July 4, 2010

Sometimes we hear folks condemn the U.S. I’ve been guilty of it myself. Certainly, there is much we can improve upon,  but it’s clear that America has a capacity for heralding good in many corners of our world.

When my Sicilian grandparents stepped onto American soil a century ago, they were overwhelmed by gratitude and hope having found the country of their dreams.  Here is where they would have a chance……an opportunity to develop their independent and triumphant spirits.

Where else might they have gone where a  country was actually founded on the principles of freedoms and opportunities that would carry them to great personal and cumulative heights?

My Mama and Papa Calabrese and Mama and Papa Giangreco, if alive today would join me

In the  spirit of this Independence Day.

And so I entreat you, let’s champion choices: the freedom to choose our foods, our education, even our medicine, Sometimes it’s an uphill battle, but it’s worth our perseverance for ourselves and generations that follow.  And perhaps more importantly, to establish fully that this is where freedom rings vigorously.

From all of us here at Homeopathyworks we wish you a healthy, happy and victorious 4^th of July Holiday.

With Love,

Joette

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HOW TO MAKE KOMBUCHA TEA

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Gluten Free Banana Bread

Gluten Free  Banana Bread

Scrumptious!

Makes 2 loaves

4 cups  raw almonds

8 T coconut oil (preferably  Green Pasture’s)

8 bananas (the more ripe, the sweeter the bread)

10 eggs

2 teaspoons baking soda

½ teaspoon salt (preferably Celtic salt)

2 teaspoons vanilla

½ cup coconut flour this is not necessary, but adds protein.

1 cup raisins or other dried fruit, such as apricots, cherries, prunes, sultanas, etc.

The almonds: The most nutritious method of making this bread is to soak and then dehydrate the almonds so that they are more easily digested.  If you chose to follow this method, place the almonds in a large bowl, cover  with an extra inch of water and set on the counter for 12-24 hours.  The following day, strain the water and arrange the nuts on a few cookie sheets one layer in depth and allow to dehydrate in a 120 degree oven for 24-48 hours. They’re done when crispy inside.

Put all the ingredients in a food processor and grind.

Pour the batter into bread pans and place in a 350 degree oven for 50-60 minutes.

Slather with cream cheese or butter…maybe both!

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Homemake Candies – Quick making, Real Healthy, Kid pleasers

Moose Mounds

These homemade candies are quick, nutrient dense and kid pleasers. They have the toothsome resistance to the bite that makes them comparable to a  high quality chocolate bar. But they’re what we want our family to eat. They stay fresh for months in a sealed container in the refrigerator….but if your family knows where they are, they won’t last that long! Very satisfying.

2 cups raw, unpasteurized, almonds, walnuts or pecans

1/5 cup almond flour, sometimes called almond powder

1 cup Green Pasture coconut oil

¼ cup organic raw coco powder or nibs

1-2 cups raisins, goji berries, or any dried fruit as the sweetener or

1 cup raw honey as alternative to dried fruit

1cup  unsweetened dried coconut

Pinch Celtic salt

Teaspoon  vanilla

Place  nuts (one kind or another) in a large bowl. Fill with water up to about 4 inches over the nuts and let sit on counter for 24 hours.  Soaking nuts allows the germination process to begin which in turn  adds higher nutritional value and better digestion.

After having soaked, drain the nuts  thoroughly  and place on cookie sheets so that they’re laying one layer thick only.  Usually 2-3 trays suffice. Put the nuts in an oven set at 120 degrees for 24 hours or until crispy.  Sometimes this process takes hours longer; sometimes shorter.  A dehydrator will do the same if your oven doesn’t have low settings.

In a food processor, grind the nuts to their finest level.   The less oily the nut; the more powdery the results which makes for a finer candy bar texture. Almonds grind to a lovely powdery consistency.

Leave the ground nuts in the food processor, add remaining ingredients and grind everything together.  Taste for flavor.  More  raisins or honey for a sweeter candy, more coco powder for a more intense chocolate taste.

With your fingers, scoop up walnut sized amounts and form into balls. They will be oily and messy because the coconut oil is warm, but will firm up like a candy bar once cooled.   At this time, these can be rolled in coconut or coco powder and then placed on a cookie tray. Place in the refrigerator or freezer for 30 minutes. That’s it!

They can then be placed in little, individual  candy wrappers and left outside the refrigerator unless it’s a warm day.

Bear Bars

For results that more resemble a chocolate bar, mix in the same fashion as above but  instead of balls, press into a square cake or brownie pan and score into bite sized bars.  Then place in the refrigerator or freezer.

Fox Fudge

Shorter shelf life and refrigerator-dependent but a fudge-like consistency try adding 1-2 cups of cream cheese.

Low Carb-Bar

For diabetics and others who want high saturated fats but low carbs, simply eliminate dried fruit and or honey. Great consistency, but no sweetness. For those on a high fat, low carb diet, these help suppress the appetite!

Joette has mastered the art of getting healthy foods into her children.  If you want to read more download her Digital CD; Secret Spoonfuls  Confessions of a Sneaky Mom – Get Healthy foods into Kids without getting caught. http://bit.ly/atv7A4.

Follow her here for more timely tips, or get her free monthly newsletter that includes more Nutritional and Homeopathic tips.  http://www.homeopathyworks.net/newsletters.cfm

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Nutri-Tip! Dandelions, as kids we loved them

Nutri-Tip!

Dandelions; as kids we loved them, as homeowners we find them annoying.  Allow me to encourage you to find your way back to loving them again. It might just bring back childhood memories of joyful summer days. Dandelions make the perfect spring tonic. Just as the flowers emerge, find a clean patch away from traffic and/ or pesticides and pop off the freshest flower heads. If your plot is clean enough and especially if it's just dewed or rained, you needn’t wash them.  Skip back to the house and toss in a hot frying pan ready with sizzling butter or coconut oil.  Sauté quickly and top a steak or grace an omelet with these pretty little edible flowers.  Commanding in taste, dandelions are known for their powerful cleansing and tonic effects so only a few are needed.  Delicious, memory filled and nutrient packed…… the perfect accompaniment to spring recollections.

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Butter, Butter, Butter and Lard

I love good food.  I mean, my favorite movies are Big Night, Chocolat, Julie and Julia. So when it comes to quality, I have a difficult time getting past the low-fat paradigm.  As far as I’m concerned: fat is where it's at.  Now, not all fats are the same.  Think of the distinction between a Dunkin Donut doughnut and my Sunday homemade buttermilk waffles, drenched in maple syrup and raw spring butter.  One is fried in weeks old soybean or canola oil, the other is made with real butter from my local farmer whose cow’s name is Priscilla. Can there be any comparison?

Butter, Butter, Butter and Lard

 

The notion that saturated fats causes heart disease is not only facile, but just plain wrong.  Do you remember the Framingham Heart Study?  Well, if not, you ought to know that it is the mainstay of the advocates of the  low-fat paradigm. Yet its hypothesis has been turned on its head.  In hindsight, some 40 years after the study became public, the director of the study confessed that “the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower the person’s serum cholesterol… we found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories, weighed the least and were the most physically active”.

Can we deduce from the director of the lipid theorists flagship study that arterial sclerosis has little to do with cholesterol and fat consumption?  It certainly appears we can.  But there’s more to it than a study; there’s physiology as well.

Interestingly, arteries that are clogged are not choked with saturated fats, but with calcium deposits akin to lime.  This is not what we have imagined all these years.  Instead, we’ve been visualizing the fats from a juicy, marbled steak with buttered potatoes to practically travel from the mouth, to the stomach and then directly into the arteries.  It simply isn’t so and there’s plenty of evidence to substantiate this.  Despite repetitious conventional medical mantra and unsound pop culture advice we might reconsider the last 40 years of fat phobia to be a wash.

So, if butter, tropical fats, cod liver oil, whole milk, lard and other animal fats in general don’t cause heart disease, then what does?  We know that deficiencies of vitamins A, E and D are one cause.  Where are these vitamins found?  Why, in butter, lard, tropical oils and animal fats….the very food we’ve been directed to eschew!

B vitamins and mineral deficiencies are also contributors to heart disease.  These occur as a result of eating foods of commerce, such as soda, preservatives, additives and enhancers, instead of whole, homemade fare.  Vitamin B happens to be abundant in red meat and in organ meats.

There’s no doubt that stress contributes to heart and artery pathology.  The very nutrients that accompany traditional foods are depleted at such  times. Hence, during periods of stress, it’s prudent to take in more than the usual amount of nutrient dense foods that provide the greatest amount of animal and tropical fats.

Butter and lard, because of their antioxidants, protect us against free radicals and are therefore, preventatives for diseases such as cancer, heart disease, depression, infections and reproductive disorders.

I remember 6^th grade science where we were taught that Vitamin D, the brain vitamin is found via three main sources: cod liver oil, lard and the utilization of sunshine.  In addition, Vitamin E, the heart vitamin is found chiefly in butter. So if we want to benefit the heart and brain, the two most vital organs, how would we do this if we didn’t eat these perfect foods?

In colonial America, where people lived hearty lives often stretching to the 100 year mark, it was simply understood that saturated fats were a mainstay of daily life, particularly in the cold months.  These people lived agrarian or at least semi agrarian lives so they had whole, healthy foods available as daily fare.  Beef tallow and pork fats were rendered after the slaughter in the fall. Then these products were used to make biscuits, piecrusts and the like.  Which when consumed, would fend off the blues, respiratory infections and build robust bodies.  Organ meats such as liver, sweetbreads, kidneys and heart were a weekly fare.

Growing up in Buffalo, New York, we had liver every Monday night and as Italian Americans we enjoyed tripe or squid in homemade red sauce regularly.  We drank whole un-homogenized milk, plenty of fresh cheeses and beef or lamb regularly.   Today, spring butter is still prized in Europe because of its high concentration of nutrients.  It’s reverently stored and preserved in the form of special cultured butter and cheeses for use in later months.  The Intuits who had lives of extended longevity until the last century, ate a daily ration of whale blubber. Germans still eat a generous coating of lard on their whole grain rye bread with a slice of onion and the French enjoy ham with the accompanying fat daily.  Yet these cultures have low heart and cancer rates; or at least a great deal lower than modern Americans.  The connection? traditional fats, traditional artisan methods, traditional meals.

How can we reinstate these time-honored fats into our diet?  Simply eat like an age old European, like an old time American farmer and prepare like the finest gourmet restaurants in the world.  Unearth your great grandmother’s old-world recipes, toss out the canola oil, vegetable oils and buy a traditional cookbooks or learn the easy way, via my audio Secret Spoonfuls .  It’s where the answers get easier because it covers my own methods, tips and tricks that lightened my efforts to get authentic, gourmet foods into my family.

Get happy!  Ward off hot flashes, heart pathology, allergies, fatigue, and spring infections.  Eat like a true gourmet.  Include butter, coconut oil, organ meats, fresh milk and in plentitude.  Then go outside and take a walk.  Your brain, heart, lungs and even your arteries will thank you.

Joette has mastered the art of getting healthy foods into her children.  If you want to read more download her Digital CD; Secret Spoonfuls  Confessions of a Sneaky Mom – Get Healthy foods into Kids without getting caught. .

Nutrition and Physical Regeneration,   Dr. Weston A. Price

Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon and Dr. Mary Enig

Photo courtesy http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Osias_Beert_(I)_-_Still-Life_with_Oysters_and_Pastries_-_WGA01569.jpg

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51 Ways to Protect Your Family; Don’t Get Cancer 48,49,50 &51

48)    Make birth a simple, natural event.  No drugs and procedures please.  If you’ve already had your children, encourage the next generation to embrace natural methods of birth and then support them.

49)  Nurse your babies.  Nothing is better for baby as well as mother than to nurse for an extended time.

50)  Stay away from meds.  I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I tend to repeat myself when I get excited.  Medications are increasingly implicated as cancer producing agents.  Keep your body pure.  Sweat out a fever (its curative), put up with a cold and treat the rash homeopathically.  Adjust your life to the needs of your body.  Don’t force your body to acquiesce to a drug.   The body has the ability to resolve many health issues if allowed to respond without restraint.  Every pill, ointment, or capsule is a method of concealing the body’s natural ability to right the wrong.  Suppressed symptoms equal pathology later…not always cancer, but why take the chance?  Learn to cure yourself and family.

51)  Do your homework.  Just because someone tells you that this is it, doesn’t mean it is.  Question, find the alternative and then question them as well. There are more myths abounding than truths.

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