The Hazelaid Review Learning Naturally

All New Packaging, Now Swear Word Free!

2010-09-28T17:52:00.000-04:00

I like to read in bed. Like at night, before I go to sleep. Often it's for no other reason than to try to distract my mind from a project or whatever, something that is keeping my brain going, which in turn is keeping me from falling asleep. I read to calm my mind. However it is also at that time of day that my wife often has things she wants to discuss…things like the food she acquired that day at the store.

These are often less than calming discussions.

Now in many marriages, the wife enjoys recounting various shopping accomplishments to her husband, and some husbands listen. I am one of those husbands. But what makes our marriage special is that my wife doesn't stop there. Usually once she's detailed our new food acquisitions, she will often then begin reviewing the ingredient list of several of our new nutritional possessions.

Now you may think that listening to someone rattle off a list of ingredients could be as effective as counting sheep. But somehow with my wife, listings of ingredients are never boring.

Such as the night she was telling me all about this new Baking Soda she had found.

"It's aluminum free!" she exclaimed (beaming).

At first I just nodded and rolled the words around in my head.

And then suddenly it hit me.

And I was like, “What?! There was aluminum in our Baking Soda? In our bread?”

This was concerning to me because I eat a lot of baked goods.

“Apparently...” my wife mutters, squinting at the packaging (no longer beaming).

I put my book down. I though in my head, "This is crazy. How many pounds of toxic aluminum have I ingested over the years?"

I do some quick mental calculations. The numbers are staggering.

And how flippantly the packaging states it! How would we react if it was some other toxic substance?

“All New Chips Ahoy Recipe, Now Mercury Free!”

“Try Our New Ground Coffee, Now with 50% less Arsenic!”

People would freak out, and rightly so. How many other products secretly have toxins in them? Toxins that they use alternative names so we don't notice them until they figure out a way to not include them and THEN announce that they're 'free' of a substance.

Now I'm perpetually afraid of my wife coming home with some new 'free of this or that' product that condemns my previous nutritional history.

I like to read in bed, to calm my mind, to calm my mind regarding my food sources.

Why can't I see the picture of the Book or Product?

2010-08-23T13:51:00.005-04:00

Good Question! I'm trying to figure that out...it seems that each time I refresh, Amazon randomly decides to take away the book-specific image and put up a general Amazon link...it's doing it on our Recommended Books page at Hazelaid.com also. Most of the time it's fine, but once and a while they seem to disappear...

Kind of a pain if you're depending on them to display the correct book cover...at this point if you can't see the cover you want, if you refresh your page once or twice there's a good shot that it'll come up. Not a perfect solution, but it's an immediate one. :)

I'll be working on getting it fixed...

(Editor's Note #1: It seems to have fixed itself? If not use recommended fix above...)

I'm also working on a new look for the blog. Blogger came out with these cool new themes, and though the mountain isn't awesome, it was awesome compared to the paper white background we had before.

(Editor's Note #2: Like the new look? Green is sort of our color...)

I'll get something good going soon...and write more posts about all the things my wife has been making me eat lately. Like recently she confessed to putting raw eggs into our 'family fruit smoothies.'

I enjoy them less now. Ignorance was bliss.

More frightening is that when she confessed about the eggs she also said there was something else that was going into my food supply that I didn't know about but that she didn't want to tell me because "I wasn't ready yet."

(dramatic pause)

I told her I'm not sure that I'm ever going to be ready to hear about what she's been doing...not if I plan to still like eating. It's like the Pentagon around here, they only tell you about the airplanes they have that are old-news, the stuff they figure you can handle. They keep the really scary autopilot UFO killing machines under wraps.

Yes, my wife is slipping really scary autopilot UFO killing machines into my food supply.

Pray for me.

Why use Medicine when you can use SUGAR!

2010-07-08T13:10:00.005-04:00

I don't even remember how it all started...I have a faint memory of my wife buying some little blue chapstick shaped bottle and forcing me to eat this tiny white pills:

"DON'T LET THEM TOUCH YOUR LIPS!! OPEN WIDER, WIDER!! DID YOU GET THEM? STICK YOUR TONGUE OUT!"

It's for the best that they taste good because otherwise the kids and I might balk at at being screamed at to "open wider". Why can't they touch my lips? I don't know.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: My wife says they can touch your lips, but I still think it's an issue if they get lost in your beard...)

What I do know is that homeopathic pills, whatever the controversy, really work. I've watched my kids bumps and lumps level out before my very eyes. Just the other day my wife cut a good piece of her finger off and was able to radically stem the bleeding using a little Arnica Montana, same stuff that works on bumps and lumps.

Out of all of the crazy crunchy things that my wife has brought into our home, it took me the longest to come around on homeopathy. I just couldn't understand how these little dots of sugar could contain any healing effects. I'm a big believer in the placebo effect and wouldn't argue against that being a factor, but again when you've got little kids and you see the difference it makes in them and they're totally clueless...well it gets you thinking.

Turns out that homeopathy has been around for a long time and was at one time pretty huge in the states, until the AMA was formed to shut it out. CONSPIRACY ALERT!!

(I'm pretty sure AMA stands for American Medical Association, I'm sure someone will let me know if I've got that wrong)

Anyway, there are a number of books that we now use (and by we I mean my wife) to deal with acute medical issues such as cuts, bruises, vomiting, headaches, etc. This often curtails the issue, and the kids think it's a win because they get a dash of sugar sprinkles in their mouth.

Two Key Points of Note:

One, homeopathy isn't a substitute for going to the hospital. If you think you're in trouble, go to the emergency room.

Two, serious homeopath types frown upon random self-administered homeopathic treatments. I guess it makes treating you for serious conditions with homeopathy more difficult because you're cloudying up the waters or something. So if you ever have any intention of going to see a professional homeopath regarding some serious medical issue you're dealing with, you should probably avoid self-dosing.

And by this point you're probably asking, "Wait! You haven't even explained how homeopathy works!" This is true, and there's two reason for that:

One, no one can say for sure exactly how it works.

Two, I'm lazy. Go read the wikipedia article.

And if you decide to get more into it, these books are the best.

Nourishing Traditions = Nourishing Bacteria

2010-05-30T03:15:00.000-04:00

I could probably write a thousand posts on how this book has changed my life. Just the other day I found a crystal pitcher on the counter full of sliced pineapple rind in some sort of clear liquid. I asked my wife if it wouldn't go bad if we left it out like that.

She said that is exactly what would happen.

And then she just smiled at me and moved on like there wasn't a pitcher of pineapple rind going bad on the counter.

The next day I (and a house guest) were made to sniff the contents of the pitcher. It did not smell good, yet I suspected that I would eventually be, in some way, eating the contents of that pitcher.

I cannot, at the time of this writing, completely rule out the idea that I have somehow already consumed portions of what was created in that pitcher.

More disturbingly, this book has somehow promoted the idea in our home that eating raw meat is good for you. Moreover, that eating raw animal organs is good for you. Let me throw down some examples so you know what I'm talking about:

Brains

Heart

Liver

BRAINS

I've made my wife promise that she will not try to sneak brains of any kind into my food...and as I think about it now...I cannot remember receiving a clear answer from her...which means I either received an unclear answer or a very clear answer that I did not like and that I blocked out from my memory.

I cannot, as of the time of this writing, completely rule out the idea that I have already eaten brains of some kind.

Most meals now I am deathly afraid of looking up to see my wife staring at me, waiting to see if I like it...with a look in her eye like she's got a secret...a brains secret...

The premise of the book seems to be that if you leave your food out overnight or let is soak in some kind of brine or generally let things grow inside it, that when you eat that food, with all those things inside it, that you'll be healthier.

Sounds crazy, I know, but I guess those little guys are good for us, or in some cases are able to make our food more edible...by pre-chewing them for us they unleash nutrients that our digestive systems could never mine out on their own. It nourishes us better to eat this way.

Where does the 'traditions' element come in? Apparently humanity has spent a lot more time eating raw animal bits and letting their food sit around without modern refrigeration for most of history. Which makes sense because they didn't have Kraft Dinner or deep freezes back then.

In fact it seems crazy, now that you think about it, how sterilized most of our food is. Cereal? Blasted to death into some kind of paste and then baked into nutritional uselessness...despite however many kinds of vitamins and minerals they sprinkle on afterward. That's why they work so hard to make it sound healthy. It's like eating pinecones.

Now I'm not advocating that you unplug your fridge and let everything in there 'ferment.' That'll probably kill you, because some things aren't ready to ferment. Things like Mayo. And you need to help some foods along, by pickling them in some vinegar or whatever. I'm pretty sure that's what my wife had all that pineapple in.

Nor am I advocating that you all go out like a horde of zombies and start eating the brains and other organs of every living creature you run across. I'm sure there's some sort of ground rules. Going organic on your brains is probably key. Pre-freezing them to kill harmful bacteria isn't a bad idea either. You'll have to read the book to be sure.

I'm definitely not done writing about this book, don't you worry. I've just scratched the surface...

Bee Pollen: Little Nuggets of Nature

2010-05-06T11:52:00.005-04:00

Every Saturday we try and do a 'Family Day' and get the kids out of the house. Sometimes that's a trip to the park for picnic, other times it means heading to the thrift shop to find old books. The weekend before last it meant going to a bee farm.

Let me say a few things I don't like about bee farms:

1. There are lots and lots of bees there.

2. Everything tastes like honey (I don't like the taste of honey).

3. There are lots and lots of bees there.

Now I eat just about anything, but honey has always been a holdout. I've tried to beat it the way I beat coffee, by consuming it sugared until I got used to the underlying flavor. With honey, that means eating lots of those little honey sticks. I like the bright colors.

This last time, Pina Colada.

Anyway so there's this tour and they explain how everything made by bees is amazing and you should eat it and make sure to visit the gift shop. So we visit the gift shop, pick up some bee pollen.

Here's my perspective on this: We didn't come home with a drop of honey, everyone wins.*

But now the first thing that hits the inside of my mouth each day (even before I start into my pre-breakfast lemon water tea that is supposed to activate my liver, or actually my wife's tea is supposed to activate her liver but my liver gets some action too because we're married and that's what you do) are little colored pellets of pollen.

Yes, I like the colors. Apparently the different colors are from the different flowers, the different bee batches of pollen I guess. The tour guide did quite the demonstration of how they collect the pollen from the bodies of the bees, they put this grill down (inside the hive?) and I guess the bees kind of crash-land on it and a bunch of the pollen falls off through the grill.

The demonstation included a small stuffed bee and a lot of sound effects.

It also included an explanation on how pollen is nature's most complete food. It's got like 22 amino acids, all kinds of vitamins, and stuff that helps your body recover after duress. Athletes eat it after major competitions. You do have to be careful though because some people have had bad reactions, like people allergic to pollen for one.

Key Life Tip: Don't eat concentrated forms of things you're allergic to. Like my wife is allergic to mold. All the time I'm like, "Babe, don't eat concentrated forms of mold, I love you."

I'll be honest though, pollen first thing in the morning? Not the best part of waking up. Kind of like if dust bunnies formed a co-op and raised little dust pellet food and then you went to their little dust economy farmer's market and bought some and ate it. It's like that.

I have this little spoon full every morning, a small spoonful because I guess your body has to get used to it or it'll make you more regular than you want to be, and I pretty much load my mouth with water and angle my head back to make the spoon pour clear my taste buds, then you just tell your throat to flush it down and away it swirls.

But still I end up with the sensation that my breath smells like it would if I were a praying mantis. At least until I'm through my lemon water tea.

*Editor's Note: My wife has informed me that we did indeed buy honey in addition to the pollen. Apparently I blocked it out.

Key Life Tip: Use selective memory techniques to improve your perspective on your past.

Cold EEZE - Not a Book, more of a Lozenge...

2010-04-10T23:52:00.002-04:00

So night before last I was just about to hit the sack when I remembered that I hadn't been feeling too well. I'd been a bit off during the day, dizzy spells, half-hearted efforts at yelling at the kids to keep it down, that sort of thing.

I was clearly developing a cold...which for me always brings an impossible decision:

A) Take a Cold-EEZE from my nightstand, wake up in the morning like I've spent the night sucking on a 9-Volt, and spend the majority of the day unable to taste my food.

-OR-

B) Don't take a Cold-EEZE, suffer for who knows how many days and weeks, throat raw from nasal drip, head pounding, daylight making me scream, etc.

This last time I actually paused for several seconds before deciding to take it. My mom used to force me to take it as a kid. Cherry Flavor.

(Involuntary Shudder).

Yesterday I took more after breakfast. And then again last night. And in my mouth right this second? Nine Volts of Tropical Fruit.

Why you ask? Because they work.

Apparently there was this double blind study done and they proved that if you started in on them early enough that it would reduce the length of your cold by 40%. I've found that, along with some heavy doses of vitamins C & D3, taking Cold-EEZE can actually knock down my cold almost right away. Like in the first twenty-four hours.

Now, you have to factor in that those are going to be the worst twenty-four hours of your life. Not only are you going to have a wicked cold, but all that comfort food is going to taste like wax and death. That's a pretty tough ride.

BUT, this is the closest thing to a cure of the common cold. It basically cures, like, 60% of your cold.

It also steals 60% of your soul...but then I think that deep down we all knew that when the cure for the common cold finally came, that it wouldn't come cheap...

Oh, the one thing that I do like about Cold-EEZE? It proves that Homeopathy isn't just for hippies. Yeah, check the box...see? It's right on there: H-O-M-E-O-P-A-T-H-I-C.

Welcome to the real world Neo.

Eat Your Coconut!

2010-04-08T22:16:00.005-04:00

So somehow my wife came across this book about coconut, and next thing I know, I'm eating coconut three times a day. I couldn't always taste it, but I'd be eating my dinner, like normal, and out of the corner of my eye I'd see my wife wasn't eating, or she was eating abnormally slowly, like she's distracted with something...and she's staring at me...and she's beaming like she has a secret...a coconut secret...and then I would know, I'm eating coconut.

At that point I'd make eye contact and she'd be like, "How's your dinner?"

Good.

Taste OK?

Yeah.

Taste anyth--

There's coconut in here, isn't there?

Yes. (beaming)

....

It's good isn't it?!

Hm (non-committal sound)

That's pretty much how things were for a while, pancakes, cookies, tea, milk on my cereal, stir-fried vegetables, fish...pretty much anything that was cooked in any way had some form of coconut baked in, poured on, or otherwise inserted. In fact I'm pretty sure things are still like this but I've just gotten used to it and she's stopped tipping me off with all the beaming. She knows I can't taste it, unless she wants me to be able to taste it, in which case it usually adds to the experience of the food.

We've got shredded coconut, powered coconut, and TWO forms of coconut oil in the house...probably other stuff too, stuff I don't even know about it. I'm eating coconut, using coconut on wounds, rubbing it on my wife's shoulders, it's everywhere.

And, apparently, it's good for us. This book, which I have not read, both because my wife has already read it and we're married and so that means I get passages read to me out of the book, as I'm in the bathroom, as I'm trying to sleep, as I'm trying to enjoy my chocolate coconut cookie, etc., and because I refuse to allow coconut to invade the books I read. That's my one sanctuary from coconut. I'll write about it, but I'm not reading that book.

Plus I think we loaned it to someone and then moved to Canada before getting it back.

My understanding of it is this (and the fact that I haven't read it is handy because I can't ruin the book for you): Most oils are not cookable, including Olive Oil. Apparently cooking olive oil makes it carcinogenic, which is the last thing any of us need. I guess the rule is, if it's liquid at room temperature, don't heat it up any more and then eat it. If it is solid at room temperature (i.e., coconut oil or butter) then you're good.

And you can do all kinds of cool things with coconut oil, like put it on acne (which seems counter intuitive, to oil your acne, but it works, we've tried it). It's also supposed to help boost your immunity and help you lose weight (yes, a fat that will make you less fat).

But maybe you hate coconut? Yeah, I did too, but they have oil that doesn't taste like coconut, and the coconut milk you can mix into things and it doesn't do much to the taste.

Plus you get used to it.

The Alternate Day Diet: It works only too well...

2010-04-06T22:54:00.004-04:00

OK...so this book isn't explicitly about anything natural or organic, but it is a remedy! A remedy to being fat. And like it or not, pretty much all of us are fat. What's your doctor always saying?

"Try to get a half-hour of walking in three times a week...try to flex your abs as you walk...and while you're at it, as you sit, as you work, as you eat...less food will fit under your abs if they are flexed...right? Just...anything. Anything other than how you are currently living. That would be an improvement. Any change."

Doctors are mean, and they don't walk three times a week. They smoke in those little courtyards that are supposed to look really Zen except for the guys in lab coats sucking little sticks of poison. At least make them hold one of those little pebble rakes while there out there...add some style...like how cigs add style to movie stars...

Anyway, the info in this book helps remedy fatness. Most ailments and diseases stem from having too much or too little of something:

To much acid
too much fat
too little air
too little blood
= problems.

My wife read about this diet somewhere...probably a blog a few over from this one, and soon after I was eating half of everything, every other day. One day, PBJ, slice of cheddar, apple. The next day, half PBJ, half a slice of cheddar, half an apple. Was I hungry after lunch? Sure, but I was eating what I normally ate, and normally I tend to over-eat so now I was under-eating by just a bit, not too painful. And in the back of my mind I always knew that today was the last day (it's always the last day) and that tomorrow I can eat whatever I want.

Wait...actually every day I can eat whatever I want...it's just that every Monday, Wednesday, Friday I have a limit to the amount of calories I can take in. If I choose to burn those eating cake all day, whose's to stop me? Well there's always my wife...and she is really good and making soups and salads that are really filling and have, like, embarrassingly few calories in them.

So we're doing this thing for a while, and I'm shedding pounds. Then we get the actual book, she reads it, I read it (most of it anyway) and we cut back to 25% on one day, 100% on the other, or as we're doing it now, 25% on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Now I'm bleeding weight off...like, weight I'm not sure I want to loose...

How does this all work?

So you know how wrestlers in high school always starve themselves and destroy their metabolism and then bulk back up in the offseason? Most diets are like that, general calorie restriction. Doesn't work though, because you just hold onto more of those calories because your body thinks you're slowly starving and are going to need little fat-snacks for later. But you don't need them, you hate them, they're killing you. Calorie restriction doesn't work, unless your goal is get fatter.

What some guys figured out, they're doctors or lab guys or whatever, they figured out that if they fed rats every other day, that the rats lost weight like crazy. So these authors pick up this, try it on themselves, and crank this book out with all the details of how it works. Turns out that if you eat every other day, it triggers this gene in your body they've dubbed the 'skinny gene.' Just like general calorie restriction makes your metabolism slow down, restricting calories EVERY OTHER DAY makes it speed up, as well as shifts your food cravings towards food with more nutrients in it.

AND after doing the diet for a while you can drop it and your body will keep running this way for like six weeks. We just spent a month moving across the country and that whole time I could just feel my body burning away. I've lost like thirteen pounds without even thinking about it, three of those pounds leaving my body AFTER I quit the diet to make this big move.

Now we're getting back onto it, but again just three days a week at 50%. Well...maybe 65%. I'm not sure I want to push this thing all the way. You ever watch that Stephen King movie Thinner? Yeah...