. Read Broth is Beautiful for additional information about the health benefits of stocks as well as the clincher for me - the benefits of gelatin . One interesting tidbit is the ancient use of stocks to help prevent infectious disease. I admit to feeling reassured by having homemade stock on hand should we get rundown with a virus.

In folk wisdom, rich chicken broth-the famous Jewish penicillin-is a valued remedy for the flu. The 12th-century physician Moses Maimonides prescribed chicken broth as a treatment for colds and asthma. Modern research has confirmed that broth helps prevent and mitigate infectious diseases. The wise food provider, who uses gelatin-rich broth on a daily or frequent basis, provides continuous protection from many health problems. Nourishing Traditions

Each Sunday we now roast a whole locally raised free range chicken. After feasting, I gently simmer the stock pot overnight. In the morning, after the stock has cooled I measure out 2 and 4 cup increments into shallow containers for freezing. Later, I unmold and label, storing the disks in zippered bags stacked vertically in the freezer. I also freeze extra baby cubes to blend with Evan’s homemade baby puree – one of a few important changes to his diet. Thankfully, I am not alone in my concerns that introducing the nasty refined baby cereal as a first food is not a healthy way to get started. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it’s a sick plot to get our children addicted to refined foods from the get go!

From Nourishing Traditions:

Chicken Stock

1 whole free-range chicken or 2 to 3 pounds of bony chicken parts, such as necks, backs, breastbones and wings*
gizzards from one chicken (optional)
2-4 chicken feet (optional)
4 quarts cold filtered water
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
2 carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped
3 celery stalks, coarsely chopped
1 bunch parsley

*Note: Farm-raised, free-range chickens give the best results. Many battery-raised chickens will not produce stock that gels.

If you are using a whole chicken, cut off the wings and remove the neck, fat glands and the gizzards from the cavity. Cut chicken parts into several pieces. (If you are using a whole chicken, remove the neck and wings and cut them into several pieces.) Place chicken or chicken pieces in a large stainless steel pot with water, vinegar and all vegetables except parsley. Let stand 30 minutes to 1 hour. Bring to a boil, and remove scum that rises to the top. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 6 to 8 hours. The longer you cook the stock, the richer and more flavorful it will be. About 10 minutes before finishing the stock, add parsley. This will impart additional mineral ions to the broth.

Remove whole chicken or pieces with a slotted spoon. If you are using a whole chicken, let cool and remove chicken meat from the carcass. Reserve for other uses, such as chicken salads, enchiladas, sandwiches or curries. Strain the stock into a large bowl and reserve in your refrigerator until the fat rises to the top and congeals. Skim off this fat and reserve the stock in covered containers in your refrigerator or freezer.

Image credit: Muffet

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Wise Cooks Use Homemade Stocks