You Eat What? Part I

While the primary purpose of this blog is to preserve family memories and publish the blog as a yearbook for the first time at the end of this year, once a month or so I want to highlight what's happening in my obsessive, hobby world of food.

This past February I decided that I couldn't contain my passion and excitement for the Weston A. Price Foundation any longer and became the volunteer chapter leader for our county.  WAPF is a non-profit, nutrition education foundation whose purpose is to educate families of the benefits in consuming traditional foods such as raw dairy, traditional fats, lacto-fermented foods, bone broths, and pasture-fed livestock.  They are based out of Washington DC and have around 700 chapters world-wide.

The foundation also has campaigns to educate people on the dangers of soy, truth in labeling, nontoxic farming, nurturing therapies, and community supported agriculture.  In a nutshell, it's all about eating stuff that our great-grandparents would have recognized as foods and not the food-like, industrialized substances that are being passed off as food these days.  

The way this translates in my kitchen is that I :

• Try to make all that I can from scratch so that there are no preservatives, artificial ingredients,  or harmful fats in our foods such as soybean oil and yellow corn oils such as canola. For example, while it doesn't have soaked or sourdoughed flour as WAPF recommends, I've been making this bread for sandwiches for years using lard or grass fed butter.  As a matter of fact, two loaves are baking in my oven even now as I type this. Store bought, packaged bread is so. bad. for. YOU!  Even the whole wheat stuff!! Seriously.

• Use traditional fats in my cooking and baking such as coconut oil, grass-fed butter (I use Kerry Gold), NON-counterfeit olive oil (mostly in homemade dressings), and pretty, white lard from a butcher friend of mine that lives down the street that I render myself in my cast iron skillet. 
• Spend a pretty penny purchasing 7 gallons of raw, unpastuerized milk once every two weeks and sometimes splurge on raw milk ice cream to make milkshake treats such as the chocolate Elvises I made for the boys a few weeks ago.
 

• Give the family a dose of the traditional, superfood of fermented cod liver oil every day from Green Pastures Products. As a matter of fact, I'm a group buyer for these products for the Naples area.  I can hook you up with the best prices!  :)

• Eat lots and lots and lots of eggs from pastured chickens that eat bugs and get plenty of sunshine and are fed a diet that does not contain soy grain.  We eat scrambled eggs a couple times a week for breakfast and on mornings we don't we have raw, egg yolk smoothies. 
• Try to avoid soy in all forms.  
• Cook two, whole, pastured chickens a week in the crockpot (this is my go-to recipe, but sometimes I try some different spice combos) and use the bones to make a bone broth that cooks on the stove for 24-36 hours.  As a matter of fact, I have some chicken bone broth simmering on my stove as a type this as well!   I use the stock in soups (usually make soup once a week) and sauces and to make rice.  
• I try to cook meats from animals that are raised on pasture and fed the food that God designed their bodies to properly digest.  Grass-fed beef and lamb and wild venison and hog are meats in my kitchen.
• Incorporate livers from pastured animals however and whenever I can, such as when I made this recipe recently and can't wait to make some more!!  It made such a huge difference in my energy level on the days that I ate this!  Truly.

 

• Ferment beverages such as Kombucha, milk kefir, and beet kvass in my kitchen.  Kombucha has been in my kitchen on and off for a couple years now and my evidence is right here in this post from four years ago!
• Have an authentic sourdough culture (that's hibernating in the fridge right now) that I use to make rustic, sourdough bread.  It took me a couple months to get a good loaf, but I think I've finally got it figured out.
• Try to eat wild caught seafood at a minimum of once a week as it's some of the most nutrient-dense food God has given us.  When I can, I love to feed Levi salmon eggs.  BEST food you can give a growing baby/toddler.  
• I have yet to ferment my own veggies such as sauerkraut or pickles, but it's on my to do list to conquer soon!!

I'll write about our local WAPF chapter meeting this month in Part II, coming soon!  :)