Farm or Pharmacy

There is no way around the fact that healthy eating takes time and effort.  If I ever find a way around that, I'll let ya know.  But it is so worth it.  I figure that I will either be spending more time at the farm or the pharmacy.  When I was in school and college, I used to do the bare minimum to get a good grade.  Unfortunately, I applied that concept to my health too.  I used to eat mostly processed low-fat foods just because I believed that this would be my quick fix to great health.  The cheapest and quickest foods are usually very high in sugar and white-flour and they have a long shelf life.  They are far from the farm.  This was a health disaster for me.  So, I gained weight and an insatiable hunger for more junk.  Other symptoms included: foggy head, random sleeping anytime and anywhere, guilt and depression, chest pains, migraines, eczema, benign tumors, horrible digestive distress, constipation and diarreah, burned-out thyroid (and resulting inability to get pregnant while severely hypo-thyroid).  I gained 30 lbs. while in my senior year of high school and freshman year of college.  This started my 7 year addiction to compulsive over-eating.  I ended up having a love-hate relationship with food.  I loved the buzz of eating but I hated the feeling afterward.  I had no appreciation for real food from the earth and from the farm.  It annoyed me that people (especially women) would degrade themselves to a job in the kitchen when there was so much more to be experienced in life.  It took a strong man (my husband) who was very confident in his man-hood to show me his own love of growing and cooking real whole foods made by God.  It also took a few years to really appreciate what he was showing me.  But when my own physical health made a drastic improvement, one by one, over time, I realized that these ailments were disappearing and God's gifts to me in the form of vegetables, fruits, meats, whole grains, and raw dairy, etc. were not to be taken lightly.  It is hard work to prepare these foods every day.... and it is soooo worth it!  I love to be in the position of providing health for me and my family as best I can.  It's an ongoing journey.  And we are learning together.  There is so much to learn.  And I hope I never stop learning.  Thank you God, that there are farmers around here who respect the earth and who love to provide good foods for me to buy.  Being at the farm is much more fun than the pharmacy.

Tomato Bisque

I just posted this recipe in www.recipehouse.com (search for my cookbook entitled "Amy's"). Or just check it out, below.  You will love this healthy tomato bisque recipe (it's from my friend Wendy).  Thank you Wendy! If you want to make it a faster prep time, buy onions that are frozen and chopped (in the frozen food section of the grocery store with vegetables) and garlic that is minced and in a jar.  Enjoy!

TOMATO BISQUE

1 large onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp. butter

2 tbsp. olive oil

4 cups diced fresh or canned tomatoes

½ tsp. dried basil

¼ tsp. black pepper

½ tsp. dried thyme

1 tsp. salt

3 tbsp. tomato paste

2 cups broth (I use vegetable)

1 tsp. sugar

2 tbsp. flour

2 cups milk

 Saute onions and garlic in butter and oil in a soup pot.  Cook 4 minutes, add tomatoes and spices, stir, then add broth, tomato paste and sugar.  Simmer for 20 minutes.  Remove from heat and puree in a blender or food processor and pour back into the saucepan.  Mix milk and flour in the blender and stir into the tomato mixture.  Simmer 10 minutes and serve.  Serves 6.

Whole foods snacks

Hi friends and family,

My friend Jenn just asked me for ideas for snacks that are good for you.  That is an area that I really struggled with when we switched over to a whole foods diet.  So, I made a list of things that helped me.  Here they are!

1.  Apples sprinkled with cinnamon/stevia (combine 1/2 c. cinnamon and 1/4 tsp. stevia powder in your cinnamon shaker, and shake a bit onto apple slices).  My kids think it's funny to call them apples in cinnamon sand or dirt.  It's really tasty.

2.  Orange slices with cinnamon/stevia

3.  Chicken cubes w/healthy b-b-q sauce to dip.

4.  Frozen petite peas or frozen corn ...I don't know why my kids like this so much.  Ha!

5.  Fruit salad.  It's a big project for my kids to cut everything up and put into fancy cups, and they are proud.

6.  Whole grain tortilla (broiled on both sides) made into a pizza w/ an organic low-sugar spaghetti sauce and mozzarella cheese.  I like to add basil and fresh tomatos on top.  Broil.

7.  Dried mangos (unsulphured, unsweetened, organic)

8.  Nuts: almonds, cashews, peanuts, macademia nuts, pecans, walnuts, etc.  Always keep nuts refrigerated... they go rancid.  Bad, bad.

9.  Fresh really good-lookin' raw veggies and a healthy dip.  You can't go wrong with carrots, cucumbers, grape tomatos, broccoli, spinach, snap peas, etc... Just keep peelin'  Just keep washin'  Just keep choppin'... Think of the movie "Nemo" and sing to the tune of "Just keep swimmin'... just keep swimmin'... swimmin'..."

10.  Smoothies!  Try any fruit combination.  Here's a recipe for an awesome smoothie called "The Green Machine."

Green Machine Smoothie

 ½ c. plain yogurt (raw is best)

1 c. fresh spinach (washed, no need to dry, pressed down)

1/2 c. fresh pineapple (or frozen)

1 frozen banana (or fresh)

3 ice cubes

 Mix it all up in a blender, making sure that the yogurt is at the bottom of the blender for best mixing.  Refreshing!

http://www.recipehouse.com/Amy's-cookbook/recipe/5/Green-Machine-Smoothie

11.  Here's my Peanut butter granola bars recipe (this is more like a dessert-ish kind of thing):

Peanut butter granola bars                       

 Mix wet ingredients:

1 c. natural peanut butter, unsweetened (or any nut butter like almond or cashew)

½ c. agave nectar (or honey)

¼ c. coconut oil or butter, melted

¼ c. warm water

 Mix dry ingredients:

½ c. shredded coconut, unsweetened and unsulphured

3 c. rolled oats

½ tsp.  salt

3/4 c. mini dark chocolate chips

 Combine everything and stir it up well with a big spoon.  Spread into small greased (w/butter or coconut oil) pan.  Score pan of bars into pretty small squares, because these bars are rich.  Refrigerate overnight for nutritional soaking benefits to the oats.  No baking.

 I like to pry each one out of the pan when they are good and cold, and place into an airtight Tupperware kind of container so that I can store them in the freezer (or frig.) and just grab ‘em and go as needed rather than cutting each one along the way.   

You can also find this recipe and more in my online cookbook at:

http://www.recipehouse.com/Amy's-cookbook/recipe/6/Peanut-butter-granola-bars

I hope you love 'em!

Amy

Great bread!

I just updated my recipe for "Challah" (this is a Jewish braided egg bread)... and I made it into a soaked whole-grain bread.  You want to try this one!  I'm tellin' ya.  Don't fear the bread.  If I can do it, you can do it.  Go to http://www.recipehouse.com/Amy's-cookbook/recipe/3/Challah 

And if you don't have time to make homemade bread, but you want the benefits of good ingredients, there are quite a few options (like Ezekiel 4:9 bread found in the freezer section of most health food stores and some regular grocery stores).  But for fresh, just out of the oven, organic sourdough soaked whole grain loaves of bread, you might have to do a little searching.  If you live in Lancaster County, your search is over when you pull into the parking lot at "A Loaf of Bread."  Here's some inside information about this week's menu from their weekly email I receive.  It is located across from the train station in Lancaster and also at Eastern Market on King St. on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  Check out their website at:

www.aloafofbread.com

Enjoy!

Amy
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: "A Loaf of Bread Bakery"
To: aloafofbreadlancaster@gmail.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 2, 2009 5:37:20 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Bread, Market, Lunch . . .

Hello all,

 

It's been a beautiful week, and we were so glad to have you share it with us.  A lot of you stopped at the store to try the new breads, and we also enjoyed seeing some of you at opening day of Eastern Market on Saturday.  Market was a fun, busy day.  There were plenty of new vendors to make the Eastern Market experience more exciting than ever.  Also music and a big crowd.  If you couldn't make it on Saturday, we'd love to see you there Wednesday 4-7pm. 

 

This week we will start our extended Friday hours.  We will stay open until 5:30 pm Fridays, starting this week, so come on in to get your bread and goodies for the weekend.  Look for another e-mail later this week with special offers for the new Friday hours.

 

I'm attaching a new bread schedule so you'll know when to find the new breads as well as the old favorites.

 

For lunch this week, we will have:

 

Tuesday - Asparagus Mushroom Soup, Tuna Salad

Wednesday - Split Pea Soup, Egg & Olive Sandwiches

Thursday - Zucchini Soup, Roasted Vegetable Bread Salad

Friday - Lentil Soup, Hummus & fresh vegetable lunch

 

Have a great week!

Good fats / bad fats

Hi all - Some people have asked me how I stopped the compulsive over-eating habit I used to be in.  I believe that 3 things had a huge impact on me: 1. Prayer  2. A mentor (Steve)  3. The increase of healthy fats & protein with a variety of whole foods.  It's hard to believe that eating fat could help you lose fat.  But when your body is really lacking a certain nutrient (in my case, healthy fats), you can really feel the relief when that nutrient is found.  It was literally like the over-eating compulsion just fell off of me (and so did the weight).  Our bodies need healthy fats to survive and thrive.  The problem is that most of the fats I was eating were cheap processed highly heated damaged oils found in processed foods.  Eating an organic grass-fed steak, or a free-range pasteur-fed chicken, or whole raw-milk yogurt is a totally different experience for your digestive tract than consuming fast food and the highly sugared non-"health food" (like yogurt) found in most grocery stores.  I have found the best fats for me are olive oil, coconut oil, and butter.  The rest of this post is a great article by Dr. Mercola:

   

Did you know that your brain is about 60 percent fat? The fats you eat strongly influence your level of brain function. Some nutritional anthropologists believe the human brain would not have developed as it did without access to high levels of DHA (a type of fat) found in fish and wild game. Just two generations of high omega-6 and low omega-3 fats can lead to profound changes in brain size and function.

Lesson 1: It is the type of fat that matters, not the amount.

Learning about fats can be confusing. When you go to the grocery store, you're confronted with advertisements telling you that a product is low in fat, or a product is made with partially hydrogenated oil. To make sense of all the labels, I've compiled the following list of definitions for you:

• Saturated fats: Saturated fats are found in animal products such as butter, cheese, whole milk, ice cream, cream and fatty meats. They are also found in some tropical plants and vegetable oils such as  coconut, palm and palm kernel. 
  
  Saturated fats are not as dangerous as you think. In fact, coconut oil is quite healthy and is the oil to use for cooking since it is far less likely to be damaged through heating. 
  
  
  
  
  A misguided fallacy that persists to this day is the belief that saturated fat will increase your risk of heart attacks. Folks, this is simply another myth that has been harming your health for the last 30 or 40 years. The truth is, saturated fats from animal and vegetable sources provide a concentrated source of energy in your diet, and they provide the building blocks for cell membranes and a variety of hormones and hormone like substances. 
  
  When you eat saturated fats as part of your meal, they slow down absorption so that you can go longer without feeling hungry. In addition, they act as carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K. Dietary fats are also needed for the conversion of carotene to vitamin A, for mineral absorption, and for a host of other biological processes. 
  
  Studies on low saturated fat diets also support nutritional typing, which predicts that one-third of people will do very well on low saturated fat diets (which supports the studies showing that they work), whereas another one-third of people need high saturated fat diets to stay healthy.
  
  If you'd like to learn more about the role dietary fats play in your health, be sure to check out these excellent research studies.
   
• Trans fats: These fats form when vegetable oil hardens, a process called hydrogenation, and can raise LDL (bad cholesterol) levels, and  lower HDL (good cholesterol) levels, which of course is the complete opposite of what you need in order to maintain good heart health. In fact, trans fats --as opposed to saturated fats -- have been linked repeatedly to heart disease. These fatty acids can also cause major clogging of your arteries, type 2 diabetes and other serious health problems..

• Monounsaturated fats: The best oil here is olive oil. Canola oil is also in this category, but I advise avoiding it and using olive oil instead.

Lesson 2: Learn about the importance of omega-3 and omega-6 fats.

Omega-3 fats improve your cell's response to insulin, neurotransmitters and other messengers. They also help the repair process when your cells are damaged. On the other hand, omega-6 fats are pro-inflammatory and contribute to insulin and membrane resistance, altering your mood, and impairing learning and cell repair. To avoid high levels of omega-6, it is important to avoid all vegetable seed oils.

Please understand that it's not only necessary to consciously consume omega-3 fats, which I'll review further in lesson 3 below, but it is just as important to lower your omega-6 fat intake. If you don't lower your omega-6 fats to acceptable levels, your omega 6:3 ratio will not be low enough, and you will not receive many of the wonderful benefits of omega-3 fats such as reduced risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer's, arthritis and many other degenerative illnesses.

Recipe House

Hey - if you want to start your own on-line recipe book to share with others, go to www.recipehouse.com

Thanks to my sister Kelly for telling me about it.  It's handy.  You'll find some healthy recipes I posted there. But I just got started, so there's only a few so far.  Tonight, I posted a new salad dressing I tried which is fabulouso!  It's very simple and good-for-you.  It's called Lemon Honey Dressing from the "Nourishing Traditions" cookbook by: Sally Fallon.  I highly recommend this book for it's wealth of knowledge and good recipes.  Have a great night!  It's beautiful in Lancaster after the rain today.  We are going outside to ride bikes in the driveway.  Yeee-ha!

Tis the season for fresh greens!

Oh yeah, spring is upon us.  If you are growing lettuce or any kind of leafy greens in your garden, you are happy to beat the rabbits to it.  I'm just happy my husband planted all this goodness. Right now is an awesome time in Lancaster, PA to be eating the tender greens straight from the garden.  Steve even picked some wild chickory greens from our yard (1st time we tried that and it was good), he cut some young kale and swiss chard from his garden, and I cut some mesclun greens, washed it all (twice and spun it out in the salad spinner - a kitchen gadget that gets daily use) and built our salads by adding a fresh chopped tomato and tossing it with a mustard dressing I made up (below)... then topping it all with shredded raw-milk cheese and toasted pinenuts.  That was a complete meal.  Very satisfying.  Wanna try the dressing?  It's really simple and fresh.  Just whisk these ingredients together:

1/2 c. extra virgin olive oil

1 TBSP. smooth or grainy mustard (I used an old-fashioned grain mustard)

2 TBSP. balsamic vinegar

1 tsp. agave nectar (or you could use honey)

If you want some great omega-3's, add a TBSP. of flax seed oil to it!