Non GMO Project Verified

I found a website to check if a product is indeed non GMO.  You can read their guidelines.  Look for their label on food:  "Non GMO Project Verified". 
http://www.nongmoproject.org/take-action/search-participating-products/

Black Bean Taco Salad

This is one of my favorite salads and I have a few variations I'll show in future posts.  It's pretty basic!  I use beans but chicken could easily be added.  Organic free range chicken and grass fed beef raised without GMO feed can be expensive so organic beans can be a good alternative. 

Cooking dry beans is more nutritious, affordable, and tastier than canned.  I make a pot of beans and use them over the course of a few days. 

Black beans should be soaked overnight in about 1 Tbsp lemon juice to 1 cup dry organic black beans.  Drain the beans the next morning and fill pot with filtered water, crushed garlic, and good quality sea salt.  Sea salt should be beige not white.  Bring to boil, then turn on low, cover, and simmer til desired texture.

Slice some luscious lettuce.

Lay lettuce on plate and cover with red pepper and red onion shavings.  I'm not talented enough to take a picture of myself shaving the pepper and onion.

Crunch some organic corn chips on top. 

Next add avocados.  Gotta have um!

  

The beans should be tender and steaming by lunch.

Grate raw milk Monterrey jack cheese.  Dairy is a controversial subject but I believe the difference between dairy being harmful or beneficial is if it's organic, pasteurized, or homongenized.  Dairy should be raw or just pasteurized from grass fed cows.   Ultra pasteurized dairy is very hard for our bodies to digest, but there are some hardy people out there.   Dairy should also be unhomogenized and free of hormones.  But, if you can't do dairy then you can't do dairy.

Add beans and cheese.

Add dollop of good quality cultured sour cream (should have probiotics in it and valuable enzymes) and salsa.  This picture shows Kirkland organic salsa.  Best of all salsa's to use would be a fermented salsa rich in probiotics and enzymes from Nourishing Traditions.

Juicing

A great thing to add you your life is fresh juicing.  I bought a juicer in 2009 and have loved it.  Juice from a store is usually from concentrate (boiled down to syrup) and then reconstituted with water which is basically flavored sugar in water.  I recommend investing in a juicer and begin drinking fresh juices in the morning before eating anything else.  I don't take vitamins because they don't absorb well into our system.  Juicing provides a boost of much needed vitamins and minerals to begin your day and is readily absorbed.  My favorite blend is carrots, celery, cucumbers, beets, kale or beet greens, lemon, and apple.  There are many juice recipe books and recipes online.  Have fun, it's delicious!

Kid Approved!

A Little on Whole Grains

I have recently started to read "Wheat Belly" which is a great read by the way, but I'm not finished yet.  In it he's is saying that wheat is a major cause of obesity and disease and its not the same wheat our grandparents and ancestors were eating.  Wheat is in almost everything in the grocery store isles.  It's hard to believe a basic staple like wheat could be bad for us, but the wheat we consume has been hybrided, cross bred, and genetically modified to the point that it is now harmful.  Our grandparents consumed wheat and were healthy, and now we consume it and become fat with a multitude of health problems.  He has many cases in the book to prove his point. 

In "Nourishing Traditions" by Sally Fallon, she says you must soak or sprout your gluten containing grains before consuming them.  This is the difference between a grain being hard to digest and hard on our system to it being beneficial and easy to digest.  Our ancestors soaked their porridges and grains. The Breakfast Porridge recipe is not for unorganic GMO oatmeal, but for soaked overnight, organic (non GMO), oatmeal porridge.  The soaking is very important. My kids love it for breakfast.  I also have a juicer which has a grinder attachment and I grind my own flour from organic spelt berries.  Most whole and white flours in stores are rancid and have very little nutrient value.  Flour should be freshly ground and whole because the enzymes in the germ help digestion of the flour. Gluten containing whole flour should be soaked 12-24 hours for nutrient benefits, digestion, and absorption.  "Nourishing Traditions" has many recipes with soaking.  Grains should be eaten whole, freshly ground, organic, non GMO, and soaked for 12-24 hours. This may seem difficult and gross at first but it yields very yummy pancakes and porridges. I'll post recipes of my favorites.  Sally Fallon, author of "Nourishing Traditions", and William Davis, author of "Wheat Belly", can explain grains more than me so read the books!

Breakfast Porridge

One of the first things that I added to my daily routine is Sally Fallon's Breakfast Porridge.  This is not an original recipe by me although I do make own twist on it. The oats are soaked in buttermilk and water overnight to nuetralize phytic acid.  Untreated phytic acid can combine with calcium, magnesium, copper, iron and especially zinc in the intestinal tract and block their absorption.  It takes a little time everynight to prepare for morning, but it becomes a habit.  The soaking vastly improves the oats nutritional benefits such as increasing beneficial enzymes and vitamins, especially B vitamins. 

In the evening before bed, put dry organic oats in a bowl.  I figure 1/2 cup dry for each adult and 1/4 cup dry for each kid.  For this recipe we are doing 1 cup dry rolled oats.

Add 1 to 2 Tablespoons of cultured organic buttermilk per 1 cup dry oats.



Add 1 cup filtered water and stir.



Cover with cloth for overnight.

Go to bed with entirely too many kids and tell stories with flashlights.  Husband comes in and decides the bed is WAY to rowdy and full.  He leaves and sleeps in the children's bed.  Poor guy...  This doesn't happen every night though.  Normally, we go to bed together and when one of the children wakes up in the night, he takes them back to bed and falls asleep.  Or neither of us wakes up when they come to bed and we don't wake up til Nolan falls off the side of the bed... just kidding:)

Wake up from a SOMEWHAT restful sleep and your oatmeal should look like this if you take the cloth off first.

Boil 1 cup water and 1/2 tsp salt.

Stare at your darling breakfast partner while you wait for the water to boil.

Add soaked oats to BOILING water.  Do not add the oats before the water boils.  And DO NOT EVER stir your oatmeal.  You can do one gentle turning of the oatmeal if you decide that the oats on top are looking a little dry and uncooked.  Again only ONE gentle little turning.

If you do not stir your oatmeal and let it cook long enough but not too long, the texture of the oatmeal should be fluffy and custardy (if that's a word) not slimy and grainy.

Drizzle with raw honey.

Dust with cinnamon, spackle with ginger, and dash with nutmeg.

Another important thing: Do not put milk on your oatmeal.  Milk becomes slimy in the bottom of your bowl.  Cream tastes delicious and it helps to ensure proper assimilation of the minerals and water-soluble vitamins in the grain.  Raw cream is best but if not available, try to find pastuerized (not ultrapasteurized which kills all enzymes to help digestion) and pasture raised cream.

Pour cream on oatmeal.

Sprinkle with optional fresh organic berries.  Costco Wholesale carries organic fresh strawberries and blackberries occasionally.  Un-organic blueberries and strawberries are high in pesticides, but I needn't be so particular.  Huckleberries are shown here.

Enjoy!