Real Food Wedding

As you know my daughter, whose personal health transformation inspired this blog, and I are real food enthusiasts.  With her wedding reception less than one week away, we are taking special care to plan a selection of real food desserts.  This has been a real pinterest inspired DIY event.  We plan to make the desserts ourselves using treasured family heirloom recipes.  Our dessert table will feature a homemade trifle, replete with lemon curd that takes 30 minutes to stir - and made by my son Brett, Mimi's berry cobbler, Grandma Taylor's picnic cake, and chocolate cupcakes with vanilla butter cream frosting along with a bride and groom cake that will be decorated in a rose design. We are avoiding all pro-inflammatory seed oils and processed faux foods.  As we finalize our shopping list this morning I am trying not to be staggered by the amounts of butter and cream.  Julia Child would be proud.

Gluten-Free Travel Food

Edible Adventures has been away from home for the past week.  For someone fixated on food like myself being away from home and my own kitchen often presents special challenges.

Since roadside fast food has no appeal for me - and is not what I consider a healthy option - I came up with three new travel foods that really worked for me and made the experience of travel more enjoyable than it usually is.

1 - Travel secret number one was paleo-style egg muffins.  I baked mine with crumbled turkey sausage (homemade and from my freezer), bacon, chopped onion, broccolini and beaten eggs.  The muffins tasted great on the road and I never felt deprived or hungry.

2 - Travel secret number two was frozen jars of homemade soup.  It was good to know that I could warm up a bowl of comforting homemade soup whenever I liked.  I made two different varieties - creamy squash soup with ginger and cream of broccoli soup with fennel and basil.

3 - Travel secret number three was onion flax crackers.  Since I am a gluten-free gal I made a large batch of dehydrated onion flax crackers and stored them in a ziplock bag.  They tasted great with mashed avocado and sunflower seeds sprouts for a quick snack.

Are Cleansing Diets Right For You?

Though our culture seems to be attracted to the idea of cleansing regimes and cleansing diets in general, perhaps a puritanical throw back, very few of us may actually thrive on a super cleansing diet, such as a raw food vegan or a macrobiotic diet, in the long run.

I have tried both a raw food vegan lifestyle - yes it is much more than a diet -  and macrobiotic diet and lifestyle for many years, and though I, currently, don't follow either program exclusively, I still incorporate much of what I learned from them into my current lifestyle.  Here are some of my thoughts on cleansing diets.

RAW FOOD VEGAN

At the risk of sounding esoteric, raw food, in my mind, is loud food.  In order to break up the fiber in raw food, especially the hardier greens such as kale and collard greens, so that you can digest and assimilate the nutrients, you have got to use some pretty heavy duty kitchen equipment.  Equipment that is often not appreciated by sensitive ears.

Raw food energy is essentially loud energy.  Loud and superficial.  What I call surface energy - like the dance of light across the surface of a lake.  There is a certain magic in the energy.  The energy feels great. You feel light, energized and even somewhat euphoric.  But, at the risk of sounding like a kill-joy, despite the energy high, on the back-side, the bodies deep energy reserves are depleted.  That would approximate a depletion of kidney or root energy from a Traditional Chinese Medicine perspective.  Or, from a Western perspective that would mean a lack of key nutrients - particularly the fat soluble vitamins, A, D, E and K-2, as well as B-12, essential fatty acids, unless supplemented, and essential amino acids.

Simply stated, a raw food vegan lifestyle, though often useful in the short term, is seldom sustainable in the long run.

MACROBIOTICS

The macrobiotic diet is also considered a cleansing diet - often used to treat excesses in the body such as tumor, cysts, growths and the like.  The macrobiotic diet is mostly a plant based diet, consisting of brown rice and vegetables with the infrequent addition of white non-oily fish or shellfish.

The focus is on slow-cooked food prepared by hand.  The food is quieter, more sustaining, and grounding than raw food.  When raw food is served it is often sauerkraut, pickle, or pressed salad and in small amounts.  The dishes are prepared by hand, requiring no more technology than a knife and cutting board.  Seeds are ground by hand using a suribachi and surikogi, which is the Japanese equivalent of a mortar and pestle.  The proper use of heat or fire is applied to "humanize" the food and help prepare it for digestion.

The diet has been helpful for people recovering from illness, however, in the long-term the diet can be depleting unless a wider diet is adopted.   Like the raw food vegan diet -  fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K-2, unless one eats natto, certain essential fatty acids, and essential amino acids are conspicuously missing.

Fantastic Smoothie

Edible Adventures is on the road.  I am currently visiting my brother and his family.  His wife, Kristen, makes the most yummy smoothie in the morning.

The good news is that it is truly delicious - the bad news is that there really isn't a recipe for it.

So for those of you that like to experiment and don't usually follow a recipe - this will be a fun one to try.

I watched her make it yesterday.  This is an approximation of the smoothie I have been enjoying in the morning.

Kristen's Morning Smoothie

Fill a Vita-Mix Blender with the following:

• coconut water

• almond milk

• organic greens

• baby carrots

• tons of berries - all sorts

• apple, pear, or kiwi optional

• slice of organic lemon with peel

• scoop of coconut oil

• scoop of chia seed

• scoop of flax seed

• scoop of vegan protein powder - soy free

• scoop of maca powder

Blend it all up until it is smooth.  She varies is every morning - so that it never tastes quite the same.

My brother says he misses the morning smoothie when he is traveling.

From Macrobiotics to Raw Food Vegan to Ayurveda

Food Styles

Over the past several decades I have explored macrobiotics, raw food, vegetarian, vegan cooked and raw, Ayurveda, among other food styles and traditions - so that over the years I have cycled though a lot of information and a lot of different ways of relating to food.  Each time I began to explore a new food system I wondered if I had found the perfect one.  What I learned is that there is no perfect diet and that even if we are eating a perfect diet today – the same food will not be perfect tomorrow – because health is not static – but a dynamic, ever changing thing.

I like to think that through my adventurous and enthusiastic dietary exploration that I was able to cull the best from each tradition.

Macrobiotics

I learned to LOVE sea vegetables.  To this day some of my favorite comfort foods come from the macrobiotic tradition.  Macrobiotic cuisine is always soothing and calming to me and I return to those time honored dishes again and again, especially when I am sick or under the weather.

Raw Food Vegan

Learning to prepare tasty raw vegan food was definitely an interesting challenge.  It was like learning a new language with food.  Colorful and completely fun.  The raw food vegan world is impeccable when it comes to food quality - insisting on the highest quality sea salts, fats and oil, organic fruits and vegetables.  I learned all about soaking and sprouting nuts, seeds, making awesome dehydrated flax crackers, and the like.

Ayurveda

It was fun to learn about the three doshas, vata, pitta, and kapha.  There is a lot of intuitive resonance with foods that support and nurture the three distinct doshas.  For instance, one can intuitively and easily reach for a vata-calming food remedy when the autumn winds are stirring around and one begins to feel less grounded.

Vegetarian

Vegetarian dishes are truly the color and excitement of the food world.  A plate without vegetables, fruits and the like would be a very dull plate indeed.  Creating a delicious array of vegetarian dishes is very instructive and will definitely take more time and TLC than throwing something on the grill for dinner, for instance.  

Weston A. Price Foundation

The evolution of a diet is a fascinating subject.  My personal dietary evolution ultimately lead to the Weston A Price Foundation where I learned about the important role of fat-soluble vitamins in human nutrition.  In addition, when I read  Sally Fallon's cookbook "Nourishing Traditions" I enthusiastically began making and eating all sorts of fermented food - which the plethora of posts on said subject attests to.

The dietary guidelines of the WAPF make the most sense to me because the parameters are very wide and easily accommodate various food styles, metabolic differences, individual needs and preferences.  Learn more about the Weston A. Price Foundation dietary guidelines and real food.

What Is A Carbohydrate Threshold

To continue the conversation about smoothies.

Remembering that historically I have not been able to have smoothies in the morning without experiencing a blood sugar crash – and encouraged by my success the day before – I made the luscious pumpkin pie smoothie for breakfast yesterday but with one important difference – I added some homemade grain-free granola for crunch and pizzaz. 

An hour later – blood sugar crash.  In addition, I ended up feeling hungry ALL day no matter what I ate after the blood sugar crash and so I ended up grazing for the remainder of the day and into the night and still felt slightly off and less able to handle stress.

So what I bumped up against yesterday – big time – is what I like to call a carbohydrate threshold.  The seemingly innocent addition of grain-free granola, sweetened with raw honey, pushed me over my edge.   And when I exceed my carb threshold at breakfast I pay the price for the rest of the day. 

What I am learning is that my personal carbohydrate threshold is more sensitive in the morning than in the afternoon.  In the morning I do better when I eat a breakfast that has plenty of fat and protein.  A good breakfast stabilizes me for the rest of the day.  Then in the afternoon and evening I have found that I can get away with the addition of more carbs without deleterious effect.

Carbohydrate intolerance of any kind is a sign of insulin resistance.  The two go hand-in-hand.

Symptoms of Carbohydrate Intolerance:

• Headache

• Feeling of Weakness

• Irritability and Unstable Mood

• Inability to Focus

• Weak Legs When Exercising

• “Pins and Needles” in the arms at night

• Weight Gain Around the Middle

• Elevated Blood Pressure

• Elevated Triglycerides

• Craving For Sugar

• PMS

Real Food Adventures

I teach cooking classes periodically throughout the year, offering a wide range of choices and food styles from cooked food to raw.  Since I am not a proponent of the one-size-fits-all dietary approach - you will find an eclectic assortment of classes to reflect my philosophy.

I try to be sensitive to the needs of class attendees and classes will often reflect their preferences and requests.  Sometimes classes reflect what I am currently interested in. 

The most popular classes, to date, here in southern California have been my vegetarian cooking classes and raw food classes.  That being said, you may have noted that I write about a wide variety of food topics and food styles – and I don’t limit myself to vegan, vegetarian or raw food exclusively.

So, least you, the reader, become confused - let me take a moment to clarify and explain myself. 

I am not a proponent of any one particular food style or philosophy, nor, do I encourage those who attend my classes to become devotees to any one food style.  My goal is to show class attendees how to use and explore a variety of food styles and encourage them to develop an aptitude and taste for REAL FOOD.  Allowing for individual differences and metabolic uniqueness there really is a wide range of possibility to explore within a Real Food Framework.   REAL FOOD - traditionally grown and raised - IS the ultimate food adventure!