Peanut Butter Been Better

I pilfered this awful nearly non-food product from my guest that stays with me a few days a week. I irk slightly every time I see as it is an unusual sight for my otherwise whole foods kitchen. What especially ruffles me is the label on the product, as it is extremely misleading for shoppers trying to find their ol' staple jar of peanut butter like they used to eat in the good old days. Not that peanut butter was any better back then, but some how this grocery item has weaselled its way to 'health food' status, probably because its made from nuts, and has protein.

It seems as though most of our educated, average-grocery-store shoppers receive their food/health education from product labels, manufactures' promotional materials, or magazine articles, which never really clearly define the subtleties of what to look for and avoid when selecting a particular food item that's deemed healthy. You see - not all foods, or ingredients are created equally. Eating fresh, recently harvested, properly stored, good quality peanuts would be one thing, but this... this terrible food that has crept onto grocery store shelves is another thing. The average shopper doesn't know the difference between one nut product from another. Allow me to educate!!!

First of all - notice the front of the label. I blanked out the brand name to protect the culprit, but notice the 'health' symbols and connotations that exist, immediately giving the impression of good health. A light blue label is reminiscent of President Choice's (Canadian brand) "Blue Label" line of health foods, and they've informed the customer that one serving (how much?) is 80 calories, and 5g of fat. Totally irrelevant to the bigger picture of health when you consider the deeper aspects that underlie good health. The peanut butter is illustrated with some green apples, not the white bread that most people consume it with, then they've also placed a picture of a butterfly (indicating no added preservatives - but then what is corn maltodextrin?), and a giant exclamation mark on it, meaning, this food must be special, somehow. Otherwise they wouldn't have cared to let us know about it. They should have put a skull and crossbones on it instead.

Flipping the jar over and reading its ingredients label gives the product a completely different, contradictory message. Written DIRECTLY on it: HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL, comprising three poor quality oils that some how got blended together, or selected at the time of manufacture, likely which ever was the lowest priced at the time. Often manufacturers will label two or three oils so that they can choose the cheapest at the time of production and not have to change the label. So they chose the cheapest oil, and then HYDROGENATED IT!! Wasn't this issue exposed about a decade ago when products started getting away from hydrogenation and trans-fats? Nah. They just put it right in, thinking that people will overlook it considering it appears as a health food. Or worse yet, they don't even look or notice, all you have to look at is the label to clearly see it is a 'health food'. Aside from that, corn maltodextrin, an indigestible (therefore zero carbohydrate sugar) corn by-product used to sweeten food is second on the list. This is useful to the manufacturer because the sweetener doesn't get included in the nutritional facts label because it CANNOT be digested by our body, so it is not counted on the label for either caloric intake OR sugar content. But they also added sugar and molasses anyway. Because maltodextrin is indigestible, the flora in our gut have the job of breaking it down after all other nutrients are absorbed. For most people, this means it exasperates candida and parasitic infections, typically resulting in a worsened condition, but acutely resulting in gas and bloating - with no understanding of why or where it came from. Sugar does this too however. It is the food to feed unwanted infections, or growths in the body, including cancer, cysts, warts, arterial plaque, viruses and fungi. Not only that, but the rancid, rotting nuts and nut oil from the peanuts, which when are poor quality contain aflotoxins - a carcinogenic by-product from rotting plant proteins, but these rancid oils, in conjunction with the sugars and hydrogenated fat inserted into the food, create an incredibly supportive 'house' for the infections to thrive and grow, further worsening most health conditions in the body. These oils also create dangerous lesions in the body, especially in the arteries, damaging the tissues, requiring cholesterol to come in and create a layer of plaque to protect the damaged tissue. Hydrogenated and rancid oils also stagnate the liver creating irritability, stress, inflammation, allergies and a host of other ailments. Refined, and rancid oils, typically found in most commercially available foods, are one of the greatest contributors to aging and the destruction of precious internal tissues such as the liver, heart, arteries, and so on. Sugar contributes to this issue as well, including the added sweeteners of maltodextrin and molasses. Salt is the last ingredient, which also contributes to bodily 'Dampness' as known in Chinese Medicine, referring to the unwanted growths in the body, which include the list above, but also excess weight, and masses in the body. So really, there is NO one good ingredient in this food. They are all refined and/or rancid by-products from foods that are hardly deemed healthy in the first place, and all contribute to increased poor health and do not facilitate in good health in any way. I took a picture of the inside of the jar to illustrate what your arteries might look like with continued use of this product.

One last thing to note: this product has been "Health Checked" by the Heart and Stroke Foundation. YIKES!

Scott's Dish

So every once and a while I'll get an email from a friend or client telling me about their meal they made, or some fantastic recipe they found out about. I sense the enthusiasm from them as much as I feel it when I get emails like that. It satiates my Whole Foodies self, and inspires me to keep doing what it is I do! I just got one from Scott Galloway tonight, a fellow musician and friend, and this was the only text in his message:

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Short grain brown rice
Onion
Black beans
Coconut milk
Cumin
Allspice
Avocado
Grape tomatoes

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I laughed, because the recipe is exactly as I would write it, and I could tell he cooked with foods he happened to have in his fridge, using his intuition to guide him through the cooking process. Combinations become easier to put together with a little cooking experience and experimentation, and I believe Scott has matured this aspect of his cooking self. It's a way of expressing yourself. Where I would cook things one way, another person would use the same ingredients differently, or add an ingredient that I would have never thought of, or bought in the first place. This is the beauty of cooking from intuition. You express yourself, and your food resonates that energy. Recipes are a great place to work from, and learn from, but really, when it comes time to making a recipe, the final product will always have the personal touch of the cook in it! Don't be afraid to improvise - do things your way, or take an idea from a recipe and experiment with it for your own gain. At the end of the day, it's your food to eat - so cook what makes you happy! ... and then send your photos and recipes to Whole Foodies! :)

Green things that grow round

WELL.. it is a new year. Allow me to crack the freshness of the blog air with a story about my garden. By now, my frozen-over, barely visible back yard dirt patch has totally glaciated my remaining Brussels sprout plants, but amazingly they are still edible and in good shape! With a shovel and frozen fingers, I hacked it out of the snow bank and brought it indoors for thawing. Beauties. I can't believe what a yield one plant can produce, and I have two more sprout statues encased in ice in the back yard ready for harvesting.

In the mood for green (typically a spring colour, but New Year's has that energy to it anyway; rejuvenation and newness), I decided to make a green meal, or at least a tasty side dish that was hearty, gentle - and green.

Brussels sprouts and peas are BOTH high in protein, as most sprouts are. About 30% of their calories are from protein. Amazing! Since they're both green; we know they contain chlorophyll, and I'm a big fan of chlorophyll.

So. My green dish. Bring water to a boil and add the cut Brussels sprouts and peas. Add whatever herbs/spices you like; I chose fennel and cumin - my favourite! You can also add a little garlic. I wouldn't argue that garlic goes well in everything.

Cook at medium heat until soft. Remove the veggies and put them in a bowl.

Add raw apple cider vinegar (about 1 tsp), a little tamari/shoyu (soy sauce, but not the MSG kind please), and drizzle with good quality unrefined oil - ideally flax or hemp. UNREFINED!

THAT'S IT FOLKS! Piece of cake. Actually, peas and sprouts, but so simple to make!

Here's a tip! I left my cook water out over night, and then in the morning I cooked my brown rice in the water in the same pot! That way I was able to use what nutrients were left behind in the cook water, and fortified my rice! Yes... I'm so thrifty.

Here's to a green new year, and hopefully more frequent blogging!

Breakfast for Two

Breakfast is one of the best meals, it can really make your day - or break it! Maybe it should be called 'makefest' instead of breakfast, anyways, hopefully this inspires you, as breakfast doesn't need to be the typical greasefest of bacon, eggs, sausage, hash browns, toast with butter, which would make me feel like yuck all day!

- Crock pot full of barley, black eyed peas, potatoes, onion, fennel seed, black pepper and bay leaves

- Steamed beets with onion and kale, with a mint, parsley, lime, and hemp oil dressing

- Sweetless granola made with toasted almonds, oat flakes, orange juice, cardamom, green stevia, flax oil (pour on after) and blueberries

- Sharla's bloobie pancakes made with whole rye flour, goat milk and oat bran

- Homemade almond milk, sauerkraut, goat kefir, oatgurt, mint/catnip tea

- Blueberries, orange slices and sliced tomatoes from my garden!

YUM!

Sourdough pancakes for champions

What to do with your excess sourdough starter? It is really important to keep your sourdough starter going, if you like that kinda thing, but what do you do when you get too much!? Pancakes!!! Requiring a REALLY healthy, super bubbly starter (and thick like a pancake batter, not watery), sourdough starter will cook up a beautiful pancake if your starter is just right. Make sure your starter actually RISES in the container you're keeping it - which means it's thick enough, and bubbly enough.

Grease a pan up with a little butter or your preferred fat, and when hot (but not too hot, just hot enough that a drop of water from your finger hisses nicely, not angrily) pour out a little cake of batter and swirl the pan so it gets as thin as possible. Cook it well on both sides, and that's it!! If it's a little rare on the inside, don't worry, the grain is already fermented, which means that is nearly pre-digested anyways!! These pancakes do require a bit more time to cook though, so it is better to cook on medium-low heat, and have each one sit for about 5 minutes.

Serve up with granola, or your preferred toppings.

Probably the healthiest granola recipe ever..

Granola is so yummy, and a nice transitional food for the accustomed morning cereal eater, as it is a food that can be prepared simply and eaten with milk. However, the downside of granola, is that it is often made with refined oils, concentrated sweeteners, rancid nuts and seeds, hot spices, and generally just kinda heavy, greasy and overly sweet. What is the solution? Make your OWN with good ingredients! Here's how I do mine:

- DRY pan toast some almonds and pumpkin seeds until aromatic (do NOT burn!)

- Add some oat flakes and stir quickly - not too much toasting time for these guys. If they are over-heated, it will not be good for your liver or heat condition, and generally not recommended.

- Chop in some fruit, like apple slices, or stir in some blueberries. The fruit may sweat and add moisture to the dish, but if it doesn't, add a TINY bit of water, or better yet, a little bit of orange juice (fresh squeezed is best).

- I usually stop cooking at this point, even before the fruit usually, and put it into a bowl, however you can add spices and continue baking it for a little time to make it more warming.

- Add spices like cardamom, green stevia, nutmeg, etc, but cinnamon tends to be too hot, and if eaten before bed can cause things like night sweats, or worsen inflammation, etc.

- I put the warm granola into my bowl, (this is where I add the OJ, fruit and spices actually), and then pour over a little flax or hemp oil to give it some richness and greasiness.

- I was a little extra hungry, so I broke up some brown rice cake into as well and stirred it.

- I was also gifted a little dark chocolate, so I chopped that up and stirred it in as well too!

- Since I make my own goat kefir, which is really my only animal product, I topped it off with that, or I might add a little homemade almond milk with it as well.

NO sweeteners, refined or cooked oils, no salt, no flours, no junky nuts, and all fresh! YUM!

Cooking for one... pot!

I LOVE one-pot meals. Really, there's nothing more satisfying then the coming together of flavours in one dish, which really, makes digesting quite easy. Consider the pot acting as your stomach, working out all the chemical differences, so that by the time you eat it, it is chemically like 'one food'! Oh yes - the finest of food combining - cook it all together!

I cook things in order from slowest to fastest, obviously. So this is how I might cook myself a one-potter:

- Put a little water in the bottom of the pot and bring to boil, or at least hot

- Add spices to infuse like a tea... such as cumin, fennel, mustard, bl. pepper (my favs)

- Add pungent vegetables like onions, leeks, garlic, etc. I think I used ginger and leek here

- Add hearty root veggies, like potato, carrot or beet. I think I only used carrot in this dish

- When roots are soft, add other veg like zucchini, which is what I did here

- I tossed in some nuts and seeds as well - which soaks and cooks them a little, which is good

- From here, you can add more water and add some grain, as I did with quinoa! Cover and cook until grains are soft, for quinoa - about 15 minutes. I threw in some brown rice pasta because I was having a party for myself that night, and pasta is pretty fun.

- Add herbs at the end, like thyme or whatever else. I added my fresh ones at the very end though

- Serve a dishfull, and that stir in some leafy greens like kale, and they'll cook in just the heat of the food.

- Prepare a small dressing/sauce, or simply just pour over a little flax/hemp oil, apple cider vinegar, or whatever inspires you.

- Add fresh chopped herbs, like basil, parsley, chives, or whatever ya got!

This is pretty elaborate, but my entire meal came from one dish! It made enough for two servings, and I had just ONE POT to clean up! Isn't it amazing.. ONE POT!! :)

Spicy Summer Salad

This was a preferred breakfast, lunch or dinner for me when I felt the urge to eat something crunchy, cool, and raw in the heat of summer. However, I don't really like the watery, overly moistening and cooling effects of just regular leafy greens, especially ice berg lettuce, but I found these amazing 'spicy greens' from the Organic Oasis near my home that contains a mix of mustard greens, and other little pungent-bitters that appeal to me much more than the watery-crisp block of ice that normal grocery lettuce is.

To add some substance and richness to my salads, I always add pumpkin seeds (usually hand pan-toasted), or almonds, and then added some cut apple, and then a few fresh things from my garden such as tomato, basil, parsley, shiso, and then add a dressing made up of flax oil, garlic, apple cider vinegar and a little miso. I sprinkle on a little dulse too, if I'm in the mood for it. I usually have something heartier with this as well, like a cooked veg or grain, but sometimes just the freshness of a simple salad, especially with the rising sun, is all that I need to make me grin and feel centered.

Easy Pickles!

These were a real hit at Paul Pitchford's Healing with Whole Foods intensive in New York. Probably because they were so garlicky and pungent with apple cider vinegar!

Since garlic fosters desire, perhaps the appeal for these grew deeper the more you ate them?

In an attempt to rid some cucumbers, Sharla quickly sliced them on a mandolin along with some spices and garlic, and then topped up the jar with half water and half apple cider vinegar.

That's it!! Use raw/unpasteurized apple cider vineger, and it will ferment the vegetable so that it will keep for quite a while. Healthy, crunchy, tasty and desire-y!

Food for yer yin-yang

Aduki beans and well cooked rice. Need I say more?

Shooting peas with flying ninja stars

Food can be so simple. It really should be. This post will be a reflection of this concept:

Cook peas in a little water, and add something fun to dress them up, like carrots shaped like ninja stars. Add a little space if need be, like black pepper, and enjoy!

Tatters

Stove-top Sharla, and oven-Mike. Did you know that sauteeing and stirring your food gives an invigorating effect to the food, and thus the person, where as long, patient cooking in the oven gives a patient quiet quality to the food, and thus person? Perhaps Sharla's cooking is a source for her upbeat energy, and Mike's oven dishes are a source of his... what, am I just going to flatter myself in a blog because I cook in the oven? Whatever, yes, it is a source of my good looks and robust figure. Just kidding... it just makes me really really smart.

I LOVE potatoes, perhaps because this was the staple food growing up for me, and for my parents too, coming from a German background (might be pronounced 'Cherman' at my grandma's house, and washed down with a bratwurst and pint of beer) anyways, I do potatoes, that is my thing. Especially in the colder weather because of the warmth they bring to the body when out of the oven, yet they are one of the best yin-builders known to the Asian (the West still deems this food as unnecessary because of the high starch content, which is ridiculous, just stop eating sugar and crap, and you'll realize potatoes are so nourishing and a far better 'sweet' than any granola bar or any other sweet garbage on the grocery shelf). Yin-building = immune boosting and hormone supporting by the way. Did you know two German lads survived during the war for THREE years on just potatoes alone? JUST potatoes, no health concerns. Or was it three guys for two years? Whatever, that's a long time for just potatoes. I digress...

If cooked for a long period of time, potatoes require almost no seasoning - the time will bring them to life. I cooked these with onion and cumin I believe, and then slipped into the oven for an hour at 350F. Grease is not necessary, just use water.

Crawckers

Rawesome. Just rawesome. I mispelt crackers as 'crawckers', cause well, they were raw, but can be done in the over too. Leftover kamut sprouts, soaked flax seed, soaked buckwheat, and variations on all of the above, made some incredible crackers that we enjoyed with nut milks, or with cheese, or just plain. The students made these in our cracker workshop, and of course, they sweet-starved students made ALL sweet crackers and almost no savoury!! haha... carob, cardamom, orange juice, stevia, yacon, vanilla, and anything else non-Dampening yet sweet they could find! They were good, I'll admit, and were gone pretty fast!!

To learn how to make these, you pretty much need to attend one of our workshops or retreats. Bo! Really, they're easy, but so much easier to teach in person than blogging about it. Maybe we should make a video about it. Yeah, that's what we'll do... stay tuned.

The Kefir Queen

Clouds from the gods? A gift from Allah? A miracle food made in heaven? Yes to all of the above. Kefir is a culture made up of yeasts and bacteria, and the cloud looking picture is my baby kefir when I first got it, and because they grow, it is now the size of my fist! Time to give some away, and sharing with your friends (and students) is what you're supposed to do!

We made 1L of kefired goat milk with it daily, which resembles yogurt, but so much more sour and bacteria rich, and of course Sharla - the Kefir Queen made aged cheese from kefir laban, and I'm sure we'll more about this in posts to come, as I hear she's working on making a bridge for the city of Chicago using kefir and some cheesecloth. She can make anything. Not only did she kefir goat milk at the intensive, she kefired coconut milk, almond milk, ginger water, and pretty much any other fluid sitting unused in an open vessel. Yum! Luckily, we had enough to give to most of our hungry students to take home and spread to their loved ones too.

Raw, Fermented, Sprouted bread

Because our guests at the intensive ate almost a full 1L of oatgurt everyday, it was necessary for us to make enough rejuvelac (used in oatgurt) to do so, and as a result, we had ample sprouted and fermented kamut grains leftover to do whatever fun things we wanted to!! Here Sharla is making sprouted bread dough using a juicer (only use the masticating kind!), and then season (if you wish) and form into loaves and either bake on low for a long period of time (2+ hours) or dehydrate over night, however you wish. That is it! Very simple! We have a video on how to make this sprouted bread if you click our videos link in the main menu or from our homepages. Sprout grain, blend/mash it, form it, dry/bake it. Easy peasy.

Crocky Breakfast

How to make breakfast delicious and fast - prepare the night before!

Pictured here, is an oatmeal dish with blueberries and vanilla bean. All things in time are better than all things rushed, so why not spend all night making your breakfast! The flavours deepen with time, so a lot of seasoning is not required, which is usually required with instant foods. Just add the vanilla, or maybe some cardamom and fruit, and let it cook all night for you!

We ate a full pot of this every morning at the intensive - and rightfully so, it was delish!

Sideways Recycled Bean Burgers

What do you do with leftover beans? Burg them!! Keep any leftover beans aside, even if they have veg and grain in them, and mash them up to make beans.

At the retreat, we continuously made bean burgers by adding chopped onion and carrot to the leftover beans, added bread crumbs, oat flakes, or even best - flour (we used fresh ground whole kamut). Play with the quantity of grain to get them tough enough to form balls in your hands - if they do, place them on a baking sheet (with parchment paper is best), and bake them at about 375F for 20 minutes or so, as per your desired firmness of burger. Pictured here, is a baking sheet for a giant oven, forced into our little home-sized oven - it worked just fine, but there were a few wonky burgers from it. Also - you can add seasonings to bring them to life, like ground cumin and black pepper - or curry powder etc. Easy as pie!.. actually, easy as bean burgers!

Sourdough, Recycled Brown Rice bread!

Throughout the retreat, we started to get a little burdened with leftovers. We weren't sure how to use 2 servings of rice, or a tiny bit of left over vegetables, so we started finding creative ways to use them in our cooking. Here's an application for left over grains, especially non-glutinous! Since we had a celiac person in our retreat, I felt a little bothered that all of our bread had gluten in it (kamut) and so began making brown rice sourdough bread. However, as grains ferment in the process, it doesn't really matter what grain it is, and if it's cooked or not. So I began putting grain leftovers in a large bowl to ferment, and would make them into bread. The first morning I made it, I didn't think it was really anything special, as was kinda weird... however, that same morning I happened to drop an entire scalding hot crock pot full of cooked brown rice congee on the ground while carrying it to the dining hall, and it smashed all over the place (including my bare feet, which gave coincidentally gave me a lovely little liver moxibustion treatment), anyways - I felt so bad that I thought I'd better serve this strange congee bread, and low and behold, they ate all of it - 2 full loaves. They loved it, and I continued making it throughout the retreat from then on.

As it really is a tactile thing to make, and working with leftovers really offers no quantifiable, measurable methodology to making it, I just simply add brown rice sourdough starter to the leftover grains (about 1 cup) and then add fluids to bring it to a batter like consistency, maybe a little wetter. For fluids, I would use leftover, starting to ferment homemade brown rice milk, or some left over vegetable cooking water - as it was a little starchier to help the bacteria nosh on the soon-to-be dough. After a day of sitting, or when I see it rise, I add fresh ground brown rice to bring it to batter consistency, and again, add a little fluid if need be. I think some dry ground grain is necessary to make it tough enough to bake, as the cooked grains were too wet and soft to make a loaf unto themselves. As a batter consistency (maybe slightly firmer than batter) pour into loaf pans and let them rise (you can rise as many times as you like, but it MUST rise in the bread pan before baking), and then when risen (usually in the morning) bake it at 450F for at least an hour. It will be extremely wet and doughy when you take it out, so it MUST cool and set IN the pan for at least 1/2 hour or so, and even still, it might pull apart a little, so be sure to grease your pans and get them out carefully. You can check to see if their done without taking them out of the pan simply by inserting a chop stick and checking to see if any doughy residues remain on the stick. You'll know, and it does take practice to get it right. It took me a whole year to get this down, but then again I didn't know what I was doing when I started! Good luck, and email Whole Foodies for questions if you have them!

Masters of Breakfast.. and the Universe

Twenty-two breakfasts and a whole lot of snacks. Whole Foodies Michael and Sharla answered their calling by attending Paul Pitchford's three-week intensive entitled "Healing with Whole Foods" in New York for the month of August, and had the honour of teaching 11 hours of workshop classes, but also preparing all breakfasts and snacks, plus special foods for the entire duration. YAY! We'll try to capture some of the meals on the blog here, but as we were producing almost 10 dishes per morning, and flying by the seat of our pants most of the time, we rarely had time to document what is was we made. Pictured here is Paul Pitchford spooning up some goodness, and a picture of what might have been a typical breakfast (and our lovely faces).

Tempeh-tation!

Tempeh is one of those magical foods that is very healthy but also satisfying.  A little bit goes a long way in satiating the appetite.  Tempeh is like the cheese of Indonesia, cooked soybeans are inoculated with a bacteria starter and it is left to get "funky" as in moldy and fermented.  The end result is a dense cake that has a nutty taste and 'shroomy aroma.  Vitamin B12 forms as result of fermentation and is one of the only vegetable sources of natural B12.  Fermentation breaks down the proteins and natural sugars in the soybean, eliminating digestive issues with other soyfood products. Tempeh is relatively inexpensive and can be found at most health food stores, try different grain varieties to see which is the most tempeh-ting!

Miso Mustard Tempeh

8 oz tempeh

1 Tbsp oil

1 cup hot water

3 Tbsp sweet white miso

1/4 cup Whole grain dijon mustard

2 cups thinly sliced leeks or or a combination of leeks and shallots

2 garlic cloves, chopped

1/2 a zucchini, sliced

2 carrots, peeled and sliced thin

1/2 lb cremini mushrooms or shiitake

1/2 cup dry white wine or stock

3-4 leaves of kale, collards or cabbage

salt and pepper to taste

Cut tempeh into 1/2 inch strips, lightly coat each side with oil.  place them in a skillet and brown on all sides.  Remove to cool and then cut them into blocks..

Make the sauce by combining the mustard, miso and water.

Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat, saute garlic and leeks and or shallots until cooked through, about 4-5 minutes, add the reserved tempeh, zuchhini, mushrooms, carrots, and mustard/miso sauce.  Bring to a boil, cover and then lower the heat to simmer for 10-15 minutes, until vegetables are crisp tender.

Add the white wine or broth, stir in the greens and cover and simmer for an additional 10 minutes.

Voila, fini!  Serve this with fresh chopped chives or tarragon.  Place atop cooked quinoa for a complete meal.

*experiment with different in season produce and adjust the flavors for maximum intensity.