Primal and Green In the OC

Easy Salmon Rolls

2012-01-18T20:58:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick recipe that's fun for the kiddos to make! My five year old had so much fun making these, and even more fun eating them! I made these in a pinch so I didn't have the time to add more ingredients, but I could see adding shredded veggies like carrots or cabbage, or even some avocado slices in there. The possibilities are endless.

Ingredients:

*Small can of wild salmon (or tuna, or sardines - my kids gobble sardines up!) - approx. 4 ounces
*2 Tbsp mayonaise
*Nori sushi sheets (I used these)

Directions:

1. Mix fish with mayonaise
2. Spoon fish/mayo mixture evenly along one end of the nori sheet.
3. Roll to desired thickness. You can make these as large or as small as you want.
4. Enjoy!

Placentophagy - Consuming Your Own Placenta

2012-01-07T13:53:00.001-08:00

Why yes, I did consume my own placenta. In pill form, that is. I learned soooo much during my last pregnancy and one of the things I was eager to try was placenta encapsulation. Why, you ask? Placenta Benefits.info offers some great information on placentophagy (I used Placenta Joy for my encapsulation services). I can tell you that the days I forgot to take my "pills" I noticed a difference in my mood and energy levels. And I don't know if it had to do with the home birth, my nutrition, or just plain knowing what to do this time around, but I had more than enough milk and breastfeeding was a lot easier. I also had very little bleeding. I highly recommend placenta encapsulation if you're not down for straight up eating your own placenta!

Here is some info regarding placenta encapsulation taken from Placenta Benefits.info:

Placenta for Healing
by Jodi Selander

Many people of the world have known the secret power of the placenta as a medicinal supplement. Among the Chinese and Vietnamese, it is a customary practice to prepare the placenta for consumption by the mother. The placenta is thought to be rich in nutrients that the mother needs to recover more readily from childbirth. In Italy, women have been known to eat parts of the placenta to help with lactation. Hungarian women bite the placenta to expedite the completion of labor. And knowledgeable midwives in this country have their birth mothers take bites of raw placenta to help stop hemorrhaging, due to its beneficial oxytocin content.

There are a variety of potential benefits to placentophagy. For one, the placenta contains vitamins and minerals that may help fight depression symptoms, such as vitamin B6. For another, the placenta is considered rich in iron and protein, which would be useful to women recovering from childbirth, and a particular benefit to vegetarian women.

Research on placentophagy is still in its infancy, although there is a large body of research beginning to develop on postpartum hormone fluctuations and health. Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) conducted a study that focused on CRH (Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone). CRH is a stress reducer, and is generally produced by the hypothalamus. During the last trimester of pregnancy, the placenta secretes so much CRH that the levels in the bloodstream increase threefold. However, it was also discovered that postpartum women have lower than average levels of CRH, triggering depressive symptoms.¹ They concluded that the placenta secreted so much CRH that the hypothalamus stopped producing it. Once the placenta was born, it took some time for the hypothalamus to get the signal that the CRH levels were low, and to begin producing it again. This is just another sign that there is likely a biological cause for the baby blues, directly related to hormone levels.

Traditional Chinese Medicine has been using placenta medicinally for thousands of years. One of the well-known TCM uses for placenta, or Zî hé chē, is to help with insufficient lactation.² Interestingly enough, in 1954, researchers conducted a study on 210 women who were expected to have insufficient milk supply. They gave dried placenta to the women, and discovered that 86% of them had a positive increase in their milk production within a matter of days.³ It is exciting to see that some scientific research has validated TCM theories of the benefits of placenta. More recent research has discovered that placentophagia could enhance pain tolerance by increasing the opium-like substances activated during childbirth.⁴ This would obviously be beneficial during the postpartum healing process.

In my personal experience, women who have taken placenta capsules report positive results in an overwhelming number of cases. Some women have even reported feeling positive effects as quickly as the same afternoon of the day they began their first dose. Women who were already feeling "weepy", or experiencing other early signs of the baby blues, have felt better within days. Although the current scientific research is exciting, we have barely begun to scratch the surface of the potential benefits of placentophagy. Considering that placenta is a completely natural substance, created by a woman's own body, encapsulation of the placenta is definitely worth considering as part of a holistic postpartum recovery for every expectant woman.

ShareThis

1. Baby blues - postpartum depression attributed to low levels of corticotropin-releasing hormone after placenta is gone; Discover; Dec 1995.
2. Chinese Herbal Medicine: Materia Medica.
3. Placenta as a Lactagogon; Gynaecologia 138: 617-627, 1954.
4. Placenta ingestion by rats enhances δ- and κ-opioid antinociception, but suppresses μ-opioid antinociception; DiPirro, J.M. and Kristal M.B., Brain Research 1014: 22-23, 2004.

The following is adapted fromPlacentophagia by Melissa Baker - reprinted with permission.

Traditional Chinese Medicine

Augments Qi (energy) and Xue (Blood) and therefore tonifies Yang, Yin and Jing (Vital Essence).

Brief Explanation:

All foods have properties that can benefit the body, depending on the body type and other factors. Placenta is considered to be a very powerful medicine as it is life giving and stores the vital essence for the baby. Placenta is often included in traditional medicinal combinations with restorative functions.

Generally we cannot directly tonify the vital essence as it is over a process of years that this is built up. Firstly there is the Qi that comes from what we consume. Some of this Qi is then turned into Xue (Blood) after digestion and stored in the Liver. If the body is producing enough Blood (via good health practices) it is then transported from the Liver to the Kidneys and Marrow (in TCM the Kidneys control the Bone Marrow) and becomes Jing. There are two types of Jing: pre-natal and post-natal. Pre-natal Jing is the reason why pre-natal care is so important for future health. It comes from the sperm and ova during conception and cannot be replenished. Post-natal Jing can be replenished but it takes many years. Pregnancy is taxing on the body and can drain Qi, Xue and Jing (in that order) even if the mother follows the best of health regimes.

More specifically, placenta pills may help to:

• Increase general energy
• Allow a quicker return to health after birth
• Increase production of breast milk
• Decrease likelihood of baby blues and post natal depression
• Decrease likelihood of iron deficiency
• Decrease likelihood of insomnia or sleep disorders

The body is so individual and because of the powerful nature of this medicine other benefits are also likely but too numerous to mention. I believe that this practice is particularly beneficial to vegetarian mothers and those prone to post natal depression.

Other Considerations

It is best to check with your midwife or health care professional to be sure that your placenta is healthy and able to be eaten. It may be best to just ask if it is healthy, depending on your relationship with your caregiver.

Contraindications

Not to be used in heat conditions or for people with the presence of pathogenic factors, including common cold and mastitis.

~ MelissaBaker.com

Salmon Cakes with Mayo Sauce

2011-12-09T15:00:00.000-08:00

OK, call me an overachiever. I made salmon cakes for my boys for lunch today. But they were really easy, I promise!

Ingredients:

*about 8 ounces of cooked salmon (I used canned wild salmon from Vital Choice)
*2 eggs
*1 tsp coconut flour
*1/4 red onion, finely diced
*2 cloves pressed garlic
*1 tsp dill
*1 tsp tomato paste
*2 tsp dijon mustard
*salt and pepper to taste
*coconut oil or butter for frying

Sauce Ingredients:

*mayonaise (I use Wilderness Family Naturals brand)
*Sweetener of your chocie to taste. (I use Stevita Supreme)

Directions:

1. Place all ingredients except salmon in a bowl and mix well.
2. Mash salmon and add to mixture to thoroughly combine.
3. Oil or butter a pan or griddle over medium heat.
4. Ladle about 1/4 cup mixture for each cake onto griddle. Flatten each cake with the back of the ladle and form into a pancake. Each cake will be about 4 inches in diameter. This recipe makes 4-5 cakes.
5. Brown each cake and then flip to brown the other side.
6. Mix mayonaise and stevia together. How much you use of each will depend on your personal taste preference.
7. Spoon mayo mixture over each cake. Serve and enjoy!

P.S. I plan to start adding pictures real soon. This blog needs some color!

Paleo Almond Flour Pancake/Waffle Recipe

2011-11-20T09:25:00.000-08:00

My five year old loves waffles for breakfast, and I have been using this easy almond flour recipe for the past year or so. It only yields about three medium sized waffles, or four small pancakes, so adjust the recipe to fit your needs. Please note: this recipe calls for blanched almond flour. Almond meal or ground almonds will not yield the same desirable results).

Ingredients:

*1 cup blanched almond flour (I use Honeyville brand)
*2 eggs (preferably organic and pastured)
*2 tbsp flax meal
*2 tbsp coconut oil
*1/2 to 3/4 cup water
*pinch sea salt

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients together in one bowl. I mix it all together at once to avoid hassle in the morning. No need to separate wet from dry first, etc.

2. Spoon about 1/4 cup mixture onto greased (preferably with coconut oil) waffle iron or griddle. Remove when done as you would with a standard waffle/pancake mix.

3. Top with ingredients of your choice. My son, of course, loves maple syrup on his. I usually just eat them plain or top them with mashed fruit or nut butter. My toddler loves these plain as well! He doesn't yet know about the sweet stuff yet and happily chows down on these plain :)

Easy Chili Recipe

2011-11-14T15:57:00.001-08:00

This chili recipe is so easy, even a caveman could do it! Ha!

But seriously, I make this chili once a week and the whole family digs it. Even my husband, when asked what he wanted for his 40th birthday dinner, requested this bad boy. You can find all the ingredients at your local Trader Joe's. Plus you will have tons of leftovers so you won't even have to think about lunch. You could even add some eggs any style to it and have it for breakfast! Whoo hoo!

Ingredients:

-2 lbs. grass-fed ground beef or ground turkey

-2 tbsp. coconut oil (or butter or other oil of your choice to brown meat in)

-1 bag frozen bell peppers n onions (TJ's makes a fire roasted variety; not organic, but easy peasy)

-Two 15 oz. cans organic tomato sauce (yes I know cans aren't that great for ya, but we are using canned in the interest of saving time and hassle!)

-Two cans water (use cans from tomato sauce)

-One 12 oz. can organic tomato paste

-2 tbsp. chili powder

-diced avocado to taste

Directions:

1. Add coconut oil to skillet and melt over medium heat.

2. Brown ground meat in coconut oil.

3. Poor off drippings (or not)

4. Add all ingredients sans avocado to a large pot. Add browned meat and stir all together. Cook over medium high until boiling, then set to low and simmer for about 15 minutes. Alternatively, you could place all ingredients in a crockpot on low for a few hours to let the flavors really meld and have dinner warm and ready when you come home!

5. Add diced avocado on top or if you go the dairy route, add sour cream and/or cheese)

6. Enjoy!

Paleo Pumpkin Pancakes

2011-11-11T13:43:00.000-08:00

Is it really already November? Fall is in the air and so is the smell of pumpkin goodness in our house!

A few weeks ago my five year old and I made a paleo pumpkin pie from scratch. I was a little intimidated by the pie pumpkin that sat on my counter for about a week, but making the insides resemble the stuff we buy in a can was easier than expected! I would post the paleo pie recipe, but I basically butchered a standard pie recipe to make it paleo and can't remember what modifications I made. But I can tell you that it was damn good!

Anywho, I had some leftover pumpkin puree from the pie pumpkin we steamed and decided to research a paleo pumpkin pancake recipe. I doubled this one and thought I'd share it with you here because it was deelish!

Ingredients:
* pinch of baking soda
* pinch of salt
* 1/2 tbsp pumpkin pie spice
* 1/2 cup almond flour

* 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
* 1/4 cup pureed pumpkin
* 1 tbsp honey ( I skipped the honey and added a little bit of Stevita )
* 2 eggs

Combine the dry ingredients together in one bowl, then in another bowl combine the wet ingredients. Then toss the wet ingredients into the dry and mix thoroughly. Let mixture sit for 2 or 3 minutes.

Cook in a pan on medium-high like a normal pancake.

Makes 6 medium sized pancakes. The pancakes will look a lot darker (and orange-er) than normal, but are still delicious!!

I love this post...

2011-10-08T21:42:00.000-07:00

During my credential/Master's degree program at UC Irvine, I knew I didn't agree with the way things were done in the public school system. Some light bulbs went on when I started working in the private homeschooling sector and I saw how well students did with independent study. Now I am homeschooling, or "unschooling" my own children...who would have thought...

What is Unschooling?

by Earl Stevens

"What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge,
not knowledge in pursuit of the child."

- George Bernard Shaw

It is very satisfying for parents to see their children in pursuit of knowledge. It is natural and healthy for the children, and in the first few years of life, the pursuit goes on during every waking hour. But after a few short years, most kids go to school. The schools also want to see children in pursuit of knowledge, but the schools want them to pursue mainly the school'sknowledge and devote twelve years of life to doing so. In his acceptance speech for the New York City Teacher of the Year award (1990), John Gatto said, "Schools were designed by Horace Mann ... and others to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population." In the interests of managing each generation of children, the public school curriculum has become a hopelessly flawed attempt to define education and to find a way of delivering that definition to vast numbers of children. The traditional curriculum is based on the assumption that children must be pursued by knowledge because they will never pursue it themselves. It was no doubt noticed that, when given a choice, most children prefer not to do school work. Since, in a school, knowledge is defined as schoolwork, it is easy for educators to conclude that children don't like to acquire knowledge. Thus schooling came to be a method of controlling children and forcing them to do whatever educators decided was beneficial for them. Most children don't like textbooks, workbooks, quizzes, rote memorization, subject schedules, and lengthy periods of physical inactivity. One can discover this - even with polite and cooperative children - by asking them if they would like to add more time to their daily schedule. I feel certain that most will decline the offer.
The work of a schoolteacher is not the same as that of a homeschooling parent. In most schools, a teacher is hired to deliver a ready-made, standardized, year-long curriculum to 25 or more age-segregated children who are confined in a building all day. The teacher must use a standard curriculum - not because it is the best approach for encouraging an individual child to learn the things that need to be known - but because it is a convenient way to handle and track large numbers of children. The school curriculum is understandable only in the context of bringing administrative order out of daily chaos, of giving direction to frustrated children and unpredictable teachers. It is a system that staggers ever onward but never upward, and every morning we read about the results in our newspapers.	Children pursue life, and in doing so, pursue knowledge.
But despite the differences between the school environment and the home, many parents begin homeschooling under the impression that it can be pursued only by following some variation of the traditional public school curriculum in the home. Preoccupied with the idea of "equivalent education", state and local education officials assume that we must share their educational goals and that we homeschool simply because we don't want our children to be inside their buildings. Textbook and curriculum publishing companies go to great lengths to assure us that we must buy their products if we expect our children to be properly educated. As if this were not enough, there are national, state, and local support organizations that have practically adopted the use of the traditional curriculum and the school-in-the-home image of homeschooling as a de facto membership requirement. In the midst of all this, it can be difficult for a new homeschooling family to think that an alternative approach is possible. One alternative approach is "unschooling", also known as "natural learning", "experience-based learning", or "independent learning". Several weeks ago, when our homeschooling support group announced a gathering to discuss unschooling, we thought a dozen or so people might attend, but more than 100 adults and children showed up. For three hours, parents and some of the children took turns talking about their homeschooling experiences and about unschooling. Many people said afterward that they left the meeting feeling reinforced and exhilarated - not because anybody told them what to do or gave them a magic formula - but because they grew more secure in making these decisions for themselves. Sharing ideas about this topic left them feeling empowered. Before I talk about what I think unschooling is, I must talk about what it isn't. Unschooling isn't a recipe, and therefore it can't be explained in recipe terms. It is impossible to give unschooling directions for people to follow so that it can be tried for a week or so to see if it works. Unschooling isn't a method, it is a way of looking at children and at life. It is based on trust that parents and children will find the paths that work best for them - without depending on educational institutions, publishing companies, or experts to tell them what to do. Unschooling does not mean that parents can never teach anything to their children, or that children should learn about life entirely on their own without the help and guidance of their parents. Unschooling does not mean that parents give up active participation in the education and development of their children and simply hope that something good will happen. Finally, since many unschooling families have definite plans for college, unschooling does not even mean that children will never take a course in any kind of a school. Then what is unschooling? I can't speak for every person who uses the term, but I can talk about my own experiences. Our son has never had an academic lesson, has never been told to read or to learn mathematics, science, or history. Nobody has told him about phonics. He has never taken a test or been asked to study or memorize anything. When people ask, "What do you do?" My answer is that we follow our interests - and our interests inevitably lead to science, literature, history, mathematics, music - all the things that have interested people before anybody thought of them as "subjects". A large component of unschooling is grounded in doing real things, not because we hope they will be good for us, but because they are intrinsically fascinating. There is an energy that comes from this that you can't buy with a curriculum. Children do real things all day long, and in a trusting and supportive home environment, "doing real things" invariably brings about healthy mental development and valuable knowledge. It is natural for children to read, write, play with numbers, learn about society, find out about the past, think, wonder and do all those things that society so unsuccessfully attempts to force upon them in the context of schooling. While few of us get out of bed in the morning in the mood for a "learning experience", I hope that all of us get up feeling in the mood for life. Children always do so - unless they are ill or life has been made overly stressful or confusing for them. Sometimes the problem for the parent is that it can be difficult to determine if anything important is actually going on. It is a little like watching a garden grow. No matter how closely we examine the garden, it is difficult to verify that anything is happening at that particular moment. But as the season progresses, we can see that much has happened, quietly and naturally. Children pursue life, and in doing so, pursue knowledge. They need adults to trust in the inevitability of this very natural process, and to offer what assistance they can. Parents come to our unschooling discussions with many questions about fulfilling state requirements. They ask: "How do unschoolers explain themselves to the state when they fill out the paperwork every year?", "If you don't use a curriculum, what do you say?" and "What about required record-keeping?" To my knowledge, unschoolers have had no problems with our state department of education over matters of this kind. This is a time when even many public school educators are moving away from the traditional curriculum, and are seeking alternatives to fragmented learning and drudgery. When I fill out the paperwork required for homeschooling in our state, I briefly describe, in the space provided, what we are currently doing, and the general intent of what we plan to do for the coming year. I don't include long lists of books or describe any of the step-by-step skills associated with a curriculum. For example, under English/Language Arts, I mentioned that our son's favorite "subject" is the English language. I said a few words about our family library. I mentioned that our son reads a great deal and uses our computer for whatever writing he happens to do. I concluded that, "Since he already does so well on his own, we have decided not to introduce language skills as a subject to be studied. It seems to make more sense for us to leave him to his own continuing success." Unschooling is a unique opportunity for each family to do whatever makes sense for the growth and development of their children. If we have a reason for using a curriculum and traditional school materials, we are free to use them. They are not a universally necessary or required component of unschooling, either educationally or legally. Allowing curriculums, textbooks, and tests to be the defining, driving force behind the education of a child is a hindrance in the home as much as in the school - not only because it interferes with learning, but because it interferes with trust. As I have mentioned, even educators are beginning to question the pre-planned, year-long curriculum as an out-dated, 19th century educational system. There is no reason that families should be less flexible and innovative than schools. Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller's mentor and friend, said: I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less "showily". Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself... Teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences. Unschooling provides a unique opportunity to step away from systems and methods, and to develop independent ideas out of actual experiences, where the child is truly in pursuit of knowledge, not the other way around.

Bradley Method of Natural Childbirth

2011-09-30T22:09:00.000-07:00

A few readers who read my birth story have inquired about the Bradley Method, so I thought I'd share the website here:

http://www.bradleybirth.com/

These classes were invaluable! I highly recommend them to anyone who is pregnant. We took the hospital classes at Hoag Hospital during my first pregnancy and WOW, those hospital classes, even at the prestigious Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, cannot come close in comparison to the Bradley classes. I also recommend hiring a doula, especially to those planning a natural childbirth in a hospital setting.

Best wishes for a safe and healthy pregnancy and labor! The way I see it now that I know what I know, you wouldn't take drugs while pregnant, so why would you take them during labor? They *do* pass through the placenta to the baby. They *glossed* over this fact in the hospital childbirth classes. Oh boy, I could go on and on...don't get me started on circumcision!

"More broth, please!"

2011-09-30T21:40:00.000-07:00

"Is that apple juice in your baby's sippy cup?"

"Um, no, it looks like apple juice, but it's homemade chicken broth."

OK so this conversation didn't really take place, but I imagine people assume it's apple juice in my little one's sippy cup LOL! I don't know too many moms who put chicken broth in their little one's sippy cup, do you?

Here's the story. My ten month old always wants what his older brother is drinking. Problem is, we're still going strong nursing and I don't want him filling up on water or juice when he should only be drinking breast milk at this point as far as fluids go. But the poor boy feels so left out and screams something terrible for a sip of big brother's drink. So since I try to make homemade chicken broth to drink throughout the week every week, I decided to let him sip on some broth in this super cool eco-friendly sippy cup when the occasion arises. After all, chicken broth *is* highly nutritious. Check this out (from Sally Fallon, author of Nourishing Traditions, full text here):

"Good broth will resurrect the dead," says a South American proverb. Said Escoffier: "Indeed, stock is everything in cooking. Without it, nothing can be done."

A cure-all in traditional households and the magic ingredient in classic gourmet cuisine, stock or broth made from bones of chicken, fish and beef builds strong bones, assuages sore throats, nurtures the sick, puts vigor in the step and sparkle in love life--so say grandmothers, midwives and healers. For chefs, stock is the magic elixir for making soul-warming soups and matchless sauces.

Meat and fish stocks play a role in all traditional cuisines—French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, African, South American, Middle Eastern and Russian. In America, stock went into gravy and soups and stews. That was when most animals were slaughtered locally and nothing went to waste. Bones, hooves, knuckles, carcasses and tough meat went into the stock pot and filled the house with the aroma of love. Today we buy individual filets and boneless chicken breasts, or grab fast food on the run, and stock has disappeared from the American tradition.

Grandmother Knew Best

Science validates what our grandmothers knew. Rich homemade chicken broths help cure colds. Stock contains minerals in a form the body can absorb easily—not just calcium but also magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur and trace minerals. It contains the broken down material from cartilage and tendons--stuff like chondroitin sulphates and glucosamine, now sold as expensive supplements for arthritis and joint pain.

Fish stock, according to traditional lore, helps boys grow up into strong men, makes childbirth easy and cures fatigue. "Fish broth will cure anything," is another South American proverb. Broth and soup made with fishheads and carcasses provide iodine and thyroid-strengthening substances.

When broth is cooled, it congeals due to the presence of gelatin. The use of gelatin as a therapeutic agent goes back to the ancient Chinese. Gelatin was probably the first functional food, dating from the invention of the "digestor" by the Frenchman Papin in 1682. Papin's digestor consisted of an apparatus for cooking bones or meat with steam to extract the gelatin. Just as vitamins occupy the center of the stage in nutritional investigations today, so two hundred years ago gelatin held a position in the forefront of food research. Gelatin was universally acclaimed as a most nutritious foodstuff particularly by the French, who were seeking ways to feed their armies and vast numbers of homeless in Paris and other cities. Although gelatin is not a complete protein, containing only the amino acids arginine and glycine in large amounts, it acts as a protein sparer, helping the poor stretch a few morsels of meat into a complete meal. During the siege of Paris, when vegetables and meat were scarce, a doctor named Guerard put his patients on gelatin bouillon with some added fat and they survived in good health.

The French were the leaders in gelatin research, which continued up to the 1950s. Gelatin was found to be useful in the treatment of a long list of diseases including peptic ulcers, tuberculosis, diabetes, muscle diseases, infectious diseases, jaundice and cancer. Babies had fewer digestive problems when gelatin was added to their milk. The American researcher Francis Pottenger pointed out that as gelatin is a hydrophilic colloid, which means that it attracts and holds liquids, it facilitates digestion by attracting digestive juices to food in the gut. Even the epicures recognized that broth-based soup did more than please the taste buds. "Soup is a healthy, light, nourishing food" said Brillant-Savarin, "good for all of humanity; it pleases the stomach, stimulates the appetite and prepares the digestion..."

Sally Fallon's Homemade Chicken Broth Recipe:

Chicken Stock

1 whole free-range chicken or 2 to 3 pounds of bony chicken parts, such as necks, backs, breastbones and wings*
gizzards from one chicken (optional)
2-4 chicken feet (optional)
4 quarts cold filtered water
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
2 carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped
3 celery stalks, coarsely chopped
1 bunch parsley

*Note: Farm-raised, free-range chickens give the best results. Many battery-raised chickens will not produce stock that gels.

If you are using a whole chicken, cut off the wings and remove the neck, fat glands and the gizzards from the cavity. Cut chicken parts into several pieces. (If you are using a whole chicken, remove the neck and wings and cut them into several pieces.) Place chicken or chicken pieces in a large stainless steel pot with water, vinegar and all vegetables except parsley. Let stand 30 minutes to 1 hour. Bring to a boil, and remove scum that rises to the top. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 6 to 8 hours. The longer you cook the stock, the richer and more flavorful it will be. About 10 minutes before finishing the stock, add parsley. This will impart additional mineral ions to the broth.

Remove whole chicken or pieces with a slotted spoon. If you are using a whole chicken, let cool and remove chicken meat from the carcass. Reserve for other uses, such as chicken salads, enchiladas, sandwiches or curries. Strain the stock into a large bowl and reserve in your refrigerator until the fat rises to the top and congeals. Skim off this fat and reserve the stock in covered containers in your refrigerator or freezer.

Paleo Ranch Dressing Recipe

2011-09-08T10:03:00.000-07:00

I love me some ranch dressing! On salads, with veggie dippers, with paleo chicken nuggets, you name it! Since I avoid dairy, I set out to find an easy paleo version and found one here. It was so good I just had it over a salad for my morning snack and Noah dipped some carrots in it and then decided to drink it straight he liked it so much!

Paleo Ranch Dressing Recipe:

Blend the following ingredients in a food processor or blender and you're good to go!

1 cup mayo (make your own)
1 cup full fat coconut milk
1 tsp dill
1/2 tsp garlic powder
pepper to taste

Paleo "Porridge" Recipe

2011-09-04T22:09:00.000-07:00

My older boy loves Grimm's fairy tales, and he is especially fond of a little tale called Sweet Porridge. I've always told him that porridge is kind of like oatmeal and then one day I decided to find out what it really is.

According to The Free Dictionary, porridge is: A soft food made by boiling oatmeal or another meal in water or milk.

OK, so I was right :)

We used to eat oatmeal round here and I would still make it once in a while for Noah, but I wondered if I could find a grain-free substitute to keep our insulin levels in check and to avoid the ill effects of grain consumption. I headed over to one of my favorite foodie bloggers, Elana's Pantry (We just tried her paleo bread recipe and we're hooked!) and found a real winner. This one's packed with healthy fats, protein, and loads of vitamins and minerals, plus it tastes fantastic! I top mine with a little stevia and a few raisins while Noah likes maple syrup in his. Oatmeal can no longer compete in our house!

Here's the recipe folks (I have been making ours sans pumpkin seeds and subbing the walnuts for almonds).

(Original recipe by Andrea Nakayama).

Gluten Free Porridge

printer friendly

2 tablespoons unsweetened shredded coconut
1 tablespoon pumpkin seeds
1 tablespoon flax seeds
1 tablespoon chia seeds
¼ cup walnuts
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup boiling water
¼ teaspoon celtic sea salt

Combine all ingredients in the dry container of a Vitamix or food processor.
Blend until finely ground (you can try a coffee grinder, I have not, so not sure if it works)
Transfer mixture to a bowl
Pour hot water over mixture, stir, then let sit for 5 minutes to thicken
Garnish with raisins, sunflower seeds or treats of your choice
Serve

Why Grains Are Unhealthy - Part 2

2011-09-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

I feel like my last post regarding grains was a little wimpy, so Mark Sisson from Mark's Daily Apple is here to help. (Full text and references here)

Why Grains are Unhealthy

by Mark Sisson

I find that grain bashing makes for a tasty, but ultimately unsatisfying meal.

You all know how much I love doing it, though. But no matter how often I sit down to dine on the stuff (and I’ve done it with great gusto in the past), I always leave the table feeling like I left something behind. Like maybe I wasn’t harsh enough about the danger of gluten, or I failed to really convey just how much I hated lectins. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the mere mention of grains was eliciting a crazy insulin-esque response and throwing my satiety hormones all out of whack. I was filling up on anti-grain talk, but I just couldn’t fill that void for long.

Well, I’ve got the hunger today, and this time I aim to stuff myself to the point of perpetual sickness. I don’t ever want to have to look at another anti-grain argument again (yeah, right). If things get a little disjointed, or if I descend into bullet points and sentence fragments, it’s only because the hunger has taken over and I’ve decided to dispense with the pleasantries in order to lay it all out at once.

So please, bear with me.

Apart from maintaining social conventions in certain situations and obtaining cheap sugar calories, there is absolutely no reason to eat grains. Believe me – I’ve searched far and wide and asked everyone I can for just one good reason to eat cereal grains, but no one can do it. They may have answers, but they just aren’t good enough. For fun, though, let’s see take a look at some of the assertions:

“You need the fiber!”

Okay, for one: no, I don’t. If you’re referring to its oft-touted ability to move things along in the inner sanctum, fiber has some unintended consequences. A few years back, scientists found that high-fiber foods “bang up against the cells lining the gastrointestinal tract, rupturing their outer covering” which “increases the level of lubricating mucus.” Err, that sounds positively awful. Banging and tearing? Rupturing? These are not the words I like to hear. But wait! The study’s authors say, “It’s a good thing.” Fantastic! So when all those sticks and twigs rub up against my fleshy interior and literally rupture my intestinal lining, I’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s all part of the plan, right?

Somehow, I’m not convinced that a massive daily infusion of insoluble grain fiber is all that essential. And that “lubricating mucus” sounds an awful like the mucus people with irritable bowel syndrome complain about. From personal experience I can tell you that once I completed my exodus from grains, the IBS completely stopped. If you’re not yet convinced on the fiber issue I’ll refer you to Konstantin Monastyrsky’s Fiber Menace. Anyway, there’s plenty of fiber in the vegetables and fruit I eat. Which takes me to the next claim:

“You need the vitamins and minerals!”

You got me. I do need vitamins and minerals, like B1 and B2, magnesium and iron, zinc and potassium. But do I need to obtain them by eating a carb-heavy, bulky grain? No, no I don’t. You show me a serving of “healthy whole grains” that can compete – nutrient, vitamin, and mineral-wise – with a Big Ass Salad. What’s that? Can’t do it? Thought so.

“But it forms the foundation of the governmental food pyramid!”

You know, I should have just started the entire post with this one. I could have saved my fingers the trouble of typing and your eyes the trouble of reading. Governmental endorsements are not points in your favor, grain-eater; they are strikes against you. An appeal to authority (unless that “authority” is actually a preponderance of scientific evidence, of course) does not an effective argument make. Conventional Wisdom requires consistent, steady dissection and criticism if it is to be of any value.

There’s a reason grains are first and foremost on the list of foods to avoid when following the Primal Blueprint: they are completely and utterly pointless in the context of a healthy diet. In fact, if your average unhealthy person were to ask for the top three things to avoid in order to get healthy, I would tell them to stop smoking, to stop drinking their calories (as soda or juice), and to stop eating grains. Period. Full stop. They really are that bad.

I’ve mentioned this time and again, but the fundamental problem with grains is that they are a distinctly Neolithic food that the human animal has yet to adapt to consuming. In fact, cereal grains figured prominently in the commencement of the New Stone Age; grains were right there on the forefront of the agricultural revolution. Hell, they were the agricultural revolution – einkorn wheat, emmer, millet, and spelt formed the backbone of Neolithic farming. They could be stored for months at a time, they were easy enough to grow in massive enough quantities to support a burgeoning population, and they promoted the construction of permanent settlements. Oh, and they were easily hoarded, meaning they were probably an early form of currency (and, by extension, a potential source of income inequality). And here’s the kicker: they were harsh, tough things that probably didn’t even taste very good. It also took a ton of work just to make them edible, thanks to their toxic anti-nutrients.

Toxic anti-nutrients? Do tell.

Living things generally do not want to be consumed by other living things. Being digested, for the most part, tends to interrupt survival, procreation, propagation of the species – you know, standard stuff that fauna and flora consider pretty important. To avoid said consumption, living things employ various self defense mechanisms. Rabbits, for example, with their massive ears, considerable fast-twitch muscle fibers, and nasty claws, can usually hear a predator coming, outrun (out-hop?) nearly anything, and (in a pinch) slash a tender belly to shreds. Blue whales are too big to fit into your mouth, while porcupines are walking reverse pincushions. Point is, animals have active defense mechanisms. They run, fight, jump, climb, fly, sting, bite, and even appeal to our emotions (if you’ve ever seen a puppy beg for a treat with sad eyes, you know that isn’t just accidental cuteness) in order to survive. All the while, predators are constantly evolving and generating adaptations.

Plants, though, are passive organisms without the ability to move, think, and react (for the most part). They must employ different tactics to ensure propagation, and they generally have to rely on outside forces to spread their seed. And so various methods are “devised” to dissuade consumption long enough for the seed to get to where it’s going. Nuts have those tough shells, and grains have the toxic anti-nutrients, lectins, gluten, and phytates. (Of course there are some obvious exceptions. Fruits are tasty, nutritious, and delicious so that animals will eat them whole and poop out the seeds, preferably into some fertile soil. The seed stays intact throughout the digestive process; it is indigestible by design. No seed “wants” to be digested, because this would defeat the purpose. They “want” to be swallowed, or borne by the wind, or carried by a bee to the next flower, but they do not want to be digested.)

Some animals are clearly adapted to grain consumption. Birds, rodents, and some insects can deal with the anti-nutrients. Humans, however, cannot. Perhaps if grains represented a significant portion of our ancestral dietary history, things might be a bit different. Some of us can digest dairy, and we’ve got the amylase enzyme present in our saliva to break down starches if need be, but we simply do not have the wiring necessary to mitigate the harmful effects of lectins, gluten, and phytate.

Lectins are bad. They bind to insulin receptors, attack the stomach lining of insects, bind to human intestinal lining, and they seemingly cause leptin resistance. And leptin resistance predicts a “worsening of the features of the metabolic syndrome independently of obesity”. Fun stuff, huh?

Gluten might be even worse. Gluten, found in wheat, rye, and barley, is a composite of the proteins giladin and glutenin. Around 1% of the population are celiacs, people who are completely and utterly intolerant of any gluten. In celiacs, any gluten in the diet can be disastrous. We’re talking compromised calcium and vitamin D3 levels, hyperparathyroidism, bone defects. Really terrible stuff. And it gets worse: just because you’re not celiac doesn’t mean you aren’t susceptible to the ravages of gluten. As Stephan highlights, one study showed that 29% of asymptomatic (read: not celiac) people nonetheless tested positive for anti-gliadin IgA in their stool. Anti-gliadin IgA is an antibody produced by the gut, and it remains there until it’s dispatched to ward off gliadin – a primary component of gluten. Basically, the only reason anti-gliadin IgA ends up in your stool is because your body sensed an impending threat – gluten. If gluten poses no threat, the anti-gliadin IgA stays in your gut. And to think, most Americans eat this stuff on a daily basis.

Phytates are a problem, too, because they make minerals bio-unavailable (so much for all those healthy vitamins and minerals we need from whole grains!), thus rendering null and void the last, remaining argument for cereal grain consumption.

What, then, is the point to all this grain madness? Is there a good reason for anyone (with access to meat, fruit, and vegetables, that is) to rely on cereal grains for a significant portion of their caloric intake?

The answer is unequivocally, undeniably no. We do not need grains to survive, let alone thrive. In fact, they are naturally selected to ward off pests, whether they be insects or hominids. I suggest we take the hint and stop eating them.

And with that, I’m done. I don’t think I could eat another bite.

My New Favorite Green Beauty Product

2011-08-16T22:36:00.000-07:00

I started using Destiny Boutique's charcoal facial soap right before my last pregnancy and fell in love! It sucked the nasties out of my pores whilst keeping my drier skin hydrated. I had to stop using it while pregnant because it has peppermint essential oil in it (a no-no during pregnancy) but now I'm back at it again! Another bonus is that this soap is rated a coveted "zero" according to the EWG's Skin Deep Cosmetics Database

For those of you in the OC wanting to try it, Mother's and Whole Foods carries it for around $8-$9. Also, check this out:

"Directions for Greener Tomorrow: Before using please remove the wildflower seed label from the soap. The handmade recycled paper could be the inspiration of your very own wildflower garden. Just plant it, and love it and watch it sprout."

How cool is that?

From the company's website:

Amazing all natural soap made with good stuff that gently draws out toxic impurities that can clog pores. 100% great soap fortified with anti-aging shea butter and argan oil that you can use safely each day without your skin ever drying out. Your skin feels softer, smoother and radiantly healthy.

Charcoal - not the one from your BBQ grill, but the specially processed activated kind - can adsorb nasty organics and environmental junk better than any other known substance rendering them ineffective and harmless.

Charcoal can do these various things because of its ability to attract other substances to its surface and hold them there by adsorption. One teaspoon of activated charcoal has a surface area of more than a football field.

Charcoal has proven track record for its detoxifying power. Ancient physicians including Hippocrates recommended the use of charcoal for medicinal purposes. North American Indians used it for skin infections. In Asia it has been used for centuries to whiten the skin. It is also legendarily used to unclog pores, remove impurities and dead skin cells from the top layer of the skin, resulting supple, delicate and smooth skin.

The black soap is scented with peppermint and tea tree essential oil to further give you the edge of the ultimately healthy skin.

Destiny Boutique's artisan handcrafted bars are handcut and weigh minimum 6 oz. Some variation is expected. One 6 ounce bar will last you an average of 3-4 weeks in the bath and longer at the sink provided the soap is kept dry when not in use.

Ingredients: naturally occurring glycerin, sodium cocoate (coconut), sodium palmate (palm), sodium olivate (olive), sodium soybeanate (soy), argania spinosa (argan) oil, raw and unrefined butyrospermum parkii (shea butter), mentha piperita (peppermint) essential oil, activated charcoal, hydrolyzed wild cruelty free tussah silk fibers, melaleuca alternofolia (tea tree) essential oil.

Skin Deep rating:0

The Skinny on Fat...

2011-08-01T22:38:00.000-07:00

Interesting video I thought I'd share with you regarding meat and fat consumption:

Wise Traditions UK 2010 - Barry Groves from Wise Traditions UK on Vimeo.

"Primal" Birthing

2011-07-31T11:10:00.000-07:00

I've been following the blog The Healthy Skeptic and love all Chris Kesser has to say on, well, everything! I started following his blog to learn more about healthy eating, but now that he discusses natural childbirth, I love the blog even more!

Lots of women I know are pregnant right now so I thought I'd post this tidbit on natural childbirth...

Original text here .

Here are the previous entries in the natural childbirth series:

Natural Childbirth I: Is home birth more dangerous than hospital birth?

Natural Childbirth IIa: Is Ultrasound Necessary and Effective in Pregnancy?

Natural Childbirth IIb: Ultrasound Not As Safe As Commonly Thought

Natural childbirth III: why undisturbed birth?

July 21, 2011 in Fertility, Pregnancy & Childbirth

Spontaneous labor in a normal woman is an event marked by a number of processes so complicated and so perfectly attuned to each other that any interference will only detract from the optimal character. The only thing reqired from the bystanders is that they show respect for this awe-inspiring process by complying with the first rule of medicine – nil nocere [do no harm]

G.J. Kloosterman, The Universal Aspects of Childbirth

In the wild, mammals isolate themselves during labor.

A pregnant sheep, which is normally a herd dweller, will separate herself from the flock when birth becomes imminent. A rhesus monkey will move away from her group to the edge of the forest and choose a well-camoflauged hiding place in which to give birth. The rat, which is normally a nocturnal prowler, gives birth during the day to increase the chances that she’ll be unobserved. And the horse, which is normally a daytime grazer, gives birth during the night for the same reason.

Human beings are mammals

As often as we forget this, human beings are mammals. We share the same 175 million year evolutionary heritage of birth with other mammals. These similarities should be starting point when try understand the process of normal, undisturbed birth in our own species.

Like our mammalian relatives, human females are designed to give birth safely in the wild without supervision or medical intervention. It is as natural to us as eating, breathing, digestion, elimination and sleeping. It’s in our genes.

As physician and natural childbirth advocate Michel Odent reminds us:

When you consider birth as an involuntary process involving old, mammalian structures of the brain, you set aside the assumption that a woman must learn to give birth. It is implicit in the mammalian interpretation that one cannot actively help a woman to give birth. The goal is to avoid disturbing her unnecessarily. 1

Traditional humans also isolate themselves during labor

In a film about birht among the Eipos tribe of Papa New Guinea, ethologist Wulf Schniefenhovel documents mothers-to-be leaving their village and going into the bush just prior to giving birth.

Isolating oneself in this way has been the norm in traditional societies around the world, including the Kung San in Africa, the Turkomans in Central Asia and First Nations tribes in Canada.

In an eighteenth-century, firsthand account of birth practices in a tribe of Canadian Indians found in a Paris library, J-C B. explains1:

Women usually give birth by themselves and without any difficulty, and always away from their own homes in small huts which have been built in the forest for this purpose, 40 or 50 days beforehand. Sometimes they even give birth in their fields.

It’s worth noting that in these societies where women isolate themselves during labor, deliveries are often reported as being easy, almost to the point of seeming effortless to observers.

Why would this be? How does privacy and isolation contribute to easier and less complicated labor?

What kind of environment inhibits a female in labor?

To answer those questions, we can look at studies of mammalian birth carried out by Niles Newton in Chicago during the 1960s.

Newton studied birth in several mammals, but focused on mice in particular. She analyzed the factors that made deliveries longer, more difficult, and more dangerous.

She found that labor could be slowed or even stopped completely by:

Placing the laboring mother in an unfamiliar environment (a place where the sights and smells are not what she’s accustomed to).
Moving the mother from one place to another during birth.
Putting the mice in a transparent cage made of glass and observing them.

Does this sound familiar? Each of these things happens in a conventional hospital birth. The mother is moved during labor from her home, which is familiar, to a hospital, which is unfamiliar, and observed by a staff of people she has little connection to or experience with.

Although we are not mice, we do share similar needs as other mammals during labor. Anything that disturbs a laboring woman’s sense of safety and privacy will disrupt the birth process.

This definition unfortunately covers most of modern obstetrics, which has created an entire industry around the observation and monitoring of pregnant women. As Dr. Sarah Buckley observes 3:

Some of the techniques used are painful or uncomfortable, most involve some transgression of bodily or social boundaries, and almost all techniques are performed by people who are essentially strangers to the woman herself.

Underlying these procedures, Buckley says, is a fundamental distrust of women’s bodies and the natural processes of birth. This distrust has a powerful “nocebo” effect and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, where women are almost certain to need the interventions that the medical model provides and feel grateful for them no matter how traumatic the experience.

Because of this, many women in western culture have come to expect birth to be a medical emergency – rather than a natural, instinctual process – that requires medical management and intervention.

The hormonal orchestration of an undisturbed birth

The hormonal orchestration of birth is an exceedingly sophisticated and complex process that is still not well understood.

In fact, we still don’t know what causes the onset of birth. We know that estrogen, progesterone, cortisol and SP-A are all implicated, but we don’t know exactly how they work together. This is another reason why it’s so important to minimize interference in the natural birth process; we are more likely to cause problems with intervention than solve them.

A perfect example of this is fetal heart monitoring with ultrasound during labor. The pretense for this type of monitoring is that it will catch a potential problem and thus make the mother and baby safer.

However, studies show just the opposite is true. A large review published in Lancet in 1987 covering tens of thousands of births in Australia, Europe and the U.S. found that the only statistically significant effect of continuous fetal heart monitoring during labor was an increase in the rate of Caesarians and forceps deliveries.

The hormones involved in orchestrating mammalian birth are secreted by brain’s most primitive structure, the limbic system. The limbic system is not in our conscious control. For birth to happen optimally, we need to give this more primitive part of the brain precedence over the “rational brain” (the neocortex).

Anything that inhibits this shift of consciousness – including fetal heart monitoring, bright lighting, conversation, observation and expectations of “rational” behavior – will very likely interrupt the natural birth process.

Conversely, when we provide the right environment for a woman during labor – conditions in which she feels safe, private and unobserved – we facilitate the instinctual coordination of birth that is part of every woman’s genetic heritage.

Dr. Buckley observes4:

Undisturbed birth represents the smoothest hormonal orchestration of the birth process, and therefore the easiest transition possible; physiologically, hormonally, psychologically, and emotionally, from pregnancy and birth to new motherhood and lactation, for each woman. When a mother’s hormonal orchestration is undisturbed, her baby’s safety is also enhanced, not only during labor and delivery, but also in the critical postnatal transition from womb to world.

This, together with modern hygiene and the availability of advanced emergency medical techniques, give us a better chance of an easy and safe birth than any of our ancestors have had in the history of the human race.

In the next few articles in this series, we’ll be exploring the hormones involved in the birth process and how medical procedures such as epidurals and induction with synthetic oxytocin (pitocin) interfere with the exquisitely regulated (and still poorly understood) hormonal orchestration of undisturbed birth.

Odent M. Birth and breastfeeding: rediscovering the needs of women during pregnancy and childbirth. Clairview Books 2007. ↩

Odent M. Birth and breastfeeding: rediscovering the needs of women during pregnancy and childbirth. Clairview Books 2007. ↩

Buckley S. Gentle birth, gentle mothering: a doctor’s guide to natural childbirth and early parenting choices. Celestial Arts 2009. pp.96 ↩

Buckley S. Gentle birth, gentle mothering: a doctor’s guide to natural childbirth and early parenting choices. Celestial Arts 2009. pp.97 ↩

Baby-led Solids Introduction

2011-07-28T09:58:00.000-07:00

Ditch the rice cereal! (It's not good for them anyway)

Ditch the purees!

Ditch the spoons!

Ditch the expensive baby food maker!

Ever heard of baby-led solids intro? We did this with Noah and little Bijon is following in his big bro's footsteps. Noah's first food was watermelon and some of Bijon's first foods were steak and eggs.

Yes, they can chew without teeth (gums are super hard). No, they didn't choke. No, they don't need rice cereal...

"...rice cereal is a less than perfect choice for the first complementary food given to infants, [Dr. Greer] said. Rice cereal is low in protein and high in carbohydrates. It is often mixed with varying amounts of breast milk or formula. Although most brands of formula now have added iron, zinc, and vitamins, iron is poorly absorbed—only about 7.8% of intake is incorporated into red blood cells.

In contrast, meat is a rich source of iron, zinc, and arachidonic acid. Consumption of meat, fish, or poultry provides iron in the form of heme and promotes absorption of nonheme iron, noted Dr. Greer. Red meat and dark poultry meat have the greatest concentration of heme iron. Heme iron is absorbed intact into intestinal mucosal cells and is not affected by inhibitors of nonheme iron from the intestinal tract. Iron salts present in infant cereal are generally insoluble and poorly absorbed."*

*Source: http://www.pediatricnews.com/article/S0031-398X(09)70296-6/fulltext

Interested? Read on...(pics to come :)

Full text here.

Guidelines for implementing a baby-led approach to the introduction of solid food

Gill Rapley

Introduction

Implementing a baby-led approach to the introduction of solid foods requires an understanding of why this approach can be considered both logical and safe. The first section below explains the rationale and underlying principles which support this method of introducing solids and the last section, DO's and DON'Ts, provides a quick reference list of the key points. Following these guidelines will maximise the chance that both the baby and his parents will enjoy the transition to solid feeding, and will help to ensure the baby's wellbeing.

Most babies will be ready to start experimenting with solid foods from around six months of age. Parents of babies who were born preterm (i.e. before 37 weeks of pregnancy), or who have any medical condition which might affect their ability to handle food safely or to digest a range of foods, are advised to discuss with their health advisers when they should start to offer their baby solid foods, and before deciding to use baby led weaning (BLW) as the only method.

by Gill Rapley, adapted by Stefan Kleintjes, dietician

*These guidelines have been adapted from the original, which were developed as a result of a small piece of research carried out by Gill Rapley as part of a Master's degree. Gill's interest in the introduction of solid foods is independent of her work for the UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative.

Rationale for a baby-led approach to the introduction of solid foods

Breastfeeding as the basis for self-feeding

Exclusive breastfeeding is recommended for the first six months of life. Breastfeeding is the ideal preparation for self-feeding with solid foods. Breastfeeding babies feed at their own pace – indeed, it is impossible to force them to do anything else! They also balance their own intake of food and fluid by choosing how long each feed should last. And, because breastmilk changes in flavour according to the mother's diet, breastfeeding prepares the baby for other tastes.

Normal, healthy breastfed babies appear to be quite capable, with the right sort of support from their parents, of managing their own introduction to solid foods. However, although it is the self-feeding which characterises breastfeeding that underpins the theory of baby-led weaning, many parents whose babies were bottle-fed have found that this method works equally well for them. The only significant difference is the need to ensure that the baby is offered drinks other than milk.

Understanding the babies motivation

This approach to the introduction of solids offers a baby the opportunity to discover what other foods have to offer as part of finding out about the world around him. It utilises his desire to explore and experiment, and to mimic the activities of others. Allowing the baby to set the pace of each meal, and maintaining an emphasis on play and exploration rather than on eating, enables the transition to solid foods to take place as naturally as possible. This is because it would appear that what motivates babies to make this transition is curiosity, not hunger.

There is no reason for mealtimes to coincide with the baby's milk feeds. Indeed, thinking of (milk)feeding and the introduction to solid foods as two separate activities will allow a more relaxed approach and make the experience more enjoyable for both parents and child.

Won't he choke?

Many parents worry about babies choking. However, there is good reason to believe that babies are at less risk of choking if they are in control of what goes into their mouth than if they are spoon fed. This is because babies are not capable of intentionally moving food to the back of their throats until after they have developed the ability to chew. And they do not develop the ability to chew until after they have developed the ability to reach out and grab things. The ability to pick up very small things develops later still. Thus, a very young baby cannot easily put himself at risk because he cannot get small pieces of food into his mouth. Spoon feeding, by contrast, encourages the baby to suck the food straight to the back of his mouth, potentially making choking more likely.

It appears that a baby's general development keeps pace with the development of his ability to manage food in his mouth, and to digest it. A baby who is struggling to get food into his mouth is probably not quite ready to eat it. It is important to resist the temptation to 'help' the baby in these circumstances since his own developmental abilities are what ensure that the transition to solid foods takes place at the right pace for him, while keeping the risk of choking to a minimum.

Tipping a baby backwards or lying him down to feed him solid foods is dangerous. A baby who is handling food should always be supported in an upright position. This ensures that food that he is not yet able to swallow, or does not wish to swallow, will fall forward out of his mouth.

Adopting a baby-led approach doesn't mean abandoning all the common sense rules of safety. While it is very unlikely that a young baby would succeed in picking up a peanut, for example, accidents can and will happen on rare occasions – however the baby is fed. The normal rules of safety while eating and playing should there be adhered to when the transition to solid foods is baby-led.

Babies who are allowed to feed themselves seem to accept a wide range of foods. This is probably because they have more than just the flavour of the food to focus on – they are experiencing texture, colour, size and shape as well. In addition, giving babies foods separately, or in a way which enables them to separate them for themselves, enables them to learn about a range of different flavours and textures. And allowing them to leave anything they appear not to like will encourage them to be prepared to try new things.

General principles of good nutrition for children apply equally to young babies who are managing their own introduction to solid foods. Thus, 'fast foods' and foods with added sugar and salt should be avoided. However, once a baby is over six months old there is no need (unless there is a family history of allergy or a known or suspected digestive disorder) to otherwise restrict the foods that the baby can be offered. Fruit and vegetables are ideal, with harder foods cooked lightly so that they are soft enough to be chewed. At first, meat is best offered as a large piece, to be explored and sucked; once the baby can manage to pick up and release fistfuls of food, minced meat works well. (Note: babies do not need teeth to bite and chew – gums do very well!)

There is no need to cut food into mouth-sized pieces. Indeed, this will make it difficult for a young baby to handle. A good guide to the size and shape needed is the size of the baby's fist, with one important extra factor to bear in mind: Young babies cannot open their fist on purpose to release things. This means that they do best with food that is chip-shaped or has a built-in 'handle' (like the stalk of a piece of broccoli). They can then chew the bit that is sticking out of their fist and drop the rest later – usually while reaching for the next interesting-looking piece. As their skills improve, less food will be dropped.

What about drinks?

The fat content of breastmilk increases during a feed. A breastfed baby recognises this change and uses it to control his fluid intake. If he wants a drink, he will tend to feed for a short time, perhaps from both breasts, whereas if he is hungry he will feed for longer. This is why breastfed babies who are allowed to feed whenever they want for as long as they want do not need any other drinks, even in hot weather.

This principle can work throughout the period of transition to family foods if the baby continues to be allowed to breastfeed 'on demand'. A cup of water can be offered with meals as part of the opportunity for exploration but there is no need to be concerned if he doesn't want to drink any.

Babies who are formula-fed need a slightly different approach, since formula has the same consistency throughout the feed and is therefore less thirst-quenching. Offering water at regular intervals once the baby is eating small quantities of food is all that is needed to ensure a sufficient fluid intake.

Continuing to give milk feeds 'on demand' during the weaning period will have the added advantage of allowing the baby to decide how and when to cut down his milk intake. As he eats more at shared mealtimes, so he will 'forget' to ask for some of his milk feeds, or will take less at each feed. There is no need for his mother to make these decisions for him.

DOs and DON'Ts for baby-led introduction of solids

-DO offer your baby the chance to participate whenever anyone else in the family is eating. You can begin to do this as soon as he shows an interest in watching you, although he is unlikely to be ready to put food in his mouth until he is about six months.

-DO ensure that your baby is supported in an upright position while he is experimenting with food. In the early days you can sit him on your lap, facing the table. Once he is beginning to show skill at picking food up he will almost certainly be mature enough to sit, with minimal support, in a high chair.

-DO start by offering foods that are baby-fist-sized, preferably chip-shaped (i.e., with a 'handle'). As far as possible, and provided they are suitable, offer him the same foods that you are eating, so that he feels part of what is going on.

-DO offer a variety of foods. There is no need to limit your baby's experience with food any more than you do with toys.

-DON'T hurry your baby. Allow him to direct the pace of what he is doing. In particular, don't be tempted to 'help' him by putting things in his mouth for him.

-DON'T expect your baby to eat any food on the first few occasions. Once he has discovered that these new toys taste nice, he will begin to chew and, later, to swallow.

-DON'T expect a young baby to eat all of each piece of food at first – remember that he won't yet have developed the ability to get at food which is inside his fist.

-DO try rejected foods again later – babies often change their minds and later accept foods they originally turned down.

-DON'T leave your baby on his own with food.

-DON'T offer foods which present an obvious danger, such as peanuts.

-DON'T offer 'fast' foods, ready meals or foods that have added salt or sugar.

-DO offer water from a cup but don't worry if your baby shows no interest in it. A breastfed baby, in particular, is likely to continue for some time to get all the drinks he needs from the breast.

-DO be prepared for the mess! A clean plastic sheet on the floor under the high chair will protect your carpet and make clearing up easier. It will also enable you to give back foods that have been dropped, so that less is wasted. (You will be pleasantly surprised at how quickly your baby learns to eat with very little mess!)

-DO continue to allow your baby to breastfeed whenever he wants, for as long as he wants. Expect his breastfeedingfeeding pattern to change as he starts to eat more solid foods.

-If you have a family history of food intolerance, allergy or digestive problems, DO discuss this method of weaning with your health advisers before embarking on it.

-Finally, DO enjoy watching your baby learn about food – and develop his skills with his hands and mouth in the process!

Almost Primal Ice Cream Recipe

2011-06-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ICE CREAM!

I love ice cream! Who doesn't? I use to go once a week to either Yogurtland, Golden Spoon, or if I was feeling really fancy, Cold Stone. But I don't do well with dairy, and even though it tasted sooo good going down, I regretted it immediately after. I knew there must be some way to make ice cream healthier and more primal.

I asked my mom if I could borrow her ice cream maker (still borrowing it, thanks mom!) and then perused the Internet for some basic coconut milk recipes. I can't take full credit for this recipe as it is a conglomeration of many I found.

I have to tell you, I never go out for ice cream anymore because this is soooo good! Feel free to experiment and add what you normally like in your ice cream!

Basic vanilla ice cream recipe:

Ingredients:

-1 can full fat coconut milk
-1 large egg, preferably organic and pastured
-1 1/2 tbsp vanilla extract
-1/2 tsp sea salt
-1 tbsp rum or brandy (keeps ice cream from getting too hard)
-3-6 tbsp sweetener of your choice (maple syrup, agave nectar, erythritol, sugar, etc. I prefer maple syrup)

Optional add-ins:

-peanut butter
-cocoa powder
-fresh fruit
-the possibilities are endless

(Our current favorite is peanut butter chocolate with shredded coconut and nuts as toppings!)

Directions:

1. Place all ingredients in blender and blend up until smooth
2. Poor into ice cream maker and turn on for 30 minutes.
3. Enjoy a non-chemical-laden, dairy-free treat!

Primal Parenting

2011-06-18T07:44:00.000-07:00

I have a mellow second child. People always comment that he is "so calm...so happy...so mellow." Thank GOD because my first was soooo not this way. I love his spirited nature, but man, it has been a rough journey.

Is it temperament? Is it the way we parent this time around? Is it nature? Is is nurture? Probably a little bit of both.

But what I do know is that one major difference this time around is Bijon was literally *on me* or someone else while we went about our business until he creeped, around five or six months. I read The Continuum Concept while I was pregnant (unfortunately, I began listening to my "instincts" a little too late with Noah, my first, and kind of missed the in-arms phase I am about to describe. It's hard to listen to your instincts the first time around when you have no idea what you're doing, and the fact that those instincts pretty much go against what EVERYONE around you is telling you do to).

I will now leave you with a passage from the author of The Continuum Concept that speaks to my soul. Does it speak to yours? Does it speak to your "primal" instincts?

(Full text here: http://www.continuum-concept.org/reading/in-arms.html

The Importance of the In-Arms Phase

by Jean Liedloff

First appeared in Mothering magazine, Winter 1989
In the two and a half years during which I lived among Stone Age Indians in the South American jungle (not all at once, but on five separate expeditions with a lot of time between them for reflection), I came to see that our human nature is not what we have been brought up to believe it is. Babies of the Yequana tribe, far from needing peace and quiet to go to sleep, snoozed blissfully whenever they were tired, while the men, women, or children carrying them danced, ran, walked, shouted, or paddled canoes. Toddlers played together without fighting or arguing, and they obeyed their elders instantly and willingly.

The notion of punishing a child had apparently never occurred to these people, nor did their behavior show anything that could truly be called permissiveness. No child would have dreamed of inconveniencing, interrupting, or being waited on by an adult. And by the age of four, children were contributing more to the work force in their family than they were costing others.

Babes in arms almost never cried and, fascinatingly, did not wave their arms, kick, arch their backs, or flex their hands and feet. They sat quietly in their slings or slept on someone's hip — exploding the myth that babies need to flex to "exercise." They also did not throw up unless extremely ill and did not suffer from colic. When startled during the first months of crawling and walking, they did not expect anyone to go to them but rather went on their own to their mother or other caretakers for the measure of reassurance needed before resuming their explorations. Without supervision, even the smallest tots rarely hurt themselves.

Is their "human nature" different from ours? Some people actually imagine that it is, but there is, of course, only one human species. What can we learn from the Yequana tribe?

Our Innate Expectations

Primarily, we can try to grasp fully the formative power of what I call the in-arms phase. It begins at birth and ends with the commencement of creeping, when the infant can depart and return at will to the caretaker's knee. It consists, simply, of the infant having 24-hour contact with an adult or older child.

At first, I merely observed that this in-arms experience had an impressively salutary effect on the babies and that they were no "trouble" to manage. Their bodies were soft and conformed to any position convenient to their bearers — some of whom even dangled their babies down their backs while holding them by the wrist. I do not mean to recommend this position, but the fact that it is possible demonstrates the scope of what constitutes comfort for a baby. In contrast to this is the desperate discomfort of infants laid carefully in a crib or carriage, tenderly tucked in, and left to go rigid with the desire for the living body that is by nature their rightful place — a body belonging to someone who will "believe" their cries and relieve their craving with welcoming arms.

Why the incompetence in our society? From childhood on, we are taught not to believe in our instinctive knowledge. We are told that parents and teachers know best and that when our feelings do not concur with their ideas, we must be wrong. Conditioned to mistrust or utterly disbelieve our feelings, we are easily convinced not to believe the baby whose cries say "You should hold me!" "I should be next to your body!" "Don't leave me!" Instead, we overrule our natural response and follow the going fashion dictated by babycare "experts." The loss of faith in our innate expertise leaves us turning from one book to another as each successive fad fails.

It is important to understand who the real experts are. The second greatest babycare expert is within us, just as surely as it resides in every surviving species that, by definition, must know how to care for its young. The greatest expert of all is, of course, the baby — programmed by millions of years of evolution to signal his or her own kind by sound and action when care is incorrect. Evolution is a refining process that has honed our innate behavior with magnificent precision. The signal from the baby, the understanding of the signal by his or her people, the impulse to obey it — all are part of our species' character.

The presumptuous intellect has shown itself to be ill-equipped to guess at the authentic requirements of human babies. The question is often: Should I pick up the baby when he or she cries? Or should I first let the baby cry for a while? Or should I let the baby cry so that this child know who is boss and will not become a "tyrant"?

No baby would agree to any of these impositions. Unanimously, they let us know by the clearest signals that they should not be put down at all. As this option has not been widely advocated in contemporary Western civilization, the relationship between parent and child has remained steadfastly adversarial. The game has been about how to get the baby to sleep in the crib, whether or not to oppose the baby's cries has not been considered. Although Tine Thevenin's book, The Family Bed, and others have gone some way to open the subject up of having children sleep with parents, the important principle has not been clearly addressed: to act against our nature as a species is inevitably to lose well-being.

Once we have grasped and accepted the principle of respecting our innate expectations, we will be able to discover precisely what those expectations are — in other words, what evolution has accustomed us to experience.

The Formative Role of the In-Arms Phase

How did I come to see the in-arms phase as crucial to a person's development? First, I saw the relaxed and happy people in the forests of South America lugging around their babies and never putting them down. Little by little, I was able to see a connection between that simple fact and the quality of their lives. Later still, I have come to certain conclusions about how and why being in constant contact with the active caretaker is essential to the initial postnatal stage of development.

For one thing, it appears that the person carrying the baby (usually the mother in the first months, then often a four- to 12-year-old child who brings the baby back to the mother for feeding) is laying the foundation for later experience. The baby passively participates in the bearers running, walking, laughing, talking, working, and playing. The particular activities, the pace, the inflections of the language, the variety of sights, night and day, the range of temperatures, wetness and dryness, and the sounds of community life form a basis for the active participation that will begin at six or eight months of age with creeping, crawling, and then walking. A baby who has spent this time lying in a quiet crib or looking at the inside of a carriage, or at the sky, will have missed most of this essential experience.

Because of the child's need to participate, it is also important that caretakers not just sit and gaze at the baby or continually ask what the baby wants, but lead active lives themselves. Occasionally one cannot resist giving a baby a flurry of kisses; however, a baby who is programmed to watch you living your busy life is confused and frustrated when you spend your time watching him living his. A baby who is in the business of absorbing what life is like as lived by you is thrown into confusion if you ask him to direct it.

The second essential function of the in-arms experience appears to have escaped the notice of everyone (including me, until the mid-1960s). It is to provide babies with a means of discharging their excess energy until they are able to do so themselves. In the months before being able to get around under their own power, babies accumulate energy from the absorption of food and sunshine. A baby therefore needs constant contact with the energy field of an active person, who can discharge the unused excess for each of them. This explains why the Yequana babies were so strangely relaxed — why they did not stiffen, kick, arch, or flex to relieve themselves of an uncomfortable accumulation of energy.

To provide the optimum in-arms experience, we have to discharge our own energy efficiently. One can very quickly calm a fussing baby by running or jumping with the child, or by dancing or doing whatever eliminates one's own energy excess. A mother or father who must suddenly go out to get something need not say, "Here, you hold the baby. I'm going to run down to the shop." The one doing the running can take the baby along for the ride. The more action, the better!

Babies — and adults — experience tension when the circulation of energy in their muscles is impeded. A baby seething with undischarged energy is asking for action: a leaping gallop around the living room or a swing from the child's hands or feet. The baby's energy field will immediately take advantage of an adult's discharging one. Babies are not the fragile things we have been handling with kid gloves. In fact, a baby treated as fragile at this formative stage can be persuaded that he or she is fragile.As parents, you can readily attain the mastery that comes with comprehension of energy flow. In the process you will discover many ways to help your baby retain the soft muscle tone of ancestral well-being and give your baby some of the calm and comfort an infant needs to feel at home in the world.

My Inspirations...

2011-06-10T17:04:00.000-07:00

5 years old & 6 months old

Where does the time go?

Thanks to my beautiful friend, Melissa, for taking these amazing photos!

Green Your Pits

2011-06-06T22:06:00.000-07:00

I've pretty much switched all my beauty and hygiene products for eco-friendly, safe ones. But there is one product I keep going back to, and that would be my not-so-safe deodorant. I've tried pretty much all of the natural ones out there, and I've come to the conclusion that I am just a stinky, sweaty girl because none of them last all day on me, heck, not even half the day. I found a couple that work OK, but after a few weeks of using them, along with the sometimes days on end I rely on whore baths to stay clean-smelling (I do have a six month old and am homeschooling a five year old, ya know; showers aren't really a priority some days just between you and me), I end up succumbing to the deodorant with yucky ingredients just so I can avoid my own stench.

What's so wrong with the yucky-ingredient containing deodorant/antiperspirant? Oh, I'm so glad you asked. Let's see here, let me go check with good ol' Dr. Mercola. He'll surely have a thorough, frenzy producing answer for you...

Ah, yes, here we go: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/09/20/does-your-antiperspirant-cause-breast-cancer.aspx

So basically deodorants and antiperspirants containing aluminum and parabens are linked to breast cancer and alzheimer's disease. Awesome!

Well, never fear because I have finally found a natural deodorant solution that ACTUALLY WORKS. I am beyond excited!

Here we go:

1. Roll on Herbal Magic deodorant:

2. After the Herbal Magic dries, sprinkle some Honeybee Gardens deodorant powder on top of that:

3. Face the world with confidence:

Apple Pie A La Mode Green Smoothie Recipe

2011-06-02T08:58:00.000-07:00

I LOVE my vitamix. I've had it for about three years now and not a day goes by that I don't use it. Sometimes I even use it twice a day. It is one of those kitchen appliances I could never see living without. Well worth the money.

I use to make green smoothies a lot for Noah when he was little, and since the wee one (almost seven months old!) has started solids, I've been making them more again. Bijon loves his green smoothies as much as his brother and I do. It's a quick, easy way for adults and kids to get in some greens that are so neglected from our modern day diet.

I made this smoothie today for myself right before I made Bijon's (Bijon's smoothies only contain water, greens, and a banana or mango chunks so far). Noah came in and asked if he could try it. This was his response: "Wow, yum! I want one! It tastes like oatmeal." So I made him a big glass of his own and when he finished it he asked for another one. Two thumbs up!

I adapted this recipe from AndreAnna over at Life As A Plate (This woman is amazing. I want to marry her just so she can cook for me every night!) The only changes I made were: I used stevia instead of honey, left out the chia seeds, and added coconut oil.

Ingredients:

-1 1/2 cups full fat coconut milk
-1 cup spinach
-1 apple, cored
-1/2 tsp cinnamon
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-15 drops vanilla cream liquid stevia (or 1 tbsp honey)
-1 tsp coconut oil
-1-2 cups ice

Directions:

-Add all ingredients to your blender, blend up until smooth and enjoy!

Paleo "Orange Bang" Recipe

2011-05-29T21:00:00.000-07:00

We often get take out on the weekend from this amazing local Mexican food restaurant and my son loves to get an Orange Bang whenever we go there. We usually let him get whatever he wants to eat when we dine out or hang out with friends, but keep his food options primarily paleo at home.

For those of you unfamiliar with Orange Bang, it's a sweet, orangey, creamy beverage and unfortunately I think they put crack in it as well because my son acts like A TOTAL CRACK-HEAD after he finishes it. Oy.

So anyway, today I was picking up take out from said restaurant for the boys and decided I was not in the mood for the mini meltdown that ensues after my son consumes Orange Bang. I knew he was going to be disappointed when I came home without one, so I decided I was going to dream up a paleo version on the drive home.

This is what I came up with and this was my son's response, "WOW mommy, it's Orange Bang, just like we get. YUM!" Nuff said.

Ingredients:

-1 cup full fat coconut milk
-1 large orange
-2 tsp vanilla extract
-1 tbsp raw honey (optional; local is best)
-1 cup ice

Directions:

1. Place all ingredients in a blender and blend for about 30 seconds.
2. Serve and enjoy!

Why Grains and Legumes are Unhealthy & "10 Reasons to Go Grain Free"

2011-05-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

Why are grains and legumes so unhealthy?
(Original text here: http://www.newtreatments.org/why%20are%20grains%20and%20legumes%20so%20unhealthy )
The answer:

It's good to point out that grains and soy aren't edible in nature without processing and so it's safe to assume we haven't eaten them for millions of years. Only since the advent of agriculture we started to rely on grains for our food supply. That was a huge mistake. There are several reasons why grains and soy are bad:

Grains are in fact a large supply of starch, surrounded by a kernel. Starch decomposes (digests) into maltose and isomaltose in the intestines, which then decompose into glucose. You can look at it this way. When you take a slice of bread and crush it in your hand, you are virtually eating that amount of refined sugar. The problem is that that amount of sugar elevates the bloodsugar levels amazingly fast and causes your pancreas to produce lots and lots of insulin to metabolise it. Humans are not adapted to eat such amounts of concentrated carbohydrates and the pancreas (and adrenals) aren't fit to the job. Over time one will develop insulin resistance, hypoglycemia, diabetes II.

Another problem is that the immune system crashes when your bloodsugar levels increases to high levels. It takes *hours* for the the immune system to recover fully. Another problem with refined grains is that it's void of minerals and vitamins, which are needed to properly digest and metabolise the huge amount of starch. So, each time you eat a slice of bread, your body needs to take minerals and vitamins from its limited stores to digest and metabolise it. Over time, you will develop deficincies of these vitamines and minerals.

You could eat the grains unrefined, but then a lot of antinutrients will remain. Antinutrients are substances that bind to essential vitamins and minerals, making them worthless or impossible to absorb from the digestive tract.

So, either way, refined or unrefined, grains will cause problems..

Further, many grains contain a lot of allergens which upset your immune system and causes the development of allergies. Imagine this: Humans have never in their evolution of millions of years eaten grains and now, since only 4.000-10.000 years ago, we are relying on this food. Our genes aren't adapted to these foods. Grains are in fact incompatible with humans (and also dogs and cats and many mammals)...

Soy beans aren't edible raw and they are full of antinutrients and substances that act like hormones in the human body. Eating soy can cause women to have menstruations that last 2 days longer than normal and are way more painfull.

Another problem with grains and soy bean is that they can't be eaten raw, which only allows us to eat them cooked. Cooking essentially damages all foods. The more you eat raw, the better you will feel..

I forgot perhaps the most important reason why grains are bad: They are very hard to digest properly. As I said above, they need to be digested in two phases. First, the starches, which are very long chains of carbohydrate molecules, must be seperated into small pieces consisting of 2 glucose molecules. This is called maltose (or isomaltose). Next, the intestines need to produce enough enzymes (maltase) to digest the maltose into the elemental glucose molecules. As you see, quite a lot of work.. The problem is that the human body isn't fit for this job and a part of the starch isn't absorbed and descends into the large intestines, feeding critters, causing inflammation, gasses, damage to the wall of the intestines, and other problems.

Compare this to fruit and honey, which are predigested foods. They primarily contain glucose and fructose, which don't need to be digested at all and can be absorbed painlessly by the intestines. Because everything is easily absorbed it can't feed the critters..

I bet there are even a dozen more reasons why grains and soy are bad but I think these are the most important..

As for the problem of not getting enough carbs: No such problem exists. Carbohydrates are optional. You can survive and feel perfectly healthy on a zero-carbohydrate diet.. Look at the Eskimos who virtually eat zero carbohydrates and look at the thousands of people eating according to a low-carbohydrate diet.. They are a *lot* healthier than people eating their grains each day..

By the way, on http://www.healingcrow.com there are some great articles on this topic..

10 Reasons to Give Up Grains
(Original text here: http://nourishedkitchen.com/against-the-grain-10-reasons-to-give-up-grains/ )

Why You Should Go Grain-free

1. If you can get it from grain, you can get it elsewhere.

The big heroes of most grains’ nutrient profile are dietary fiber and B vitamins. Take heed, every grain is different and different grains offer different nutrient profiles. Yet, one thing remains constant: if you can find the nutrient in grain, you can find the nutrient in better quantities in other foods. For example, 100 grams of whole wheat flour contains 44 mcg of folate; however, a 100-gram portion of lamb liver will give you 400 mcg of folate and a 100-gram portion of yardlong beans will give you a whopping 658 mcg per 100-gram portion. Similarly with the B Vitamins niacin and thiamin, while a 100-gram whole wheat flour contains 30% of the RDA for niacin and 32% of the RDA for thiamin, you can find these nutrients in higher quantities in other foods – namely flaxseeds and sesame seeds. Whole grains are often touted as health foods for their fiber content, but you can find dietary fiber in better quantities in other, more nutrient-dense foods. For example: 100 grams of cooked brown rice offers up 1.8 grams of dietary fiber; by contrast, a 100-gram serving of cooked collard greens offers 2.8 grams; 100 grams of raw fireweed contains a whopping 11 grams of dietary fiber and even green peas contain about 5 grams of fiber per serving.

2. Grains aren’t good for your gut.

Intestinal health is critical to your overall health. If you’re gut isn’t healthy, you can’t absorb nutrients from the foods you eat. If you can’t absorb nutrients from the foods you eat, your body is malnourished and is more prone to disease. Grains are associated with a condition called leaky gut syndrome. Tiny particles of grains, when ingested, can slip through the intestinal walls causing an immune response. With your immune system excessively taxed by constantly attacking these out-of-place particles of grain, it cannot effectively fight against true threats like pathogens.

3. You’re probably gluten-intolerant.

If you’re white, there’s a good chance that you’re gluten-intolerant to some degree. Current research estimates that about 1% of the population suffers from celiac disease, an auto-immune condition related to the ingestion of gluten-containing grains like wheat and barley; however, some researchers on celiac disease and gluten intolerance estimate that 30% to 40% of people of European descent are gluten-intolerant to some degree. That’s a lot of people who are regularly consuming a food that makes them sick. (And, yes, I’m one of them.)

4. Grains cause inflammation.

Due to a high starch content, grains are inflammatory foods. The more refined the grain, the more inflammatory it is. For example, unbleached white flour is more inflammatory than whole grain flour; however, whole grains are still moderately inflammatory foods and certainly more inflammatory than other foods like fresh vegetables and wholesome fats. Chronic inflammation is linked to a myriad of degenerative, modern diseases including arthritis, allergies, asthma, cardiovascular disease, bone loss, emotional imbalance and even cancer. Unbleached white flour earns an inflammation factor of -421 or strongly inflammatory on NutritionData.com while whole wheat flour earns an inflammation factor of -247 or moderately inflammatory. Similarly, whole cooked millet earns an inflammation factor of -150 and cooked brown rice earns an inflammation factor of -143 – also moderately inflammatory.

5. Grains are fairly new on the scene.

While still a traditional food, grains are, nonetheless, the new kids on the block. Prior to the advent of agriculture, humans relied on hunting and gathering for their foods. They foraged for wild greens, berries, fruits and other plants. They hunted wild animals. They fished for wild fish. They didn’t plant a garden, or grow any amber waves of grain or, for that matter, drink dairy from domesticated animals since there simply wasn’t any domesticated animals. Humans survived like this from the development of the appearance of the first homo sapiens sapiens about 47,000 years ago to the advent of agriculture some 10 – 12,000 years ago. So, for the better part of human existence grains did not comprise any notable portion of the human diet. In essence, what has become the bulk of our modern diet was missing from the diet of our prehistoric ancestors.

6. Grains aren’t good for your joints.

Due to their inflammatory nature, grains – even whole grains – are linked to joint pain and arthritis. Grain’s amino acid composition mirrors that of the soft tissue in your joints. Because both synovial tissue and grains are chemically similar, your body has difficulty differentiating between the two. So, when your immune cells get all hot and bothered by inflammation caused by grain and begin to attack it as a foreign invader, they also begin to attack the soft tissue in your joint – leading to pain, autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and, of course, more inflammation.

7. Poorly Prepared Grains prevent mineral absorption.

When improperly prepared as they most often are, grains can inhibit vitamin and mineral absorption. Grains contain substances like phytic acid which binds up minerals and prevents proper absorption. Essentially, though your diet might be rich in iron, calcium and other vital nutrients if you eat improperly prepared grain, you’re not fully absorbing nutrients from the foods you eat. However, please note that souring, sprouting and soaking grains neutralizes phytates and renders the nutrients in grain more absorbable.

8. Grains are bad for your teeth.

Due to those high levels of phytates in grain, grain is linked to dental decay. With high levels of mineral-blocking phytic acid coupled with low mineral absorption rates and plenty of starches for bacteria to feed on, grain contributes to dental decay. Anthropological records of our pre-agricultural ancestors indicates very little to no tooth decay; however, that changed after the dawn of agriculture. Indeed, some anthropologists use the presence of tooth decay is an indicator of an agricultural society.

9. Grains aren’t good for your skin either.

Grains have a very high carbohydrate content, and while the carbohydrates in grain are complex they are still broken down into sugars nonetheless. These sugars instruct your body to produce more insulin and insulin-like growth factor (IFG-1). Elevated insulin levels lead to a cascading hormonal response and these hormones activate the sebum-producing glands in your skin – encouraging them to produce more oil. IFG-1 is also linked with the increased production of keratinocytes which also contribute to acne.

10. Eating grain makes you crave grain.

You know how the smell of bread creates a longing in you – a yearning for a slice, slathered with butter and maybe jam. Or consider a plate of cookies set in front of you – so delicious – and you can’t just have one? Foods rich in carbohydrates give you quick energy, but that energy wears off just as quickly as it came. Since grains break down into sugar, they create a rise in insulin levels when those levels fall you crave more grains and, thus, the vicious cycle continues.

Another quickie post since life is getting in the way of my blog :)

2011-05-04T23:37:00.000-07:00

I have a post I'm working on that addresses the many reasons to avoid grains. And no, it's not just because they are full of carbs, leading to spiked insulin, leading to fat storage, leading to muffin tops! But that post will have to wait because it is dear to my heart and I really want to give it my all :) I just can't tell you enough how much avoiding grains has impacted my life for the better and I look forward to sharing the "science" behind why grains are bad for you.

So back to this post.

It seems that many people wonder how eating fat (yes, even saturated fat - it's good for you! Just read Nourishing Traditions, to name one fabulous book, to find out why), red meat (100% grass-fed and organic, that is), and the incredible, edible (and demonized) egg impacts their inner health. I have read more stories than I can count on both hands that go something like this: "I was tired of being on medications to control my blood pressure/diabetes/cholesterol/thyroid (etc.). My doctor didn't give me any options other than "Take your medication, eat low fat, avoid red meat, avoid eggs, make sure you eat your whole grains." Frustrated with seeing absolutely NO improvement, and on top of that, I was still gaining weight, I decided to become my own advocate. I researched and found out about the paleo diet. I've been on it for X days/months and my doctor can't believe my blood work results. It's a MIRACLE."

No, it's not a miracle. You are just giving your body what it needs to function normally, and those foods happen to be all the foods your doctor has been telling you to avoid. Did you know that medical doctors receive next to zero training in diet and nutrition? Oh, maybe one class for one semester of the EIGHT PLUS years they attended school. Hmm. Food is medicine people.

So on that note, I thought I would leave you with a testimonial I read over at http://www.everydaypaleo.com/ (I just ordered her cookbook by the way and it's suppose to be fab! I love all her recipes...kid/husband tested and approved):

"My wife Yvonne joined Norcal S&C in March 2007 and has been a loyal member ever since. They encouraged her from the get go to change her diet. Originally it was a bit of a more zone/paleo combo but as Robb Wolf is the owner of this gym it became definitely more paleo focused soon enough. Over the past few years she has tried to convince me to “go paleo” with her. I gave it half-hearted efforts a few times (and saw results in weight loss) but always reverted back to my old ways of eating. She too went on and off it as it was just easier to cook the same food for both of us, but she remained more strict than I was.

I am an active guy, play tennis everyday, and don’t eat a lot of fast food, sweets, etc, but seven months ago I found myself on five different medications for things ranging from hyper tension to high cholesterol and tri-glycerides. This was also right about when Robb’s book came out. I am not much of a reader but got through that entire book very quickly. This time we both committed to really making the change to paleo.

Sarah was Yvonne’s trainer so we had lots of great support and recipes to get us going. We quickly found that we were eating a greater variety of more interesting and tastier food. My wife who had always been a food is fuel person and hated grocery shopping was suddenly very enthusiastic about creating meals and new dishes. Rather than a banana for breakfast, sandwich for lunch and grilled chicken with rice and veg for dinner, we were now having frittatas for breakfast, leftovers for lunch (which means meat and veg) and recipes ranging from Moroccan Spiced Beef, African Fish or Mexican Chicken Stew for dinner.

After one month of eating paleo I had my blood work run again. Already my cholesterol was down from 272 to 160 (with a 1.9 ratio) and my triglycerides were down less than a quarter what they had been. I had also dropped some weight and was feeling better.

I just had my 6 month blood work review this morning. I am now down 2 pants sizes (20lbs), my cholesterol is even better (3.2 ratio), my triglycerides are “perfect” according to my doctor and my C-reactive, the one thing that was a bit high last time, is now down from 5.7 to 2.3. I am now only taking medication for my hypertension (which is hereditary).

My doctor said to me that it made no sense medically but that my blood work keeps improving. She thinks I must have an angel on my shoulder.

My wife and I are very happy with our life with our Paleo angel."

Quickie post: Dangers of Hospital Birth

2011-02-13T15:01:00.000-08:00

For those who keep asking and wondering why on earth I had a homebirth:

(I also highly recommend viewing The Business of Being Born, available through Netflix)

Full text here: http://www.gentlebirth.org/ronnie/hospitalDangers.html

Dangers of Hospital Birth

Why Birthing in a Hospital Causes More Problems Than It Solves for Normal Birth

by Ronnie Falcão, LM MS

There's a saying that birth is as safe as life gets. Sometimes birth can become dangerous for the baby or, very rarely, for the mother. This is when hospital-based maternity care really shines, and we're able to save mothers and babies who might have died a hundred years ago. Thank goodness that there are skilled surgeons who can come to the rescue when truly necessary.

There's also a saying that when you've got a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail. So it is that for hospital-based birth attendants, it is easy to become accustomed to treating every birth as a disaster waiting to happen. Many obstetricians have lost touch with the possibility of normal birth, so much so that even a pitocin induction with an epidural, fetal scalp electrode and vacuum extraction is called a "natural birth". Some hospital staff seem offended by the idea of minimizing interventions, as if preferring not to have a needle the size of a house nail inserted near your spine is the same as declining to have a second piece of Aunt Sally's Fruit Cake. Sadly, some of today’s younger doctors may never even have seen a truly physiological labor and birth—a birth completely without medical intervention.

This is how the saving grace of the hospital can become the scourging disgrace of maternity care. In their rush to prevent problems that aren't happening, hospital personnel may aggressively push procedures and drugs that can actually cause problems. Pitocin can cause uterine contractions that are so strong that they stress the baby and cause fetal distress. [1] IV narcotic drugs affect the baby so strongly that the baby may not breathe at birth [2] ; there is even a specific drug that is used to counteract the narcotics to help these drugged babies to breathe . [3] There is considerable debate as to how epidurals affect the progress of labor, but they certainly affect a woman's ability to get into a squat, which opens the pelvic plane by 20-30%; anyone can understand that this could affect the possibility of the baby's fitting through the pelvis. Epidurals can lower the mother's blood pressure so that the baby isn't getting enough oxygen through the placenta; this can cause fetal distress and the need for an emergency c-section to rescue the baby . [4]

In addition to the specific dangers of individual obstetric interventions, hospital births suffer the effects of any form of institutionalized care. Perhaps the best-known risk of hospital birth is hospital-acquired infections. Those most susceptible to hospital-acquired infections are those with compromised immune systems, such as newborns. In particular, babies are born with sterile skin and gut that are supposed to be colonized by direct contact with the mother's skin flora. If antibiotic-resistant hospital germs colonize the baby's skin and gut instead, the baby is at high risk of becoming very sick from infections that are very difficult to treat. The overall infection rate for babies born in the hospital is four times that of babies born at home [5], and these infections are more likely to be antibiotic-resistant.

More people die every year from hospital-acquired infections (90,000) [6] than from all accidental deaths (70,000), including motor vehicle crashes, fires, burns, falls, drownings, and poisonings. An additional 98,000 people die each year from general medical error . [7]

Another obvious risk of institutionalized care arises from the piecemeal nature of the care. Because there are so many different kinds of personnel performing so many different procedures, there is a lot of potential for miscommunication about critical matters. In an astoundingly progressive admission of institutional shortcomings, Beth Israel Hospital published a paper [8] about a tragic miscommunication that resulted in a baby's death. To their great credit, instead of covering up this horrible mistake, they used it as a wake-up call to revise their protocols, in an attempt to reduce miscommunication and increase safety. Unfortunately, other hospitals are slow to adopt the reforms of Beth Israel Hospital.

One of the most dangerous aspects of hospital care is that those providing most of the direct care (i.e. the nurses) are hierarchically subservient to those managing the care from a distance (i.e. the doctors). This kind of a power structure can prevent knowledgeable nurses from mitigating the potentially dangerous actions of the doctors.

Many people feel that the hospital must be the safest place to birth because of all the equipment they have. Well, the equipment is only as good as the people using it. In many hospitals, there are not enough Registered Nurses to cover all the patients, so they use Medical Technicians, who are trained to perform procedures but not necessarily trained to interpret fetal heart tracings. Most labors start at night, and women birthing second or subsequent babies often birth during the night. This is the time when the senior staff are home sleeping in their beds, because their seniority allows them to opt for the more desirable daytime shifts. A recent study confirmed that outcomes at births are worse during the night, because even the most sophisticated equipment is useless in the wrong hands . [9]

(For the record, many homebirth midwives now carry equipment that is as sophisticated as that in most hospital birth rooms. This includes continuous electronic fetal monitors and equipment for performing neonatal resuscitation if necessary.)

Institutionalized care also suffers from the economic pressures of running an efficient organization, regardless of how this might interfere with the normal process of labor and birth.

Sometimes doctors recommend pitocin without true medical necessity, simply to hasten the birth. This may be due to a need to free up a birth room to make room for other patients, or because the doctor has other responsibilities elsewhere. Stimulating labor artificially overrides the baby's ability to space out the contractions if the labor is too stressful. This increases the risk of fetal distress.

Hospital staff have a strong bias towards confining the laboring woman to the bed and requiring her to push in a reclining position. This often puts the baby's weight on the placenta or umbilical cord, possibly restricting the baby's supply of oxygenated blood from the placenta. In contrast, upright positions put the baby's weight downward, towards the open cervix and away from the placenta and umbilical cord, reducing or eliminating fetal distress caused by cord compression.

A rush to clamp and cut the umbilical cord within seconds after birth is one of the most dangerous hospital practices. This premature severance of the umbilical cord cuts the flow of oxygenated blood to the baby before the baby has established the lungs as the source of oxygen. Premature cord clamping also deprives the baby of the blood that would naturally fill the pulmonary vasculature as it expands in the minutes immediately after the birth. This practice is documented to increase the risks of neonatal hypoxia, hypovolemia, and anemia, thus increasing the need for blood transfusions. [10]

There is some very new research showing that placental tissue itself may be a rich source of pluripotent stem cells, in addition to the blood stem cells in blood drawn from the umbilical cord. [11] We do not yet know whether premature cutting of the umbilical cord halts the migration of pluripotent stem cells from the placental tissue into the baby's body to repair damage from even minor birth trauma.

Perhaps the most egregious and unnecessary interference with the normal birth sequence is the separation of mother and baby immediately after birth. Even a ten-minute separation is too long during this critical first hour after birth - it prevents the natural nipple stimulation that increases the mother's oxytocin to contract the uterus and prevent a postpartum hemorrhage.[12] Instead of baby-provided nipple stimulation, hospitals are now routinely using synthetic oxytocin by IV or injection after the birth to control bleeding.

Similarly, early cuddling of mother and baby stimulates oxytocin production in the newborn, thus raising the baby's body temperature to help with the adaptation to the extrauterine environment. The mother's body is the best warmer for the newborn. [13]

Because different personnel are involved in providing piecemeal care for mothers and babies, providers do not always see how their actions in one area may cause problems in another area. For example, because obstetricians are not involved in breastfeeding issues, they may not realize that cutting an episiotomy hampers a woman's ability to sit comfortably in order to nurse her baby. Likewise, the pediatricians also are not involved in breastfeeding, so they may not realize that separating the mother and baby right after the birth in order to do a routine newborn exam also interferes with breastfeeding. Nursery nurses often do not seem to appreciate the importance of minimizing the separation of mother and baby and thus also unwittingly interfere with breastfeeding. They tend to ignore the World Health Organization's recommendations to delay initial bathing of the baby until at least six hours after the birth, even though bathing causes the baby's temperature to drop so dangerously low that they do not return the baby to the mother for an hour or more. [14] [15]

I emphasize the hazards to the breastfeeding relationship because breastfeeding is so vital to a newborn's well-being, reducing infant mortality by 20%. [16] This is a huge health benefit, and hospitals should be taking the lead in tailoring their routines to support breastfeeding. But because the functions of caring for mother and baby are separated into the roles of maternity nurses (who care for the mothers) and nursery nurses (who care for the babies), sometimes the mother and baby are also physically separated. Most of the time, there are no lactation consultants in the hospital - they are often only available during weekday business hours. But babies need to be fed around the clock, and if a Lactation Consultant isn't available to help a struggling mother/baby pair, it might become necessary to feed the baby artificial breastmilk with a bottle, which further interferes with successful breastfeeding.

Because the entire model of hospital birth is based on the birth as a medical procedure, hospital staff seem to miss the fact that they are interfering in a delicate time in a new baby's life. Perinatal psychologists describe the first hour after birth as the "critical period", during which the baby will learn how to learn and whether or not it is safe to relax and to trust the outer world. This has tremendous implications for mental health and stress-related disorders. [17]

There was a time when cesareans were acknowledged to be a risky surgery reserved to save the life of the mother or baby. Now even cesarean surgery has become almost routine. Some obstetricians and hospital administrators are advocating for a 100% cesarean rate as a solution to liability and scheduling problems that are inherent in providing maternity care. [18] Unfortunately, cesarean surgeries increase risks for the mother and for this baby. They also increase the risk for subsequent pregnancies, with higher rates of placenta previa and placenta accreta, and small but non-zero risk that a pre-labor uterine rupture could result in the baby's or even the mother's death.

When someone needs to be in the hospital and needs to be receiving medical treatment for a life-threatening condition, the risk-benefit tradeoff comes in heavily on the side of benefit.

But for women who are hoping to have a drug-free birth, it makes no sense to expose themselves to the infection risks associated with simply being in the hospital. Most people know that it is unwise to take a newborn baby out and about in public because of the risk of exposing the baby even to ordinary germs. It is even a worse idea to expose the baby to the antibiotic-resistant strains of germs commonly found in hospitals.

When a woman planning a homebirth needs medical care and care is transferred to a hospital-based provider, the phrase "failed homebirth" is often written in her chart, even if she goes on to have an outcome that is better than if she had started out in the hospital. I would like to propose the concept of a “failed hospital birth” as any birth where hospital procedures specifically cause more problems than they solve. When you consider hospital infection rates, surgical complications, and the damage to the breastfeeding relationship caused by routine separation of mother and baby, we might find that close to 95% of planned hospital births are failed hospital births. They failed to support the mother in an empowering birth experience to better prepare her for motherhood, and they failed to satisfy the baby's overwhelming need and desire to enter and adapt to the outside world as nature intended.

Our society has an obligation to improve maternity care services as much as possible. Consider that the countries with the safest maternity care rely on midwives as the guardians of normal birth, reserving risky medical procedures for cases of true need. "In The five European countries with the lowest infant mortality rates, midwives preside at more than 70 percent of all births. More than half of all Dutch babies are born at home with midwives in attendance, and Holland's maternal and infant mortality rates are far lower than in the United States..." [19] The United States needs to return to a model of midwives as the default maternity care providers, reserving the surgical specialists for the highest-risk patients. We need to educate pregnant women so that they understand that the choices they make about drugs during labor affect their baby, just like the choices they make about drugs during pregnancy. We need to offer women realistic pain relief alternatives to dangerous pharmaceuticals; warm water immersion during labor provides risk-free pain relief that many women find as satisfactory as an epidural. (Mothers who are uncomfortable with the idea of waterbirth can easily leave the tub to give birth "on land", while still deriving tremendous comfort and safety benefits of laboring in water.) Hospitals need to develop new routines that protect mother-baby bonding and the breastfeeding relationship as if they are a matter of life and death, because they are.

Obstetricians would do well to practice according to the wisdom contained in the phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." This means supporting healthy women with normal pregnancies in birthing at home if they choose and encouraging women planning hospital births to work with them to minimize interventions that turn normal births into risky medical procedures.

"I could never do that"

2011-01-30T09:40:00.000-08:00

"I could never do that."

This is a comment I often hear when what I eat comes up in conversation. Especially when I tell people I don't eat any grains, even the so-called "healthy" whole grains. People really respond strongly to that. I can't say I blame them, especially since the USDA's food pyramid includes grains as the base of a healthy diet and recommends 6-11 servings/day.

The truth is, if I really thought grains were healthy for me, I would eat them. But I don't. I will detail why in the next post. For now, this post is going to focus on why a primal diet works for me and how I transitioned away from grains.

If you already read my first blog post, you know that I sort of stumbled upon the notion of a primal diet by trial and error. Years of following the Standard American Diet finally caught up with me. I finally figured out that my bloating, gas, acne, thinning hair, dry skin, mood swings, PMS, and difficulty maintaining my weight with the same methods was linked to what I was eating.

I fooled around with my diet for a couple years, going vegetarian, eating less calories, eating less fat, eating more raw foods, following the blood type diet, and probably other tweaks I can't recall. In the end, it turned out that I function best on a paleo/primal diet. Why? My body does not like most dairy (even raw) or grains (even whole grains, gluten-free grains, and rice). I dislike even putting a label on my "diet" because it makes it sound like it is something temporary. It's not. It just so happens that the food my body craves and thrives on happen to all be on the paleo/primal diet list. I have been eating primal for the past year now (with the exception of the first few months of my pregnancy where my primal go-to foods literally made me want to hurl, and of course I indulge here and there with cupcakes, birthday cake, and ice cream).

So what changes have I seen in my body since going "primal"? Here are a few:

stronger nails
clearer, more hydrated skin
thicker hair
less bloating and gas
less abdominal fat
easier to maintain and build muscle
less exercise needed to maintain/lose weight
more energy
less cravings for sugary foods
less mood swings (although my husband may disagree LOL)

Of course when you grow up eating bread, pasta, cereal, and other grainy foods, it is difficult to transition them out of your diet. I am a very disciplined person, especially when it comes to my health, so once I read that something is not good for me, it's fairly easy to eliminate that food. But, I do crave some of the things I grew up on. So what do I do when that happens? I find primal substitutes. Or, if it is a very strong craving, I indulge, and then I feel like crap afterwards and remember why I don't eat that food anymore! But finding primal substitutes has really been the key to making the transition to a primal diet.

Here are some of the things I find myself craving now and again, and what primal food I use to fulfill that craving:

Pasta: I LOVE spaghetti squash and use it to replace dishes that call for pasta
Breads/Crusts: I use almond flour and coconut flour and find yummy paleo recipes online or in cookbooks
Sweets/Desserts: I find paleo recipes that use mostly fruit as a sweetener and sometimes I use a little bit of raw honey or stevia
Crackers: I make crackers out of nuts, seeds, or nut flours. Sometimes veggies alone as a dipper do the trick
Crunchy snacks: Nuts always do the trick for me

Like I said, if I have a REALLY strong craving for something, I will indulge, but it is usually a "planned indulgence." And I usually feel so yucky afterward, that I am glad I indulged, because it reminds me why I don't eat those foods and I am less likely to indulge (for a long while, at least!)

Paleo Banana Bread Recipe - Gluten-free, refined sugar-free, dairy-free

2011-01-27T22:16:00.000-08:00

Every week, I make a little primal "treat" to keep on hand for my sweet tooth that tends to sneak up. The last couple weeks, I have been really into a banana bread recipe I adapted from this one. I basically just lowered the honey content, added an extra banana, and used coconut oil instead of grapeseed oil. My hubby tried it and said it was super moist and tasted like it had a stick of butter in it!

Here it is:

Ingredients:

3 cups blanched almond flour
½ teaspoon celtic sea salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tbsp raw honey
¼ cup coconut oil, melted
3 eggs, whisked
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2-3 very ripe bananas (about one cup) mashed

Directions:

1.In a large bowl, mix together almond flour, salt and baking soda

2.In a smaller bowl, combine honey, coconut oil, eggs and vanilla, then stir in bananas

3.Mix wet ingredients into dry

4.Place batter in either a cake pan or two small 7.5″ x 3.5″ loaf pans

5.Bake at 350° for 40 minutes (mine was done in 30 minutes)

6.Remove from oven and allow to cool

Serves 12

Food/Exercise Log

2011-01-27T21:53:00.000-08:00

Today was crazy and if I wasn't breastfeeding, I would go drink a bottle of wine all by myself. Bijon has been super fussy the past few days. I am going to take him to the chiropractor tomorrow and see if that helps because I have tried ruling out every possible thing that could be bugging him. I am desperate!

But anyway...here is what today looked like:

Breakfast:

crust-less quiche made with: eggs, coconut milk, bell peppers, spinach and grass-fed ground beef, green tea with stevia, small slice of paleo banana bread

Snack:

handful almonds, half orange

Lunch:

I was only able to sneak in a protein shake made with Dr. Mercola's Miracle Whey protein powder, almond milk, chia seeds, and psyllium husk

Snack:

cottage cheese with applesauce

Dinner:

Crockpot pork chops, caesar salad, blueberries

Dessert:

I binged on extra dark chocolate - I ate like half the bar. Emotional eating, anyone?

Exercise:

15 minutes on recumbent bike with Bijon sleeping in the Moby Wrap LOL

1. 15 bicep curls, each arm
2. 15 forward shoulder raises, each arm
3. 15 overhead tricep exercises (not sure what they're called), each arm
4. 15 back rows with resistance band
5. 40 abdominal bicycles
6. Repeat the above five exercises three times total, performing as a circuit with no breaks in between exercises or sets
7. A few planks for 45 seconds

Food/Exercise Log

2011-01-25T19:10:00.000-08:00

I'm going to start logging my daily or near-daily menu (depending on how crazy that day is with the two kiddos!) and exercise routine.

I probably exercise 10-30 minutes a day, depending on what I can sneak in. But I always try to get something in. I usually aim for 10-15 minutes of weights/resistance/body resistance while Bijon naps and Noah has quiet time and then some kind of light cardio with the kids. I have learned that daily exercise fills me up and makes me a better mom, so I make it a priority and schedule it in, even if it's only for a few minutes. If the kids need me, the session is cut short but I always feel better that I at least tried. And I can always count on a daily walk if all else fails with Bijon sleeping in the Moby wrap and Noah gets to ride his scooter alongside us. And I figure I must be burning some extra calories too while doing errands and chores with Bijon in the sling or Moby wrap most of the day!

As far as cardio goes, daily walks are always easy to sneak in and I just got a stationary recumbent bike (thanks mom!) off of Craigslist for an unbelievable price, which I will hop on here and there while I'm nursing Bijon. My husband walks in the room and laughs :) Bijon loves it because it jiggles him a little bit and I get some exercise in while bonding with him LOL! Twice a week, I will do sprints on the stationary bike, which only takes 15-20 minutes. I learned about the benefits of sprinting from Mark's Daily Apple and Dr. Mercola's articles on Peak 8 fitness. According to Mark Sisson and Dr. Mercola, two to three short sprint sessions a week are far more beneficial than endless hours of cardio. And Mark Sisson was a marathon runner; go figure!

So here's the menu for today:

Breakfast:

2 slices roast beef, slice of paleo banana bread (recipe coming), green tea with stevia

Snack:

Dr. Mercola Cocoa Cassava Bar

Lunch:

salad made with spinach, brocolli/carrot slaw, grass-fed ground beef, salsa, dollop of sour cream, and 1/2 avocado (no dressing)

Snack:

handful almonds, 1/2 apple

Dinner:

Wild turbo fish with a shitload of broccoli on the side with butter

Dessert:

Extra dark chocolate square dipped in peanut butter

Exercise:

10 minutes on recumbent bike

1. plank 45-60 seconds
2. 25 standing side leg lifts while balancing on one leg, each side
3. 15 squats
4. 25 donkey kicks each leg
5. repeat the above four exercises three times total (I complete the above as a circuit with no breaks in between exercises or sets; so I am going strong with max effort for 10-15 minutes to complete this routine)
6. 40 inner thigh leg lifts each leg

My body after birth...

2011-01-24T12:07:00.000-08:00

I have to admit I was pretty worried about how my body would look after a second pregnancy and had lots of body issues while pregnant this time around. Maybe it was because the first pregnancy is so new and exciting and I looked forward to my belly expanding. Or maybe I had body issues this pregnancy because you "show" so much faster during subsequent pregnancies - I definitely did! I felt like I looked seven months pregnant when I was only four months into it! Or maybe I dreaded packing on those pounds after I had finally reached my ideal body weight and composition just prior to the pregnancy. I would love to say that I am one of those women who thinks pregnancy is "beautiful" (I do think it is beautiful on others, just not on me for some reason!) and that I felt "glowy" but the reality is that this time around I was very vain and did not like the way I looked pregnant. Just being honest here. No matter how many compliments I received from my husband and others, the truth is, I felt very insecure and couldn't wait to get back to my old self, and wondered if that was possible. (The fact that I felt absolutely blessed to have a life growing inside of me goes without saying and even if I never looked the same again, it would all be worth it!)

Well, I followed a mostly primal diet while pregnant, not only to manage my weight gain but also because I feel my best when eating like a cavewoman. I included some Ezekiel products and oatmeal here and there which are not primal, but I felt like I needed the extra carbs to steadily gain weight. And of course I splurged on ice cream and other treats here and there, but I never made a habit of it. So while I am vain, I know it's important to eat healthy and gain the proper weight to support the pregnancy and breastfeeding afterward. I *wanted* to gain at least 35 pounds to have the healthiest pregnancy possible and to ensure I had adequate reserves for breastfeeding postpartum. So I gained 36 pounds and although my ass was larger than I wanted and I had bra fat, I was very happy with my overall weight gain.

Fastforward to today. How do I feel about my body now? I feel fantastic! I want to share how I lost the weight and toned up because I myself searched the Internet to find out real life examples of how women got their figures back. Don't get me wrong...I'm far from a Victoria's Secret Model and won't be donning a bikini any time soon. I have lovely stretch marks and cellulite dimples that I am learning to live with. But I think for a new mom two months postpartum, I'm doing alright. I lost 26 of the 36 pounds in the first month. I have lost five more in the second month so I still have five more to go. I do not believe in cutting calories (especially with breastfeeding) or depriving yourself when you are hungry. I would rather be healthy than thin (well, preferably both) and it's really important to me that my diet is balanced to ensure nutritious breastmilk.

I have found what works for me. I will say it is difficult to find the time and energy to exercise and prepare nutritious meals, especially when you are nursing and practicing attachment parenting. But if I can do it, so can others. Here is what has worked for me:

following a primal diet - that means no grains and limiting dairy and sugar.
consistent exercise - even if it's only 10 minutes a day, consistency will pay off.
breastfeeding - burns up to 500 calories a day!

In my next few posts, I will detail some of my meals and snacks as well as some of my exercise routines.

Bijon's birth story...

2011-01-20T21:07:00.000-08:00

I woke up at around 5am on Tuesday, November 9th (my birthday and due date!) with contractions lasting around 30 seconds and 15 minutes apart. I tried to go back to sleep but the contractions kept waking me up every 15 minutes. So I decided to get up and upload some pictures and do some other busy work I had been meaning to get to before little Bijon made his arrival.

I went out to breakfast with Simon, Noah and my mom to have some yummy pancakes, waffles, and cinnamon roll French toast at Ruby’s. Yum. It was like the last supper LOL. I figured that was my last chance to eat “like a pregnant woman” because I was pretty sure that the consistent contractions meant I was in early labor. Mind you I never ate like that during the pregnancy so it was really fun to finally splurge and go all out!

The rest of the day the contractions stayed about the same, so I decided to go for a few walks to get things going. I even decided to go get my eyebrows waxed and tinted. A girl’s gotta take care of important business while she can! I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that again for a long while with the wee one on the way. Later that afternoon, I texted my doula and called the midwife’s office to give them a heads up that I may be calling them later when I was in active labor. Later in the night, around 8pm, the contractions started getting closer together and lasting longer, but they were still all over the place (ten minutes apart, five minutes apart, seven minutes apart). I kept in contact with the midwife and doula and then around 10pm I decided to call the doula to get her advice because the contractions were coming about seven minutes apart, lasting around a minute long, and I kept getting the shakes. I took a shower to try and stimulate labor further, but the contractions stayed the same.

Jennifer, our doula, decided to come over around 11pm. When she walked in the door, she decided I still had a long way to go because I “still looked too pretty” in her words LOL. We talked and hung out awhile and I think I got into the tub at one point because the contractions were getting pretty intense. Simon filled up the tub in our living room. It felt sooo good. It didn’t take away the pain, but it definitely took the edge off and I felt much lighter in the water. Jennifer and I chatted in between contractions while Simon took a little rest. It was kind of like a slumber party but with pain sprinkled in every few minutes LOL. Jennifer decided it was time to get some rest because we still had a lot of work ahead of us. We turned on some relaxation music and had some lavender essential oil burning. I tried to sleep on the couch with Jennifer on the bean bag beside me, but I just wanted to be in my bed at that point with Simon’s massaging hands. So I went to the bedroom with Simon while Jennifer slept in the living room.

I tried to sleep in between contractions but they were about five to seven minutes apart so every time I would doze off, another contraction would wake me up. It took so much will power to just relax my entire body during that 60-90 second contraction. I wanted to kick and scream through each contraction, but as I learned in the Bradley classes we took, tensing up only makes the pain worse. So I focused inward, using my own little script, “Relax your face, relax your feet and hands, relax your whole body, especially your birthing muscles. Each contraction brings me closer to my baby.”

After a few hours of enduring the contractions while everyone slept around me, I decided I needed to get back in the tub for some relief. So Simon heated up the water again and Jennifer stayed by my side for another 30-45 minutes. She said we have to get in and out of the tub to get things moving. My contractions were consistently 4-5 minutes apart at this point. It was probably around 3am. I then got out of the tub and Jennifer suggested Simon make us some breakfast so that I keep up my strength. It was so nice to have a home cooked meal in the comfort of my own home, rather than be attached to some IV for nourishment. I was so bloated after all those IV fluids after I had Noah…

Then I went back to the couch with Jennifer, attempting to rest between contractions while she and Simon got some more sleep. I have to admit I felt pretty alone with everyone sleeping around me, but really there was nothing they could do for me and it was better for them to be rested if they could sleep so that my birth team was in good spirits for me when I really needed them.

Around 6am I decided to wake up Jennifer and needed her guidance through the contractions. They were really intense and I was feeling emotionally and physically drained. I got back in the tub for awhile and then Jennifer suggested we go for a walk to get the contractions going (closer together). I started to feel pretty discouraged with how long the labor was taking and was also missing Noah (he was at my mom’s since the day before). I did not want to go for a walk to get things moving LOL. Well, I wanted to get things moving but I felt like I couldn’t stand up and walk for the life of me. My whole labor I just wanted to lean over something, like the kitchen counter or the couch or kneel over the side of the birthing tub. I just did not want to be upright. But I knew we had to get things moving and I was tired of being in labor for so long.

Jennifer, Simon and I went for a walk down Bushard and then circled back through the alley. The walk really brought on the contractions and I leaned over Simon’s arms while he supported me and Jennifer massaged my back through each contraction. Her words of encouragement and massaging really helped me and Simon’s strong arms felt really good when I had no strength left in my body. We kept walking, stopping for each contraction. They were really coming now. I felt like each step I took brought on another contraction. I was not a happy camper. I did not want to take another step but persevered to get this going already! Oh yeah we ate yummy frozen grapes along our walk :)

After we made one loop around the alley, Jennifer said we had to go around one more time and that this is the time that birthing mommies do not like their doulas, because they make them do things they don’t want to do LOL. I was getting pretty irritable at that point, which made me think I had to be in transition. I also felt like I couldn’t go on any longer and kept asking Jennifer and Simon if they thought I could do it. Another sign of transition - self-doubt, hitting the wall so to speak. At one point I just plopped down on the sidewalk, which Simon and Jennifer found amusing. A lady driving by with her kids stopped and asked if everything was OK and I mouthed, “What the fuck are you looking at?” Yeah, definitely in transition. (They didn’t hear me or anything by the way!).

I said I couldn’t walk anymore and that I was feeling pressure in my bottom (a sign that it was soon time to start pushing). So we turned around to go home. Literally every step I took brought on the most intense contraction and even though I was only about 20 feet away from our front door, it felt like an eternity to get there. It was the longest 20 feet I ever had to walk!

We got inside finally and Jennifer called the midwife, Lorri. I got into the tub and endured another hour or so of contractions, each one bringing more and more pressure to push. But I wasn’t quite ready to push yet. My body still had some more work to do, so Jennifer continued guiding me through each contraction. I really needed her guidance at this point.

Lorri showed up around 10am and asked if she could check me. I was hesitant because the last vaginal exam I had was pretty painful and I was afraid that the pain would cause me to tense up and stall my labor. But she said that if I felt like pushing, her exam would tell me if we needed to change positions to get pushing going. I agreed and when she checked me, she said that I was right there, that “your baby is in your vagina, Laura “ and that if I changed to an upright position, the “lip” on my cervix would disappear and I could start pushing.

So I sat upright Indian-style in the tub and sure enough, I felt tons of pressure to push. Simon then got in the tub with me and sat behind me while I held his hands and I started to bear down with the next contraction. I turned into a bit of a crazy woman when I first started pushing. I wanted to be really calm and in control while pushing, but for some reason I just kept screaming with each push. It was a release to let out all those screams because I had kept them in throughout the whole labor through contractions. I’m kind of embarrassed about all the screaming but the birth team didn’t even seem phased and Simon said he thought nothing of it…that he just wanted to take the pain away.

Bijon kept coming in and out with each push and at one point he was right there and I felt like my vagina was tearing apart. His heart rate dropped a little because he was kind of stuck (Lorri said it was no big deal, that my “muscles” were really tight, and she pushed him back in.) That felt really weird! Everyone just kept telling me to listen to my body and push when I felt like pushing. They said that if I was in the hospital, the doctors would be really urging me to push and “coaching” me, but that they as midwives wanted me to really listen to my body. That was really empowering and yet really scary…I think we women in the U.S. expect someone to come save us and tell us what to do, when we have the inner strength, wisdom, and instincts in us all along; if only others would encourage us to listen to and trust our bodies.

I remember at one point sitting in the tub, absolutely exhausted, looking around at my birth team. Each one of them was patiently waiting and perfectly calm. At that point I knew that unless I did this, they would all be here waiting, including me, all day. It dawned on me that this was all me…only I could birth this baby. So I swear I turned into a different woman (Lorri said I turned into “Earth Mama”) and I pushed that baby out with all my might. At one point, when Bijon’s head was crowning, Lorri told me to reach down and feel my baby’s head. I didn’t want to at first for some reason, but I’m so glad I did! I still remember how his soft, wet head of hair felt and I reminisce how that felt when I now rub his sweet little head.

Soon after, Bijon’s head was out and I looked in the mirror one of the assistants was holding to see what it looked like. His face was so scrunched up and he looked like a little old man! I was so excited and proud because I knew the hardest part was over (birthing the head). I said, “I did it! Well, almost!” and Lorri flashed a huge smile, joining me in my pride, saying, “Yes, you did it!” So then it was time to birth the rest of Bijon’s body but for some reason my contractions stalled. Lorri asked me why I wasn’t pushing and asked if I stopped having contractions. I said that they had stopped and she asked if she could stimulate my nipples to get them going again. I agreed and sure enough I had another contraction and pushed Bijon out. Oh I almost forgot - at one point I was pretty exhausted with all the pushing so Lorri asked Simon to push down on the top of my fundus while I beared down with each contraction. This really helped and Simon was really excited to be able to “help” me push the baby out.

Once Bijon was almost out, Simon reached his hands down with Lorri’s hands and they guided Bijon out onto my stomach/chest. They had to maneuver a little so that Simon could reach and in the process, I could feel Bijon kicking his way out of me. It was surreal. Simon and I were both crying tears of joy (Simon especially J ) and we were stuck in time gazing at our precious little boy. Simon kept trying to pull Bijon up on my chest, but the cord was too short to reach that high so Bijon hung out more on my abdomen while in the water. Lorri advised us to get out of the tub and make our way to the couch. This is the best part…I was able to carry my own child after giving birth to him without any help to the couch. When I had Noah, they would not let me walk anywhere with him while holding him…I had to push him around in this stupid cart for liability reasons. Lame. This birth was therapeutic in so many ways.

So we headed to the couch and Bijon latched on perfectly right away with very little guidance from me. The whole birth team was in awe at how quickly and perfectly he latched on. I was able to nurse him for the next two hours on the couch with no interruptions. While I nursed him, I birthed the placenta (on our protected couch) and the midwife wrapped it in a blanket and put it in a plastic bag next to us. We were able to keep the cord attached to the placenta for the whole two hours while I nursed him, definitely ensuring all the oxygen reached Bijon from the placenta in that timeframe. I had learned how important it is to keep the cord attached as long as possible and was really pleased that we were able to do so.

My doula then asked if I was hungry. Of course I was! That was hard work man! So she came over to the couch and spoon fed me while I laid there nursing Bijon. Brunch in bed LOL! Simon stayed with me the whole time and the rest of the birth team left us alone to bond while they ate lunch and completed paperwork at our dining room table. This was really important to me…that we were left alone right away to bond. In the hospital, Noah was on my chest for a brief few moments before they whisked him away across the room with Simon and I was left there in the hospital bed all alone listening to my baby’s cries and being unable to soothe them with my breast right away. What a dramatically different, fulfilling experience we had at home.

After a few hours, it was time to cut the cord, stitch me up, and do the standard newborn exam. We opted out of everything they routinely do in the hospital - no vaccines, no eye ointment, no Vitamin K, nothing. My baby was born pure and clean and has only had breast milk in his system since birth! That thrills me! Not to mention the fact that I had no IV’s, no pitocin, no drugs, nothing in my own system being passed on to him. I experienced a natural high that only natural birth can provide uncomparable to anything else I’ve ever experienced in my life and seriously felt like I could do anything after that. The love, pride, and positive energy of this experience cannot be matched, I believe. I feel like I have completed the female rite of passage and I feel more “whole” if that makes any sense. I’m just beyond happy with my birth experience and love, love, love this baby boy!

on my due date in early labor

some relief in the tub with my doula, Jennifer

just hanging out on Bushard. What, you've never seen a woman in labor on a major street?

starting to push

Happy birthday, Bijon!!!!

minutes after being born, bonding with mommy

daddy weighing Bijon

Mr. Scrunchy Face bonding with daddy

meeting big brother and Grandma for the first time

Mr. Smiles

WOW!

Bijon has arrived...

2010-11-26T21:09:00.000-08:00

So I had a baby...
at home...
in my living room...
in a tub full of warm water...
with my hubby's arms around me...
baby boy #2...
so in love!

birth story to come...

Primal Custard Recipe

2010-11-07T20:32:00.000-08:00

Oops I did it again. I stole another recipe from the SoG (Son of Grok) to share with you all. I was really craving something creamy yet light for dessert the other night so I decided to bake up some of the SoG's yummy Caveman Custard. I've made it once before and it was so-so (didn't really hit the spot for what I was craving) so this time I decided to add another banana for sweetness. Ooooh it's good. I'm eating some right now in-between typing :) I love how easy all his recipes are too!

Here's the recipe:

Dairy Free, No Sugar Added Custard

Do you miss puddings and custards in your primal world? We have a local egg custard here known as “Flan” and for some weird reason, I have been craving it. Here is a custard recipe that I have been putting together. I finally got the proportions perfectly where I like them. If you like yours sweeter, all you need to do is add more bananas! This recipe is about as simple as it gets.

Ingredients:

- 2 bananas (I added 3 this time and liked it better than with 2)
- 1 can coconut milk
- 3 eggs
- Cinnamon

Directions:

1. Combine all ingredients except for cinnamon in a mixer and mix well.

2. Pour into custard or souffle cups (coffee cups or other oven safe containers work fine if you don’t have custard cups). ( I just used an 8 x 8 baking dish coated with coconut oil cooking spray)

3. Sprinkle top with cinnamon.

4. Bake in oven at 350 degrees for approx 45 minutes. Custard will balloon a bit and you may see some liquid… its ok, it will work itself out.

5. Chill.

6. Serve and enjoy.

On my reading list: The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith

2010-10-22T21:54:00.000-07:00

Having previously been a vegetarian, actually near-vegan, I am very interested in any books covering such dietary information. I have read most of the popular and not-so-popular books (i.e. Skinny Bitch, Food for Life, Greens for Life, Becoming Vegetarian, Cancer is Good for You, etc. to name a few). So I am fully aware of all the reasons people have for living a vegetarian lifestyle. It was actually very difficult to let go of many of the notions I gleaned from reading the aforementioned books when I decided to eat meat again. I try my best to choose meats and other animal-based proteins that were raised in a sustainable, humane way. If you are interested in why I decided to forego a vegetarian diet, you can visit my very first post on this blog here.

What I have yet to come across is a book that actually attempts to dispell all the myths surrounding a vegetarian diet. I have been hearing a lot about a book called The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith and it is going straight on my reading list!

Check out this review by Dr. Thomas Cowan:

The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith

Very occasionally powerful, life-changing books are written that give one the palpable sense that "if people would only listen" the world might be a different place. The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith is one such book. In this book Lierre essentially tells two intertwined stories. One is the story of the deterioration of her own health as a direct result of adopting a vegan diet. The second is the related tale of the destruction of our planet essentially as a result of the widespread adoption of agriculture, specifically agriculture based on the growing of grains. Her central premise is that, unlike what we are all led to believe, the absolute worst thing that could ever befall humans or the earth is if we all adopted a vegetarian or, worse yet, a vegan diet. To many, this is such an unbelievable head spinner that they simply will not even be able to entertain the ideas that are presented by Lierre. The ideas, the argument she presents to make her case are powerful, coherent and irrefutable - grains and in fact a grain-based (i.e. vegetarian) diet are literally killing us all.

First, the ecological argument. We are told that the biggest users of fresh water and the most wasteful, ecologically speaking, food we can eat is meat. We are told that if instead of feeding grains to cows to get meat, which is anyway poison for us to eat, we should feed that grain to people thereby feeding at least 30 people with a grain-based diet for every one person we can feed on a meat-based diet. We are told to eat low on the food chain to conserve resources and be ecologically friendly. And, finally and crucially we hear people proudly announce they don't eat anything with faces as a sign that they are living out their deeply held convictions about social justice. The facts actually tell a completely different story.

Imagine the Middle East 10,000 years ago when the only people living in what we now call Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, etc., were nomadic hunter-gatherer types. This area was referred to as a paradise; it was lush, fecund; Lebanon was the land of the cedar forests. The area between the Tigris and Euphrates was literally paradise on earth. Then came agriculture, specifically the growing of grains. As happens where grains are grown and irrigation is used, the soil began to lose its vitality, the humous layer was lost. The irrigation and the converting of perennial grasses and the animals that live on these grasses to annual crops is akin to mining the nutrients and the fertility out of the soil. Without sufficient animal manure and animal bodies to put nutrients back into the soil, without the annual flooding of the plains that is stopped when irrigation systems are used, the land loses its nutrients, the soil becomes more salty and, as evidenced in the Middle East, eventually, inevitably the land becomes a desert. Lierre describes this process in intimate detail so the reader is left with no doubt that in human history, whenever the transition from perennial grass- based land - alongside naturally flowing lakes and rivers, co-existing with verdant forests - is converted into grain based agriculture, the inevitable result is everything dies. Everything - the plants, the insects, the wild animals and eventually the people.

If this wasn't reason enough for conscientious people to shun a grain-based diet, Lierre spends the second half of the book detailing the negative health repercussions from adopting a grain-based, vegetarian or vegan diet. For those familiar with the work of the Weston A. Price foundation or The Fourfold Path to Healing, this will come as no surprise. What will be eye-opening for many is a detailed chart that compares the physiology of meat eaters with that of herbivores. If you still have any doubts that humans are literally physiologically required to live on mostly an animal food diet, I recommend checking out this enlightening chart. Lierre has done her homework. She references many studies that have been done in the last 100 years documenting the superior health outcomes, the absence of chronic disease, and the total absence of cancer and heart disease in people who eat the food that comes naturally out of a perennially based grass and forest system. What do these people eat? What is the "human" diet, the diet that works back to heal the land? Conveniently it is one diet, called the GAPS diet. As probably more than a hundred of my patients can attest, those who have literally regained their health as a result of the GAPS diet, it is no surprise that the very diet that can heal so many sick people is the very diet that,when applied to agriculture, can heal a "sick" earth.

Get this book, read it, pass it to your friends, especially your vegetarian friends, for as Lierre often says in our current situation, it is not enough any more to just have good intentions. You also have to be informed about what it is you are fighting for.

Have you read this book or heard of it? It sounds so very interesting and has received great reviews!

Grain-Gluten-Free Primal Pizza Crust

2010-09-04T19:58:00.000-07:00

As you can probably tell, since the last three posts were recipes, mama is growing hungrier and hungrier with this little babe growing inside! I've had a lingering craving for some pizza but knew I'd feel like doggy doo after indulging in the real thing. Especially since I cannot consume less than five slices of the real deal. But tonight I sent the hubby out for the ingredients I came across in this recipe over at Primal Matriarch. It was a hit! We were all stoked on it, including the wee one, and since almond flour is so filling, two slices did the trick for me. I even used some of the leftover dough and modified it a bit to make some of her primal biscuits and they were MAGICALLY DELICIOUS! Yum! Here's the recipe for the pizza crust:

AndreAnna's Grain/Gluten-Free "Primal" Pizza Crust

What you need:

*3 c. almond flour

*1 c. sour cream/plain organic yogurt

*1/2 c. grated Parmesan

*pinch salt

*1 egg

*1/2 tsp baking soda

*fresh parsley (optional)

What you do:

1. Mix dry ingredients

2. Beat egg into sour cream and slowly add to the dry mixture.

3. Beat until well blended.

4. Mixture will be batter-like and not dough-like, so you must SPREAD this with a spatula onto parchment paper, about 1/4-in thick.

5. YES, it HAS to be parchment. Trust me.

6. This amount makes three small pizza crusts in the size shown. If you're not going to eat them all, half the recipe. They do not reheat very well; they tend to get soggy.

7. Bake at 350 for around 30 minutes or until brown all the way over.

8. Top with whatever your heart desires. The possibilities are endless!!! I was just in the mood for a good ol' pepperoni pie!

9. Stick back in the oven for five minutes to melt the cheese and toppings.

10. Enjoy!!

Easy Primal Italian-esque Chicken Dinner

2010-08-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

OK so this isn't the most gourmet meal, but I was actually surprised that I was able to take the fresh chicken, green beans and eggplant I made and add a few ingredients leftover in the fridge to make a primal Italian-esque dinner. I am not that creative in the kitchen and if I don't have a recipe to follow, it's usually just some version of meat and tons of veggies drizzled with some sort of fat like olive oil or butter for dinner. Which actually is very satisfying if you use quality, fresh ingredients. But anyway, I just thought I'd share this one with y'all because it was pretty darn good and easy to make. I realize the butter and cheese aren't totally primal, but I felt better about using them rather than some carby pasta that would make me feel sluggish and bloated afterward. I already have enough of that to deal with being pregnant and all LOL!

Ingredients:

*one medium-sized fresh organic eggplant
*3 or more cups fresh organic green beans
*2-3tbsp melted butter
*garlic powder to taste
*3 organic chicken breasts
*organic marinara sauce (I used Trader Joe's)
*grated parmesan cheese to taste

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cut up eggplant and green beans and place on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Brush veggies with melted butter, then sprinkle with garlic powder. Cook in oven for about 15-20 minutes or until desired tenderness.

3. While veggies are in the oven, cook your chicken however you desire. I use the Turbo Oven I purchased from Dr. Mercola's site and the meat always turns out soooo juicy and yummy. I highly recommend this device!

4. Heat up some marinara sauce.

5. When the chicken is done, cut into long strips. Stack chicken and eggplant on a plate and top with marinara sauce. Add green beans alongside with or without marinara. Top all with parmesan cheese. Simple and yummy and totally took care of my Italian craving!

Paleo Banana-Coconut Flour Cupcakes (more like muffins)

2010-07-17T13:58:00.000-07:00

My son is a cupcake fanatic and was begging me this morning to make some "healthy cupcakes". He knows we try to make healthy substitutes for the foods we love when we're at home. But don't get me wrong, it's fair game at birthday parties and outside the house for that kid! I don't want him to feel deprived and then go off the deep end when he's older. What I love though, is that he is finding out early on what is and isn't good for your body and he sees that the healthy substitutes take care of that sweet craving without leaving him feeling yucky afterward.

So we went online to look for a primal cupcake recipe and found this one over at Cosomopolitan Primal Girl. I didn't have the ingredients for the icing, so we just made the cupcake part. It turned out to be more like a muffin and it was dee-lish! I love that most of the sweetness comes from the bananas; there's only about two tablespoons of raw honey in the whole batch. Plus, since it calls for coconut flour, it's grain free, and the coconut flour leaves you feeling full long afterward. What a winner!

Here it is, minus the icing directions (click on the link above for the full recipe):

Ingredients (makes 12 cupcakes)

- 2 Tbsp coconut oil
- 4 Tbsp coconut milk
- 1/2 Cup coconut flour
- 2 Tbsp raw honey or maple syrup
- 1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract
- 3 eggs
- 1 tsp aluminum free baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 whole mashed bananas (very ripe)

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350

2. In a bowl, mix together coconut flour, salt, baking powder, coconut milk, vanilla extract, bananas and eggs

3. Melt the coconut oil and honey/maple syrup and then slowly add it to the mix.

4. Mix together thoroughly and pour into greased (use coconut oil or non-stick spray) muffin baking pan.

5. Bake for about 20-30 minutes – check after 20 minutes because you might have a better oven. You want to be able to stick a fork into the middle and have it come out dry.

6. Remove from oven and let it cool completely.

While I'm on the subject of school...

2010-07-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

I just came across this lovely post on my friend's blog at Finally...I'm the Mom! that really hits the nail on the head when it comes to all the reasons we do not intend to send our son(s) to public school and will be homeschooling. Since I couldn't have said it better myself, I am going to re-post it here:

Schooled... why public school is not for us.

I often tell people when the discussion comes up as to where Elijah will go to school (as if most people have that figured out at 11 months old) that Elijah will not go to public school. I am then usually bombarded with how the schools in their neighborhood have high test scores or that their particular school is amazing. While I have no doubt these claims are accurate, they do not impress me.

I do not see public school as the devil. It definitely serves a purpose and for many children it is a safety net. It was for me. My public school teachers were the reasons I survived my childhood and one of them in particular still serves the role of a mother for me.

So why no public school for my child? Oh, where to begin...

1. The Curriculum. The phrase "Inch deep and a mile wide" seems to fit perfectly and that depth they speak of is not filled with entire accuracies either. If you don't believe me, pick up a history book. On top of that, it is monumentally boring to do ditto sheet after ditto sheet of stuff no matter how old you are, much less when you are 5! I do not want a child who hates learning or even one that tolerates it.

2. Lack of Play. If you are reading my blog, I probably do not need to convince you of the benefit of play in a child's life, how it is the ONLY way they learn anything, or that play is not 15 minute recess on a blacktop twice a day with one ball for 30 kids (if you are lucky). Ok, yes, some schools have more than that and maybe even a few blades of grass.

To get what I am looking for though, take a look at this and this company.

3. Extrinsic Control. Other than a life of love, the one thing I want more than anything for Elijah is to be internally motivated. To do things that matter to him with passion and to do what is right because it matters to him and not because he will get some reward for it or especially because he is afraid of what might happen to him if he does not do it. It is much more difficult to maintain that in a child when eight hours a day is spent in a rewards/punishments based, praise based, grades based system. I will get more into this in another post, but put more simply... I don't want Elijah to have to try to understand why he was demoted to the red card for talking to his friends during spelling.

There are so many other reasons that public school is not for us. These are the most important. And while there are excellent teachers out there who create amazing programs and who certainly make a difference, it is the system that is flawed. It is the politicians that have passed bills that do not allow those wonderful teachers to flourish to the best of their ability. And while things might one day change, the pendulum has swung so far in this direction, I don't see it coming back in my child's lifetime. I just can not let him be a casualty.

Satirical Article: Increasing Number of Parents Opting to Have Children School-Homed

2010-07-02T09:52:00.000-07:00

I'm not really sure how this article fits into this blog...but in any case, I loved it and just had to share!

Taken from The Onion: http://www.theonion.com/articles/increasing-number-of-parents-opting-to-have-childr,17159/

WASHINGTON—According to a report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Education, an increasing number of American parents are choosing to have their children raised at school rather than at home.

Deputy Education Secretary Anthony W. Miller said that many parents who school-home find U.S. households to be frightening, overwhelming environments for their children, and feel that they are just not conducive to producing well-rounded members of society.

Thousands of mothers and fathers polled in the study also believe that those running American homes cannot be trusted to keep their kids safe.

"Every year more parents are finding that their homes are not equipped to instill the right values in their children," Miller said. "When it comes to important life skills such as proper nutrition, safe sex, and even basic socialization, a growing number of mothers and fathers think it's better to rely on educators to guide and nurture their kids."

"And really, who can blame them?" Miller continued. "American homes have let down our nation's youth time and again in almost every imaginable respect."

According to the report, children raised at home were less likely to receive individual adult attention, and were often subjected to ineffective and wildly inconsistent disciplinary measures. The study also found that many parents expressed concerns that, when at home, their children were being teased and bullied by those older than themselves.

In addition to providing better supervision and overall direction, school-homing has become popular among mothers and fathers who just want to be less involved in the day-to-day lives of their children.

"Parents are finding creative ways to make this increasingly common child-rearing track work," Miller said. "Whether it's over-relying on after-school programs and extracurricular activities, or simply gross neglect,† school-homing is becoming a widely accepted method of bringing children up."

Despite the trend's growing popularity, Miller said that school programs are often jeopardized or terminated because shortsighted individuals vote against tax increases intended to boost educational spending.

"The terrifying reality we're facing is that the worst-equipped people you could possibly imagine may actually be forced to take care of their children," Miller said.

Parents who have decided to school-home their children have echoed many of Miller's concerns. Most said that an alarming number of legal guardians such as themselves lack the most basic common sense required to give children the type of instruction they need during crucial developmental years.

"It's really a matter of who has more experience in dealing with my child," Cincinnati- resident Kevin Dufrense said of his decision to have his 10-year-old son Jake, who suffers from ADHD and dyslexia, school-homed. "These teachers are dealing with upwards of 40 students in their classrooms at a time, so obviously they know a lot more about children than someone like me, who only has one son and doesn't know where he is half the time anyway."

"Simply put, it's not the job of parents to raise these kids," Dufrense added.

Though school-homing has proven to be an ideal solution for millions of uninvolved parents, increasingly overburdened public schools have recently led to a steady upswing in the number of students being prison-homed.

10 Great Reasons to Cloth Diaper

2010-06-19T14:00:00.000-07:00

Being in baby mode, I've been going through some of my son's old clothes and baby items. Which made me think about the fact that we used cloth diapers with him and plan to do so again with our next baby, which made me think that I should share some important information regarding the benefits of cloth over disposables on this blog. Some of you already know all the benefits, but then there are some probably furrowing their brows wondering why on earth anyone would use cloth diapers when we have the wonderful modern invention of disposable diapers. Well...did you know that disposable diapers are one of the top three items overruning our landfills? That's just the beginning...read on...

10 Great Reasons to Cloth Diaper
(taken from http://infantstoddlers.suite101.com/article.cfm/whos_using_cloth_diapers_anyway )

1. Safer for Baby

There are three chemicals found in disposable diapers that are disturbing and can potentially be harmful to baby – sodium polyacrylate, dioxin, and tributyl-tin.

Have you ever changed your baby only to find her sensitive bottom covered in crystals and gel? What you saw was sodium polyacrylate. It makes up the absorbent layer in most disposable diapers. The crystals become a gel when baby wets and that gel wicks the wetness away from baby. While it is pretty effective at its job by absorbing many times its own weight in fluids and keeping baby feeling dry, it also can cause allergic reactions in babies, skin irritations, and was banned for use in tampons in 1985 because of its association with toxic shock syndrome.

The use of chlorine to bleach the paper used in making disposable diapers creates dioxin, a cancer-causing chemical considered by the EPA to be the most toxic of all carcinogens. Traces of this toxic substance carry over to the finished diaper product. The World Health Organization claims that newborns are particularly susceptible to the effects of this chemical since their organs are developing so rapidly. Most countries, except for the United States, have banned dioxin. Long- term exposure can cause harmful effects on the immune, nervous, and reproductive systems.

Tributyl-tin (TBT) is a toxic chemical that can be absorbed through the skin and has been found to cause hormonal problems and harm the immune system.

2. Better for the Environment

According to the Real Diaper Association (RDA), 27.4 billion disposable diapers are used in the U.S. each year, 92% of those end up in a landfill. Estimates say that disposables take between 250-500 years to decompose - that’s a very long time. There are some that say the water used in washing cloth diapers negates some of the positive effect gained by saving landfill space, but the RDA refutes that claim saying that the water used in manufacturing and consumption of disposables is 2.3 times greater than used on cloth.

3. Cute Fashions and Style

Why settle for plain white paper? With all the variety of cloth styles and fabric available, your baby can be stylin’ and can have a diaper for every occasion. Match your outfits, show off your baby’s personality, be unique, whatever your taste – all the while, baby looks cute as can be.

4. Feels Better to Baby

What baby wouldn’t want to feel soft fleece or cotton on their bottom over a harsh paper-like lining? With their stretchy designs and soft linings, cloth diapers are comfortable for baby and keep baby dry naturally.

5. Save Money

You can find countless calculators and estimates that will compare the cost of cloth diapering with the use of disposables. While they all vary depending on prices and products used, they all pretty much agree that no matter how you look at it, cloth diapering is less expensive in the end. You do buy your products upfront which may make it appear more expensive, but many businesses selling cloth diapers will do layway or payments to help make it easier to start out. According to the RDA, using a basic cloth diaper setup of prefolds and covers, you could use cloth diapers for one-tenth of the cost it would cost you to use disposables.

6. Next, Please!

Cloth diapers can be held onto and reused by your next baby. Usually a cloth diaper will last through use and washing for at least two kids, sometimes more. You have your next baby and you already own and have paid for their diapers. That adds up to a huge savings and makes for a great investment!

7. Return on Investment

If you don’t plan on having any more kids of your own to use them on, you can resell or donate your cloth diapers. Sell them at a consignment store, on eBay, use a diaper swapping website. Regardless, used cloth diapers hold their value and can resell at a great price. If you would rather donate them, there are a few organizations out there like Miracle Diapers that will take your used diapers off your hands and get them into the hands of low-income families. You could also sell them yourself and donate the money to charity.

8. Choices, Choices, Choices

You choose how much or how little you want to spend on diapers. You choose what kind of material graces your baby’s bottom. You choose the style and color. You choose how they’re made. With cloth diapers, you have the opportunity to decide what you want and what’s best for your baby. For more information on the choices available, read Cloth Diapering Basics.

9. Easy to Use

Contrary to popular opinion, cloth is easy. Many of the styles available go on just like a disposable. Even getting rid of the poo is easy - before baby is on solids, you don’t have to do anything except throw it in the washer and it goes out with the water. When baby starts eating solids, you just dump it in the toilet or use a sprayer to spray it off – there’s no need to swish them around in the toilet anymore. And getting rid of the poo makes cloth diapering a lot less stinky than using disposables where the poo can sit around a few days before it gets taken out with the trash.

10. Cleaning Rags for Years to Come

If you hang on to your prefolds, you never have to buy cleaning rags again.

Here's another great article well worth taking the time to read!

Because I really like this blogger's post...

2010-06-15T19:44:00.000-07:00

I came across this post over at knitfit and could totally relate...if I had a diary or blog or something (oh wait, I do have a blog), these would be my exact sentiments. Just had to share...

"Stop poisoning yourself: Why I care

Okay, I had a lot of fun stuff to share with you today, bunnies and nerdy crafty stuff and some thoughts about swimming and conditioning for sprints and quick recovery. But I want to get serious. I started writing the following rant in an email, and I realized it needed to go here on the blog. I know that pretty often I post about Paleo eating, usually just my personal experiences with it and an occasional recipe. This is a topic that is incredibly important to me. I believe that if people were more informed about their diets, about what healthy eating really is, based on the science, they could drastically improve the quality of their lives. Nothing is more important that that. I don't care how productive you are at work, how many friends you have, how rich and famous and fabulous you are, if you don't feel good and you don't have the energy to attack every day, your quality of life is compromised and that other stuff doesn't matter.

In my email, I started by ranting a bit about the breast cancer "industry", which doesn't really raise money for research so much as it sustains itself, with races and products. Think of all the pink tote bags, pink hats, pink ribbon everything. Cancer of any kind is a terrible thing, and I want nothing more than to support cancer patients and survivors in any way I can. But what kills me is some of the companies with the pink ribbons on their stuff are the ones causing the breast cancer!

Cheerios, Yoplait, to name a couple - they turn into pure sugar in your body, which raises your insulin, which over time makes you insulin-resistant, which screws up various hormonal cascades and feedback loops, especially estrogen, especially during menopause, leading to breast cancer and other reproductive cancers. I've been doing a ton of reading about this stuff and the science is there to back it up. I know how to critically read science and understand controlled studies and biological mechanisms. I have a Ph.D. in neuroscience, I'm not just some random crazy person out there who's found a weird niche on the internet and has fallen down a rabbit hole.

Why doesn't your doctor tell you this? Doctors are practitioners, not researchers. They don't question, they look for simple advice to give to people. They are generally overworked and simply not able to pay attention to all the studies that come out, so they just listen to and repeat the same stuff they've always believed. Minimizing cognitive dissonance.

The fact is that sugar is the worst thing for you; fat and cholesterol are a healthy part of the human diet and have been for hundreds of thousands of years. Whole grains, nonexistent for our ancestors, are just sugar wrapped up in a package, along with some dangerous proteins (glutens) that put your immune system on constant alert and make you low-grade sick all the time, so that you don't even notice anymore, and it gets worse over time (e.g., stomach problems, arthritis, lots more). It's just that the agribusiness lobbies have such a stronghold on the government, culture, media, the medical community, EVERYTHING, that nobody questions what they hear, nobody puts the pieces together and everyone keeps spewing the same conventional wisdom nonsense. There are some very powerful psychological and social mechanisms at work there, along with powerful vested interests and lots of money to be made on low-fat, grain and corn based non-food. There's no point in marketing an apple or a pork chop or a stick of butter.

I'm writing this because I care. I walk the walk. I see the tremendous benefits I've experienced in the past 10 months and no, I don't miss cake, I don't miss pasta, I don't miss any of it. I wouldn't ask anyone to listen to me if I weren't doing it myself. It's time to get serious."

Primal Recipe: Coconut Flour Pancakes

2010-06-12T10:35:00.000-07:00

This morning I came down with a mad craving for some pancakes. Trying to stick to a primal diet, I made a third attempt at some coconut flour pancakes. Have you ever had coconut flour? It is a primally delicious and nutritious staple. Coconut flour is a low-carb, high protein, high fiber, gluten-free flour alternative. Click here to learn more about the many benefits of coconut flour.

So my previous two attempts at coconut pancakes were either too dry or too delicate. Coconut flour is a little tricky that way. I remembered reading about a coconut pancake recipe over at Girl Gone Primal and decided to give it a go this morning. Yum! The hubby came in from the other room asking what yummy concoction I was cooking. Coconut pancakes! Hubby: "Those are primal, aren't they?" (He's super into this primal thing, as he's lost about 20 pounds and looks younger, more cut, and more rested, in my opinion.) Me: "Yes, they're totally primal!" I got two thumbs up on this batch. Finally!

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

*1/4 cup coconut flour
*4 large eggs
*3 tbsp. melted coconut oil
*about 1/3-1/2 cup water

Directions:

1. Preheat skillet to medium heat.
2. Combine flour and eggs in a large bowl.
3. Add oil and stir well.
4. Gradually add water to the mixture while stirring until the consistency is just shy of runny. (A runnier mixture will make your pancakes more delicate, a problem I had in the past).
5. Spoon desired amount of mixture onto preheated, oiled skillet. (You can use coconut oil or butter to oil the skillet, although butter is not really primal).
6. Leave to fry until base is firm and edges begin to brown. Flip and repeat.
7. Remove from heat and serve immediately.

I served these puppies up with some defrosted frozen organic strawberries. They were sweet and mushy and added just the right amount of sweetness. You could also go a non-primal route and add a little maple syrup.

Let me know if you try these as well, or if you have any favorite coconut flour recipes!

*Note: I feel like I do have to warn you: these pancakes will not taste like the ones you are probably use to. I don't think any recipe will ever come close to the fluffy, carby, indulgent treats they serve up at pancake houses or grandma's house. But if you want to satisfy your craving while maintaining your weight and health goals, give these a go!

Go California! No more plastic grocery bags, please!

2010-06-04T13:42:00.000-07:00

One of the issues I was going to address on this blog is the importance of reusing. Specifically, grocery bags. I feel like there is no excuse anymore for using paper/plastic when you can buy some reusable bags for only around $1 each. Take them shopping wherever you go...Target, the mall, the grocery store, the farmer's market. Whenever I forget my reusable bags (which only really happens when someone else is driving their car and I forgot to grab mine out of my own car), I feel like such a second class citizen. Seriously! I am truly embarrassed when I step out of a store carrying my items in a plastic bag, or even a paper bag. Luckily I usually go shopping with my mom and she has some handy dandy purse-sized reusable bags that open up to a nice roomy bag when I'm in a pinch. I need to invest in some of those. Then they are always with you. If I do end up with some plastic or paper bags, I reuse those as well as much as I can. But never to clean up the doggie doo! For that, I use those bio-bags. Who wants dog sh*t rotting in a plastic bag that takes forever and a day to degrade.

So you can imagine how excited I was when I opened up MSNBC and found this article addressing California's plan to ban plastic bags in pharmacies, liquor stores, and grocery stores, to name a few. Arnie fully backs this up, too! If this passes, we will be the first state in our nation to enforce such a fabulous environmental law as this one.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37514616/ns/us_news-environment/

Yay team!

Primal Meatloaf Recipe

2010-06-03T20:27:00.000-07:00

Well hello to those of you still following my blog:) I've been MIA since becoming pregnant and feeling yucky, but I'm getting back in the swing of things now that I'm feeling better and have more energy...exercising regularly, focusing on eating primally (except for that cupcake last week, oh and that donut today lol), and trying to do more for my boys who both speak the "acts of service" love language :)

That said, tonight I made my old favorite for dinner...primal meatloaf with farmer's market-fresh steamed asparagus and summer squash. Yum! I'm so excited to be craving some of my old primal stand-by's.

For those of you scared of red meat, please read this article. It's the conventional variety that gives red meat a bad rap...the corn fed, antibiotic-hormone-chemical-laden, crowded, inhumanely treated variety, that is. Grass-fed, organic, free range cows that have been humanely treated from start to finish and allowed to eat and live the way they were meant to offer tremendous health benefits. I hear so often that pregnant women (and non-pregnant women) are anemic and deficient in essential omega fatty acids. I am easily prone to becoming anemic myself, and I think the fact that I eat plenty of grass-fed, organic red meat has kept me from becoming anemic. Plus, if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, the extra omega 3's from grass-fed beef are tremendously healthy for your child.

Anywho, here is that yummy primal meatloaf recipe, slightly modifed, courtesy once again of Son of Grok:

Ingredients:

Sauce:

-1/2 can tomato paste
-1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
-1/4 of a green bell pepper finely diced

Loaf:

-1 lb organic, grass-fed ground beef (or ground buffalo)
-1/2 of a green bell pepper finely diced
-1/2 of a red bell pepper finely diced
-1/2 onion of your choice finely diced
-1 egg
-1/2 can of tomato paste
-4 slices of cooked bacon chopped (optional but it tastes better with the bacon!)
-1 tsp garlic salt
-1 tsp black pepper
-1 tsp salt
-(optional) swiss cheese broken into small chunks (not really primal with the cheese included)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Sauce: Add water to tomato paste until you get a nice consistency and mix all sauce ingredients together.

Loaf:

1. Mix all ingredients together in a big mixing bowl (with hands for best results, exciting)
2. Form into round loaves on a nonstick pan.
3. Paint some of your sauce on top of your loaves.
4. Put in the oven and bake for 45-60 min.
5. After cooked, paint some more sauce on top of your loaves and serve.

*This recipe made about four medium sized patties.

Do you know what's lurking in your mattress?

2010-04-16T16:46:00.000-07:00

Do you know what's in the mattress you're sleeping on? I'm not just talking bed bugs. I'm talking toxic chemicals that have been banned in other countries. That's right - if you're not sleeping on an all natural, organic mattress, you're most likely spending one third of your life breathing in toxic gases. Not good.

When I first had Noah, I didn't know how important this really is. I received numerous links and emails from natural parenting support groups warning me about the dangers posed by conventional mattresses, but I thought, "Hey, we recently spent $1800 on a top of the line mattress. How bad could it really be." I had a lot to learn, like many other things I've discovered since having a child.

I remember reading that the chemicals present in conventional bedding, including pillows and mattresses, readily enter a woman's breastmilk. That really scared me. Not to mention the fact that our child slept with us in our chemical laden bed. And he was an infant with an immature, very delicate immune system compared to us adults. As I learned more and more about all of these yucky chemicals and their effects on children and adults, it became clear to me that providing safe bedding was an important step in continuing to offer my child the best start in life.

So we bought an all natural, organic cotton and wool full size bed, complete with organic sheets and pillows. It was pricier and a little hard to adjust to since they are naturally firmer, but I am so happy we did this. We also splurge on organic sleepwear for Noah. They are pricier, but it's one of the things we feel is worth spending the extra money on. After reading the information at the end of this post, you will understand why. Sorry, but I don't feel like unnecessarily draping my child's body in chemical laden clothes while he sleeps at night.

I only wish we could afford to buy an organic bed for my hubby to sleep in! He just won't part with his $1800 bed. Oh well, you do what you can!

Here is some information covering the various reasons for choosing organic bedding.

Taken from The Natural Sleep Store at: http://www.thenaturalsleepstore.com/whybuyorganicfaq.html

FAQ from The Natural Sleep Store

Why buy a natural and organic mattress?

1. Your current mattress could be emitting toxic cancer-causing chemicals.

Conventional mattresses are filled with synthetic materials. For example, most mattresses contain polyurethane foam. Polyurethane foam constantly breaks down and releases chemicals, which is called off-gassing. Polyurethane foam is made from chemicals that are known carcinogens. Other toxic chemicals that can be found in conventional mattresses are PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) or boric acid. These are used in mattresses as a flame retardant.

PBDEs: these have been shown to have health effects in animals and are so toxic that Europe is phasing out the use of them completely! Read more about PBDEs at: http://www.thegreenguide.com/flame-retardant/ or http://apha.confex.com/apha/132am/techprogram/session_14062.htm

Boric acid: this chemical is also quite toxic, and is in fact used as a roach killer. The EPA and CDC warn of reproductive, developmental, and neurological damage. It has many known health risks jus due to inhalation, a few of which are: inflammation of the upper respiratory tract (including dry throat and cough), eye irritation, and reproductive damage in men (including low sperm count). Please see the following link for the complete report: http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp26-c2.pdf

Read more about boric acid in mattresses here: http://www.peopleforcleanbeds.org/

What is that smell in memory foam? It is the off-gassing of toxic chemicals and is noticeably strong for weeks to months. This has been known to cause headaches and other severe health reactions in people who sleep on them. Get more information on the health effects of memory foam and conventional mattresses: http://www.chem-tox.com/guest/guestbook.html

You can avoid all these toxins by choosing an organic mattress / natural mattress.

2. People tend to sleep more soundly on a mattress that uses natural fibers.

A sleep study conducted by Peter R. Dickson (1984) examined sleep quality of participants when sleeping on natural wool (participants slept on a wool pad that was placed under their sheet). He found that participants moved (tossed and turned) significantly less in the night. Additionally, participants in the study reported that they had slept better and that they felt better the next day when sleeping on the wool. The less a person tosses and turns is related to greater quality of sleep! Wool is hypothesized to increase sleep quality and reduce tossing and turning because 1) it reduces pressure points; and 2) it regulates body temperature. Believe it or not, wool helps keep you warm when it is cold and cool when it is warm. Wool can do this because of its moisture-regulation quality. Here is how it works: when you get too hot, you sweat. If you are sleeping with bedding that is not natural, the sweat will remain near your body and not evaporate, and not cool you down. You can wake up feeling sticky and clammy. However, if you are sleeping with natural fibers, which are breathable, the sweat can evaporate from your body and cool you down. Wool is able to wick water away from your body and is able to absorb up to 30% of its weight in moisture and still feel dry. Wool helps you stay warm when the air is cool because it is a natural insulator. There are air pockets in wool, which trap heat and let the air circulate near your body. In this way, your body heat stays regulated. If you have a consistent body temperature, you will toss and turn less and have a deep and restful sleep.

References:

Dickson, P. R. (1984). Effect of a fleecy woolen underlay on sleep. The Medical Journal of Australia, 140, 87-89.

3. Natural mattresses and organic mattresses help promote a healthy environment.

Natural Rubber/Latex: Natural rubber is harvested by tapping the milk (sap) of Hevea brasiliensis (the common rubber tree), which grows within 10 degrees of the equator. The rubber tree sap is whipped up and turned into latex foam. This is truly a sustainable resource because sap can be collected from the trees up to 180 days per year and the tree heals within an hour.

Organic Cotton: United States farmers applied nearly one-third of a pound of chemical fertilizers and pesticides for every pound of cotton harvested (these chemicals are the most toxic classified by the Environmental Protection Agency). This can account for 25% of all the pesticides used in the United States. The use of chemicals in producing cotton can lead to massive environmental and health problems. You are helping sustain the environment if you buy a natural mattress made with 100% organic cotton, organic sheets, and/or organic bedding. Read more about pesticides at: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/

Organic Wool: Organic wool is produced without the use of hormones or pesticides, both in the animal and in the animal’s food. Wool is a sustainable resource because the sheep are not killed; they are merely shorn each year. See the quote from http://www.ota.com/OrganicWool.html:

In order for wool to be certified as 'organic,' it must be produced in accordance with federal standards for organic livestock production, which state:

• Livestock feed and forage used from the last third of gestation on must be organic.

• Use of hormones or synthetic hormones and genetic engineering is prohibited.

• Use of synthetic pesticides (internal, external and on pastures) is prohibited.

• Producers must encourage livestock health through good cultural and management practices.

That means that sheep cannot be dipped in pesticides to control external parasites, and all pastures must have gone a minimum of three years since last being treated with synthetic chemicals. Producers must also ensure that they do not exceed the natural carrying capacity of the land on which their animals graze.

Why choose organic for baby?

1. One cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) may be from exposure to toxic chemicals being emitted from crib mattresses. Crib mattresses off-gas many toxic chemicals similar to adult mattresses (they are made from polyvinyl chloride [pvc], polyurethane, etc.). They also contain phosphorus, arsenic, and antimony compounds as preservatives and fire retardants. Toxic nerve gasses (phosphine, arsine, and stibine) can be emitted because of interactions with these chemicals and cause anticholinesterase poisoning and cardiac failure in infants. These chemicals are linked to SIDS; in fact, Richardson (1994) and Taylor (1996) found high levels of antimony in the blood and livers of babies who died from SIDS. An article in Midwifery Today goes into detail as well as explaining how these chemicals in crib mattress may be related to other SIDS risk factors (Quinn, 2002). To read this article, go to: http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/bedding.asp?a=1&r=1&e=1&q=sids+crib+mattress. However, there has been some revolt against the conclusion that baby mattresses can cause SIDS (see, for example, Mitchell, Fitzpatrick, & Waters, 1998). As with most things, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle; toxic chemicals in crib mattresses may be one of the many causes of SIDS. Either way, most parents are not willing to risk it.

See also http://www.jeffreywarber.com/hc%20pages/sids.html for more information on SIDS.

Avoid exposing your baby to toxic chemicals by choosing an organic crib mattress and organic sheets for baby’s crib.

References:

Mitchell, E.A., Fitzpatrick, M.G., & Waters, J. (1998). SIDS and the toxic gas theory revisited. The New Zealand Medical Journal, 111, 219-221.

Quinn, J.B. (2002). Baby's bedding: is it creating toxic nerve gasses? Midwifery Today, 61, 21-22.

Richardson, B.A. (1994). Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: a possible primary cause. Journal-Forensic Science Society, 34, 199-204.

Taylor, A. (1996). Antimony, cot mattresses, and SIDS. The Lancet, 347, 616.

2. Greater quality of sleep for baby.

As discussed above, sleeping on wool has been found to increase the quality of sleep in adults (Dickson, 1984). We expect that due to the temperature regulation quality in wool, the same would hold true for babies sleeping on an organic crib mattress with wool in it, perhaps even more for babies since they cannot manually regulate their temperature by adding or removing covers like an adult can.

The Natural Sleep Store is currently trying to track down three articles in The Lancet on babies’ health and sleeping on wool. Please check back soon.

3. A great deal of infant sleepwear is treated with toxic fire retardants.

By law, infant sleepwear has to be fire- or flame-retardant. As cotton is not naturally flame-retardant, it is treated with flame retardants such as PBDEs, which may cause cancer. What is especially disturbing is that companies do not have to place this information on the label of the clothes. The Natural Sleep Store contacted Carter’s to find out if their sleepwear was treated with flame retardants. Their polyester sleepwear is NOT treated because polyester is naturally flame-retardant (however, their cotton sleepwear is treated with flame retardants). The only problem with polyester as a material is that it does not breathe well, which makes it difficult for baby to regulate his or her body temperature. The only ways to get around treating cotton sleepwear with flame retardants are to 1) not sell them as sleepwear; and 2) disclose on the label that it is to be worn snug-fitting.

See http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/safety/fireresist.html for a discussion on flame retardants in infant sleepwear.

Choose organic baby sleepwear to reduce exposure of toxic fire retardants for baby.

What is a natural rubber or natural latex mattress?

Latex rubber foam is encased in wool and/or cotton to make the most comfortable, yet supportive organic mattress out there.

In a natural latex mattress, latex rubber foam is the core of the bed. Latex rubber foam is dense foam that will last for 10 to 20 years. Latex is great as a core, because it helps relieve pressure points from sleeping on an innerspring mattress, helps keep your spine in alignment, and is inherently hypo-allergenic, anti-microbial and dust-mite-resistant. However, natural latex doesn’t offer the breathability that cotton and wool can, so our natural latex mattresses are encased in organic cotton and organic wool. When sleeping on natural mattresses, circulation can be increased, tossing and turning can be reduced, and you will be breathing clean air. This helps you sleep more deeply!

Why should you sleep with natural or organic bedding?

Many cotton sheets are treated with formaldehyde to produce less wrinkles.

Non- organic cotton sheets are often treated with a formaldehyde-based finish that reduces wrinkling. These sheets don’t even have to have a label informing you of what they were treated with! Formaldehyde is a cancer-causing chemical that, unfortunately, is found in many common household items like furniture, particle board (which is actually used in the construction of your house), paints, and carpet. It would be hard to completely avoid exposure to formaldehyde, but about 1/3 of your life is spent sleeping, so by avoiding breathing formaldehyde fumes while you sleep (by using an organic mattress with organic cotton sheets) could greatly reduce your overall exposure. Follow this link for more formaldehyde information: http://www.homestore.com/HomeGarden/HomeImprovement/Safety/Dadd/Sheets.asp?poe=homestore

Additionally, the conventional cotton growers use more pesticide than almost any other crop. If you choose organic, you are choosing to help save the planet!

Choose chemical free organic cotton sheets and/or organic bedding to avoid formaldehyde.

A Primal Pregnancy?

2010-04-12T18:03:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been so long! I've missed getting on here and spilling my heart out about about some of the things I am most passionate about.

So...for those of you who don't already know, I'm pregnant! So exciting! I'm wondering if this one's a girl because I don't remember feeling nearly this bad, as far as morning sickness goes, when I was pregnant with Noah. I am so nauseous most of the day and have terrible indigestion. Hopefully I only have a few more weeks of this hungover/motion sickness/stomach flu feeling to go and then I can enjoy my second trimester honeymoon period. Ahhh the hubby will be so happy. I have neglected my homemaker duties in a serious way since feeling like this!

Unfortunately, I have totally fallen off the wagon when it comes to primal eating. But I am coming to terms with it after beating myself up day after carb-fueling day. I figure once I feel better I can jump right back into my commitment to shunning grains. Luckily I don't crave sweets too often. But cooking and eating most of my old protein-rich go-to's just grosses me out. So to feed my growing belly, I have been turning to more grains than I would like to admit. A girl has to eat something! Luckily I still love fruit, especially grapefruit.

I will say that the days I stick to eating a lot of protein, which are naturally my most primal-eating days, I feel best. My midwife even said that "protein builds bodies, carbs do not" so we really don't need as many carbs as we think we do. And I read that women who eat a paleo diet have easier pregnancies and deliveries, which totally motivates me to stick to this lifestyle. There are just so many benefits to a primal lifestyle. When I indulge in a carby snack or meal, I feel so awful afterward. Those multi-grain hotcakes the other day tasted soooo good going down but man did I pay for it the rest of the day. The next day, I chose a protein-rich egg scramble meal and I felt loads better.

Anywho, I will keep you posted on the adventures of my primal pregnancy. My next post will be about the importance of organic bedding :)

A Few of My Favorite Things...

2010-03-01T12:12:00.000-08:00

I'm a girly girl...I like my makeup and savor the few moments I can grab now that I'm a mom when I'm able to pamper myself...you know, take a shower AND shave AND put on lotion AND do my hair and makeup. I also love products. But, when I think about the seemingly innocent products I use to put all over my body, I cringe! I can't believe drugstores and even high-end cosmetics counters still get away with selling products with the nasty ingredients they contain. Yuck! I've learned not to put anything on my body that I wouldn't put in my body.

Want to see how your products stack up? If you haven't already done so, check out http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/

There, you can enter the name of a product you're interested in, and they will provide you with a safety score based on various ingredients listed in the product. I consult this site every time I'm in the mood to try something new and it has been invaluable to me. I have also chucked a lot of products after consulting that site and finding out how horribly they rate in terms of safety!

Soooo...all that said, I've compiled a list of my favorite "safe" and eco-friendly products, from deodorant, to shampoo, sunscreen, to makeup. Here are a few of my favorites (I use a lot of the same products that I use on my son):

California Baby Shampoo and Body Wash
Aubrey Organics Island Naturals Shampoo & Conditioner
Desert Essence Coconut Hand & Body Lotion
Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil (moisturizer)
Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil (moisturizer)
Desert Essence Thoroughly Clean Face Wash
Derma-E Hyalauronic Acid Night Cream
Annemarie Borlind Eye Wrinkle Cream
Dr. Hauschka Toned Day Cream
Lafes Natural & Organic Active Deodorant
California Baby Sunscreen
UV Natural Sunscreen
Larenim Mineral Mascara
Cargo Plant Love Makeup
Tarte Makeup
Eco Dent Tooth Powder

What are your favorite "safe" products? Please tell!

Dairy

2010-02-12T21:16:00.000-08:00

I grew up drinking milk, like most of you. I always thought it was a necessity to drink milk...it does a body good, right? I mean, how are you going to get your calcium and Vitamin D? Once I began searching for answers to my questions about milk and its supposed benefits, I found out that we are the only species to drink milk (from another animal, by the way) after weaning. Here's an interesting tidbit, taken from Dr. Jay Gordon (although we don't take his advice regarding the inclusion of soy products, orange juice, and cereals to get our calcium): (http://www.drjaygordon.com/development/nutrition/danger01.asp)

"Thanks in part to lobbying efforts on behalf of dairy farmers, Americans feel that it's necessary to drink milk throughout their lives. We've seen countless advertisements which perpetuate the myth: "Milk. It does a body good." Milk can be a high fat product with excessive quantities of protein. It's specifically designed to efficiently grow a cow, an animal which will mature rapidly and live a relatively short time. The National Research Council, a nonprofit organization that provides scientific advice to the federal government, has reported that the cow's milk humans drink also contains all of the pesticides and hormones that cows ingest with the alfalfa they eat.

A study published in the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" in June, 1993, confirmed that there is a definite correlation between cow's milk and the incidence of diabetes. Furthermore, some allergies, which manifest themselves in runny and stuffy noses, can be traced to cow's milk. Some ear and tonsil infections also originate with the drinking of milk. Ingesting other dairy products including butter, cheese and ice cream can also result in these symptoms.

Surprisingly, we are the only species on this planet that drinks milk after infancy, and we are also the only species that drinks milk from a species other than our own. Maybe the other animals know more than we do!

Many infants have trouble digesting cow's milk. This intolerance of lactose, or to the protein in milk, manifests itself in stomach and intestinal disturbance, gas and rashes.

Lactose is the result of combining two sugars: glucose and galactose. Most of us produce an intestinal enzyme, lactase, which allows us to break down these sugars. Our bodies produce the most lactase in infancy when we drink the most milk. As we get older, our bodies produce lesser amounts of lactase so our tolerance to lactose goes down naturally.

The protein we get from milk can be obtained from dozens of vegetable sources, primarily legumes, which include soy bean products. It is a little trickier to find other sources of calcium but this substance is contained in many vegetables like broccoli. Calcium is also available, in smaller amounts, in many other foods. If you're still concerned, you can buy calcium supplements wherever vitamins are sold. Soy milk, orange juice and cereals are now calcium fortified.

I want you to be aware that cow's milk can show up in unexpected food items so you have to read labels carefully. Even a small amount hidden in a food can trigger a reaction in children with milk protein allergies."

Did you also know that countries with the highest dairy intake have the highest incidence of osteoporosis? Osteoporosis is related more to calcium excretion due to salt and protein intake than to calcium deficiency in the diet.

So, Noah has only had a few cups of cow milk so far. We don't "drink" milk just to drink it. He does, however, still nurse (gasp!) and complements breastmilk with almond milk, hemp milk, or coconut milk. I think it's interesting when people comment on the fact that I am still nursing an almost four year old, yet they don't see anything wrong with giving their child milk from another animal. I'm just doing the more natural thing! Besides, we humans are biologically designed to benefit from breastfeeding for an average of 2.5 to 7 years of age (Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives, Katherine Dettwyler).

I do think there is some benefit in eating dairy products like cheese, yogurt, cream, and kefir in moderation. I think it is better to eat these items over grain products, if you have to make the choice. We try our best to avoid grains and have found that including some dairy products gives us more variety. When Noah does eat grains, we make sure they are sprouted (like Ezekiel products) or pre-soaked oats. I will get into grains another time in another post.

But I have also learned that not all dairy is equal. Dr. Joseph Mercola and Dr. Weston Price both promote raw dairy products. According to Dr. Price (http://www.westonaprice.org/Milk-It-Does-a-Body-Good.html):

"Pasteurization is a process of heat treating milk to kill bacteria. Although Louis Pasteur developed this technique for preserving beer and wine, he was not responsible for applying it to milk. That was done at the end of the 1800s as a temporary solution until filthy urban dairies could find a way to produce cleaner milk. But instead of cleaning up milk production, dairies used pasteurization as a way to cover up dirty milk. As milk became more mass produced, pasteurization became necessary for large dairies to increase their profits. So the public then had to be convinced that pasteurized milk was safer than raw milk. Soon raw milk consumption was blamed for all sorts of diseases and outbreaks until the public was finally convinced that pasteurized milk was superior to milk in its natural state.

Today if you mention raw milk, many people gasp and utter ridiculous statements like, You can die from drinking raw milk!" But the truth is that there are far more risks from drinking pasteurized milk than unpasteurized milk. Raw milk naturally contains healthy bacteria that inhibit the growth of undesirable and dangerous organisms. Without these friendly bacteria, pasteurized milk is more susceptible to contamination. Furthermore, modern equipment, such as milking machines, stainless steel tanks and refrigerated trucks, make it entirely possible to bring clean, raw milk to the market anywhere in the US.

Not only does pasteurization kill the friendly bacteria, it also greatly diminishes the nutrient content of the milk. Pasteurized milk has up to a 66 percent loss of vitamins A, D and E. Vitamin C loss usually exceeds 50 percent. Heat affects water soluble vitamins and can make them 38 percent to 80 percent less effective. Vitamins B6 and B12 are completely destroyed during pasteurization. Pasteurization also destroys beneficial enzymes, antibodies and hormones. Pasteurization destroys lipase (an enzyme that breaksdown fat), which impairs fat metabolism and the ability to properly absorb fat soluble vitamins A and D. (The dairy industry is aware of the diminished vitamin D content in commercial milk, so they fortify it with a form of this vitamin.)

We have all been led to believe that milk is a wonderful source of calcium, when in fact, pasteurization makes calcium and other minerals less available. Complete destruction of phosphatase is one method of testing to see if milk has been adequately pasteurized. Phosphatase is essential for the absorption of calcium."

While Dr. Mercola and Dr. Price are both fans of drinking raw milk, we don't focus too heavily on dairy products in our diet. I have found that even raw dairy products create a lot of mucous and I just don't feel as good when I'm eating a lot of dairy. But when we do eat dairy, we strive to buy the raw, grass-fed, organic brands. You can visit http://www.realmilk.com/where.html to find a supplier near you.

The Benefits of Co-sleeping

2010-02-03T21:13:00.000-08:00

Why am I talking about co-sleeping on this blog? I think it is a pretty "primal" way of life...I highly doubt our primal ancestors placed their babies/children in another cave or enter form of shelter here. LOL

Anyway, the reason I bring up this subject is because today I saw a video on ABC news discussing how SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) is linked to low serotonin levels in the baby's brain and ways to prevent SIDS. I have long known that co-sleeping and breastfeeding (including night-nursing) decrease your chances of SIDS. However, the conventional doctor in the video says to avoid co-sleeping. She does say that breastfeeding decreases your chances of SIDS, so I'll give her credit for that one. Here is a great explanation as to how co-sleeping may help to prevent SIDS. Also, here is a great co-sleeping and SIDS fact sheet that talks about why co-sleeping gets a bad rap, and how to successfully and safely co-sleep. My favorite part is where the author states:

"Why does our nation rank only 42nd in infant survival in the industrialized world (some non-reporting nations are thought to rank better than us as well)? Our difference from the best-ranking nations is a high predominance of formula feeding, isolated sleep, and medical intervention. The highest cosleeping/ breastfeeding nations rank with half our overall infant death rate (and negligable SIDS rates). Remember we rank #1 in medical intervention. "

Let me also highlight how co-sleeping decreases your chances of SIDS according to LLLI and Dr. James McKenna:

(Excerpts from a LLLI press release from September 30, 1999: )

Studies have shown that co-sleeping with a breastfeeding infant promotes bonding, regulates the mother and baby's sleep patterns, plays a role in helping the mother to become more responsive to her baby's cues, and gives both the mother and baby needed rest. The co-sleeping environment also assists mothers in the continuation of breastfeeding on demand, an important step in maintaining mom's milk supply.

Dr. James McKenna, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, a member of LLLI's Health Advisory Council, and an expert on the subject of co-sleeping, believes there to be more danger in leaving an infant alone in a crib than in arranging a safe co-sleeping environment. He states, "We agree... that special precautions need to be taken to minimize catastrophic accidents. However, the need for such precautions is no more an argument against all co-sleeping and, specifically bedsharing, than is the reality of infants accidentally strangling, suffocating, or dying from SIDS alone in cribs, a reason to recommend against all solitary, unsupervised infant sleep." He adds, "While specific structural hazards of an adult bed are important, the fact that they exist means neither that they cannot be eliminated nor that all bedsharing is unsafe."

Dr. McKenna goes on to address concerns over co-sleeping being unhealthy for a child's psychological development:

In part, this view represents a personal and arbitrary judgment that anyone is entitled to make as long as it is not passed on as scientific fact. Such judgments are based on Western values favoring the perception of how individualism and infant autonomy are best promoted and obtained. No study has shown, however, that the goals for separateness and independence (or happiness, for that matter) are obtained in the individual by, among other things, separate sleeping arrangements for parents and children, nor do any studies demonstrate negative consequences for children or parents who choose to cosleep for ideological or emotional purposes, except when cosleeping is part of a larger psychologically disordered set of family relationships or when cosleeping occurs under dangerous social or physical circumstances. The only studies of the psychological or social effects of cosleeping reveal not negative but positive consequences. One study among military families revealed that cosleeping children receive higher evaluations of their comportment from their teachers than do solitary sleeping children and are under-represented among psychiatric populations, when compared with children who do not cosleep [Forbes JF, Weiss DS: The cosleeping habits of military children. Mil Med 1992; 157:196-200]. Lewis and Janda found that college-age students who coslept as children were better adjusted and more satisfied with their sexual identities and behavior than college-age students who did not cosleep [Lewis RJ, Janda H: The relationship between adult sexual adjustment and childhood experience regarding exposure to nudity, sleeping in the parental bed, and parental attitudes towards sexuality. Arch Sex Behav 1988; 17:349-363] . Clearly, we need to change our conceptualization concerning what constitutes a normal or healthy childhood sleep pattern!

(From: Stein MT, et al. Cosleeping (Bedsharing) Among Infants and Toddlers. Pediatrics 2001 Apr; 107(4); 873-877)

And I can attest that co-sleeping has in no way hampered my sex life!!!

Ten Reasons to Shop at the Farmers Market

2010-02-03T20:31:00.000-08:00

My old mommy friend Rebecca over at Know Thy Food is an amazing woman. She lives the kind of life I strive to emulate. I especially admire her commitment to avoiding grocery stores and mainstream food consumption. This means buying only local, organic foods. Of course, it helps that she lives in an area surrrounded by outstanding farms! I do my best in Orange County by buying most of our meat directly in bulk from the farm and shopping the farmers market every week. The few things I stop by the grocery store for are: organic, raw, grass-fed butter, organic, raw, grass-fed cream, nuts, condiments/spices, almond milk, coconut milk and other coconut products, and occasionally yogurt and cottage cheese. I am working on finding ways to make some of these items myself or buying them from a more direct source. Any suggestions?

For those of you looking for a farmers market near you, you can visit http://www.localharvest.org/. Noah and I love our weekly visit to the farmers market. Everyone there is so nice to him and he is learning so much about where food actually comes from and what is in season. He is also learning a little about money by being in charge of paying for our items in cash. The main reasons we shop at the farmers market are:

(taken from the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture at http://www.cuesa.org/sustainable_ag/issues/10reasons.php)

1. Taste Real Flavors: The fruits and vegetables you buy at the farmers market are the freshest and tastiest available. Fruits are allowed to ripen in the field and brought directly to you - no long-distance shipping, no gassing to simulate the ripening process, no sitting for weeks in storage. This food is as real as it gets -food fresh from the farm.

2. Enjoy the Season: The food you buy at the farmers market is seasonal. It is fresh and delicious and reflects the truest flavors. Shopping and cooking from the farmers market helps you to reconnect with the cycles of nature in our region. As you look forward to asparagus in spring, savor sweet corn in summer, or bake pumpkins in autumn, you reconnect with the earth, the weather, and the turning of the year.

3. Support Family Farmers: Family farmers are becoming increasingly rare as large agribusiness farms and ranches steadily take over food production in the U.S. Small family farms have a hard time competing in the food marketplace. Buying directly from farmers gives them a better return for their produce and gives them a fighting chance in today's globalized economy.

4. Protect the Environment: Food in the U.S. travels an average of 1500 miles to get to your plate. All this shipping uses large amounts of natural resources (especially fossil fuels), contributes greatly to pollution and creates excess trash with extra packaging. Conventional agriculture also uses many more resources than sustainable agriculture and pollutes water, land and air with toxic agricultural by-products. Food at the farmers market is transported shorter distances and grown using methods that minimize the impact on the earth.

5. Nourish Yourself: Much food found in grocery stores is highly processed. The fresh produce you do find is often grown using pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, and genetic modification. In many cases it has been irradiated, waxed, or gassed in transit. All of these practices have potentially damaging effects on the health of those who eat these foods. In contrast, most food found at the farmers market is minimally processed, and many of our farmers go to great lengths to grow the most nutritious produce possible by building their soil's fertility and giving their crops the nutrients they need to flourish in the ground and nourish those who eat them.

6. Discover the Spice of Life ~ Variety: At the Farmers Market you find an amazing array of produce that you don't see in your supermarket: red carrots, a rainbow of heirloom tomatoes, white peaches, stinging nettles, green garlic, watermelon radishes, quail eggs, maitake mushrooms, gigande beans, whole pheasants, and much, much more. It is a wonderful opportunity to experience first hand the diversity (and biodiversity) of our planet, both cultivated and wild!

7. Promote Humane Treatment of Animals: At the farmers market, you can find meats, cheeses, and eggs from animals that have been raised without hormones or antibiotics, who have grazed on green grass and been fed natural diets, and who have been spared the cramped and unnatural living conditions of so many of their brethren on feedlots.

8. Know Where Your Food Comes From: A regular trip to a farmers market is one of the best ways to reconnect with where your food comes from. Farmers themselves sell their produce at the farm stands. Meeting and talking to farmers is a great opportunity to learn more about how food is grown, where it is grown, when it is grown, and why!

9. Learn Cooking Tips, Recipes, and Meal Ideas: Few grocery store cashiers or produce stockers will give you tips on how to cook the ingredients you buy, but farmers, ranchers, and vendors at the farmers market are often passionate cooks with plenty of free advice about how to cook the foods they are selling. They'll give you ideas for what to have for supper, hand out recipes, and troubleshoot your culinary conundrums.

10. Connect with Your Community: Wouldn't you rather stroll amidst outdoor stalls of fresh produce on a sunny day than roll your cart around a grocery store with artificial lights and piped in music? Coming to the Farmers Market makes shopping a pleasure rather than a chore. The Farmers Market is a community gathering place - a place to meet up with your friends, bring your children, or just get a taste of small-town life in the midst of our wonderful big city.

Guilt-free primal dessert recipe: Gorilla Cake

2010-02-01T20:07:00.000-08:00

...courtesy of Son of Grok. Check out his Primal Blueprint success story here. Totally inspiring!

I'll admit it. I LOVE dessert. Seriously. Who doesn't. With the exception of a birthday cake or other special occasion, I've stuck to finding healthy, primal recipes to curb my sweet tooth when it sneaks up on me. This one's gooooood. Even the hubby who despises both banana and coconut couldn't stop picking at it. And the best part is, it's grain-free and gets its sweetness naturally from bananas! Hooray!

I am going to make this one for my lovely friend Kristina's birthday. I think I will add some whipped raw cream. Yum. I hope she likes it as much as I do :)

Here it is, taken from Son of Grok's site:

Ingredients:

Crust

- Dash of Cinnamon
- 2 Tblspoons organic butter (or coconut oil if you prefer)
- .5-1 cup almond flour

Filling

- 3 bananas
- 2.5 cups of unsweetened shredded coconut
- 1/4 cup coconut milk
- 2 eggs
- Dash of cinnamon

Directions:

Crust

1. Melt butter or oil and mix almond flour and a dash of cinnamon into a dough.
2. Press your dough very thinly into your baking pan.

Filling

1. Process 2 of the cups of shredded coconut until fine. (I used my food processor.
2. Combine fine coconut, unprocessed coconut, bananas and eggs in a mixer (I was trying out my new kitchen aid) Mix until liquid pudding texture. (if you don’t have a kitchen aid, you may need to uses a blender or processor to goo up your nanners.

Put it together

1. Pour your filling into your pan with your crust
2. Sprinkle top with a dash of cinnamon
3. Bake at 350 degrees until done (mine took about 30 minutes).
4. Serve warm or cold! Enjoy

Setting Us Up For Success

2010-02-01T19:59:00.000-08:00

Every Sunday, I score major points with the hubby by whipping up a bunch of yummy, healthy, primal food to get us through the week. It has helped us stay on track with eating healthily by having a refrigerator full of already-prepared snacks and mini meals to grab for during the day when we're hungry. Plus, Simon saves money and time by bringing his lunch and snacks to work every day.

Here's a list of what I made this week:

No-bean chili with organic, grass-fed ground beef and chopped up bacon
Crust-less quiche to last the whole week made with eggs (of course), full-fat coconut milk, chopped up kale and bacon (Can you tell I'm craving bacon?)
One Dozen hard-boiled eggs
Enough salad for each of us to eat every day for lunch. This week I used romaine lettuce, chopped apples, zucchini, cucumber, tomato, red bell peppers, and diced turkey. We just pour on olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dress it up.
Six chicken drumsticks

The time and effort I put into making these foods has helped us tremendously and I actually look forward to doing it each week. It makes me feel good when I open the refrigerator and see all the yummy food I prepared with love and care. Plus it saves me time and headache during the week when I just don't have the energy to whip up something fresh and healthy.

What do you mean you live "primally"?

2010-01-30T16:37:00.000-08:00

I don't mean we live in a house made of sticks and mud and that Simon quit his job to actually "bring home the bacon" while donning a loin cloth.

I mean we follow The Primal Blueprint! Click here to learn more.

Do you know what your meat ate for dinner?

2010-01-30T16:02:00.000-08:00

We've been buying organic, grass-fed, free-range meat since we decided vegetarianism wasn't for us. I rationalized that if we were going to eat meat, it had to be the healthiest, most-humanely treated meat available. The benefits are huge, not only to your health, but also for the planet. I know a lot of you already eat this way, but for those who are interested, I think Mark Sisson at Marksdailyapple.com best summarizes why grass-fed, organic, truly free-range meat is superior to conventional meat:

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/concentrated-animal-feeding-operations/

We have been buying our meat from US Wellness Meats, Hearst Ranch, Trader Joe's (sometimes they carry organic, 100% grass fed ground beef), and now I think we will start buying Sommers brand from the Sprouts that just opened by our house. We always try to buy local, but so far the only local supplier we know of is Hearst Ranch and they can be pretty pricey.

Did you also know that chickens naturally thrive on a grass-fed diet, full of rich vegetation and juicy insects for their liking? I am so excited because I finally found a local supplier of grass-fed, organic, truly free-roaming poutry at Rainbow Ranch. Come to think of it, I need to go place my order right now!

And of course we also only eat pastured, organic eggs. Please read Cheeseslave's post here to learn why; I think she summarizes the reasons beautifully.

Some people think that eating this way is a luxury and that they can't afford it. I agree in certain situations. But I think for most of us, if we cut out all the processed, boxed crap and unnecessary expenses, we would see that buying quality food is the best investment we can make in our health and our future.

Natural mold and mildew cleaner

2010-01-30T15:34:00.000-08:00

Like most of you, we like to use only natural cleaning products in our house. There are so many yucky chemicals in most household products, and after having Noah, I became even more aware of this issue. Luckily, stores now carry many more natural cleaning products than they use to. We love Mrs. Meyers when we're in a pinch! Method by Target is another one we reach for from time to time, but I'm not totally sure I buy that they are super duper natural. I guess the best way to ensure you are using a truly natural product is to make it yourself! Which brings me to a simple remedy for that yucky mold and mildew that creeps into our shower and bath...

Mix two teaspoons tea tree oil with two cups of water in a spray bottle. Spray down the nasties and do not rinse. Spray the mildew/mold prone areas at least once a week for prevention.

I use to use bleach for this problem until I read about how bad bleach is for the environment and our bodies.

What natural remedies can you recommend for household cleaning purposes?

Cloth napkins

2010-01-30T15:26:00.000-08:00

While we're on the subject of reducing waste, let's talk about ditching your paper towels and paper napkins, if you haven't already done so, that is. They are totally unnecessary. Plus every meal feels like a special occasion when you're using a lovely cloth napkin! Then you just throw it in the wash with the rest of the towels. I would recommend buying a darker color napkin to hide food stains. I bought some cheap cloth napkins at Target (I'm sure you can find them even cheaper elsewhere) for meal times, and we use any old towel to soak up a mess in place of a paper towel. I'm not sure why we still buy paper towels, though. In any case, we haven't had to buy any in a long time! I think the hubby just has some issues with change, even if it is for the better. Having paper towels on the counter somehow makes him feel more secure. Or something like that.

One time we were enjoying a picnic lunch at the park and another mom saw me wiping Noah's face with a cloth napkin. She said, "Oh here! I brought some napkins. You don't have to use that towel thing." I didn't say anything and just took her napkin...I'm still working on navigating these issues in social situations:)

Do you re-use your ziplock baggies?

2010-01-30T15:16:00.000-08:00

One of the things we do in our home is reuse plastic ziplock baggies. We try to avoid using them to cut down on waste (and use a glass container instead to store things) but sometimes only a ziplock baggy will do. We have found that you can wash, dry, and re-use ziplock baggies over and over again and have saved some pretty pennies (and space in our landfills) by doing so. Some recycling centers will accept the plastic baggies, but I'm honestly too lazy to drive my little baggies all that way. So we just use the baggies until they are worn out and then toss them.

To wash the baggy, simply turn it inside out and wash it with soap and water. Then leave it inside out to dry. I am working on getting the hubby to make me a ziplock baggy stand dryer thingy. Pics to come. Some people put their ziplock baggies in the dishwasher's top rack and wash/dry it along with your dirty dishes. Of course, never re-use baggies that have stored raw meat.

Do you do this too? What is your method?

How it all began...

2010-01-29T17:34:00.000-08:00

Do you ever look at your life and wonder, "How did I come to live my life this way? What chain of events led me to this point in time?" I do.

Just last night I was laying in bed thinking about how different I use to be, specifically before my son was born. It's funny how you think you know things, but then you find out you don't. I guess that's the beauty of life...we are always learning and growing. I think keeping an open mind and accepting new ways of doing things create the most opportunities for growth.

Anyway, I was wondering last night what led me to my slight obsession with eating the healthiest foods possible and living in a sustainable and eco-friendly way. I think it all came about after Noah was born. I always knew I wanted to breastfeed my future child, but I didn't know how important it really is and how much it impacts and changes you as a woman until I experienced it first hand. I really think the fact that I chose to breastfeed Noah impacted my life for the better, in terms of health. And I know that his birth made me just plain care more about the planet. I'm not saying that whether one chooses to breastfeed or formula feed impacts all women in this way, I'm just saying that it impacted me. I know of many women who formula fed and feed their children extremely healthily; I also know many women who breastfed and don't feed their children all that well. For me, when I decided to give my child the healthiest start possible by breastfeeding him, I wanted to continue feeding him the healthiest foods possible when it was time for him to experiment with food. I researched all the different ways, and realized that "child led solids" made the most sense to me. I had followed my child's lead since birth by nursing on demand and other means, so I really wanted food to be on his terms as well. This meant skipping the spoons, purees and baby cereals so that he could pick up real, organic food and learn how to eat it himself. Of course some people freaked out about this, worried that he would choke. But the reality is that baby's fine motor development (his ability to actually pick up food with is hand) matches his oral development (his ability to mash and chew the food with his gums and then successfully swallow it or spit it out). So basically, if they can't pick it up and get it in their mouth, they are not ready to eat it. This readiness takes place around six months of age, which is when most doctors recommend starting solids. If you are interested in learning more about child led solids, follow this link.

So we decided from an early age to feed Noah organic, whole foods and their derivatives. No processed crap. This of course carried over to how we ate as a family. If you want your kid to eat healthy, you have to only keep healthy foods in the house. I always thought I ate healthy until I started eating like my child. The sticky part came when he wouldn't eat meat. I worried he wasn't getting enough protein and/or iron so I began researching the best vegetarian diets to make sure I complemented his diet with proper nutrients. In that quest for knowledge, I was seduced by all the vegetarian, vegan, and raw diet books and their claims of better health and a more sustainable planet. So we all went vegetarian! I even went near-vegan for awhile. I didn't worry so much about Noah because he had a pretty balanced diet and I was still nursing him. But I started to just not feel "right" so I found a naturopath through a vegetarian support group. She was suppose to be very vegetarian friendly. She was, but do you know what she told me? That I shouldn't be a vegetarian! She said I am a protein type and need animal based protein as the base of my diet. I followed her advice and also turned to Mercola.com, Paleo diet websites, The Schwarzbein Principle, and eventually, found Mark Sisson's book, The Primal Blueprint. All of these sources led me to the conclusion that I should only be eating what our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate: Meat, seafood, eggs, nuts, seeds, fruits, veggies, and their whole food derivatives. I guess I had to turn vegetarian to meet a doctor who would tell me I should not be a vegetarian!

So here we are, following The Primal Blueprint, and feeling more energetic, lean, content and satiated than ever! Noah, by the way, grew out of his aversion to meat and loves it now. But we don't buy just any meat...we always go for organic, grass fed meat. I will detail where we purchase our meat in a later post. I have never felt this good about my body and state of mind, and I have never had this much fun cooking and eating! Giving up grains, processed foods, and sugar has been the best thing I've ever done for my health. I know it sounds crazy, giving up grains especially, but I promise that once you start eating this way and trying some of the recipes I post, you will forget about all the grains you thought you couldn't live without. And once you start noticing your body leaning out, you will be even more motivated to incorporate this lifestyle.

Another important aspect of The Primal Blueprint is the way you exercise. It is imperative to tone down your workouts by focusing on low-level cardio and a few strength training sessions a week, complemented with sprints every week or so. Because when you overdo your cardio and engage in long workouts, you're just compromising your immune system and you're hungry all the time! And what do you crave? CARBS, but the kind you don't want like grains and sugar. You want to focus on getting your carbs from fruits, veggies, and nuts. And you also want to eat high-quality FAT. That's right, I have lost weight by eating more fat and actually consuming more calories than I did before making this lifestyle change. And I actually exercise way less than I use to, yet am better able to build and maintain muscle with the way I am eating.

So along with eating this way, we also strive to buy all our food in its freshest, most natural state. That means buying organic and locally. I will detail these specifics in future posts. Eating this way naturally spills over to other areas of your life...from the products you clean with, to the products you put on your body. You just want to live as close to the way nature intended which means going for natural products and materials. If only I had known all of this long ago! But that is why I am starting this blog...maybe some of the information here will impact others. Please feel free to comment on any posts and enlighten me with information I have yet to gather!