I started taking an e-course on the fundamentals of cooking nourishing food at the beginning of the summer. The course is the Fundamentals E-course at GNOWFGLINS. I set out to learn how to prepare grains properly so they don't interfere with nutrients, and how to make traditional foods such as home-made cream cheese, sourdough breads, lacto-fermented vegetables such as sauerkraut, and rich nourishing bone broths.
These foods are some of the key elements in the healthy way of eating recommended by the Weston A Price Foundation.
I was kind of skeptical, but I tried one thing at a time, and I kept reading, and one day even found myself buying raw milk at a local health food store. (WAPF calls this Real Milk instead of raw milk.)
I drank it.
I liked it.
I lived.
By the end of the summer, when my son went off to visit his dad for three weeks, I had sampled some of the basics, one meal and one recipe at a time, and I was ready to try more.
So I gave myself a challenge. While he was gone, I would do all my own cooking, and stick as closely to the WAPF principles for healthy eating as my skills and my budget would allow.
I loved it. I ate avocado and cheddar cheese omelets and didn't worry about the fat. I made cream cheese from raw milk that was deliberately left out to sour. I made broth that had a full 24-hours to simmer, extracting all kinds of nutrients from the bones, instead just the few hours that it takes to cook meat until is tender. In the last week, I finally made bright purple sauerkraut, which is still souring on top of my refrigerator.
Cheating: I did finish off the ice cream in the frig (but saved the rest of the chocolate syrup for my son). When I had an all-day training to attend, I bought two chicken tamales (a traditional food -- and pretty sure this store makes them with real lard instead of vegetable shortening) for my lunch, and I said yes one day when someone offered to buy me lunch. I had about a week of struggling with sugar and salt cravings (and I found a bag of powdered sugar in the back of one of my cupboards. You don't really want to know all the ways I have of making a bag of sugar disappear.)
I had already cut back on caffeine and during these three weeks I went from a small pot of 90% decaf to no caffeine at all. My blood pressure had been going down steadily ever since I started cutting back...my doctor took me off blood pressure medication when it went below 140/90, and at my last visit it was 132/88.
I learned to make kombucha, but I'm using decaf tea bags.
One day I went through the refrigerator and threw out everything that had high fructose corn syrup on the label.
Then the next day I had to figure out how to make tuna salad without my sweet pickle relish and mayo! I ended up making open-face tuna melt sandwiches on sourdough English muffins, with yogurt, mustard, and black Greek olives in the tuna instead of pickle relish, mayo and mustard.
Frankly, they were a triumph.
What it all boils down to: I now feel really committed to this way of eating, which is so wonderful I really don't feel restricted at all. I'm not bringing processed packaged foods into my home again. At least not for myself.
Converting my 17-year old son may take a little longer.
Blog Hops: This post is entered in Simple Lives Thursday at GNOWFGLINS and Fight Back Friday at Food Renegade.
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