Wow. Well needless to say, blogging is not my strong suit. Then again, it all boils down to time management and THAT is really my weakness. There are not enough hours in the day to do near the amount of things I'd like, especially sleep! People out there with schedules that work please, please share your wisdom with me.
Well, on to what I came here to post about. Food, food and more food. It's no secret to people that know us that J and I are the weirdoes in the Wisconsin Northwoods when it comes to food. And lately it's gotten even more weird. My parents a few months ago decided to get these books and change their life by changing what they eat. J and I have long known that what you eat has a direct link to how you feel so we just kind of ignored it. However, my mom pushed and pushed till we finally read The Fungus Link series of books by Doug Kaufmann. If you search out this guy, some people say it makes sense, others say he is a quack. So decide for yourself. J and I decided that since we already knew a bit about fungus, at least candida that we'd try it and see how things went. After all, a few years back I had done a candida detox with the help of a holistic nutritionist and things worked out quite well for me. I felt amazing, so there was no reason not to try this, and we really did feel that the reasoning made a lot of sense. Especially given the fact that I don't even know anyone who doesn't have acid reflux issues, weight issues, etc.
Let me first prep by saying this. Under this LIFESTYLE change, you cut out sugar, corn, wheat, most forms of dairy, most fruits, etc. There is a REASON for this but it took this guy 3 books to explain why so I'm not getting into it. But notice I didn't say MEAT. Well, J and I don't eat meat and haven't for years and so adding it back in to follow some guys' advice wasn't really an option. So, after eating the 3 recipes that didn't include meat in Doug's cookbook, we decided to take a different route. We started eating more Raw foods. Really, it's 11 p.m. and this is the only time I can find to blog, so I'm not going to go into details and perhaps I can keep blogging so that people can understand my children really do eat well. But I figured I'd give an overview of how things are going.
For the most part in any given week we go through about 4-5 cookbooks and a few online recipes to plan our meals for the week. We have completely cut out normal sugar and the above mentioned things. So what the hell do we eat? Well, we started out with a few cookbooks. Out of all the ones we have, I use Going Raw by Judita Wignall the most. Recipes we love: We love to use her zucchini taco meat, combine that with a whole bunch of veggies, peppers, lettuce, etc., and place it in her red pepper tortilla and have tacos. We have also loved her spaghetti bolognese, burgers (skip the bun hassle and eat it in a romaine leaf), etc. We can't eat any yeast or mushrooms or soy though, so we leave out the nutritional yeasts & shrooms and sub coconut aminos for any soy product.
But on a given week we don't just eat raw. We do feel that our kids need a bit more so we make sure to have a touch of organic cream cheese, organic eggs, and occasionally sour cream. Why? Well, we feel it's the best of both worlds. In nature animals like gorillas and orangutans get bugs in with their food and eat them. Am I going to eat bugs? No. Do I think it makes sense for humans to be the only animal to eat the milk of another animal or even milk at all past infancy? No. But am I a nutritionist and can I understand how cave men ate and what exactly humans need when doctors can't even agree? No. So I'll eat a bit of dairy, at least the stuff that is in accordance with my anti-fungal part of my diet. We also cook things in any given week. We did have a few cooked soups this week. We sometimes cook wheat free, rice free, corn free pancakes. Etc. We used to do a lot of vegan recipes and use a lot of the vegan substitutes for things like cream cheese and stuff, but my thinking on that has changed a bit. I feel that the more natural the better. I couldn't even pronounce some of those ingredients and it dawned on me that who cares if it's animal free, it's not chemical free. I don't want to feed my kids draino just because it's vegan.
So what am I trying to say with all this blathering? DO WHAT IS RIGHT FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY. When we first started with raw foodism we kept reading about people who were so far that their kids were losing their teeth and they kept referring to it as a detox symptom. UM no. I will not sacrifice the health of my kids for any dogma. If they aren't thriving well on a mostly vegan 3/4 of the time raw diet, then it's time to reassess. And fast.
So onto a few of our simple favorites:
We LOVE fruit leather. Puree any fruits you have. J and I can only have berries and green apples. So I take 2 green apples, skins on, and a whole bunch of berries, frozen or fresh, puree, dump and spread on a dehydrator sheet, dehydrate at 110 for maybe 9 hours and eat. The kids get all kinds of fruit leathers though. Banana pear mango. Apple Orange. Whatever. You can even add some spinach into the mix and you'll never know. And YOU DON'T need to add sugar, so don't!
Replace xylitol in recipes asking for sugar. We can't have agave, maple syrup or honey (only on special occasions), but xylitol works amazing. Try it, use it, mmmm. We are getting used to less sugary tastes so I sometimes use 1/2 the xylitol that the recipe calls for. Xylitol can have a laxative effect if you consume tons, so just use your judgement.
Popped amaranth works awesome for a breakfast cereal. It's not raw but it's nummy. Put a pan on stove and heat on high, quickly spray with some cooking spray and pop it just like popcorn. Serve with some fresh berries, and some almond milk. My kids love it. (PS: There is a learning curve. Don't get upset if you burn some and maybe even google how to do it if you are having trouble)
Raw sorbet: Take 1/2 lime, 1 lb of frozen strawberries, 1 cup of water and 1/4 cup of xylitol (or agave if you choose). I only put in 2 Tbsp of xylitol and we think it's amazing but the original recipe calls for 1/4 cup agave. You probably need a high speed blender for this to get creamy enough. We use a Vitamix.
For special occasions any of the raw food desserts are amazing. Be careful though. Just because agave nectar is the sweetheart sweetener of the raw world, doesn't mean it's always ok and amazing. Most of the desserts we've tried we find are too sweet. I feel that making super duper sweet desserts just sets us all up to need the taste of sugar. Berries are sweet enough by themselves, we don't need to add 2 Tbsp of agave nectar to them. Use your own judgement. Once you get used to less sugar you will be amazed how cloyingly gross certain traditional desserts can seem. I usually keep it a rule to use 1/2 the amount called for. And they always turn out amazing.
Our supper food menu last week:
Nachos using flax chips, lettuce, raw taco "meat", jalapeños, peppers, fresh pico. Added a touch of cream cheese and sour cream to the kids'.
Tomato fettuchini using zucchini spiraled into noodles
Pizza using a raw pizza crust, lots of peppers, onions, raw sun dried tomato sauce.
Banana crepes filled with fresh fruit, cashew cream and a strawberry sauce with lots of fruit on side.
Raw veggie burgers, kale chips (chips were cooked)
Scrambled eggs with lots of peppers and onions wrapped in homemade raw red pepper wraps with rutabaga "hash browns".
Raw "falafel" wrapped in lettuce leaves with zucchini hummus, carrots, cucumber dill yogurt sauce (homemade).
I have amazing recipes (cooked) for carrot & apple muffins, cooked and uncooked desserts, and just food, but let's take one step at a time.
I hope to get some actual recipes up sometime soon. But for now it's late and I'm off to bed. ;)
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