A Jaded Mama

Hot Chocolate for Dummies

I don't know about you but at this time of year I just can't handle cold drinks. I was at Starbucks the other day waiting for my chai latté waiting for my herbal tea and I watched a man picked up his iced something or other. Every fibre of my being recoiled from that cold drink. It's hard enough to stay warm without dousing our insides with frostiness.

I actually can't drink hot chocolate myself as I can't tolerate that volume of pasteurized milk (and still have not had the chance to test out raw milk) but the kids really love a nourishing, warming drink in the morning before we have to head out into the cold.

Did you know that hot chocolate mixes are full of high fructose corn syrup for one, and whole bunch of unnecessary fillers? And next time I pass by a kiosk I'll take a photo of a label. In anycase, if you want to enjoy a steaming cup of hot chocolate there's no need to consume non-food items. It's SO easy to make yourself.

Hot Chocolate for Dummies

Ingredients:

2 cups of whole milk, ideally raw and if not then non-homogenize and low temperature pasteurized.

2 tbsp cocoa powder. Look for pure, unadulterated, unsweetened cocoa. Fair trade is a plus!

1/2 tsp vanilla

3 tbsp maple syrup, or more to taste

Directions:

Into a small saucepan, pour the milk. Warm slowly over medium heat until just before boiling. Add the cocoa and stir until it is thoroughly dissolved. Add the vanilla and stir well. Add syrup to taste. 

That's it, that's all! Enjoy!

Poutine, the REAL food way!

I wrote a post last week based on a Facebook thread that went, well, bad, and it set me to thinking that what is normally considered a junkie dish could, in fact, be made the whole food way.

Poutine is considered a Quebec staple. I for sure wouldn't go so far as to call it a delicacy because there's nothing delicate about it. But it sure is tasty! If you've never heard of it, think gravy fries but with melted cheese curds. There are variations on the theme, including the addition of a bolognese sauce, but for the purposes of this experiment, the straight up version was my goal.

Poutine requires three components - fries, gravy and cheese curds. If you head over to La Belle Provence your fries will be deep fried in rancid industrial oils, your gravy will come from a mix and your cheese curds will be...actually, that's the only part that won't change. They'll still be fresh cheese curds. Basically you're looking at indigestion in a disposable bowl in the short term, and all kinds of fun stuff in the long term. Why risk your health when it's SO easy to make with real, whole and fresh ingreidents?

My version features oven-roasted fries in freshly rendered duck fat, gluten-free homemade chicken gravy from my own drippings and bone broth, and...fresh cheese curds.


1. Homemade Gravy

1/2 cup drippings from a roasted chicken. If you leave these in the fridge, the fat and liquids will separate, but when heated they'll mix back up nicely.

3 tbsp brown rice flour (or all-purpose flour if you're not picky or gluten-free)

2 cups of homemade chicken stock. 

Salt and pepper to taste.

Savoury herbs to taste.

Melt the drippings in a pot and stir in the flour until dissolved. Add the chicken stock, salt and pepper and savoury, bring to a boil, and then simmer for about 20 minutes until the gravy is thickened and reduced. Season to taste.

2. Oven-Roasted Duck Fat Fries

2 globs of rendered duck fat (I happened to have roasted a duck and so rendered my own fat, but you can also purchase it already rendered).

6 - 8 medium sized russet potatoes (or any other potato that roasts well in the oven)

2 tsp of sea salt, or to taste

Preheat over to 350°. Scrub potatoes to rid them of all dirt but don't peel. Julien the potatoes so that they are thin but not so thin that they become only crispy when roasted. You still want some body to them. Soak the potatoes in cold, salted water for five minutes and then drain and rinse.

Transfer globs of duck fat to a roasting pan or cookie sheet and pop the pan in the oven for five minutes, or until fat is all liquid. Spread the dried julienned potatoes evenly across the pan and then toss lightly to coat with the melted fat. Sprinkle liberally with the sea salt, and then toss again.

Place pan in oven on a middle rack and set the timer of 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, toss using a spatula. Put the pan back in the oven and set the timer for 10 minutes, and then toss again. Repeat the exercise every 10 minutes for approximately 40 minutes, or until the fries are cooked through but crisp on the outside.

 3. Fresh cheese curds, one 250g package. Now, we used the cheddar curds and I'm wondering if they would have melted better had they been mozarella. 

4. Assemble as follows - Put the fries in a large bowl. Sprinkle the cheese curds over the top. You may not want to use all 250g. Use your judgement. Lastly, ladle piping hot gravy over top. Let sit three minutes so the cheese can soften. ENJOY!

(Note - because we may have used the wrong kind of curds, our cheese did not melt. It may also have been that because the fries were not fried, they weren't super hot. So you may want to put the entire arrangement briefly under the broiler to inspire some meltage in the cheese!)

Can you be frugal and still be a Real Foodie? 10 Tips.

Let me preface this post by stating clearly that I could not stick to a budget if it slapped me in the face. Okay? But I know that if you are so inclined, eating real food while on a budget IS doable. It's not my area of specialty. So instead, let's talk about being frugal, because that's a nice, generic term that I could PRETEND applies to me. It's all relative, right?

This post is going to be an evolution. I'm not great at numbers (hence the reason why budgets elude me) but I do understand quantities and purchasing. I'm also pretty good at sourcing locally, which is one of the first things you need to start doing if you want to be a Real Foodie! 

Also, I would like your input! If I have missed points, or if you totally disagree with something I've written, please comment! I'll refine and revise until I've got a realistic plan of attack for those who need it.

So without further ado, I bring you...

Ten tips for how to be frugal and still consume Real Food

So how can you be frugal and still eat Real Food? Here are some tips for you:

1. Decide which items need to be organic and which don't - 95% of the purchasing in this household is organic. But does it have to be? And what does organic mean? CERTIFIED organic tends to mean that a third party organization is overseeing the production methods of a food producer. But it certainly is not the be-all, end-all, and not all your food NEEDS to be organic.

For instance, the eggs and chickens that I buy from a local producer are not certified organic and do not have an organic price tag ($4.50 for 12 eggs, vs. up to $6.99 for organic eggs from the health food store), but the production methods are just as important. My eggs need to either be certified AND free run (often it's only the big producers that can afford the certification, and in order to be able to afford it they need large volume, which means CAFO type systems) or I need to know that they are coming from a small farm where they are provided lots of room to move and nest. Same goes for my chickens. If they are cooped up and not allowed to move then the quality of the meat will be poor, along with the energetic values, and I'm not interested. What they are being fed is secondary. And you may have to go hunting to find a source. I emailed the farm from which I ordered my quarter beef and asked if they'd be providing eggs at any point as I'd be willing to commit to four dozen every two weeks, and they told me that as of February they plan to have chicken AND duck eggs available. Woot! In the meantime, I do know about a lady who raises her own chickens and sells the eggs, so every two weeks I can pick up four dozen and hope that holds us. It's good to have options!

The same goes for beef or other meat sources. If you can find a small, local farmer and pay a visit and see that the animals are in touch with the earth and allowed to graze freely, that goes a long way towards insuring the quality of the meat. Standards for beef production in Canada are thankfully MUCH higher than in the US ("There's sh*t in the meat." - anyone know which move that came from?), and you won't get the same sort of exposure to growth hormones and antibiotics that you would south of the border, even if you eat non-organic. You'll still pay an elevated price for your meat compared to grocery store steaks if you purchase from a local farmer, but it won't be as expensive as buying a certified product. Make sure that the cows are allowed to graze on grass in the warmer months and are fed hay in the winter months, and NOT mainly grain or corn-fed. Bovine stomachs are designed to process green food, not grain. Often the cows are finished on grains as this makes for a nicely marbled steak, but for the most part grass-fed is what you are looking for.

Now, as for where to find this beef locally, I can't tell you YET. My sources are certified organic. But for people living in other parts of Canada, such as out in the prairies or in more northerly regions, this may be an easier task to accomplish. As well, if you happen to live somewhere not so urban, maybe you are friends with a hunter? There's nothing better than wild caught meat, be it moose (thanks for that Simone!), deer or...what the heck else runs free that Canadians are allowed to hunt? 

See point 3 on how to get the most bang from your buck when it comes to eating animals.

When it comes to fruits and veggies, it's good to keep an eye on the yearly Dirty Dozen list from the Environmental Working Group (actually, here's the Dirty 53 - The higher on the list, the more chemicals present). I would for sure recommend sticking to organic for the items up near the top, at least the top dozen. I'd also recommend to sticking to seasonal as much as possible. There is NO reason to be eating abnormally large, greenhouse raised organic California berries in the middle of the winter. They are not appropriate food for winter consumption anyways and for $8 a container, well, you could get two dozen eggs. If you feel you NEED strawberries in the middle of the winter then make a point of buying a large amount of local berries in July when they are abundant and CHEAP, then wash, dry, hull and freeze them. In the winter we need grounded, nourishing, warming foods and less reliance on fruit. But that's a whole other post, so just keep that idea in mind for now. If it is a fruit or veggie that can easily keep through the winter season, then it's worth consuming. See point 6 for further elaboration.

The one area in which I'm a bit fuzzy around the edges is butter. As far as milk is concerned, organic is ooooookay, but really, once milk is pasteurized it's pretty much a damaging food. I've found a few brands that don't homogenize their milk and that also pasteurize at a lower temperature, but I'm GOING to find a source of raw milk locally, even if I have to buy and board my own bovine, dagnabit! Yogourt is milk's saving grace, as making your own (which I am terrible at) brings it back to life and also provides a good source of probiotic cultures. But butter, when organic is INSANELY EXPENSIVE, and for good reason I'm sure. So usually I try to find a cultured regular butter and go with that. As contradictory as this sounds, we simply eat too much of it to be able to shell out $5 for 454g. I'd like to pay that much for a kilogram. Still working on this one...

2. Subscribe to a weekly produce basket - Are you familiar with the concept of community supported agriculture (CSA)? The idea is that members of the community are directly connected with local growers, usually of the vegetable and fruit variety. What this allows for is slightly lower cost (compared to imported, organic grocery store produce), local, sustainably farmed produce. Often you can also connect with meat producers in the same way. The farms are small and you can often communicate directly with the owners to give feedback and establish a relationship. I've subscribed to the Ferme du Zephyr a few times over the last few years and Stephen Homer always remembers my name when we meet for the pickup, or if I run into him somewhere in the community. The produce I receive usually comes out of the ground that day, if not in last few days, and it's beautifully varied. 

The other thing I do, year round, is order an organic basket from Jardin des Anges. While this company offers more of an organic grocery service than anything else, the focus, especially during the growing season, is more on local than anything else. In the summer I reduce the vegetable content and increase the fruit content.

So here's what I TRY to do with my weekly baskets - USE UP ALL THE PRODUCE. This is crazy challenging because it requires creativity and thinking outside the box. And as a result, I have at least two bags of rutabaga and two of beets sitting in my fridge right now waiting for me to figure out what to do with them (thinking of making beet kvass and borscht this weekend...what the heck does one do with an overabundance of rutabaga?). But this is one way to stay on budget. My weekly basket consists of 10 veggies, 4 fruit and for an extra $10 I take an extra four fruit (an example of an extra fruit is four oranges). And I add one very expensive bottle of organic apple juice for $5.35. The whole shebang costs me $63.35 a week. If I skipped the juice, which is really an indulgence, I'd be spending just under $300 a month on produce. And, as I said, if I were super organized and dedicated, I wouldn't buy more produce in the week. I do, but let's pretend I don't, okay? This size basket is enough for two veggie enthusiasts (which we aren't) and it's plenty for our family of five, for the most part. A bag of beets can go a looooong way...

Actually, on that note, a really great way to be SUPER efficient with your veggies is to do this. Most of the stuff you'd otherwise throw into the compost bin can actually be used to either make a veggie stock, or to enhance your bone broth. Brilliant, huh?

3. Nose to Tail Eating - Of course, I didn't coin this phrase (in fact, click the link and you'll be taken to the book) but it pretty much sums up the way to frugally consume the beast. In my world, eating Real Food means a heavy reliance on all things animal (which does NOT mean we eat steak with every meal. In fact, we almost never eat steak), but in North America we have a limited view of which parts of the beast are fit for consumption. The parts we usually consider worthy of our consideration also tend to be the most expensive. And the parts that are really expensive, such as boneless chicken breast, are also the most boring. Nothing gets my blood pumping like BONES. Bones are generally considered garbage and as a result can be purchased for relatively cheap.  At my organic grocer, a bag of beef marrow bones (mmm...marrow) is 4.99/kg (vs. $11.99/kg for the beef itself). And further to my post on how to make a good bone broth, I have discovered that a 1kg bag of bones is actually good for about three pots of stock. All you need to do is keep that witches' brew bubbling on the stove for a good week, skimming off stock as you need it starting on day three, and adding water back in. By the end of the week it should still gel somewhat. It's even richer if you can find and add oxtail. Note this ongoing stock idea only works for beef bones. 

As far as chicken carcasses go, at my organic grocer they are $4.59/kg and come with plenty of meat still on. Two carcasses comes in each pack, for a total of $4.99, or thereabouts. A whole organic chicken costs from $20-$25. This meat won't feed your family, but it does make for a nice, rich chicken stock. And all stocks, which are full of good protein from the gelatin in the bones, can be used as the base for many nutritious and not-so-animal-dense dishes such as soups and stews. An organic chicken, in contrast, is about $21 here and while it does usually make for two good meals of chicken itself and one or two involving stock, it's still a bit pricey for most people to consume on a weekly basis. So using a carcass is a cost-effective way to keep yourself in chicken stock all the time.

Of course, when you do roast your own chicken, remember that as good as eating the meat is, having that perfect carcass for your stock is just as good, if not better!

Also, don't overlook the giblets. Hearts, kidneys and liver are super cheap and nutrient dense bits of meat. The texture is different, and personally I can't handle the taste of liver, but a quick google search reveals all sorts of interesting way to prepare them. I'm waiting on a deal for a meat grinder attachment for Kitchenaid mixer as chicken hearts are SUPER cheap, and ground or chopped no one will know what they are eating! In the meantime, slice, dice, shred, bread and panfry with lots of butter and salt and who knows, maybe we won't notice the texture!

Now, if you do want to eat beef on a regular basis, I HIGHLY recommend purchasing a side of cow. You can purchase a quarter if you don't have room for half a cow (I don't, plus a half a cow is a LOT of meat) but you still need freezer space. The front half of the cow is cheaper than the back half, because the quality of the cuts are poorer. Remember that the more you buy, the less you will pay. For my quarter front of certified organic beef I am paying about $10.80/kilo. If I were to buy a pack of organic ground beef from my local organic grocer, I'd be paying $11.99/kilo. My side will come out to approximately 45kgs, so that's about $55 saved. It's not a huge amount but it does represent about 5 packages of ground beef. And ground can go a LONG way in things like chili and pasta sauce.

The other advantage of buying my beef directly from the farmer is that I can specify the cuts I want. I've also asked for the heart to be ground in with my beef for added nutrient density and I've asked for a pound of beef fat to render as tallow. And I've requested the bones and extra oxtail. You could get a nice liver, if you so chose, and also the tongue. Tongue is the final frontier for me, though, so will leave that one alone for now. I'll pretty much be good on the beef front for at least the next 6 - 8 months. 

And lastly, save the drippings! If you roast a chicken this way, you'll end up with a nice amount of drippings, in which the veggies have been cooked. A roasting pan is a great investment as it does allow you to keep and save the drippings, while also yielding the perfect, crispy-skinned chicken. If you transfer the drippings to a jar and then put the jar in the fridge to cool, the fat will rise to the top and you'll get some lovely shmaltz. You want to eat the fat from the food you cooked, a) because it's really, really good for you, and b) because it will keep you feeling full longer. And there's no better way to be frugal than by consuming less!

4. Grow Your Own. I hate gardening. It's taken me a while to admit that but really, it's so dirty and time consuming and there are bugs. Maybe in another lifetime I'll be the ultimate gardener but for now the incredibly fecund lot behind my house is populate by weeds. But in the meantime, the grapevines and pear tree that came with this magnificent house were AMAZING. And both seem to be super low maintenance. That's my kind of gardening! 

But if you are so inclined, having your own garden, even if it's just small enough to grow some kale and tomatoes, can really increase the quality of your food and decrease your budget. You may want to look into community gardening plots also, as having to compare yourself to others may be the inspiration you need to get your own plot blooming!

5. Yes, you CAN! - Can, that is. Ever tried it? When I get my new kitchen it's one project I plan to undertake. Canning will allow you to buy local, in season produce and have it available all year round. And it would save me from having to give away half my pears so I don't lose them to rot! 

6. Respect the Seasons - This one ties in with part of point one and a big part of point two. Everything is cheaper AND more nutritious when it's local and in season. NOTHING grows in this climate in the winter, unless it's the mould in your bathroom. And sweet, watery fruits and veggies are too cooling to be eaten in the cold months anyways. We need grounded, dense, nutrient rich and rather dry types of food in the winter, and root veggies store nicely. Fruit is not a given at this time of year unless it's cooked (like apples) or canned (like virtually any fruit). And even then, they should be treats. They're expensive out of season!

7. Buy in Bulk. I'm talking stuff like grains here. You'll save a BUNDLE. For instance, a bit North of Montreal there's a place called Bourassa and my friend picked me up a 5kg bag of rolled oats for $11!! A 1kg bag costs about $5 at the grocery store. When my new kitchen is finished and I've picked up a nifty grain grinder for my Kitchenaid mixer, I will start buying all my grains (kamut, mainly) and grind my own flour. The flour you buy in smaller packages is a) pricey, and b) often rancid. If you're buying ground flour I would actually recommend buying smaller bags that you'll go through more quickly as it's really not good to be consuming rancid grains.

Store your bulk goods in pretty 1.9L mason jars or get some of these babies, which come in much larger volumes.

8. Packaged food is NOT real food. If you still insist on buying packaged foods then you might as well walk away now. You're not a Real Foodie, I'm sorry to tell you. If it's processed, it's a product, end of story. It's not FOOD. Breakfast cereal is not actually fit for human consumption. On top of that, it's SO BLOODY EXPENSIVE. Eat toast and eggs! Easy, convenient and it will actually keep you full for an hour or two. Or how about old-fashioned oatmeal with apples and raisins? 

9. COOK. I don't really think I need to elaborate much on this point, but I will anyways. You NEED TO COOK. If you don't know how, learn. Cooking real food is not complicated. It's not gourmet. It's a very basic and simple approach to nutrition. How hard is it to throw a bunch of bones in the oven, roast them for half an hour, then add them to a pot, cover with water, throw in some carrots, onions and celery, and leave them on simmer for 24 hours? Et voilà, you've got yourself a super nourishing and nutrient dense stock to start a whole lot of other dishes. There are some great blogs out there with really wonderful introductions to real food and cooking, and it's worth the investment.

10. Find INSPIRATION. Subscribe to real food blogs. Some good ones are Healthy Home Economist, Kelly the Kitchen Kop, Nourished and Nurtured, Butter Believer, and The Mommypotamus. Reading these blogs will lead you to other blogs. These women have made it their lives' mission to educate their readers about Real Food and they do a darn good job. You'll get a lovely recipe feed to your inbox and you'll find inspiration and recipes you'd like to try. 

Also, check out the Weston A. Price Foundation page (I just became a member!) and see if there is a local chapter in your area. Get in touch with the leader and find out if he or she has a list of local producers for you. That will cut your legwork in half when it comes to sourcing locally.

This post is linked to Sunday School at Butter Believer, at Fat Tuesday and at Monday Mania.

On poutine.

There's nothing like a Facebook post gone awry to bring out the creativity in the real foodie. A discussion about my business partner's proclivity for Diet Pepsi somehow spawned into a discussion about poutine, and it set me a cravin'. I don't know about you, but this delicacy that is signature to Quebec is not one that usually gets my tastebuds doing the happy dance, mainly because the fries will have been cooked in very rancid, industrial oil and who knows that the "gravy" is made from. So I am on a quest to make a real food poutine and tell you all about it!

Here's my plan:

1. Get my hands on some organic duck fat. If I had jumped on that enormous brick of the stuff back early this fall when we visit Morgan Farms, well, I'd still be swimming in the stuff, but I'd have some at my disposal for Operation Poutine. When I emailed them the other day they advised me that they took all their duck fat off the shelf as they need it to make confit. Drooooooool. So now I'm trying to track down another source. Ferme Stairsholme (which doesn't seem to have a website so you can google them if you're interested or email me and I'll send you the contact info) sells duck and duck eggs, so I've put out feelers to see if they can get me some FAT. I'll keep you posted.

By the way, the purpose of the fat is for oven "frying" the fries, which I will make from real, whole, fresh potatoes. Mmmmm...

2. Yesterday, when I roasted our weekly chicken (really, WHY would you cook a chicken any other way? It can't possibly taste as good as it does roasted), I removed the cooked sweet potatoes and carrots from the bottom of the roasting pan and poured the drippings into the jar, to save for my gravy. I've never made gravy that hard, but a quick search on Google proved that it's not that difficult. And last week I bought some brown rice flour to use for the roux as Fred is gluten-free. So now it's really just a question of enough wholesome sea salt to bring out the depth of the drippings.

3. The cheese will be tricky, only because I have never in my life heard of organic cheese curds. For those of you who aren't familiar with this delicacy, they're little, well, curds of cheese that are left out for the first 24 hours at the grocery store. During this time, when you bite into them, they squeak between your teeth, and you're rewarded by salty, tender yet slightly resistent cheesy goodness. And then you get really, really thirsty.

And as far as I'm aware, that's pretty much all their is to poutine! And this version I'll a) be able to eat without feeling like I'm setting myself up for trouble, and 2) be able to feed the kids and feel like they're getting some get nourishing!

Stay tuned...

Local Farm Spotlight - Morgan Farms

Autumn made itself known today by dropping the temperature to a chilly 8°C and sending the wind and rain in our way. But a little weather is no reason not to take a drive up into the Laurentians to check out both the changing leaves and an organic farm!

Morgan Farms is just over 100km outside of Montreal. A chunk of the drive is boring highway, but pretty soon one finds oneself surrounded by hillsides covered in the vibrant colours of fall. We headed out around 11:30am and the two youngest girls (Azure was off not far away at Brownie camp) promptly fell asleep. They were kind to their parents and slept the whole drive, so Fred and I were able to really enjoy the scenery and each other's company. The way back was a different story, but this time Fred was asleep so I guess he got to enjoy both directions. Lucky him.

It's not a particularly pleasant time of year to visit a farm. Everything looks kind of wet and all I could think about was how much chicken poop was everywhere and what I'd do if one of the kids fell in it. But it was authentic! And I love how free run the chickens really were. And the ducks. And they were all kept in place by dogs, which, incidentally, are not for eating.

 Morgan Farms, we were informed by Farmer Bob (his real name), is a co-op, and the seven participants are in the process of buying out neighbouring farms. Phoenix was pulling at my arm asking to go out and see the animals, so I didn't get the entire rundown, but I think it means they'll be expanding. I asked about the possibility of milk and they said to check back in a year. So I shall. 

We toured the farm on our own and quacked at the ducks, crowd at the chickens and gobbled with the turkeys. Phoenix was none too impressed by the odour of the cow area (couldn't figure out where it was coming from as I don't think cows smell like that), so I suggested she shouldn't be a farmer when she grows up. She responded by asking to go home. Sigh. City kids.

At the farm you can buy a great assortment of poultry (turkey, Muscovy duck, chicken, guinea fowl), beef parts and wild boar. I stocked up on oxtail and soup bones for making bone broth. Oh, and Osso Bucco! I've never made that before but I LOVE eating the marrow from my roasted beef bones before I throw them into a pot to simmer. I got a few packs of spareribs as I'm quite sure I've seen a real food recipe for the sauce somewhere. I picked up packs of beef sausages and beef and wild boar sausages (not big on the pork myself but that doesn't mean the rest of the family can't enjoy it!),  a Muscovy duck, a guinea fowl, and a loaf of wheat-free sourdough bread that ways about 5lbs. They've also got rendered duck fat, but the packs are simply big for the amount of cooking I do with duck fat (none but it's part of the plan) and confit of duck...mmmm. The freezer is full of meat pies and other baked delicacies.

Morgan Farms has two drop off points in Montreal itself so you don't have to make the trek out there. But it's a great destination for a family outing, and next weekend, October 8, is their harvest festival, which you might want to check out. Fingers crossed it's a warmer day than it was today! 

 Here are some more photos for your viewing pleasure. Just think, one of these babies could land up on YOUR plate in the not so distant future...

 

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Bone Broths 101

This post was shared on Monday Mania at The Healthy Home Economist, Ruth's Real Foods, Fat Tuesday on Real Food Forager, and on Traditional Tuesdays at Whole New Mom.

Perfectly gellied Chicken Broth

One of the biggest eye openers I came across when I started my in depth reading about Real Food is that the purpose of broth is not only to add taste to recipes, it is also an incomparable source for a whole whack of vital nutrients.

Not only that, but did you know that the broth that you buy, whether in as cubes or in liquid form, is actually really not any good for you, even if organic? That's right, my sources tell me that they ALL contain MSG, not to mention all kinds of sodium and who the heck knows what else. I promptly headed home and threw out all my packaged broths and vowed to get with the program.

Now I make my own broths, from bones.

The wonderful thing about Real Food and Traditional Foods is that this stuff I'm relating to you is not new fangled hocus pocusy health nut stuff. It's the way that traditional societies have always known to prepare food. We've just lost touch and forgotten about all that stuff in the name of convenience.

Making your own bone broth is SO easy to do, there's no reason why not to do it. It's chock full of essentially minerals, gelatin (which is so important to be consuming during stomach bug season as it attracts and gets rid of viruses somehow and the word chelation comes to mind. Don't ask me how it works, though, because I don't know. I just like that idea), and all sorts of nutrients that are essential to healthy bones and teeth.

A really good stock will gelly up in the fridge but will be liquid when you heat it up. The trick to getting this effect is not to add too much water. I made a whole lot of broth before I figured it out first, so I'm passing on the knowledge to help you get it right the first time.

Now, the tricky part is consuming this broth only because we aren't huge fans of any soup in this house, unless it's my homemade chicken soup, and we can only eat that so often. I use it as my stock in chili and for cooking my Beatmalls. In order to benefit from the healing and nourishing powers of bone broth, you should aim to consume a cup a day, which, of course is easier said than done. Since I've switched back to white rice we consume a bit more than we did before (more on that later) and I use the stock in place of water to cook, simply adding a little sea salt for flavour.

My tastiest broth comes from the bones of my roasted chicken. We devour the chicken and I remind everyone not to throw away their large bones or the carcass. I leave some meat and gristle on the bones for added depth of flavour. Chicken broth I simmer for 24 hours.

I also periodically make broth from beef bones. These I can pick up from my local organic grocer for just a few dollars a bag. First I roast them lightly on a cookie sheet in the oven, and of course I inhale the marrow. Did you know it's 80% fat? Mmmm...drooling just thinking about it.

If you're pressed for time you don't have to roast the bones.

So all you need is:

• A collection of bones, from either a chicken, turkey, bovine or any other organically, pastured animal you are lucky enough to get your hands on. 

• Filtered water.

• 2 tablespoons of vinegar, which apparently helps to leach the minerals from the bones.

• You can add anything you like to the stock, such as veggie scraps or garlic, but you don't have to. I prefer to add veggies to soups afterwards when I make them anyways.

• A large stock pot.

• A free burned on your stove (or a crockpot will work as well) as this process is lengthy.

Directions:

1. Roast your bones if desired. 

2. Place bones in your stock pot.

3. Cover with water until the water rises about 1" above your bones.

4. Add vinegar.

5. Bring to a boil and then reduce to simmer.

6. Add anything else you'd like, such as veggie scraps or garlic.

7. Cover and leave to simmer.

I leave my chicken broth to simmer for a full 24 hours. Broth made from beef bones is left for 72 hours. Always check on the water levels but with the lid on and the heat low, they shouldn't drop much, even after all that time.

Let the stock cool, and then, using a strainer and cheesecloth, strain until your broth is relatively clear. Sometimes I forget the cheesecloth and just use a dirty broth, but that's mainly because I'm lazy or have run out of cheesecloth. I'd suggest freezing it in small, open mouth mason jars, because then it's so easy to add to any recipe. If you freeze too large a portion you'll have a hard time using it up. 1 cup allotments is the perfect size, I find.

And that's that! Easy as pie and you've got a really nourishing and nutritions base for your cooking!

Then you can freeze or use right away.

Milk just may do a body good after all

This post was shared at Fat Tuesday on the Real Food Forager.

For a long, long time I believed that milk from cows was not fit for human consumption. I had a couple of solid reasons backing me up, but the key consideration was the fact that my body just didn't like it. After puberty, that glass of milk I'd enjoyed as a child only served to bloat me like a hot air balloon. 

Growing up my brother were given milk to drink alongside our glass of orange juice for breakfast. Milk was freely available and the drinking of it was encouraged, despite the fact that my mother herself never drank it. It was what kids drank, and it still is.

But not for my kids.

My first two kids were all breastfed past the age of two. Once weaned they drank water and the occasional amount of juice. But milk to me, in the conventional format, has always reeked of dairy board collusion and the way it's hawked to us all through intensive and ongoing advertising campaigns is really tantamount to the drug pushing of Big Pharma, is it not? How many times has the fact that my kids don't drink milk been met with looks of horror because I'm allowing their bones to turn to rubber? The general public has bought into the idea, hook line and sinker, that without 2 - 4 servings of milk a day, all of us will end up with osteoporosis by the age of 50. 

What is conventional milk? Conventional milk is a very highly processed industrial food product. Yes, it is. VERY highly processed. In fact, it's so processed that many of the nutrients we are supposed to be deriving from it NATURALLY have had to be added back in, including vitamins A and D. Not only does the high heat pasteurization process destroy these naturally occuring nutrients, but if you remove the fat from milk, you also remove the fat soluble vitamins. That's not so hard to figure out.

Have you ever picked up one of those little milk packets at the café and actually read the label? The "milk" in these containers has been modified to such an extent that it cannot actually be called milk. Instead you'll see them labelled "Dairy Milkers".

So past the factory like conditions in which dairy cows are enslaved (perhaps not so much here in Canada where laws are much stricter, but for sure in the US where demand for milk is ENORMOUS), we've got the pasteurization process and the homogenization process. For an in depth look at the evolution of the modern dairy industry and an explanation of how these process came into being, I'd suggest you pick up a copy of The Untold Story of Milk. It's a rather disturbing read and I've once again been made aware of how lucky I am to be living in Canada where demand for product is much lower than in the US.

In theory, these two processes are designed to both save us from certain death (they don't) and to allow milk a weeks' long shelf life (they do), but what they also do is impact greatly on our health.

Now, here's where my non-scientific self comes in. There are TONS of studies out there both on the positive and negative impacts of drinking processed milk. I'm not going to list them for you because they are easy enough to find through a Google search, so you do the leg work if you need convincing. I don't. I'm convinced. But THIS article was very very timely and backs up my feelings exactly, so I will share it with you. And I quote:

"Farm milk consumption has been identified as an exposure that might contribute to the protective effect of farm life on childhood asthma and allergies. The mechanism of action and the role of particular constituents of farm milk, however, are not yet clear."

(Source:The protective effect of farm milk consumption on childhood asthma and atopy: The GABRIELA study)

So for those of us, once again, who buy into the theories of the Weston A. Price Foundation, this is a kind of pointless study. We know already, both from reading the works of Dr. Price and from the tons of anecdotes on the tons of Real Food blogs, that drinking milk straight from the cow is a health promoting practice. After all, it IS breastmilk, and look what that has done for our babies. Granted, we're not cow babies, but we're also not strictly reliant on cow milk for our survival. We do eat food.

Upon having started reading all the literature in depth when I rediscovered my love for the Real Food movement, it quickly became apparent that while I am very fortunate in many areas (local egg lady, farm fresh CSA produce, freshly slaughtered quarter beef bit for my freezer), I am SEVERELY and perhaps permanently deprived in the raw milk department unless I a) can make really really good friends with a small scale dairy farmer, or b) buy my own cow and find someone to board it for me.

Oh, Québec. You bring me $7/day daycare and you expose me to a beautiful and very challenging culture but you don't allow me to CHOOSE to drink my milk unpasteurized.

I will tell you, I have yet to encounter a problem to which I cannot find a workaround, and I am communing with the universe to connect my path with that of a dairy farmer or a lonely cow, so I may yet be able to add the consumption of raw milk to my bucket list.

In the meantime, however, I feel very fortunate to be able to purchase low temperature pasteurized and unhomogenized milk at my local organic green grocer. That's a step in the right direction, even if it does come in squishy plastic bottles.

This stuff still hurts my stomach. It still gives my kids diarrhea when I attempt to increase their daily consumption. But the cream rises to the top and it is not fat reduced, so that's a start. And on Wednesdays when I pick it up I stick one bottle in the fridge and make the other into a deliciously tart, fully fermented living yogourt that my body does appreciate.

Milk may just do a body good after all, but not YOUR kind of milk. Consider yourself warned.

Wordless Wednesday - Marker, meet Baby

Food woes? None here, thank you very much!

Though I have had every intention of really getting into the Real Food thing on my blog, the problem is that I just haven't been able to plain old figure out where to start. It's a chicken and the egg kinda thing, and I'm a bit intimidated by the knowledge that if I write too much your eyes will go all googly and I'll have lost you, perhaps forever. 

But my good ol' baby bro gave me some fodder for a starting point, so please indulge me while I jump straight into the deep end. 

Health Really Does Originate in the Gut

I sent along this really interesting article to my brother today from The Mommypotamus on the real cause of acne. I'd sent it for him to pass along to a friend who I happen to know has had acne issues. The article suggests that the true causes of acne are rooted in the gut, to oversimplify things. 

Let me preface my brother's response and my initial interpretation of it by stating that he's my Sid the Science Guy. Sometimes I just can't figure out how my parents could have produced us, we're such polar opposites (except in the looks category - we've both kinda lucked out there:).

I've been singing my song for years, quite loudly at times, and let's just say that he's been known to imitate duck sounds in response. In fact, he's gone so far as to spell out the sound that ducks make in an email to me in response to something I'd touched on. But we've learned to keep a healthy distance when it comes to certain subjects, and I do appreciate his perspective on a number of issues. Plus I love him dearly. He's my only sibling and he did once let me dress him up like a girl.

So his response to this really interesting article (note, I do not suffer from acne) was:

"Eh. Yet again food solves or causes all woes?"

Now, originally I had interpreted his response to suggest that he felt I was way off base, once again, but in fact, he has clarified his reaction. What he meant was that he's tired of thinking about food as a way to fix things, rather than something to just enjoy. And I can't say I blame him as he's got Type 1 diabetes. Living with this sort of a condition would give one an entirely different perspective on food.

So my fantastic premise for jumping into my take on Real Food has kind of been pulled out from under my feet because I was going to go into science versus instinct approaches to nutrition, but so much for that, because he didn't mean what I thought he meant. But never mind. I've already started writing so might as well finish, right?

Now, if you subscribe at all to the theories of the Weston A. Price Foundation, the idea that the cause of your acne originates in your gut won't be news to you. To me, it resonates STRONGLY. I full believe in the idea that all health originates in the gut. And I believe that this refers not only to physical health, but to mental health as well. 

And as time goes by, this belief is becoming easier and easier to translate into practice in my household. I've understood and subscribed to the Real Food philosophies since I was first introduced to them at the age of 25 through the NHC Institute here in Montreal, but then life got busy. I got married, I got pregnant, I had a baby, I created a business, I had another baby, I created another business, and then I had another baby. There hasn't been tons of time for breathing, let alone cooking.

Now, though, post-babies, in a relatively well-established business and with three kids in full-time care, I am making the time to breathe again and to focus on the one thing I have been truly and consistently passionate about on some level all these years, namely, food.

Re-Inspired

This past June, my darling husband decided, as he does periodically, that it was once again time to deny himself the pleasure of certain foods in the name of weight loss. I'm always all for these initiatives of his because it usually means a total and complete cessation of the consumption of sugar, and who isn't in awe of anyone who can stick to such a committment for any amount of time?

But this time he decided to go a step further and cut out the things he considered "carbs", such as grains.

My husband has been a low level sufferer of digestive issues for years. He's not largely overweight and he eats well, normally, and yet he's experienced chronic nasal congestion and snoring along with the kinds of symptoms caused by chronic inflammation of the digestive track. I won't get into the details of the latter because he'd kill me.

So anyways, he cut out grains and he cut out sugar. And fast forward two months and not only had he lost 10 pounds without exercising, but his chronic congestion had disappeared and his bowel function could now be classified as healthy and normal (I only know this because I found a poop chart on the internet and we had a discussion about it. We're not that intimate and I hope we never will be).

Initially I thought that perhaps he was gluten intolerant as we went out to eat and he had the calamari, which was fried in batter, and then had a relapse in the digestive department, but it seems that may have been more viral than anything else. The next time he allowed himself to slip he did not experience any problems.

All this to say, by making a change in his consumption habit and by identifying a component of the modern North American diet that we have been told is a health food (grains and whole grains), he gave his gut the time to heal from a problem that has probably been plaguing him for most of his adult life. And a condition that most would consider unrelated, his chronic congestion, cleared up.

And this, my friends, has been the most incredibly validating experience for me. I have all the proof I need to fully and wholeheartedly jump right back into the world of Real Food and envelop myself in it in the home. I learned about bone broths and am working on incorporating them into our daily food intake. We changed our purchasing habits pretty drastically and now buy only fresh produce and unprepared meats. We consume three cartons of eggs from our local egg lady a week and butter by the pound, and I've done my homework and found the closest thing to raw milk that's available to us in the this crazy province if we don't happen to be neighbours to a cow. My freezer is full of a quarter of a beef, all nicely packaged and organized.

I soak my family's oatmeal nightly. I strain my homemade yogourt to make a creamy cottage cheese and use the whey in green smoothies to increase our probiotic consumption. I actually used up a large amount of the pears from our tree in healthy, low grain baking and I didn't let them rot. I used all the apples we picked at the organic orchard in crumbles and my kids ate them two or three times a day. 

My plan for my new kitchen (due in April - stay tuned as I chronicle the renovation journey in all its splendour) includes a Kitchenaid Stand Mixer with a grain grinding attachment so that if I do need to use grains I can rest assured that my flour is as fresh as can be.

Next year I plan to learn how to can those pears, should we be lucky enough to have such a perfect and abundant harvest again. I will learn how to lacto-ferment vegetables and maybe we'll even enjoy eating them. Maybe I will learn how to make jelly from the grapes that grow on our vine. And who knows, one of these years maybe I'll actually be able to slow down enough to enjoy gardening.

It's all a journey and it's one I'm happy to have re-embarked on. And if you'd like to come along for the ride, I'd really appreciate the company!