Mustard Greens

This is a mustard green leaf.  This is the first season I've ever tried to grow and eat mustard greens, so I'm still intrigued by this vegetable.  Apparently, mustard greens count as a cruciferous vegetable, and are packed with nutrition.  Folks on the interweb are saying that of all the cruciferous vegetables, mustard greens might even have the most good stuff to prevent cancer.  Cool.   

We have been making slow progress to move the saturated bales of straw from around the house foundation.  Brandon put four or five bales in the greenhouse, and I used the little patties of wet and moldy straw to pave around the beds of greens.  They work wonders to smash down all the weeds and make a nice place to walk, although it's heavy work to move them.  I can only lift a thin wedge in each hand, so I have to make lots of trips to the bale and back.  

I like the way the mustard green leaves grow broad and flat, and they are easy to pick off of each plant.  

I swish them in water to make sure there isn't any gritty dirt on the leaves.  Gritty greens are the worst!

I can wad up a big bunch and sort of roll it into a tube, and slice the tub into thin strips with my knife.  This makes nice cut pieces to cook, so no one has to chew a whole leaf at one time.  Someone asked me if I really eat six cups of greens a day.  Yes, I try too.  I measured this mess of greens, and it was eight cups raw.  Brandon and I each ate half, so just for dinner we ate four cups each, and that's not even including the onion and radish that I cooked with it.  

The onions and radish cook for a while in the coconut oil before I add the chopped mustard greens, which take only moments to cook down. 

For this batch I added sea salt, onion and garlic powder, and big drizzle of Braggs liquid amino acids, which gives it a soy sauce flavor. 

My twelve year old self would have been disappointed with mustard greens, baked chicken, and sweet potato for dinner, but the middle aged me thinks its delicious!  

A Salamander and a Smoothie

As I walked up a recently restored stream channel, I noticed this bright red salamander on the rocks at my feet.  It was in a dry part of the stream, so it was dehydrated and barely moving.  I carried it to a shallow pool and splashed it with stream water and it started to squirm. 

At the time, I assumed it was a northern red salamander (Pseudotriton ruber), which I've seen before.  I've been doing some reading and looking closely at the photos, and I think it might be a midland mud salamander (Pseudotriton montanus).  I've never seen one of those before!  It's always exciting to find a new-to-me species.  Does it look like fish bait to you?  

Puddles and small vernal pools in the floodplain had thousands of tadpoles.  Spring is an exciting time for amphibians.  

I fell off the diet wagon this week.  Not only did I over do the drinks and snacks at a party, but then Brandon was out of town, and I was on the go, so I skipped grocery shopping and making real meals.  After a long day of field work, I realized that my only nutrition came from the coffee I had for breakfast, potato chips and a melted snicker bar I ate in desperation while driving, and a chicken finger basket from a small town Dairy Queen which plagued my digestion for hours.  I hadn't eaten anything green for two days, so it was no wonder I didn't feel like cooking.  Time to raid the greenhouse garden for some greens!

With a blender full of lettuce, pea shoots, and kale leaves, a splash of water, plus some frozen blueberries, a handful of strawberries, the juice from a lemon, and an avocado, I made an entire pitcher of green smoothie.  No cooking required!  No chewing either!  

When Brandon arrived home late at night, I handed him a big glass of health and he made faces while he swallowed it down.  A green smoothie without a sweet banana is a powerful taste. We are steering ourselves back onto the right track now.  Having all those greens just waiting to be picked makes it easier.     

The Journey to Normal

It used to strike me as weird when someone would refer to their food journey.  Or their health journey.  But, when I reflect on this delicious homemade pepperoni pizza, I realize that I could say Brandon and I have been on a journey for our health.  This seems true to me because there is no universally understood route to get to health, and there are so many different directions given for a healthy lifestyle and diet, that it's a journey just to try them all and find one that works.  

This is a pizza crust made with cauliflower!  It's Dr. Berg's recipe, which is two cups of shredded cauliflower, two cups of shredded cheese, and two eggs.  It's pretty good, too!  

Brandon and I have journeyed from the standard american diet and various attempts at weight loss diets, to vegetable smoothies, then to juice fasting, super foods, an elimination diet, gluten and sugar free, low carbohydrate, and now we've stumbled into the realm of the ketogenic diet.  

This pizza turns out even better when cooked on parchment paper on a pizza stone, although we enjoyed scraping it out of a cast iron skillet and eating it with a fork several times before we invested in the right tools for the job.  

I think some of the pathways we took on this journey were not the right destination, ultimately, but they were important steps for us to take.  For instance, I think juice fasting was the thing that made us both realize that we could feel noticeably better by changing how we ate.  Sounds obvious, right?  But until you experience it, it's hard to understand.  It was probably the first time that I stopped eating my old favorites, and didn't have cravings and weakness.  I felt flush with life, and it helped me understand that my body has the potential to feel much better when crammed with vegetable nutrition.  Of course, you can't live on juice forever.  What to eat, then?   

The elimination diet was also a big step in this journey for us.  Not just because we systematically tested different foods, and eliminated foods that triggered uncomfortable feelings in our bodies, but because for two entire months we had to cook all of our own meals from scratch.  If you had asked me before the elimination diet, I would have said we cooked most of our own food, and we weren't eating convenience food very often.  Ha.  We get busy or in a hurry, just like everyone, but during the elimination diet we forced ourselves to plan ahead, and to turn down temptations.  It was good practice, and it's been easier ever since.  

So here we are now, making our own pizza crust with vegetables, scarfing salad by the box, and loading up on saturated fats.  This ketogenic diet approach has us eating unlimited vegetables plus lots of eggs, meat, cheese, avocados, olives, butter, and healthy oils.  We're trying to eat six to ten cups of greens a day!  We're avoiding most carbohydrates, including fruit and alcohol.  

Even though so many people tell me that eating saturated fat is good for me, it's still makes me wonder when I see so many government approved diet plans that say to avoid saturated fat.  But look at the results from my recent physical - I'm normal!  No one ever tells me I'm normal!  Actually, my triglycerides have never been lower, and my good HDL cholesterol has never been higher.  I've also lost nearly twenty pounds since I was at the doctor for my physical last year.  

When I went for an appointment for some new glasses last week (Brandon sat on mine!), they said my blood pressure was text book - 120 over 62.  The doctor bragged about how healthy my eyes were, and when I told him that years ago an eye doctor said there were little bubbles in my eyes that people who get diabetes have, this new doctor scoffed.  He said, "your eyes are perfectly healthy inside and out."  

It's much more fun to visit a doctor and be told I'm normal, text book, and perfectly healthy.  It's encouraging, and it makes me want to continue this journey.  

A Big Deal About Food

As I said before, Brandon and I have started an elimination diet with the hope that if we eat a completely clean diet for a while, of only foods that most people are tolerant of, we can make sure our bodies aren't constantly in a state of irritation and inflammation.  You know, for our organs. This means that for a few weeks anyway, we aren't eating stuff like bread, milk, eggs, red meats, citrus, and nightshades (potatoes, peppers, and tomatoes).  Don't worry though, this doesn't mean we are starving.  The foods we can eat, like beans, sweet potatoes, vegetables, rice, quinoa, fruits, turkey, chicken, fish, and lamb, don't come from the drive through window, but they do taste delicious!   The photo above is last nights dinner.  We mixed some chopped onion and summer squash with ground lamb and cooked burgers in olive oil in a cast iron skillet, and served it with a bed of salad greens covered in black beans, avocado, and some home made dressing made from apple cider vinegar, olive oil, salt, honey, and basil from the garden.  We had fresh fruit salad topped with raw honey on the side.  

The night before, we had a big salad full of fruit, pumpkin seeds, and sunflower seeds, with chicken sausage made by putting organic boneless chicken thighs in the food processor with an apple, onion, and some herbs from the garden.  We cooked them in the skillet with some coconut oil.  It was so good!  Like a giant chicken nugget, for adults.  

For breakfast this morning we had quinoa cooked with raisins, and topped with sliced banana, strawberries, and a drizzle of honey, plus a giant glass of fresh juice made from apples, celery, carrots, beet, and kale.  Lunch is left over lamb burgers from dinner the night before, plus beans and salad.  Snacks are fruit and dried fruits, plus salad and beans.  

This is only day three of the elimination, but so far the challenges are just what you would expect - the amount of time it takes for food preparation, planning ahead for lunches away from home, numerous trips to the grocery, and the cost of all those organic ingredients.  I've kept the instant pot going constantly, making chicken broth and beans cooked in the broth.  Which means I'm trying to always have the next round of beans soaking so they will be ready to cook as soon as the instant pot is free. 

I think we can do this.  We're finding new rhythms in the kitchen as we work together.  Brandon works hard, physically, every day, and tends to crash when he gets calorie deprived, so it's a challenge for him because he can't grab a quick bite from a restaurant or make a sandwich when he's running low on energy, but he's figuring out how to prepare for his day.  He said he feels like all we think and talk about is food, and that this is more of a challenge to his identity and his emotions than he expected it to be.  Food is a big deal, isn't it?

Pondering Healthy Hermit-Hood

Someone told me recently that they think I moved out to the farm and now I'm becoming a hermit.  I've been thinking about this lately  - I have time to ponder the pros and cons of hermit-hood because I'm home so much now, tending a menagerie of animals and a plot of land.  I even turned down an opportunity to attend a professional conference that I used to attend annually.  In the recent past, I would have been a little upset if I wasn't given the opportunity to attend.  It was important to me to maintain my professional contacts and to make sure I was perceived as someone who stayed current with new information.  I wanted to be involved.  I also wanted to stay in a hotel and have a good time drinking beers with friends who I don't see that often.  Why didn't I want to go this year?  Why don't I want to go anywhere?  

My focus is changing, I think.  Part of my desire to stay home more is that I'm excited by all the new experiences I'm having learning about raising animals and managing our small acreage, but I'm also tending to our health more lately, and that's really hard to do when I'm not at home.  A few years ago I had a routine heath screening and my numbers were borderline.  I was in my mid-thirties and my blood work was indicating that I wasn't healthy.  Not sick, yet, but the nurses talked to me like I was a person who was going to be sick.   They kept talking about boring stuff like cholesterol and blood sugar.  They measured my waist and weighed me and marked me down on the form in the obese category.  Sigh.  

All that was a bummer, for sure, but then I started having back pain.  The kind where my back would "go out" and I would have weeks of limited mobility and pain.  My job and some of my favorite things involve movement, and when my back was hurting it really sucked the fun out of everything.  

I've been known to say that if I have to have a job, then my job is definitely the one I want.  Not only do I work with cool people and have a flexible schedule, but it's taken me places -  I've traveled all over our region, working in at least seven states, and been to workshops out west and as far north as Canada.  I get to switch focus all the time, which keeps things interesting.  In the past fifteen years I've trampled through swamps, climbed mountains, and been deep under ground in caves, and got paid for it all.  

I've also spent countless hours riding in a truck to get to all those places, and once I'm there, I eat at restaurants.  Three meals a day, all made from low quality ingredients.  Turns out, it doesn't matter how hard I work physically, I can't work hard enough to counteract the hours of immobility in the truck and the repeated exposure to low quality food.  Add disrupted sleep on top of that, due to staying in strange beds and keeping strange hours, and its no wonder my health was beginning to slip as I got older.  

Luckily, I figured out that yoga keeps my back in line.  I have to do it regularly, but I don't have to do anything extreme.  I started with this Yoga Therapy for Back Pain DVD, and now I select free routines from the Yoga with Adriene website, and use my phone to watch them.  If I get out of the habit, my back reminds me that I need to take it seriously.  

I managed to get my blood work back to normal too.  I had to make food a hobby.  I read about food and nutrition, and make myself think about where the food I eat originates, how it was grown, and what's been added to it.  Brandon and I tried seemingly extreme things like juice fasts, and we found out that drinking fruit and vegetable smoothies and juices makes us feel better.  We spend a lot of money to buy quality ingredients, and it's working.  We're healthier, and stronger now at and nearing forty than we were at thirty, but it takes a lot of concentration, and when I get out of my routine by going somewhere, we get off track.  So maybe being a hermit is healthy.  

Or maybe I'm just a lazy introvert and I would rather stay home with my goats!

My Cats Like RNA Smoothies

Look, kitties, this smoothie matches our walls!  Cool, right?  No..? 

It's that time of year.  The candy jar at work is filled with irresistible chocolates, Brandon is already planning to make his holiday peanut butter fudge, and my shopping list this week includes all the ingredients for Brandon's mom's famous magic cookie bars.  Yum.  With all this in mind, I've been trying to get back in the habit of making a daily smoothie.    

I've added a new ingredient to our smoothies too.  Mom and I recently watched an online presentation where this chiropractor claimed he was having success treating patients with sleep apnea using RNA supplements.  What?!  I never knew there was such a thing as an RNA supplement, or that RNA was something that when consumed had an effect on the body.  I've had a few genetics courses, and learned about DNA, RNA, and all those little bits that make us who we are, but never remember hearing anyone say that consuming RNA could have an effect on health.  Turns out, our bodies incorporate microRNA fragments into our cells from our food, just like vitamins and minerals - RNA molecules are taken from the food we eat, and then used to build our bodies.  Maybe even change our bodies, depending on who's RNA we are eating (hmm... maybe there's something to the genetically modified food argument, after all?).  So, since I take all my medical advise from random chiropractors on the inter web, I decided to see if there's a natural way to increase our RNA consumption.      

My research landed me on this green powder, called Rejuvenate (with an !).  And we all know how much I like a green powder calling itself a superfood.   I've already talked myself into drinking grass juice, algae, and even strange African plants sold at jewelry stores, so I was immediately on board.  

Just look at all the weird things in this - kelp, dulse, spirulina, chia seeds, nutritional yeast, and the list goes on.  It smells like something that's good for you, for sure.   

Baby spinach is still our favorite green to use in a smoothie because it tastes so mild.  With some frozen berries, a banana or two, and scoop of magic green powder, I should be able to eat peanut better fudge without getting scurvy, right?  

Whoa, that's green.  Whoa baby, that tastes green!  Maybe I should add a few pears to sweeten it up.  

Help me! I'm drowning in green sludge!  I rarely have as much empathy for a fruit as I did these pears.

The best way to serve a green slurry is in a fancy glass.  Anything in a fancy glass tastes good.  Notice that Brandon gets his served in a old peanut butter jar.  Should I feel guilty? 

I'm not sure which of the long list of strange ingredients captured the cats interest, but they stalked me while I was making this smoothie, and Newt even had the audacity to jump on the kitchen counter while I was standing there!  Normally, they have enough manners sneak and do this when I'm not within swatting distance.  

I had two cats perched on me while I tried to enjoy my tasty treat.  And really, it was pretty tasty.  Those sweet ripe pears were the the key.  The poor cats wanted it so bad I let them lick the glass.  Who knew cats liked smoothies?  

Newt, is your tongue numb?  

Ditto looked so silly licking his chops after his taste of smoothie that I wanted to take his picture with his tongue out.  Lick.  Click.  Missed!  Lick, click.  Click.  Click.  Lick.  Click.  Doh!  Is he intentionally being uncooperative?!  Click. Click. Lick.  Ah!  I give up.  Twenty pictures later.  

Red Palm Oil is Orange, and I Probably Shouldn't Blog About Food While Fasting

I stumbled across red palm oil at the co-op recently.  I wasn't sure what it was, but it was less expensive than the coconut oil, and it says "organic superfood" right on the label.  These days I'm a sucker for anything claiming to be a superfood, so I added it to my cart and when I got home did some hasty research to see what exactly I purchased.  Folks on the interweb are saying that is has lots of healthy stuff, like carotene and vitamins, but that the production of palm oil in southeast Asia is killing orangutans.  Uh oh, I like orangutans!  Fortunately, this brand is from palm trees grown in Ecuador, where there are no orangutans, and the farms are small and managed organically.  Whew.  

The oil is a beautiful orange color, like pumpkin.  I tasted some on a spoon, and it has a earthy carroty flavor.  I decided it would be best used in a flavorful dish, where the flavor of the oil wouldn't be too strong.  Last Friday was my first opportunity to try cooking with the palm oil, since I've been juice fasting during the weekdays.  After I took the photo above and a few others, I was standing by the stove while the skillet heated, sipping my beverage, listening to my tunes, and admiring the orange color of the oil while deciding which photo composition I like the best, like I do, when the oil took on a life of it's own, and tried to run for it.    I guess the oil melted from the spatula balanced on the edge of the skillet, and the then unbalanced spatula flipped through the air, in a physics defying arch, splattering oil on the wall, ceiling, down the front of the stove, on the floor, the dog, everywhere!  Doh!  

I immediately began to examine myself, hoping without hope that I didn't have a big orange stain on my new pajamas.  Brandon't mom gave them to me for Christmas, and it would be nice to not stain them immediately, right?  I had no idea this oil would be so dangerous.  I was lucky this time.  Although, in my efforts to clean the orange oil off of everything else, I let the skillet get too hot, and the oil started to smoke, most likely turning it from a healthy superfood into cancer causing vapor. I started to panic, alarming the army of cats who were helping me clean up the oil splatters.  Ah!   This oil is damaging my calm!  I guess when they recommend medium-heat saute, they mean it!  As you can see, the oil I wiped from the wall is definitely colorful.  Beware the danger.   

Now, I should probably remind you that while I was struggling in the oil vapor filled kitchen to simply saute some chopped vegetables, I hadn't eaten any solid food all week, just drank vegetable juice, and I had been looking forward to eating and cooking, and suddenly everything is out of control.   I had to take a few deep breaths to keep from feeling like I was taking part in one of these vintage kitchen slapstick routines.    

I was hoping the red palm oil would turn the onions bright orange, but they were only subtly different.  I found the smell of the palm oil to be very nice.  Of course, since I hadn't eaten any fats all week, it may not have been the best time to judge.  I'm going to add to the list of juice fast benefits, which includes feeling better, clothes that stop shrinking when washed, and and increased desire to clean my house, the way it also makes getting to cook food seem super special instead of a chore, especially if made with superfoods!  dum da dum (super man theme song? No?).  Seriously, I was so excited by the sights, sounds, and smells of this food, that I couldn't help but take it's picture.  And now, I'm rattling on about cooking like it's the my greatest adventure, and I'm sure it's because I haven't cooked or eaten food since Sunday.  I have, however, organized most of my closets and cleaned out all my junk drawers.    

But guess what?!  It's Friday, which means I'm excited because I'm making dinner again tonight. Maybe I'll bore you with photos of food again next week, because tonight a chicken is on the menu.  Not that my carrot/beet/orange/ginger lunch juice wasn't delicious, but it was no chicken!  Mmmm... chicken.... 

Back on the Juice!

I couldn't resist sharing this photo of my kittens, who I think I should rename Yin and Yang after seeing this pose. 

I also wanted to share a couple of cute pictures of vegetable juice.  Did you know green juice tastes better in a crystal glass?  For some reason I think anything in a fancy glass tastes good, even when it's made of spinach juice!   

This pretty green and pink frothy top came about when I poured some carrot/beet/orange/apple juice into a glass after I finished drinking the apple/celery/kale/lime juice that I started with.  It actually tasted as good as looked, even without the fancy glass.  

I'm back on the juice, man, back on the juice, and loving it!  Since I'm a firm believer in New Year resolutions, and I resolved years ago to never give myself another one, I can't claim that the increase in my vegetable and fruit juice consumption is the result of after holiday binge guilt.  This is a motivation even more powerful than guilt.  Survival.  Brandon and I are planning a hiking trip this summer with some friends, that will be like no other hiking trip we've ever attempted.  Hiking at high altitude!  I really don't want to die, but I also don't want to invest all my vacation time and all our hopes for the success of this trip only to find out that I'm not in good enough shape to enjoy the hike.  Since I love oxygen, and have a hard enough time hiking up a steep hill when there is plenty of oxygen to be had, anything I can do to make hiking easier will greatly benefit me when it comes to hiking in lower oxygen conditions.  

Keeping in mind that I want to enjoy this hike and not die encourages me to attempt building stamina and losing some excess pounds.  I have five months to get ready, and nothing helps me feel energized for exercise like ingesting large quantities of fresh vegetable juices.  

Every week day last week, I ate or drank nothing but fresh vegetable and fruit juice.  It was hard at first.  I felt tired.  When people ate food around me I felt like I truly understood what the dog feels when he stares at me while I'm eating and uncontrollably drools.  I caught myself researching recipes on the interweb and fantasizing about pizza dough.  Fasting like this really makes me understand the addiction of food, particularly bread.  But, because I've done this before, I knew it was temporary, and sure enough, after taking the weekend off the fast, I was back on the juice this week and already feeling the benefits.  I've already lost that bloated feeling that comes from too much winter indulgence, and the scales are reflecting the change.

I don't think it's a coincidence that after four days on the juice fast, I found myself deep cleaning my bedroom.  I mean, I cleaned like I never clean unless my mom is there to make me.  I even turned my furniture upside down and used furniture polish on the underside.  Who does this?  Not me, which I guess is why I found so many spider egg sacks under my night stand.  I wiped the walls.  I don't even care if my walls are dirty, and I wiped all of the walls.  I actually organized the contents of the toy baskets I keep handy for the kids so the toys were displayed to their best advantage.  The clothes in my closet is now organized by use, and I had the will power to get rid of an entire box of shoes.  I'm telling you, this juice is like crack for housework.   If the mountain hike defeats me, at least my house will be clean!