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After reading America’s Cheapest Family yesterday and reading about how they freeze much of their food purchases I got the urge to read a book that has been on my shelf for many months. I probably should have read this book before spring and the growing season but hey I am studying up for next season right? The book is Preserving Food Without Canning or Freezing -Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation.

The basic concept of the book is to show we can preserve food in MANY other ways besides freezing and canning. This is important to green/health conscious people because traditional canning sterilizes your food and kills most of the nutrients and all of the enzymes. Freezing does cause some nutrient damage but the issue there is that freezing requires constant energy. This book shows us all the ways we can preserve food without sterilizing it, hence keeping it a live food, and without using too much energy.

The first preservation method discussed is preservation in the ground through a homemade silo. It basically involves digging a hole in the ground and storing certain veggies inside it…covered with sand and then covering the mound with straw to keep them very cold in winter but not frozen. This is a common method of storing potatoes and other root vegetables. Then it goes on to discuss all the fruits and veggies you can store in cold cellars. I especially liked the info on preserving blueberries…it looked very easy and they are supposed to keep for up to a year.

Next up was preservation by drying. Fruits and veggies can be dried outside in the sun or with solar or electric dehydrators. One great benefit of drying fruits is that the sugar is concentrated so the dried fruits make great sweeteners. One very interesting method discussed was drying apples in elderberry flowers. It has instructions for drying peaches, plums, berries, persimmons, cherries, tomatoes, mushrooms, turnips, and so much more.

The lactic fermentation chapter was new and appealing to me with recipes for vegetable medleys, tomato sauce, pearl onions, and sauerkraut. The recipes for storing in oil and vinegar were also great but I was most interested in reading about preservation in salt. I have eaten fish and beef preserved this way and they were deliriously yummy. There are recipes for salt preservation of green beans, anchovies, tomatoes, and lemons.

The chapter on preserving with sugar was basically a collection of jam recipes that require cooking. They sound divine but I was a bit disappointed that there were not many options that did not involve cooking and therefore destroying much of the nutritional content. But all in all a very good book and one I will be referencing like crazy next spring and summer when I load up on fresh produce at the farmer’s market.

My kiddies recently got to be testers for several different kinds of Pure Fun Organic Candy. It was a hard job but I think they managed to do just fine. These candies are made exclusively in Canada and the US and have built a fine reputation for what is NOT found in their candy: NO Gluten, NO GMO’S, NO FD&C Colors, NO Casein, NO Dairy, NO artificial flavors, NO dyes, NO Synthetics, NO Pesticides, NO preservatives…nothing but Pure Fun.

BUT they do have good stuff IN them to: organic cane juice, organic brown rice syrup, and natural colors derived from great stuff like red beet concentrate, alfalfa extract, red cabbage, annatto, and other yummy fruits and vegetables.

So now that we have established that they are a pretty safe option as far as candy goes they also have many different flavors and candy types….fruit rocks, pure pops, fruit pinwheels, citrus slices, chocolate meltdowns, candy canes, and root beer barrels, to name a few. Honestly I will admit I was not a huge fan of the flavor…I am not real big on candy, especially hard candies anyway but these tasted a little “off” to me. My kids, however, noticed nothing and were happy to eat them. They didn’t go nuts on them either…they just had one or two a day, so it seemed they were better able to self regulate on these.

If you are giving away candy for Halloween these would be good but a bit pricey for that. They would also be good for pulling a switcheroo on your kids Trick or Treat baskets…maybe grabbing a handful  or two of snickers and peanut butter cups and throwing these in there instead.

Here is to a greener, healthier Halloween!

Just in case you missed it, I posted about kids and raw food over at my other blog. It is challenging IMO to commit to a raw foods diet because it is so different than what we all grew up and with. It also contrasts with what is considered the “norm” nowadays. Kids in particular can be hard to transition away from processed, chemical laden, nutritionally deficient cooked foods. You have to get more creative than trail mix and salad to get the kids on board.

With that in mind I have just released an un-cookbook called Recipes for Raw Kids. It has nearly 90 pages of info, tips, and recipes for raw dishes that are delicious and kid approved. I have gotten TONS of great feedback on it so far and one mom even told me that it is great for adults too that want to eat more raw foods and want to start out simple.

99% of the recipes are raw vegan. There are two recipes in it that are transitional….aka healthier but not completely raw. And of course this book is for strict raw foodies AND people that just want to increase their current percentage of raw foods eaten. Anyone can benefit from more raw food…you don’t have to go completely raw. I know I get turned off by the militant raw foodies who act as though it is all or nothing. I hope this book gives people some creative new ideas.

And if you have a blog or website and want to share this book with others I have an affiliate program you may be interested in.

At this moment I am off on a birthday celebration with my family in Pittsburgh. We will be joined by my brother, sister, and father in-law. It should be a very nice time. We are going to the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum…I have never been but my two oldest went last year. Here are some pics of the bento lunches I made. The kids bentos will provide lunch and snacks…nut butter sandwiches on Ezekiel bread, Lara Bar, flax crackers, carrots, dipping sauce, cheese, a fruit leather, a vegan cookie, veggie crackers, cranberries, and raspberries. Almond milk to drink. Inside Laptop Lunchboxes. The napkins are from Fabkins.

For my husband and I: Flax crackers, carrots, raw apple/cinammon cookies, a Larabar. Not pictured is fresh fruit bowl for us to share.

Green Smoothies have to be one of the smartest creations ever. The benefits are awesome and the taste even better. There are so many people learning about these crafty concoctions and their bodies are thankful for the introduction.

Maybe you are asking just what a green smoothie is. The answer is rather simple. A green smoothie is a fruit smoothie that includes a big serving of dark green leafy vegetables. And please don’t let the name fool you because they are not all green and they definitely don’t taste like grass.

Green smoothies are excellent choices for meals such as breakfast because they provide the healthy carbohydrates, along with an abundance of vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and chlorophyll that a body needs for proper energy source that won’t weigh you down or give that false start followed by a hard fall that unhealthy carbs tend to do. They are also full of fiber which your body needs for proper waster elimination. And they have several servings of greens!

You will find that by consuming more greens you are able to get the amino acids needed for protein as well as antioxidants, and Alkaline minerals which are all important to the function of the body.

Green smoothies are also a perfect way to get your kids to eat their veggies without a fight. They may gawk at the color, especially if it turns out green but they will love the taste so much they will most likely forget the color. Or they may like…my kids love to drink spinach smoothies and be like “Popeye”. You may find that with the older kids, they start to make them without your assistance as a snack or even for their buddies who stop by for a visit. It is truly wonderful.

Because so few of us consume the amount of greens we need to per day, adding green smoothies to the diet can only help. Drinking one or two of these drinks per day will not only give you’re the added necessary nutrition your body needs but you also find that you actually get full. This makes a green smoothie and excellent meal replacement choice.

Some people who consumed green smoothies on a regular basis have reported they  noticed improvements in digestion, skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis, and acne, healing of various conditions such as thyroid problems, and more!  I know when I started drinking green smoothies I noticed a huge difference in my skin. I finally knew what they meant by glowing skin…it was like I shaved ten years off my face after just a couple of days. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but it was amazing.

With green smoothies you can mix the greens with any combination of fruit and enjoy a tasty healthy treat that is practically fat free and low in calories. It is as if you are having your cake and eating it to. Really, they are just that good.

Green smoothies are not the wave of the future, they are the here and now. Learning to make them on a daily basis is healthy for you, your family, and even the environment because you are consuming less meat which makes our earth a happy earth.

Check out my kids favorite green smoothie recipe. And check out this video below on how to make a green smoothie. Enjoy!

When I heard about raw foods I had my doubts. Mostly because raw foodies are also vegans. I tried the whole vegetarian/vegan thing for a couple years and I walked away thinking I had done my body more harm than good. My eyes had dark circles, I was weak and tired all the time, my nails were brittle and broke often, my hair was dry and lifeless like straw. People would take one look at me and run screaming from all thoughts of a vegan diet. It was BAD.

After researching the raw food diet and trying it for many months I have come to some realizations…a vegan diet would have been just fine IF I had gone raw as well. Most of the food I was eating was cooked or processed. Tofu, soy dogs, vegan lasagna, vegan tacos with soy tofu “meat”, soy milk, soy ice cream, etc. Now I realize how dangerous it is to be eating all that soy and I won’t touch it with a ten foot poll. So that combined with the fact that I was cooking everything, except for small salads or the occasional banana, made for a very unhealthy diet.

Cooking usually destroys around 30-50% or more of the nutrient content of any given food. So cooking automatically renders something half as healthy as it should be. Cooking kills ALL of the life giving enzymes. The enzymes are what help us to digest that particular food…they come neatly packaged with everything you need for maximum digestion and absorption. When the enzymes are destroyed our body has to scramble and look for some within the stores of our body. Enzymes are a necessary element in maintaining good health and are responsible for every reaction in the human body. If our enzyme production is insufficient we open ourselves up to many health problems; and if we don’t have enzymes we will die. There is really no other way to put it. While the body has the ability to produce enzymes on it own, it is not enough to produce the quality enzymes needed…not when our optimal diet is SUPPOSED to have that covered.

In addition to the enzymes, raw foods are filled with the necessary vitamins and minerals that we can all use for healthier bodies. There is no need to worry about missing essential fatty acids, iron, calcium, or protein on a raw vegan diet; because raw foods contain some of the highest sources of each of these necessary nutrients.

So when I was eating vegan before I was essentially destroying my food before I consumed it. THAT was why I was so unhealthy…not because I wasn’t eating animal products and meat. I admit that I will not likely give up ALL animal products. I do like my raw milk on occassion and I like sushi something fierce but eventually I would like to make those occasional vices only and the rest of my diet would ideally be vegan.

Because of this realization about raw/vegan eating I have also started to disagree just a bit with Mr. Weston Price. Carrie please don’t flog me. I think animal proteins have their place in many diets..I truly do but only because we humans are not eating what we should be in the first place. I absolutely loved the book Green for Life as it explained this beautifully.

We share an amazing 99.4% of our DNA sequence with Chimpanzees. In fact, many scientists believe they actually should be classified as humans! They have the same A-B-O blood groupings as we do. We are also closely related to Gorillas. With all of the similarities between us why do they not also have our degenerative diseases? Their diet! A Chimpanzee’s diet consists of 50% fruit, 43% greens, 5% pith, bark, and seeds, and 3% insects and on rare occasions…small animals. Are we eating diets proportional to that? Heck no!

They eat hardly any meat but yet would you call chimps or gorillas wimpy??? No, they get ample protein from plants and we can too. We could technically eat 1-2 pounds of plain leafy greens (Kale, Romaine, Spinach, etc) every day but who wants to. I sure don’t…unless I mix them up with some fruit and make a green smoothie. I can easily down a pound of Kale if I put it in smoothies and drink it throughout the day. The problem isn’t that we can’t get the protein from plant sources, the problem is that we aren’t willing or able to eat enough of it most times to GET that protein. Green smoothies though have solved this problem for many people though, including a lot of raw foodies. Consider too that animal proteins are extremely hard for our bodies to digest making it likely that much of the protein will be useless to us and you can see why I think plant based proteins win out every time.

I remember once reading about this a long time ago from a Biblical perspective too. The author talked about how humans were meant to eat what they could get from the Garden of Eden…fruits and greens. Only later did our diet adapt as we were essentially forced to eat what we could get our hands on. I can’t remember what book that was though.

Of course if you don’t chew your greens properly until they are like a liquid paste in your mouth…you are not accessing all of the nutritional benefit. The cells of plants are very tough and have actually one of the strongest molecular structures on the planet. In order for the nutrients to be released from the cells they have to be ruptured or “chewed” to a pulp. Think of how a cow can chew on the same wad of greens for like 5 minutes, LOL. Humans have lost their jaw power after centuries of soft, cooked foods. A good blender will “chew” the food for you and release all those lovely nutrients.

And one more tidbit…greens makes the body alkaline. This is optimal for health. Animal proteins and by-products make your body acidic. In 1931 a man named Otto Warburg won the Nobel prize for his research that showed cancer cells form when the body cells have become to acidic. When I was diagnosed with cancer I was told repeatedly I shouldn’t drink milk and I should reduce meat because cancer cells thrive on the acid. I have already shared that I think meat consumption played a BIG roll in my illness.

Anyway…can you believe I just went on an on about that when the whole point of this post is that I am joining a Green Smoothie Challenge? Mrs. Blabbermouth strikes again.

Lately I gotten so busy I have neglected my green smoothie drinking and I have started to have cravings for food I know isn’t good for me. So I need to do this Green Smoothie Challenge from the Raw Divas. It only costs $5 and you get a free pass to gift to someone else. And $3 of that $5 is donated to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) an international non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization whose mission is to end the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world’s oceans in order to conserve and protect ecosystems and species. Pretty cool!

In addition to that they are having a celebration on International Green Smoothie Day (August 15) which challenge members will be invited to and you can win prizes.

If you are looking for an easy intro to raw foods or you just want to try and incorporate more greens into your life then I suggest you take this challenge. Hope to see you there! I also whole heartedly recommend that everyone read Green for Life.

Perhaps this may be a tad early but schools will be back in session next month. Something going on right now will certainly have an impact on your local school’s lunch room.

This article at The Associated Press confirms something I have suspected…the skyrocketing gas and food prices will be hard on public schools and school lunches.

Even a one-penny increase in the cost of milk can cost the nation’s schools another $54 million, said Pavel N. Matustik, chief food services administrator of the Santa Clarita Valley School in California.

According to the article it costs well over $3 (let’s say $3.50) for a school lunch. The state reimburses the school only $2.57 per lunch. AND remember that $3.50 isn’t just food. That $3.50 has to cover the wages for the lunchroom staff, and operating the lunchroom. When everything is considered this leaves the school with about $1.00 per child for actual food according to Ann Cooper of Lunch Lessons. And that was when food prices were lower. Now that figure may be closer to .85 cents or lower.

How much quality are they getting for .85 to $1? Especially when the operating costs of most lunchrooms leave little room for them to do anything other than microwave convenience foods. This is very scary IMO.

Now might be a good time to start thinking about homemade lunches. Here are some articles and links that may help:

Healthy, Frugal, School Lunches

Laptop Lunches

Nutritional supplement companies have done a brisk business over the years because of the general concern that modern food processing and lifestyles preferences may be having a detrimental impact on our nutritional intake.

The message consumers are receiving from supplement companies is that there’s no need to worry if you’re not eating enough fruit, fiber and protein as supplements can help to make up for the vitamin deficiencies in your diet. The key point that consumers need to be aware of is that not all supplements are created equal. For some reason it never “clicked” in my mind that MOST of these vitamins and supplements, even the ones for children, are synthetic. The vitamin C is not real Vitamin C from a source like oranges…instead it is created in a lab from heaven knows what. Researchers are now finding that most vitamins do zip or worse because they’re synthetic.

Synthetic vitamins offer you much less than you think are receiving. Some studies have shown that certain synthetic vitamins give only 50% or less of the biological activity as compared to whole vitamins (vitamins that come directly from vegetables). Why do companies choose to use synthetic vitamins if they are not as effective as whole vitamins? Many argue they do so because synthetic vitamins cost far less to manufacture. I would have to agree. The vitamin business is a racket.

One synthetic vitamin causing much controversy is synthetic vitamin C. Some argue that this form of vitamin C can contribute to the thickening of the arterial walls of the heart by as much as 2.5 times. This is potentially very harmful. In another study, 22,000 pregnant women were given synthetic Vitamin A. The study was halted because birth defects increased 400% according to the New England Journal of Medicine, 1995.

In stores, ascorbic acid is often sold as vitamin C but it is actually only a chemically derived fraction of the whole food vitamin. In food, vitamin C is a complete complex made up of ascorbic acid plus rutin, bioflavonoids, K factor and J factors along with other substances.

The body is able to absorb and use this vitamin only when all parts of the complex is present. So when the chemically derived “fraction” of vitamin C is taken the body must first supply the other parts of the whole food complex. If the pill is taken on its own it will then be necessary for the body to complete the complex by taking the missing elements its own collagen tissue to complete the fractionated complex you supplied. This is the same reason why I am such a proponent of raw foods…raw foods have the required enzymes to digest and process the food, it is a package deal…when we cook the food the enzymes are killed and our bodies must scrape together what it can to get the job done. It stresses our bodies to have to do all this extra work to digest foods that should have come packaged with their own handy dandy enzymes. Vitamins too should come with all they need for absorption. It is no wonder we age so fast.

This whole process of robbing stores within the body to complete the complex can cause even greater deficiencies in the body.

Studies have shown that vitamin C from citrus extract was absorbed 35 percent more than ascorbic acid. Other vitamins have been shown to be more effective in their whole food form. For example the Medical Science Research publication reported that whole food vitamin E and vitamin A are more bioavailable than isolated, synthetic forms of these vitamins. The examination of vitamin A showed the food base product was retained 9.4 times more than the synthetic form.

Whole food vitamins do not cause deficiencies in areas of the body but instead supply the individual cells with the nutrients they need for vitality.

How can you tell a synthetic vitamin from a whole food vitamin? Look at the label. Instead of seeing a long list of chemicals you should find the names of foods listed as the vitamin source. A vitamin or mineral is synthetic if only its chemical and/or popular name appears, with no plant source. For instance if a label reads like this: Calcium Carbonate, Calcium Phosphate, Magnesium Oxide, Zinc Oxide….then you know it is synthetic. These vitamins and supplements also commonly have added sugars, preservatives, and dyes. If it is a natural, whole food vitamin it will list the foods, herbs, or spices used like strawberries, carrot, alfalfa, etc.

So if you are ready to stop wasting money on synthetic vitamins that will provide minimal nutrition and maybe even a harmful side effect or two there are a couple whole foods supplements I like for children.

EveryKid Children’s Multi-Vitamin – This very eco-friendly company out of Vermont believes that nature got it right the first time. EveryKid is the first organic, whole food children’s multi-vitamin, without the aluminum dyes, artificial preservatives and flavors, or chemical residuals found in many current alternatives. They are powder pouches that you can just give to your kids as is. My kids really like the Brilliant Berries flavor. You would think I was giving them powdered sugar. Of course I had to try to…for research purposes and yes…quite yummy.

They are easy to digest, gluten free, vegetarian, and contain no artificial colors or flavors. Some of the food “sources” include strawberries, cherries, blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries…all organic of course. My kids give them a big thumbs up.

Nutri Stars Multivitamin and Multimineral Children’s Chewable from a Rainbow Light. Besides all the regular vitamins and minerals you would expect to find in a chewable vitamin it has some bonuses like veggie concentrates from carrots, spinach, grean beans, broccoli, and beets. It also has organic spirulina and wheat sprouts. It is 100% natural with no artifical colors, flavors, preservatives, sweeteners, or other additives that are often found in other vitamin products. And here is the most important thing….kids like them.

Hero Nutritionals Yummi Bears – This is a good whole food vitamin inside tasty gummy bears, so of course it won’t be hard to get kids to eat these. My kids always ask for these when we go to Whole Foods. Does not contain yeast, wheat, milk, egg, soy, glutens, salt, artificial colors, artificial flavors, salicylates or preservatives. Kids can have up to three bears per day.

And a good one for adults:

Green Pops and Purple Pops - A supplement whose ingredients are real foods minus the water and fiber. Vegetables, fruits, herbs, spices that contain all the nutrients in the real food - not just a blend of vitamins and minerals. The green pops are provide nutrition from veggie and sources and the purple pops are from fruit sources. They both have added antioxidants, digestive enzymes, and probiotics as well.

To your health!