Category Archives: food

A tale of recovery: my path from traumatized to healer

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I had lunch a few weeks ago with John, someone I’ve known for about 12 years but haven’t seen much in recent years. He commented that I am a very different person now from when he met me, and that would not be apparent to people who hadn’t known me that long.

When we met in 2004 (I think), I seemed troubled to him, and I was. John said that now, I appear to be happy and “like a fountain” (which I love), and he was curious about that.

Other people have said I’ve changed more than anyone they know. Well, that’s probably because I was starting from a more troubled place than most.

So I’m reviewing my path in search of insights to share. This is for you, John, and I know that some of you are interested in recovery from trauma, and some of you are interested in personal growth, so this is for you too.

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Lead and cadmium in chocolate? Oh, my!

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This just in! Have you heard? Some (mostly dark) chocolate bars contain small amounts of lead and cadmium. CNN reports:

As You Sow, a California-based consumer advocacy group, believes that some chocolate has more lead than necessary. An updated survey released by the group this week found levels of lead in chocolate at nine times the daily amount that California considers safe to avoid reproductive harm. In addition, the group also found cadmium up to seven times the state’s maximum daily exposure.

The group had multiple samples of 50 different cocoa products analyzed by an independent lab and found more than half contained lead and cadmium levels above the state’s limits, which are more strict than federal guidelines. As You Sow won’t disclose the exact amounts of metals found in the products, in hopes of working directly with the manufacturers to help target sources of these metals, it said. [my emphasis]

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6 variations on the chocolate breakfast smoothie

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For months, I indulged daily in eating pieces of chocolate bars with 70 percent or more cacao. It was intensely deep dark chocolate. On good days, I could eat just one small square, and my tastebuds felt gratified and satisfied.

On bad days, half the bar – or the whole dang thing.

I’m not sure if it was the wee bit of sugar or the chocolate that led me to overindulge like that. Chocolate contains magnesium, a mineral most of us are low in, and stress depletes magnesium. Hence chocolate relieves stress. (Bet you knew that already! Yep, that’s the ticket! Stress made me overindulge!)

Sugar is plainly addictive (read more here). Instead of relieving stress, it adds to the body’s stress load and plays a role in obesity, metabolic syndrome, fatty liver disease, diabetes, cancer, tooth decay, malnutrition, heart disease, etc.).

Yes, sometimes a little bit of sugar sneaks into my food (usually in small amounts in a condiment like ketchup or fish sauce), and very occasionally I satisfy a desire for a package of peanut M&Ms. Usually, however, if sugary sweetness is the main point, I forgo it, eating at most 1 teaspoon a day, far below the 32 teaspoons per day the average American consumes.

My tastebuds have changed so that I notice and enjoy the natural sweetness of foods like carrots, liver, caramelized onions, roasted veggies. When I ate sugar regularly, there was no such thing as “too sweet”. Now there definitely is. If you are moving away from sugar, wait for this to happen!

But what to do about cravings for something sweet, without sugar, and chocolate-y?

Make chocolate breakfast smoothies to start each day well!

If you’re concerned about lead and cadmium in chocolate, you can learn more here.

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Empty glass, Buddha Board

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Easy improvisational curry (vegan, vegetarian, and carnivore versions)

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This recipe is like jazz: you can improvise based on what you have on hand and what your tastebuds desire. It’s a great way to eat lots of veggies because it’s so delicious. It’s easy because everything can be chopped roughly to bite-size, which adds to the charm; precision is not needed. It’s colorful, too!

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Juicing with watermelon

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This summer,  I’ve had a blast making juices with watermelon as the main ingredient. Seedless watermelons are so easy to work with, abundant, and inexpensive. You start with the sweetness of the watermelon and add layers of flavor — sour, hot, herbal, fragrant, smoked, savory, and/or salty elements — to that yumminess.

Screen Shot 2017-07-01 at 2.57.45 PM.pngAlthough I make a lot of juices that are all veggies (green) or veggies plus one fruit (usually brown!), for some reason it seemed important to keep this juice red in color, so I didn’t add kale, spinach, or parsley, which I’m sure would have made the juice more nutritious, if less pretty to look at.

I had fun combining watermelon with other flavors. I don’t measure, so measurements aren’t included. Make watermelon the most abundant ingredient, because it’s where most of the juice comes from. After that, use your tastebuds and common sense! Continue reading →

New science about heart disease, sulfate, glyphosate, sunlight, statins, and aluminum

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I listened to a podcast earlier this week that was pretty scientific (for me), yet fascinating. The Bulletproof Exec (Dave Asprey) interviewed Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a senior researcher at MIT. For three decades she’s been doing interdisciplinary research where biology and computers intersect.

It was so full of information, I could hardly keep up with the podcast while driving. Later I went online to read the actual transcript. Here’s the link, and the page also has video of the Facetime-like conversation.

I am not a scientist, but the findings and recommendations that I found intriguing in this lengthy and wide-ranging conversation are listed below. If you want to learn more about any of this, there’s a lot of good information available online. There are open-access scientific journals and papers available on the internet that are free. And you can google “Seneff”.

  • The cause of heart disease isn’t high cholesterol, it’s a deficiency in sulfate.

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My version of bulletproof tea, an excellent morning drink

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You may have heard of Bulletproof Coffee. It even has its own listing on Wikipedia: Bulletproof Coffee! It’s a brand created by the man who blogs at Bulletproof Exec, who adds a proprietary “brain octane” medium-chain triglyceride oil to it.

The term is also used generically to refer to high-quality coffee blended with high-quality butter or ghee. The inspiration is butter tea, a traditional energy-giving drink in the Himalayan region that uses black tea, yak butter, hot water, and salt (using those pink Himalayan salt crystals, methinks).

I realized a few years ago that – after drinking coffee for my whole adult life – that I didn’t even enjoy the taste, always doctoring it with cream and sugar (waaaaay back before I went dairy- and sugar-free). I started drinking it for the stimulation of the caffeine when I was a young college student, and it became a habit.

Even freshly ground, organic coffee beans just didn’t and still don’t taste good to me. Too acidic and too much caffeine. Smells good, though.

Then I discovered green tea. I enjoy the taste, the lower level of caffeine, the health benefits, and the way my stomach feels. So it was natural to experiment and come up with my own version of “bulletproof tea”.

Screen Shot 2015-06-10 at 10.43.04 AMEquipment:
Have a mug with lid and a built-in infuser ready (or mug plus strainer, whatever you’ve got).

Ingredients:
green tea
pu-erh tea
yerba maté
coconut oil or grass-fed ghee
very hot water
lemon juice
stevia to taste (optional)
salt to taste (optional) Continue reading →

Beet kvass: The easiest, quickest, cheapest fermented drink you can make

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I just made beet kvass for the first time, and I want to share how easy it is! I found it full of umami flavor – earthy, salty, and tangy.

Everyone is learning how good fermented foods are — a way to get probiotics into your belly without expensive supplements that may or may not actually get those probiotics to just the right place in your digestive tract to be effective.

Beet kvass is something you can easily make at home that is ready to consume in as little as two days! And…it’s a time-tested traditional food known to have profound health-giving qualities.

beet kvass, The Well

My First Batch

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The best chicken liver paté recipe ever

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I eat a Paleo diet, and right now I’m being rather strict about it: no grains, no dairy, no sugar, and lots of healthy meat and veggies. My energy levels are good!

My nutritionist, Olivia Honeycutt, tells me how good it is to eat liver. I’m pretty sure it was not one of my favorite childhood flavors (actually, my dad didn’t like it so my mom didn’t cook it, but she — having grown up on a ranch where they raised a lot of their own food — liked it).

As an adult I tried liver and onions and came to like it enough to eat occasionally, but not very often.

Liver is loaded with nutrients. One ounce (28 grams, or about 2 tablespoons) contains the following: Continue reading →

New finding: Sanitation practices may play a bigger role than antibiotics in gut microbial diversity

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Just sharing a link to a story on NPR News covering new studies on the gut microbiome.

Here’s a summary: Modern Western guts are missing microbes that exist in the guts of hunter-gatherer people.

Western diets and modern-day hygiene have wiped a few dozen species right out of our digestive tracts. One missing microbe helps metabolize carbohydrates. Other bygone bacteria act as prebiotics. And another communicates with our immune system.

The big question is why.  Continue reading →