Seeking Inspiration on a Cold and Rainy Day

A lot of my favorite people have gotten to go on some fun trips out of town lately. And being strapped down by work, school and lacking cash, I am not only feeling left out but lacking any true inspiration from the void of outside exposure. Don’t get me wrong, I truly love where I live, but everyone needs escape. So my lunch break today was spent looking for visual escape via the blogs I follow (thank you sources).

                                                                 I'd like to live here

And see this

I'd like to celebrate with these people

And then take a nap here

I'd like to sail on this

and get places on this

I'd like to spend my night here

And have all friends over for dinner here

I would like it be to socially acceptable to wear this every day

Or this

But I'd settle for this

I'd like this to be boyfriend and I right now

And this to be best friend and I

I'd like to know the story behind this

And the rest just make me smile

Inspiration found in multiple sources:

http://blog.freepeople.com/

http://souvenirsofagirl.blogspot.com/

http://lauratj.blogspot.com/

http://blog.krisatomic.com/

I am reading two of Michael Pollan's books for my biology class. And while I really loved the Botany of Desire, In Defense of Food is really the book for me. And for you by close proximity. And although I have written a total of 16 pages in book review for the two books (one of which isn’t even completed). I refrain from inundating you with my opinion. I will simply say read them both, you won’t regret it. But if you don’t take this incredibly well written quote from In Defense of Food home with you.

 "One of the most momentous changes in American diet since 1909 (when USDA first began keeping track) has been the increase in the percentage of calories coming from sugars, from 13 percent to 20 percent. Add to that the percentage of calories coming from carbohydrates (roughly 40 percent, or ten servings, nine of which are refined) and American are consuming a diet that is at least half sugars in one form or another - calories providing virtually nothing but energy. The energy density of these refined carbohydrates contributes to obesity in two ways. First, we consume many more calories per unity of food; the fiber that's been removed from these foods is precisely what would have made us feel full and stop eating. Also, the flash flood of glucose causes insulin levels to spike and then, once the cells have taken all that glucose out of circulation, drop precipitously, making us think we need to eat again."


To view his books, and the man himself go to here : http://michaelpollan.com/

"Malk, now with more vitamin R"

There is a whole host of conflicting studies showing drink skim milk for reduced fat intake, drink organic whole milk for full vitamin intake, drink soy milk for prostate and whole health, don’t drink soy products due to over processing and under fermentation.  It gets a little confusing, and extremely irritating, everywhere you turn another interest group is telling you to consume a different type of milk like products. But take a look at this sentence and tell me what is wrong with it…..interest groups and milk like products. If single ads don’t set off bells and whistles in your head try compiling a few ads and studies done on milk and find out who has backed them, what measures were taken during the study, what was actually studied, and what was actually found before just jumping onto that conclusions mat and making rash decisions.

First of all can we agree that one should “eat for evolution”. Eat the food in the form that we as humans have evolved to consume, it may seem silly, but it is astonishing how far from this we have come thanks to food industrialization. The short of it, eat the food that looks like food, your body will thank you later. Second,  milk is a fantastic source of calcium, vitamin D, A, E and K. These also all happen to be fat soluble vitamins, meaning without fat in your diet you will never be able to absorb and take benefit from them. But not to worry, our brilliant mother nature has managed to provide a neat little package to ensure that your fat soluble vitamins in milk will be absorbed properly, its called whole milk. Other types of processed milk 2%, 1% and non fat get increasingly less beneficial, and also tend to be worse for you. There are several types of milk proteins that are broken into two groups, caseins and whey.  Caseins are the fats that generally get used for cheese production and whey gets pulled out to create proteins powders, chip flavors and various other dairy flavored food type products. These also happen to be the two bi products under most scrutiny by anti milk interest groups  and have organized studies that have shown they aggravate the symptoms of autism, ADHD, and IBS.

Do these two types of proteins then cause these problems, no. Do they aggravate them, maybe but only if these people are allergic to milk products. And this goes back to “eat for evolution” any person with Asian decent has a very high probability of being allergic to milk or lactose intolerant (two different problems), this includes Muslim, Indian, Greek, any Asian country, parts of Russian heritage, parts of Gypsies heritage, Native American and some south Americans.  It takes a certain amount of a certain type of bacteria in a person’s gut to properly break down these huge animal proteins (nearly 6 times larger than the milk proteins found in human breast milk). When humans first started drinking cow’s milk they became very sick, but over time of continued use and the wonders of evolution and adapting to environment certain peoples have developed the ability to properly digest and reap the benefits of this fantastic food.

Those afraid of the side effects of dairy allergies don’t go running to the grocery store and picking up all dairy free products yet. Caseins are extracted for dairy products like cheese. But whey is extracted for all manner of processed foods including dairy free creamers. If you think about whole milk, all the things that it holds, a certain percentage of this a little bit of that, etc. Then think of processing out whey, its going to take a lot of milk to pull out enough whey to create the cheesy flavor in cheetos. The amount of whey being consumed in one package of cheetos is astronomically higher than that of a glass of milk. Not to mention that fact that glass of milk is a package of natures brilliance, chances are your body knows what to do with it, where as eating cheetos probably causes your digestive stomach bacteria’s to say WTF (not really but you get the point).

I read a study not to long ago, and now I cannot for the life of me find it to attach for your reading pleasure (or horror, more likely horror) about kittens and milk products. A group of kittens were split into test groups one of group of kittens were raised on whole milk, another on 2% milk and yet another on dry powered milk (powerdere milk tends to be made of processed flours, proteins, whey, extracted and refortified vitamins etc). The groups of cats on liquid milks seemed to have grown into adults with seemingly little issues, those on powered milk were a little slow in development but nothing too noticeable. The second generation of liquid milk cats were fine, the powered milk cats showed some pretty serious retardation, the third and subsequent generations the 2% cats started to show lowered developmental abilities but no major side effects and the powered milk cats got worse and worse until they could no longer reproduce.

Now that you have some facts on dairy, let’s talk soy milk and milk alternative. Soy milk has its own issues in that about 90 % of the American population is allergic to it. Just like most people of Asian descent are allergic to dairy, Americans only started eating soy products with any sort of regularity around 1920’s and have had very few generation to adapt a proper internal biochemistry to digest such foods. Almond milks and coconut milks are also decent tasting bi products but before you make any rash decisions remember that these two are highly processed products and lend themselves to their own problems, many are high in sugar and low in fat which makes the fat soluble vitamins they are fortified with nearly impossible for your body to absorb (just because they are on the label doesn’t mean your body will automatically know what to do with it).

The best possible thing you can do for yourself is go to a doctor and get allergy tests. Not all doctors will see this as a reasonable request, so going to a naturopath will lend the most support for your quest. There are two types of allergy tests one for immediate reactions and one for long term reactions. Not only do they show what you may be allergic to but also the degree. After getting your results back you will be better equipped to make a decision regarding what sorts of milk products you should be consuming. If you don’t have the means to undertake this quite expensive endeavor you can test yourself through fasting and then reintroducing products back into your diet. This takes a lot of patients and an insight into what your body is telling you that not everyone has the patience to undergo. Just be patient with yourself if this is your choice, it make take a few trials. This is the method I have taken and am still several years later playing with it. I know I am allergic to whey and while it is in milks and cheese, I find I have a much more mild and manageable reaction to whole milks and cheese than I do to food type products (which I avoid like the plague now).

Choosing how to eat right can be very confusing, especially considering all the conflicting message out there. The best possible advice I can give is just listen to your body. It will tell you when something is wrong, you just have to be listening to understand what it is trying to say. If you go into anaphylactic shock when you eat dairy, I’d say avoid it. If your child’s ADHD or IBS symptoms are worse when consuming certain products, avoid it, but don’t replace it with a processed product just to maintain a semblance of normality, these products have their issues too. Be smart about your choices, research foods and pick ones that work best of you, not anyone else but you, because every body is unique.

Side Notes: Two trivia questions, where is the title of this blog from and what is wrong with the picture I have posted above. Also see below for links to more milk information.




http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/04/full-fat-dairy-for-cardiovascular.html

http://organic.lovetoknow.com/Why_Organic_Milk_Is_Better_than_Regular_Milk

http://class.fst.ohio-state.edu/FST822/lecturesab/Milk2.htm


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casein

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whey

http://www.foodallergysolutions.com/food-allergy-news0307.html

Just a Little Bit of Wheat

Wheat and Gluten allergies come – like all food intolerances – in many forms. Quickened pulse rate, light headedness, stomach cramps, vomiting and nausea, hives, rashes, difficulty breathing as well as anaphylactic shock. In Celiac disease instead of antibodies attacking food and causing allergy like symptoms, the antibodies attack the villi and micro villi that cover the small intestine. These villi are the mechanism by which nutrients from food are absorbed thought the wall of the small intestine and into the bloodstream. When gluten is consumed villi are destroyed and the host will become malnourished.

These reactions can be mostly attributed to the trilploid and hexiploid nature of agricultural wheats and grains. The most common grain used is appropriately named Common Wheat or Bread Wheat, a hexaploid species of wheat that has been cultivated and genetically engineered from several types wheats to be both hardy to weather conditions, pests and still yield high protein content. As a result of this breeding, the chromosomes of the wheat cells have more than the natural two chromosome pairs (diploid). A cell difference that antibodies and cell recognition sensors internally see as an abnormality and often a mutation that should be destroyed. Hence the adverse reactions in most people when consumed. Other common wheat types such as Durum and Emmer are only triploid and spelt is actually another hexaploid. Einkorn wheat however is a diploid species that is usually found wild (an ancient wheat that was used to help cultivate the unnatural wheats used worldwide today), but there are few and hard to find cultivated varieties of Einkorn. And these Einkorn varieties of wheat can be consumed and absorbed reaction free by nearly all wheat sufferers.

Due to the agricultural disadvantage of growing non genetically engineered wheat (more susceptible to damage and less protein yields) Einkorn farming is fairly limited. However, some Eastern Oregon Farmers are making an attempt to incorporate Einkorn varieties in with Durman and Spelt yields. And Hopworks Brewery is currently brewing  Einkorn into their 7 Grain Stout. Luckily for us Oregonians our state tends to be idea for grass growth I would imagine any advances in Einkorn cultivation would be heard first on home ground (most likely at Bob’s Red Mill).

FRIDAY FUN DAY!

The health message in today's post: doing things that make you happy can do wonders for your ability to process and endure life’s downs. This resilience to tougher times can help lower your stress levels, which in turn keeps your body functioning outside of crisis mode even though it seems life wants nothing more than to destroy you. We have all felt like that, and the most important thing to remember in getting through these tough times are the things that make you truly happy. Movies have always been one of my favorite pleasures, they are bright and shiny and beautiful, whether it be a musical, a comedy, a horror movie or cartoons, they always cheer me up. Today I got to thinking about cartoons in general and how the limitless possibilities of expression in this medium is truly astounding. You don’t need special effects or fancy contraptions to defy the laws of nature and gravity. Given the right tools you can reinvent the world. And while some of my favorite cartoons have always been on the light and fluffy side, there are some noteworthy films in the animation category that may change your life as much as they changed mind. Such movies as, “Waltz with Bashir”, “Grave of the Fire Flies”, “Persepolis” and “The Triplets of Bellville” run the gamete from unimaginably sad, to beautiful, to awe inspiring to hilarious, and have truly expanded my world view.  But if you are reading at work and do not have time go out and hunt for these movies,  watch these shorts and maybe find some inspiration to seek the limitless possibilities of animated films.

Between Bears by Ori Avni and Daniela Spector
http://vimeo.com/13776542

Day and Night by Pixar
http://www.gamaniak.com/video-5484-day-and-night-pixar.html

Eat Your Apples Not Your Pills

Have you ever been out to a restaurant and witnessed a person pulling a kayak sized pill box out and taking more vitamins than food is on the table, or is this you? While eating poorly and subsidizing your diet with vitamins may be an easy diet option, it is not a wise one. Throw the pills away and pick up an apple.

There are a lot of things wrong with vitamins. Aside from the obvious fact that you as a consumer have no way of knowing how long those pills have been on the shelf, or for that matter how long the ingredients in the pills sat before they got inserted into capsules and sent to the grocery. But also take into consideration how much trust you are putting into a label. There are a lot of big words on there, do you know what they are? Ninety percent of most dietary supplements are made of filler. And that filler can range to any number of mysterious albeit digestible materials. But just because the FDA and our friendly supplement manufactures say it’s okay to ingest it doesn’t mean that you should.

The ingredients that people flock towards supplements for, are found in food. Food that is found in your grocery store. In the produce section, the whole meats section (not chicken strips or nuggets, real honest to goodness chicken, beef, fish, pork etc), and the whole dairy section (milk, cream ,cheese), and the whole grains located in the bulk sections of most markets (oats, nuts and legumes). We as humans have evolved along with every other living organisms on this planet to suit our environment. We evolved with our food sources and unless you ate a radioactive Cheesy Poof, I don’t think the chip/cookie isle, the boxes and prepared food isle, or the frozen dinner isle is going to provide the substance your body need to carry out normal daily metabolic functions.  

These very real, very normal foods have all the vitamins and minerals a person needs. If you eat them, veggies first, then fruits, followed by legumes and meats, then dairy and breads. Daily at every meal you will be taking in Vitamin A, B, C, D, K as well as Chromium, Copper, Fluorine, Manganese, Selenium Zinc, and Iron. And not only will you be taking them in, but they come prepared by nature in packages that allow for optimum absorption and complimentary pairing, ie your body will know what to do with it.  

Vitamins and minerals are good, in fact your body needs them to function. So do yourself a favor and eat them in a way they can be used. Eating an apple a day really does keep the doctor away.

Favorite Things for a Friday

Number One: Pie

Brought to you by my favorite blog: http://www.smittenkitchen.com/

Single-Crust Plum and Apple Pie
Adapted from Nigel Slater
I was at a potluck last weekend where a friend gave me a (jokingly) hard time about the ridiculous number of changes I make to a recipe while still calling it “adapted from”, so this intro is just for her: First, I put all of the measurements in “American”, i.e. cups and spoons so if some of them seem like odd amounts, keep in mind that they were nice round weights to begin with. I made a few adjustments there, too; you can use regular or coarse (turbinado or golden caster sugar, the latter of which I can only say with a terrible faux-British accent) sugar. I added some flaky salt to the crust because it is delightful there, and also a few scrapings of orange zest, because I really like it with plums. I stick the dough in the freezer instead of the fridge because I didn’t want to wait any longer for my pie than I had to.
The filling calls for either prune plums or greengages (greenish-yellow sweet plums), but I could only find the prune plums but the thought all-prune pie made me nervous about its, you know, intensity. Ahem. So I swapped half the plums with apples but I forgot that apples take much longer to bake than plums and had I cut them smaller, this shouldn’t have been an issue. Or I could have stopped fussing and made an all-plum pie. I added a squeeze of orange juice to the filling, again because I like orange against plums, a little less sugar and I mixed the whole thing in the pie dish, because I am lazy. I bet you can hear my friend rolling her eyes all the way on the other side of the internet, huh?
Lid
7 tablespoons (100 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon finely grated orange zest
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 cup plus 6 1/2 tablespoons (175 grams) all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon coarse or flaky salt (or less of table salt)
Milk or cream, for brushing crust
Coarse or fine sugar, for sprinkling crust
Softly whipped, lightly sweetened cream, for serving
Filling
1 pound ripe prune plums or greengages, halved, pitted, and halved again (i.e. quartered)
1 pound apples, peeled, cored and cut into smaller chunks (than you see in my photos)
2 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Squeeze or two of orange or lemon juice
Make the lid: In a stand mixer, cream the butter, sugar and orange zest until light and fluffy. Mix in the lightly beaten egg and scrape down sides. Slowly add the flour, baking powder and salt and beat until combined. Scrape dough into a piece of waxed paper or plastic wrap, and stick in the freezer for 10 to 20 minutes, or until firmed up.
Assemble the pie: Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C or gas mark 4) Butter a pie or baking dish. Add the fruit and spinkle it with the sugar, cinnamon and orange or lemon juice. Gently toss the ingredients together once or twice; don’t worry, they’ll “muddle” well once cooking in the oven.
Roll out the firmed-up lid dough on a very well floured counter and gently lift it onto the pie and trim the overhang. It will tear. This is fine, and all the better to let juice erupt through. If it flusters you, you can use some of the trimmings to patch it up but still, the pie will bubble through in other places. Brush the crust with milk or cream, sprinkle with sugar and bake for 40 minutes, until lightly golden on top. Scoop onto dishes and serve with whipped cream.


                                            Number Two: Vintage David Bowie

                                                 Number Three: Beautiful Dresses

Number Four and Five: Edward Steichen (photographer) and Men in Suits (Gary Cooper)

                                                                     Happy Friday!