No, I’m not hiring Guy Fieri to take us on a tour of restaurants that serve real food across the nation…although maybe that should go on my bucket list!

When we traveled for a long drive over Memorial Day weekend this year, I posted something on Facebook about what foods we were packing for the trip. The response was really positive and people shared their own ideas for what they like to pack for traveling, and I realize it’s the perfect topic for the Eat Well, Spend Less summertime traveling theme this week.

5 Reasons to Pack a Meal When Traveling

1. Eat Well – The only way to really be in charge of your family’s nutrition is to make your own food. Fast food makes it particularly tough to find anything nourishing, and when traveling, it’s likely that you’re entering into a time of more compromising foods anyway, I choose to eat well on the road and have fun when we’re with family, at an event, or visiting others.
2. Spend Less – Similarly, the best way to save money on food is to make your own. Buying a meal for our family, with an 8-year-old boy, 5-year-old girl, and almost-2-year-old carnivorous male, runs $20 pretty quickly. I can pack for in the single digits, and we waste less, too.
3. Flexibility of Time – Our fondest desire when in the car is for our littlest to fall asleep. It’s much less stressful for everyone. If we have our own food, the big kids can eat when they’re hungry without running the risk of having to stop somewhere 20 minutes after John finally gives up to the sandman.
   
4. Occupying Time – The sec`ond most-wanted reality in the car is content kiddos, ones who aren’t saying, “When will we get there?” or “I’m bored!” For our slow eaters, a meal can take a glorious 30-60 minutes, during which time they’re completely happy, and we get home faster because we didn’t have to stop for food, just for potty, gas, and wiggle worms.
5. Less Waste – It’s a minor thing, but I’m always happy to avoid throwing away a bunch of trash, and we pack no-waste lunches, so I feel good about  the environment, too.

Strategies for Making Car Food Work

It takes a little more prep to pack our own grub, but I’m happy to do it for my kids’ good health.

I used to pack everything together, family style, like a picnic, but recently I started packing individual lunchboxes for the big kids, and I really like that system.

The kids can have some responsibility for their own food, and if the littlest is sleeping (finally), it’s so easy to just pass back a lunchbox (or already have it next to them at the start of the trip). I pack in a Lunchbot or Ecolunchbox and include the napkin, stainless steel water bottle, and utensils, just as I would for a school lunch.

To save on dishes, my husband and I and John, who shouldn’t feed himself in the car, pack family style. For this last long trip, I sat next to John so I could play with him, read books, and feed him. I kid you not, eating took 90 minutes on the way down! It’s by far his favorite diversion, and we don’t mind one bit.

Beyond the individual lunchboxes, I always pack extra little snacks that are non-perishable, and we just throw back a reusable sandwich bag with something in it to the big kids in the back row of the van.

What We Packed

Our travels over Memorial Day weekend took us 6 hours one direction, so we had to pack dinner on the way down and lunch on the way back.

Dinner

• egg salad made with homemade mayo and plenty of mustard
• homemade whole wheat crackers and/or /Blue Diamond Nut Thins (pricey, but compared to fast food, it’s a far better compromise, and some in our family need to be gluten-free)
• cut raw veggies: carrots, cucumbers, pea pods (cukes in particular also work great for dipping egg salad)
  • sometimes I include homemade ranch dressing, made thick with sour cream
• sliced cheese
• sliced apples
• power “balls” from Healthy Snacks to Go – like a homemade Larabar, but more bite-sized and easy to eat for kids. My personal favorites are Cinnamix and Cocoshew, so I make those most often!
• individual water bottles

Lunch on the way home

We were visiting family and I brought a lot of food for meals because our hosts had just had a baby, so I knew what options we’d likely have for packing on the return trip.

• cold grilled chicken with mustard for dipping (our family eats mustard like most American children go through ketchup!)
• homemade potato salad
• string cheese
• cubed melon
• carrot sticks with homemade guacamole for dipping
• The adults also had homemade yogurt with fresh fruit and grain-free granola topping, but I don’t trust the children with anything that liquid-y.

car Snacks

What’s a car trip without an abundance of snacks? We packed a seriously ridiculous amount of food overall, including:

• grain-free coconut muffins from Healthy Snacks to Go (with dried mixed berries in them, a special sugared-up treat!)
• plenty of power balls
• homemade granola (soaked) for munching
• dried strawberry fruit rolls
• Snapeas (a terrible indulgence from Costco…)
• trail mix
• leftover buckwheat pancakes made into sandwiches with a little peanut butter and honey

Let’s just say we did not go hungry.

Healthy Travel Food Resources

Did you know I have a whole book of snacks “to go?” Healthy Snacks to Go is my first eBook, and since spring 2010, it’s been helping real food families everywhere conquer the temptation of convenience foods when the days get busy.

I’d love you to have this resource for your summer travel plans. If you’ve already got it on your computer somewhere but you haven’t opened it much, consider this your reminder to get on with it! You won’t be sorry.

If you’d love to take a peek, you can get a 22-page excerpt for free right HERE by entering your name in the form a little way down the page. If you like what you see, I’m happy to share a summery coupon for all my eating well, spending less readers: Use “EWSL-Car-Trip” to get Healthy Snacks to Go for 50% off through the end of June.

MOre free stuff

In the spirit of summer travels, I’m also offering the new printables that come with The Family Camping Handbook (coming on Kindle THIS WEEK!) for free to anyone who signs up for the KS monthly newsletter – click HERE to enter your name and download two gluten-free weekend menu plans, one grain-free camping menu, and 10 printable recipe cards to go along with them. You don’t have to camp to enjoy these resources!

If you are an Amazon Prime member, watch for the camping handbook to be part of the Lending Library on Kindle starting this weekend (and, psssst! Really, really good launch deals for those of you who aren’t part of the lending library…).

More Healthy Travel Food Ideas

The community on Facebook shared plenty of other ideas for healthy car snacks and meals, and I’ve got a few more up my own sleeve as well:

• hard-boiled eggs
• sweet potato chips
• dehydrated green beans
• baked apple chips
• crispy roasted chickpeas (in Healthy Snacks to Go…now why don’t you have a copy yet?)
• fresh fruit, cut for easy eating if necessary
• your favorite muffin recipe
  • healthy pumpkin muffins
  • banana flax muffins
• dried bananas (how to dehydrate fruit)
• homemade granola bars
• celery sticks with cream cheese or peanut butter (and napkins!)
• popcorn (mmm, butter)

Cool tip from a reader: For hotel stays, use a crockpot to warm up taco meat for taco salads and homemade muffins for breakfast. Wow!

Your turn! Let’s fill the comments with drool-worthy goodies…What do you like to pack when you’re on the road?

One Last Way to Save Buckeroos

I use Swagbucks to earn gift cards for Amazon, which I do sometimes spend on food…or diapers, exciting stuff like that. I’ve got a neat dealie for you this month:

Any Swagbucks user (new or old!) who signed up under me (but I have no idea how you can find that out) who earns at least 50 Swag Bucks in total from any combination of Shop, Search, Watch, Play Answer or Discover is automatically entered into a drawing for a $50 gift card of their choice from the Swag store (Amazon included).

New to Swagbucks? Sign up here and use the code STEWARDSHIP70 for 70 bonus Swagbucks at signup (thru July 12).

What’s the best way to get 50 points? Just do a search every time you want to go to any website instead of typing the URL directly. You get around 10 swagbucks ever 6-10 searches or so, so it really wouldn’t take very long to get 50. Any “bucks” you’ve earned from June 1 until now ALSO automatically count, as long as you signed up under me. Have fun with that!

See how the other EWSL ladies are traveling with real food:

• Mandi from Easy. Homemade.
• Shaina from Food for My Family
• Amy from Kingdom First Mom
• Carrie from Denver Bargains
• Jessica from Life as MOM
• Aimee from Simple Bites

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I’d love to see more of you!  Sign up for a free email subscription or grab my reader feed. You can also follow me on Twitter, get KS for Kindle, or see my Facebook Fan Page.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

Disclosure: There are affiliate links in this post to Amazon and Ecolunchboxes from which I will earn some commission if you make a purchase. Your Swagbucks signups also help me earn bucks. See my full disclosure statement here.

Don't forget that Google Reader is DISAPPEARING forever this month! Be sure to get KS via email or switch to another reader (Feedly is one option; there are many others). I'd miss you if you got lost!

I’m over at Green Your Way today with a little exploration of chemicals and their role in our lives.

I can’t share too much or it will give away the main idea too much, but here’s a quick peek:

“I don’t eat vegetables with chemicals.”

“I choose to use personal products without chemicals.”

“I don’t like putting chemicals in my body.”

Read the rest HERE, and I can’t wait to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Big Thanks to my Sponsors!

It is such a joy to be able to offer so much free content here at Kitchen Stewardship (like the menu plans and printable recipes cards you can get for signing up for the KS monthly newsletter). I owe some of the thanks for the opportunity to work for free to my paid sponsors, and all three this month have been with me a long time:

Mighty Nest: My trustworthy source for only the best natural, safe products for the kitchen, cleaning, and kids.

Visit Mighty Nest for all your homemaking needs, especially lunch packing and traveling this summer.

Plan to Eat is a menu planning program that allows you to save and categorize recipes, then use your own favorites OR the 60,000+ real food recipes in the KS group to plan weekly menus. It’s a cinch to use and compatible with mobile phones, even generating a shopping list. Try a 30-day trial to see if it’s the right thing for you!

LPC Survival has wonderful Berkey filters like the one my family uses, and they also offer many preparedness tools and items, including Tattler reusable canning lids. Many readers love being able to reuse the lids and not buy new every year!

Thank you, sponsors! Please give them a visit of gratitude for everything you read here.

Don't forget that Google Reader is DISAPPEARING forever this month! Be sure to get KS via email or switch to another reader (Feedly is one option; there are many others). I'd miss you if you got lost!

Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to specifically focus on the deep enjoyment that food can bring this week.

That doesn’t mean you have to eat junk food and compromise eating well…because real food can be wholly enjoyable in the right company, with the right attitude, and with the right recipes or raw materials.

A fresh strawberry, for example. (Ours are finally in here in Michigan, and I keep wondering how the things from California that we can buy in stores can even share the same name as these juicy sweet morsels of summertime!)

A salad with feta cheese, chopped red onion and peppers, sunflower seeds, avocado, raw vegetables, and a garlicky homemade dressing on top. Score even more for local lettuce.

Homemade French fries, grassfed grilled burgers with lots of fixings, and fresh asparagus sauteed in bacon grease in a cast iron pan, especially made sweeter if you’re eating it as a request for a 5-year-old’s birthday dinner, accompanied by chocolate milk made with homemade syrup.

Do You Enjoy Your Food?

After the last few weeks of food exploration and common sense questioning, like talking about what kind of strawberries to eat, whole grains vs. white flour, and "how much is too much?" when it comes to things like eggs, almonds, and coconuts, a friend asked me this question:

"Do you enjoy food?"

All the information and counter-information was wearing her down and making her feel like nothing was safe (or fun) to eat anymore.

Oops.

It’s very much in my nature to overthink things – everything – but not everyone is cut out for the extent to which I continue to explore food.

And honestly, sometimes all that knowledge does make me hate food.

From the purchasing (decisions) to the planning to the hours I spend in the kitchen preparing and then cleaning up, there are definitely times I hate food and hate eating, and I really hate that I can’t just get out of it for a while. We can’t just stop eating.

Real food is a lot of work, from the sourcing of direct-from-farm products to the vegetable cutting, from the preserving of local bounty to the simple fact that making everything from scratch has to take longer than opening a package, no matter how efficient you are.

Most days it’s just a part of our lives. If I don’t stand back to assess the fact that the rest of my neighborhood is not spending an hour preparing dinner (or more), I don’t worry about it. It’s what we do.

Some days I’m quite simply proud of what we’re doing. I count my blessings that I can be a stay-at-home mom (or more accurately, a work-at-home mom) with time to create from-scratch cooking on a daily basis. I look at our balanced, hot lunches and think about the positive food habits my kids are forming. I watch other kids eat practically nothing while mine gobble up veggies and dip and all sorts of healthy fare, and I make a silent act of praise and thanksgiving.

And sometimes I look around in  horror at what families around me are letting their kids consume (McDonald’s and concession stand fare at baseball games, for example), and I’m so glad we’ve chosen the nutritional path that we have.

There is the occasional day where I’m just out of steam: I’m behind on everything and really don’t feel like spending one more minute in the kitchen. The Kitchen Stewardship household does resort to eating out from time to time, and last Friday was one of our rare spur-of-the-moment trips.

The Restaurant Factor

Should you let someone else make your food and do your dishes for a night in the name of enjoyment?

If you’re totally stressed out about the time you’re spending in the kitchen or totally exhausted and know your joy would be increased if you went out to a restaurant, then by all means, go for it!

We decided to walk to a local restaurant we had never tried last Friday because the meal I told my husband I was going to throw together sounded like "grazing food" to him. During our decision-making process, my husband said, "But you have to make sure you enjoy it. If you’re stressed out about the food, then it won’t be worth it because we’ll both still come home cranky."

Okay, I promise.

I can’t say I did very well. I hate reading kids’ menus: lots of gluten and fried foods, very few vegetables, and the ominous chocolate milk.

I was going to try an experiment by having the kids split something from the real adult menu and see how that went, if the portions made sense and if there was anything slightly more nutritious, but I was derailed when my 8-year-old read part of the kids’ menu out loud. That lifted the veil of secrecy I had been using by only sharing with the 5-year-old things I might rather her get, and she latched onto the hot dog.

Arg, worst specimen of fake food possible!!!!!!!

Foiled.

My mistake was in not setting ground rules before walking in:

1. No reading the menu out loud.
2. Mommy offers some choices; we discuss who gets what.
3. Actual meat without breading is always preferable to deep fried foods.
4. Everyone should try to eat a vegetable other than French fries.
5. No drinks other than water.

I did manage to read the side dish menu and casually omitted the French fries. What a mean mom. They were both deliriously happy with their fruit cup, actually, and the restaurant ran out of hot dog buns (could I contain my joy????) and offered another side instead, so our littlest one got a fruit cup to himself.

We also learned that he eats enough that we need to start ordering him his own meal instead of sharing from our plates. He’s 22 months, and I think we did the "share plan" with the other until well after two years old, but this guy can EAT.

I didn’t have much fun ordering, because although I’m not opposed to white flour every so often and I really do enjoy a good French fry, this was a homestyle restaurant. I didn’t expect to enjoy the fries enough to bother with them, and everything, it seemed, was deep fried.

I ended up with a burger and carrot sticks as the side. Hubs ordered a steak as he was remaining gluten free.

I just wanted to walk out and not feel a heavy, ucky sensation in my gut like we sometimes deal with when eating fast food or restaurant food.

To our surprise, instead we all went home hungry!

Luckily I had homemade fudgsicles for the kids, so they weren’t too sad (recipe in Smart Sweets, and we’re giving away some of those popsicle molds next week!).

I’m not sure whether it was less stressful or more stressful to go out than stay in, but I do know this: When I made the meal we traded for the restaurant food the following night, we all nearly died of bliss, it was so good.

I waggled my eyebrows at my husband, who had deemed it "grazing fare," and said, You see what we gave up last night for the restaurant? THIS is what restaurant food should taste like!

He agreed, and everyone left the table both full and satisfied – and more importantly, happy.

The meal, if you’re dying of curiosity, was bacon, egg and cheese paninis made with some frozen GF flatbread I had on hand (from the Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen), leftover baked potatoes, sliced and fried in home-rendered lard and 
butter, and fresh asparagus cooked in bacon grease. Divine. 

3 Tips for Enjoying Your Food

1. Find the right crowd.

I’ve been slowly but surely working my way through French Kids Eat Everything, and one of my favorite parts is learning about the French way of life. For the French, food is always social and always enjoyable. They take over an hour at the dinner table, on average, and special occasions often warrant 4-hour meals or longer.

And it’s not torture.

It’s the highlight of their year.

Meals are the centerpiece around which social life occurs, during which the best conversations and the best jokes are shared, and they go way beyond nourishment of the body alone.

A French person would practically never eat alone.

So to truly enjoy your food, find company with whom to enjoy it. If you have a family, work to prioritize family meals this week. If you don’t, prioritize inviting a few friends over for a meal.

2. Find the right recipes.

There are certain meals that my husband about which my husband will say, "We could have that every night and I wouldn’t complain." I take that as a good sign that he enjoyed his meal, even if he does eat too fast.

• Chickpea Wraps 
• Chicken Barley Leek Soup (can be made with rice too)
• Mac and Cheese (from Better Than a Box)
• Black Bean Soup 
• Veggie Bean Burritos 
• Black-Eyed Pea Casserole (from The Everything Beans Book)
• Chicken, Rice and Green Beans (from Better Than a Box)
• Check out all the family-friendly recipes here at KS right HERE

3. slow down.

This is another lesson from the French: eat slowly. Not only will you feel more relaxed and enjoy both the flavors of the food and the quality of conversation more, but you’ll even digest better, as I learned in Divine Health from the Inside Out’s Heal Your Gut eCourse that I’ve been listening to while driving.

Stress and digestion don’t really happen at the same time, because your body will devote its energy into "fight or flight" mode when you’re stressed and ignore functions like digesting food, which isn’t an immediate life-or-death situation. Slowing down your eating, sitting down to eat at a table (and staying there without multitasking), and chewing your food thoroughly all improve digestion and ultimately enhance your eating experience inside and out.

I’m laughing too, don’t worry, busy parents of young children. It’s one thing to write, "Slow it down," on the screen here, but it’s completely another to make sure dinner is on the table on time to avoid any rushing around and stress.

I admit, I’m horrible at serving a meal with poise, nutrition, and joy. By the time it’s dinnertime, I’m usually behind on my schedule, cranky about something not going right, and the toddler is likely clingy and won’t do anything other than bother me in the kitchen and whine or cry.

Slowing down might as well be a foreign country.

But it’s a good goal, and as long as I keep thinking about it and try to brainstorm some better strategies to avoid the awful dinnertime rush by being proactive instead of reactive, I’ll start making progress.

Savor It

When food is nothing but a formula for health and eating simply something you do to be nourished and that is all, I believe you’ve lost the social and gustatory pleasure of it, and that’s something you need to reclaim.

This week, make a conscious effort, at least once a day. Have a simple breakfast so you can eat slowly and enjoy the simplicity. Buy some fresh local fruit and eat it while grabbing a ray of sunshine. Invite a friend to join you for a meal and savor every bite – of both conversation and food.

Teach your kids the meaning of my 5-year-old’s new favorite word: savor. It makes the good stuff last longer.  

What’s your plan to enjoy your food this week? (Or how do you already successfully enjoy food? Teach us!

Somebody Gets Good Food!

The winner of last week’s Wise Choice Market giveaway is:

Hagar Shirman

Congrats! Please email me with your address and phone number by the end of the day Wednesday so we can get your goodies on their way (otherwise we’ll have to draw a new winner).

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I’d love to see more of you!  Sign up for a free email subscription or grab my reader feed. You can also follow me on Twitter, get KS for Kindle, or see my Facebook Fan Page.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

Disclosure: There are affiliate links in this post to Amazon and Divine Health from which I will earn some commission if you make a purchase. See my full disclosure statement here.

Don't forget that Google Reader is DISAPPEARING forever this month! Be sure to get KS via email or switch to another reader (Feedly is one option; there are many others). I'd miss you if you got lost!

If someone has scrambled eggs for breakfast, egg salad at lunch, and egg quiche for dinner, most folks would say or think, “Wow, that’s a lot of eggs. Is that okay to eat?”

If someone else has cereal and milk for breakfast, grilled cheese for lunch, and lasagna for dinner, I would note, “Wow, that’s a lot of wheat.” Five years ago, I wouldn’t have said a thing. Someone who is lactose intolerant would probably also notice that dairy was consumed in large quantity at each meal. I might not.

One of the theories about the rise in gluten sensitivity is that people quite simply overconsume it, in basic ways that we don’t even notice, like the example above, because wheat is such a part of our food culture.

However, this is not a post about gluten.

It’s about everything else.

I’ve been wondering a lot lately whether we’ll end up overconsuming some of the other things that end up replacing wheat in a gluten-free or grain-free diet. (Or perhaps we simply overconsume, period.)

Eggs

One example in our family is those eggs – although I don’t usually serve three egg-centric main dishes in a day, it’s nothing to have scrambled eggs for breakfast, grain-free coconut muffins (from Healthy Snacks to Go) for a snack, clocking in at half an egg per muffin and easy to eat two, and then grain-free cheesy biscuits (from Better Than a Box) with soup for dinner, with 8 eggs in that recipe.

I do believe eggs are healthy, so I’m not going to by swayed by the egg-white lovers or the saturated fat demonizers, but I wonder about quantity. Particularly in the dark days of winter, when chickens usually wouldn’t lay, or would at least seriously slow down production without artificial light, is four dozen eggs a week really what God intended for our bodies?

Coconut

Coconut products are one of my favorite discoveries of the traditional foods lifestyle and a huge change from my previous life, when I hated all things coconut. (I think I disliked fake coconut flavor and never really knew what real coconuts tasted like.)

I’ve read advice from other real food bloggers describing ways to make sure they have coconut something-or-other at least once a day, advice about having some coconut oil with every meal, and I myself have recommended adding coconut oil in places you wouldn’t normally, like morning oatmeal, coffee, or smoothies.

Between coconut flour in my baked goods, shredded coconut in my granola, and coconut oil in a lot of parts of my kitchen life, we consume a good deal of this tropical food.

And there’s the rub: as much as I enjoy and now rely on coconut products, if I really want a traditional foods perspective, how would a northerner like me possibly have consumed this many coconuts?

In Dr. Weston A. Price’s world travels, he logged many cultures who would travel and trade for fish, for example, if they didn’t live by a source of water. So it’s possible for traditional food to be found outside its boundaries a bit, but I can’t see coconuts being quite so worldwide and pervasive as fish.

If coconut flour is the only option for going grain-free, then you’re probably not doing it in a real traditional or primal manner. That doesn’t make it wrong, but don’t kid yourself about origins of a diet.

If coconut oil feels like the only way to bring down high cholesterol or lose weight, then it’s worth exploring some other options, just out of respect for the distance the coconuts traveled to help you meet your goal. I cannot believe that a good and just God would have made it so that this one food was a “wonder food” and then make it only grow in the tropics.

I could make that argument for a lot of the more exotic “superfoods” being touted on the market today. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with them, and I’m certainly not saying you shouldn’t eat them, but I am pointing out that they’re probably not the only amazingly nutritive foods out there. (Unless of course we’ve tainted our food system so badly, which God could foresee, so He designed foods that would save us from ourselves that could only live in places untainted by big ag, which we could only transport and market effectively in the exact time in history that we needed them most. You see where you can end up if you keep asking questions…)

With five gallons of coconut oil in my basement, I’m really just blowing hot air and asking questions here, because I don’t plan to stop using it. I think it is wonderful…but I also think it can’t be lifted on a pedestal as the only magic bullet for anything, since much of the world isn’t designed with easy access to the product.

I’m just hoping that the body is adaptable enough to be able to utilize the good parts of the coconut, even though it’s not exactly indigenous to my piece of the world.

Almonds

In the Primal/Paleo lifestyle and any grain-free baking, almonds tend to play a major role. I’ve seen grain-free dessert recipes with almond flour in the crust, almond butter in the filling and crushed almonds on top. That particular dessert was delicious, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think, “Wow, that’s a lot of almonds.”

It’s easy to have almonds in your grain-free granola for breakfast, an almond flour muffin for a snack, almond butter banana bread at lunch and almond flour tortillas at dinner.

I have to question this one even more than eggs and coconut, I think, for a few reasons. First, the difficulty in cracking the nut. If you had to gather all your own food, do you have any idea how long cracking enough almonds for two cups of almond flour would take? Oy. (And for most of us, we don’t even see the green outer hull that has to come off before the hard shell.) Shelling nuts is a long and often painful process for the fingers, and I think that almond flour muffin would start to sound less important as you worked, and you might grab an apple instead.

So can traditional diets really include so many almonds? Likely not if one really wants to mimic traditional peoples, who I do not think baked with almond flour or made pancakes with almonds as the main ingredient.

The second real question with almonds is the nutrient profile. Although I love nuts for their nutrient density, almonds raise a few potential issues:

Omega 6s

Almonds are known to be high in omega 6s, the polyunsaturated fat that is inflammatory (think of them as the opposite on the constantly-in-the-new omega 3s, which are heart healthy and anti-inflammatory).

We all need to eat more omega 3s, because it’s all about the ratio of 3s to 6s. Opinions vary on what the ratio should be, ranging from 4:1 (more omega 6s) to 1:1 (even). Most Americans eat closer to a 20:1 ratio. (source) 

In other words, as long as you’re not eating 6s in everything and getting adequate omega 3s, you may not need to worry about every little omega 6. We need to eat them, just not in excess.

Here are the real nutrition facts on one ounce of almonds, about 23 nuts:

• 3408 mg omega 6s
• 1.7 mg omega 3s
• ratio of 2004:1 (yikes!)
• However, the omega 6s are only 24% of the total fat, whereas 62% is actually monounsaturated fats (the same healthy fats in avocado)

Walnuts, touted as high in omega 3s, have in one ounce:

• 2300 mg of omega 3s
• about about 11,000 mg omega 6s
• ratio of 5:1, still omega 6s  higher

Note: NutritionData.com was way off on walnuts, surprising me at first. The omega 3s were very low, but the USDA calculator and caloriecount.about.com both agreed on the above data.

From what I can tell – and this is a total surprise to me, please correct me if I’m crunching these numbers incorrectly – both walnuts and almonds are actually higher in omega 6s than 3s. Walnuts have a good omega 3 rep for a few reasons: omega 3s are hard to find, and they have enough to start satisfying the recommended daily value in just a few handfuls.

Salmon would be another food important to eat for omega 3s, ringing in at:

• 1253 mg omega 3s
• 175 mg omega 6s in a 3 oz. serving
• ratio of 1:8 (finally, something with more omega 3s for real!)
  • Of course, I just read that frying salmon, our preferred method, knocks out almost all the omega 3 benefits. Le sigh.)
• 25% of the total fat is omega 3s; monounsaturated fats are actually highest in salmon as well.

Even though the stats on nuts seem pretty abysmal, compare to the ratios on corn, which are:

• Corn oil ratio: 46:1 (54% of the total fat is omega 6s)
• Frozen corn ratio: 32:1 (48% of total fat is omega 6s, but still 91% less than an ounce of almonds)
• Corn tortilla: 40:1
• Corn chips: 33:1

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and NutritionData.com

Is it safe to say that if your diet isn’t full of highly processed, highly inflammatory corn and soy that you’re okay with almonds? Or should anyone, no matter the rest of their diet, eat no more than a handful a day?

Oxalic Acid

This guy thinks almonds should come with a warning, and that clearly no one should eat more than a handful a day, which is pretty much all you need to get a good dose of Vitamin E and other nutrients that almonds are praised for having.

His argument is based on kidney stones and oxalic acid, and he’s a doctor, although I did not follow up on all his sources. His line of thinking may be totally off the mark, but it’s another possible fault for the role of almonds in a healthy diet, particularly as a centerpiece of that diet.

Oxalic acid or oxalates are present in many plant foods naturally. For many people, they don’t cause problems, but there are a couple issues with over-consumption of oxalates (potatoes, spinach, tomatoes, and soy milk are on the “high” list, along with almonds). Calcium oxalate is insoluble, and if the body can’t get rid of it all, folks can get painful kidney stones. Gout, thyroid disease, asthma and autism are on the list of other diseases that may be impacted by high levels of oxalates.

Oxalic acid is often pinned in spinach discussions: here’s a blogger who says “avoid it” and here’s one that’s a little more balanced, differentiating between natural sources, etc. I did not follow all their sources either, because this is just one piece of a very large, very complicated picture and honestly, I don’t have the time.

Sources: 1, 2, 3

Phytic Acid

This is one subject I know a little more about, although I would never claim to be an expert. Phytic acid or phytates (two sides of the same coin, basically, as far as discussing what happens in the body when consumed, even though they’re different in a scientific discussion) are “anti-nutrients” that bind certain minerals up in a form that prevents the human digestive system from absorbing them. It’s possible that eating foods high in phytic acid, like all whole grains and seeds, may even reduce the proper assimilation of the minerals you eat in other foods at the same sitting.

All nuts have this property, because as the seed of a plant, they don’t really want to be digested. Anti-nutrients prevent proper digestion – good for the plant’s potential progeny, bad for you.

Soaking and dehydrating nuts, a process often called “crispy nuts,” reduces some of the phytic acid (and makes the nuts deliciously crunchy! It’s one of the only traditional foods preparations that makes something more delicious in almost everyone’s opinion…).

However, soaking nuts and seeds doesn’t eliminate all the phytic acid, so anytime you eat almonds, you’re battling some anti-nutrients.

This only comes into play when the brown skin is still on, so blanched almonds and blanched almond flour are exempt. However, I don’t know how to get the skins off in my home kitchen, so I’d have to buy them blanched, which brings us to the last almond issue:

Chemical Pasteurization

I discussed a little bit about the almond pasteurization law in this grain-free almond apple pancake recipe, but basically:

• Any almonds not sold by the grower must be pasteurized.
• There are two method: steam and chemical (PPO).
• There’s not a huge body of evidence to prove that PPO pasteurization causes health issues, but I’m just not a fan. If I can source almonds that haven’t been sprayed with noxious gases – even if it’s only for 3 seconds and then it dissipates – well, I’m going to.
• Steam pasteurized almonds are harder to find; organic almonds are always steam pasteurized.

OR you can buy them like I do, direct from the grower. I can’t get them blanched direct from the farm! Therefore, I have to deal with the phytic acid. And the storage. (I need a bigger freezer, I’m learning, as I research almonds today. Mine are at the end of their shelf life and I have no room for 15 pounds of almonds in my tiny chest freezer! Ack!)

So How Much is Too Much?

Beats me.

In French Kids Eat Everything, I was just reading this week that it’s very important for the French to eat a vast variety of foods, from day to day, week to week, and season to season.

It’s possible that a disadvantage of our modern conveniences, being able to have any kind of food, anytime, anywhere, is that we’re going against our bodies’ natural seasonal and geographical rhythms.

We buy almonds in 25-pound portions and eat quite a few of them, eat plenty of the same foods over and over (onions, garlic, peppers, carrots, cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, butter, ETC.), and our 4-5 dozen eggs a week and frequent coconut consumption are also suspect, so I’m not pointing fingers at anyone. I’m just asking hard questions and starting to wonder if I’m making a nutritional mistake in the name of better health…

It wouldn’t be the first mistake I’ve made…like the way I phrased the teaser to yesterday’s sunscreen post on Facebook (I really didn’t know that a ton of people get skin cancer on their face. Please read my reply near the end of the thread if you were one who pointed out my error…I learned a lot!)

What foods do you find you eat a lot of? Would they be difficult to obtain for pre-civilized man?

And one last apology…

Yesterday was not such a good day on Facebook for Katie. I learned a lot, but I also had to go buy a gallon of humility in bulk just to get through all the comments on a few updates.

This one about the fluoride content of tea, and thereby kombucha, took quite a beating. I read an article by the Orawellness team that they asked their partners to share, and I saw the sources at the bottom and noted that they weren’t all pop culture sources, and the conclusions drawn were new to me, but they didn’t send my “no sense made” sensors ringing.

The authors of the post were very gracious to folks in the comments, and although people asked good questions about their sources and conclusions, I didn’t see anyone who positively proved that the article should be rescinded or rewritten.

Since I neither drink tea nor make kombucha, you know what? I don’t really care about natural vs. manmade sources of fluoride. There are plenty of natural things that I don’t want in my body, particularly in high levels: aluminum is one example that is also in many beverages, and the oxalates discussed above are another thing that’s natural, in food (very healthy foods, like tea!), but still a potential problem.

I’m sure I have a lot to learn about fluoride, to be honest, and if we end up with a cavity problem in our family, I’d probably pretty quickly consider fluoride back in my toothpaste, not ingested, but on the surface of the teeth. I’d also do my research a lot deeper and more diligently when it really mattered to my family’s immediate health.

As it is, I can’t possibly thoroughly research every topic about health and nutrition out there. I’m only one person, and if I actually researched it all to the extent that one should, I’d never have time to actually make the food to keep my family nourished or go to the beach to even encounter the sun/sunscreen question.

So. I promise I’ll try hard not to condemn anyone’s ignorance (I may have been a little harsh in the white flour post…), and I beg your pardon when I make mistakes based on lack of knowledge. As I said in the sunscreen update post, “I’m a stay-at-home mom who strings words together online and doesn’t use her Elementary Education certificate for much anymore…and I never claim to be otherwise.”

Thanks for sticking with me, dear readers, through the common sense and and lack thereof. I just hope and pray I have more in the end than most, just like I hope my kids have more vegetables than compromise foods by the end of each week.  

I’m all about finding the balance…

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Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

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Don’t you feel horrible when your kids get a little pink from the sun?

It’s a difficult balance to strike, wanting them to get Vitamin D from the sun and also be protected from the harmful effects of the same darn sun.

Sometimes I forget that I’m not afraid of sunscreen itself anymore, and I should slather it on a little more liberally. My 4yo (whoops, 5yo! Happy Birthday, little girl!) wore a borrowed bathing suit this week and had more back skin exposed than usual, and although I thought I had gotten it well, it wasn’t quite good enough for the very liberal dose of noonday sun we got.

Her sunburn didn’t hurt her, but it made me feel awful – because I know it might hurt her later.

It also made me think more about common sense and sun exposure. Even with last week’s sunscreen safety post, we still have a few issues to explore.

Here’s a conversation I was drawn into at Jo-Lynne’s post about sun safety:

Hmmm, I have mixed feelings on this post. I have worked in Dermatology Research at the VA Medical Center with the Chief of Dermatology for more than 15 years and preach regularly about sunscreen use. I am not aware of any true clinical research to support the whole “chemical sunscreens cause cancer” theory. Also, by stating that sunscreens may cause cancer could lead to people not using it all which puts you at a much higher risk of skin cancer. Also, a base tan is NOT protection from the sun. A base tan is sun damage. That fact is indisputable. I respect everyone’s opinion and to each his/her own.

Kim

My response:

Kim,
I’m the gal who tested out the 28 (now 43 actually) sunscreens that Jo-Lynne linked to in this post, and I’ve written quite a bit on sunscreen. I hope you don’t mind me jumping in too.

I think you make a really good point about people ending up feeling almost afraid of sunscreen and then not putting it on enough and getting burned. Finding the balance between getting some sun exposure for the Vitamin D benefits and getting the sunscreen on is tricky, so I can even see that result in our own family sometimes.  I hate that feeling of, "Arg, I waited too long to put on sunscreen and they’re looking pink!!" when I look at my kids (happened today in fact, sigh). I give myself the "bad mom award."

I’m surprised to hear that you’ve never come across any research that sunscreen causes cancer. I feel like oxybenzone in particular is pretty well established as toxic. Heather Dessinger does even better research than I do generally – do you see anything substantiated over here:  www.mommypotamus.com/many-healthy-sunscreens-accelerate-skin-aging/ or here: http://www.mommypotamus.com/wait-what-sunlight-prevents-cancer/ ?

I was just reading somewhere about how the production of melanin offers protection for the skin from the sun, i.e. the base tan theory. I wish I could remember exactly  where.

Ultimately, I have a lot of questions about the theories that (a) sunlight causes cancer and (b) sunscreen prevents cancer. My neighbor and I were talking, and just common sense wise, why is it that so many people get their skin cancer in areas that aren’t really exposed to the sun (buttocks, for example) and plenty of people DON’T get skin cancer on places like their nose, even if, like my neighbor, they never wore sunscreen as a kid and got burned and peeling every summer, all summer long? I know that’s just anecdotal, but I’d love to hear the dermatology response, because I’m sure there’s information I just don’t understand about that.

The statistics on skin cancer have not really decreased as sunscreen use has increased, which I suppose could simply mean that a lot of people are now seeing the consequences of former poor sun exposure practices – is that the general dermatology theory? That it was too late for folks who damaged their skin long ago?

I’m curious – what active ingredients do you counsel patients to look for in sunscreen? And what is the best way to get our necessary Vitamin D from the sun? Are there certain times of day that are good or bad, can Vit D get through sunscreen at all, and how many minutes of sunlight do people need?

I’m not trying to be lippy or oppositional; I just really want to understand all the sides of the issue, and I think it’s wonderful that Jo-Lynne has a visitor with real clinical knowledge. Feel free to point me to journal articles demonstrating research that sunscreens prevent cancer, etc.

Thank you so much for your time and knowledge!

Katie Kimball

When I turn on my common sense, I just can’t believe that we should be protected by sunscreen 100% of the time:

• Research has proven that the BEST way for our bodies to get Vitamin D is to synthesize it from the sun. We NEED the sun.
• Although I realize that a fallen world has made the sun’s rays more harmful, I still can’t believe that God would make it so complicated to be safe outside.
• I’ve even read that Dr. Mercola recommends people NOT be outside before 10 and after 4, the usual hours when folks feel safe, because the sun’s angle causes more cancer even though no burns. I don’t buy it. I believe God would create a system that makes sense, like the warning sign of a burn telling people that they’re doing something harmful to their skin.

I’m really hoping "Kim" will respond, and I’m looking forward to learning more answers to my questions, especially the one about skin cancer showing up in places that people don’t get sun exposure.

My common sense solution?

• Get some sunshine without anything on your skin.
• Wear natural mineral sunscreen the rest of the time or cover up or get inside.
• Do NOT use any chemical sunscreens; read up on sun safety and the science behind these things.
• Don’t stress out about it.
• Get plenty of antioxidants on your skin and in your body to combat all the effects of both the sun and sunscreen.
• If you get a little pink, use a lotion with antioxidants, virgin coconut oil, and soothing properties like aloe or essential oils.

One reader commented that when she stopped wearing sunglasses, her Vitamin D levels finally increased to a normal level. This is something I want to know more about! I’ve read in a few places that sunglasses aren’t actually good for us, and I’ve mostly stopped wearing them (partly because they’re either lost or too dirty to do me any good anyway).

The information coming at you about sun exposure and sun protection are going to change every year, I guarantee that.

Your strategy needs to be one of gathering facts, remembering that the natural world does have patterns and rules, and using your common sense ALWAYS.

Now we’re off to the zoo, all day in the sun.

We’re wearing sunscreen and hats. Have a great day!

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If I make my mom’s biscuit recipe with unbleached, unbromated wheat flour, home-rendered pastured lard, Real Salt, and organic, grassfed milk, but the flour happens to have all the bran and all the germ sifted out of it, is my resulting biscuit – which will be so fluffy and melt-in-your-mouth smeared with pastured butter that you’ll think you died and gone to Heaven – is it junk food? Is it real food? Or would some even say, "It’s not even food at all!" just because of the refined grains?

I posed a basic question last week on Facebook: White flour…food, non-food, junk food, or somewhere in between?

It generated quite the conversation, and I thought that many of the comments and opinions deserved my own response.

The title of this post is partially a "whole grains" vs. refined grains question but really that whole "grains question," as in, I’m going to talk about grains through the lens of common sense. All grains: refined, soaked, sprouted, and none at all. (top photo source)

What’s the deal with grains?

What is "Food" Anyway?

I promise that’s not a trick question.

If I’m going to deem something "food" or "not food," I need to be able to articulate a definition for food.

I can reasonably say that if I can trace something from its origin either in the ground or on an animal, then be able to replicate every step of its processing in my home kitchen without a chemistry degree or any degree of heroics, then it’s actually food.

For example, let’s look at the white flour in question:

1. White flour begins on a wheat plant, as the seed. I could grow and harvest that myself if I so desired.
2. The seed is then ground into flour, which I could do in my Nutrimill, or, if I wanted a more "pure" definition of food without any fancy machinery, I could always grind flour by hand with a mortar and pestle. That sounds like fun…
3. Now I have whole wheat flour with the bran, germ and endosperm of the seed all ground up. Like I demonstrated in my Nutrimill videos, all that’s needed to separate the bran out is a fine sieve, and it doesn’t really even take that long. To separate the germ, I’d just need a finer sieve, but I am fairly certain I could do it in my own kitchen.
4. White flour: it may have the most nutritious part of the plant removed, but I don’t see any reason why the part that is left, the refined grain, should be relegated to "not food" any more than peeling a carrot or a cucumber should suddenly change its status to "not food."

Someone on the Facebook thread stated that the body does not recognize white flour, and I soundly disagree. We’re not talking trans fats here, which have been altered at the molecular level in a lab to create a "food" that is totally new and different from any naturally occurring fats. The body does not recognize that and doesn’t know what to do with it, true, but white flour is just food that’s missing some parts from its whole form.

The body can handle it.

Trans fats start as a food, but the process that makes them "hydrogenated" is not something I can hope to replicate in my kitchen. It fails the "food" test.

Artificial colors made from petroleum (or anything else) are another great example of something that fails the "food" test, this one at the very beginning. There’s nothing that ever grew in the ground or was alive, so it’s not something I want to eat. (Salt and minerals would be one exception to this rule, but I can’t think of any others. Did I miss anything?)

Genetic modification pushes my system a little bit, because the issue happens before the plant is even harvested, in fact before it’s even grown.

Up until very recently, I would have judged GM crops as food, hands down. Messed up food, maybe, but still edible food. 

I was, perhaps, not fully using my common sense and was purposely not looking into the issue very deeply, knowing that I was avoiding most GMOs already and not wanting to take any additional time to delve deeper.

I mentioned in yesterday’s Common Sense Monday Mission that I had been reading Laurie Neverman’s Common Sense Health eBook and learned a number of new facts about genetically modified crops that I didn’t know before. I still need to follow my own advice by following her sources, but I’m much more taken aback than I have been in the past. I’m also a lot closer to relegating GM crops like Bt corn to the "non-food" category.  More research needed…

Other Issues with White Flour

(photo source)

I’m always surprised how people like to preach about the perfect foods or their perfect diet, but they’re totally wrong.

Some fallacies:

• You need to soak white flour to make it more nutritious.
• If you have "sprouted" white flour, that’s okay.
• Confusing "white whole wheat" with white refined flour
• That GM wheat makes it so that people should never eat white flour.

Corrections:

Soaking White Flour

The whole point of soaking grains is to release the minerals in the bran and germ from phytic acid, which binds them and may inhibit absorption of certain nutrients in the gut. White flour has no bran, no germ, and no antinutrients to soak out. Please read my extensive soaking grains research and methods HERE if you need to understand better.

One note: Although basic overnight soaking is totally unnecessary for refined grains of any kind, the sourdough process still may yield health benefits with white flour, making the starch in the refined grain more easily digestible because of fermentation, a pre-digestive process.

Sprouted White Flour?

There’s no such thing as sprouted white flour. To sprout something, you have to start with the whole grain, sprout it, dry it, and then grind it. I suppose one might be able to then sift out the bran and germ, but honestly, I’ve never heard of it. I’m not sure how sprouting alters the size and shape of the bran and germ; it may be impossible to sift them out.

I’m also not quite sure about what would be left: the point of sprouting is to (a) stop the seed’s antinutrient tendencies (aka release minerals from the phytic acid) since as far as the seed is concerned, it’s met its goal in life if it’s beginning to grow, and also (b) sprouting reduces the starch content since the baby plant begins to eat its food source, the endosperm.

That part IS the white flour part, so if it’s already being eaten by the plant…what will left if it is refined?

I’m open to this being possible, because, you know, I want to have some common sense about it all and think it through. I am wrong sometimes (okay, quite often really). But it sounds like a redundancy at best and impossible at worst to me.

White Whole Wheat Flour

"White whole wheat" has nothing at all to do with white flour. They’re completely different, although it’s confusing, I know. When anyone mentions white flour, I guarantee they’re talking about a refined product, a type of wheat flour with its bran and germ removed. White whole wheat, on the other hand, is made from a specific type of wheat berry: hard white spring wheat.

Traditional whole wheat flour that is the "standard" one you can buy in a bag at the store comes from "hard red wheat," usually either spring or winter varieties. It’s just that the plant itself from which the wheat berries were harvested is different, but there’s little to no difference in nutritional value and zero difference in processing.

There are plenty of different kinds of whole wheat grains that can be made into whole wheat flour: The two mentioned above plus "soft white wheat berries," aka pastry flour, are some of the most common.

White whole wheat is quite lovely, by the way, for baking muffins and cookies, and it’s absolutely necessary, in my opinion, for perfect homemade whole wheat tortillas.

Genetically Modified Wheat, oh Really?

Genetic modification is really building steam as a hot topic right now, which is great. It’s important to get the word out on GM crops to the widest audience possible so that people are informed about their food and can make eating and buying choices according to their beliefs, as well as vote with their dollar and their ballots (hopefully against GM taking root any deeper in America, but we shall see).

The problem with hot topics is that they tend to be misinterpreted and overblown. Suddenly the problem with every food possible is, "Genetic modification makes that unhealthy." People begin to throw around the terms in every conversation: "GM is the root of all nutritional evils." "Oh, you know, genetic modification blah blah blah…"

The fallacy in that is that there are really very few genetically modified crops on the market today. Corn, soy, cotton and sugar are very widely genetically modified, and they’re in just about every processed food (not cotton, obviously, although sometimes it tastes like it), so GMOs do impact our food supply in that way.

However – strawberries, tomatoes, wheat, rice, apples and many, many more foods are not (yet) genetically modified, at least not officially. When people continue to peg GM as the problem with all those foods, it shows their ignorance, in my opinion.

Yes, genetically modified wheat was found recently growing in Oregon. Yes, that’s incredibly scary, and it’s possible that a great deal of the wheat in America has been contaminated by experiments that got out of hand. However, up until just last month (May, 2013), nobody knew that. So all the naysayers preaching the evils of GM wheat before that had no sources to back up their claims.

What common sense says about this new evidence, I’m not sure, but my common sense says this about genetic modification in general: We should not play God, and getting into the genes of any living creature is a slippery slope.

At our time in history, we don’t yet know the ramifications of genetic modification on the environment or our bodies, but we do know that the GM crops can, through cross-pollination, take over other crops. To fiddle with something that can get so out of our control and which may quickly enter into the realm of immorality (if we begin to experiment on human beings, for example) is dangerous and irresponsible.

The decisions made about genetic modification now are going to impact generations to come, and I’m firmly opposed to it.

But What About White Flour?

Food vilification is pretty rampant in some real food circles. We’ve already established that yes, white flour IS a food. It may not be the most nutritious food possible, but those who demonize it as an “anti-food, a poison, and potentially dangerous" are stretching the truth.

White flour has 455 calories per cup, including some protein and fat (although mostly the bad polyunsaturated fats), and it even has 3.4 grams of fiber. Not much, but at least some. When people are starving, they can survive on white bread. They may not thrive, but they are not poisoned. Good grief. (sources: 1, 2, 3)

White flour may have quite an undesirable glycemic load, it may be high in starch with little fiber to slow down that starch’s trip through the digestive system, and it may be lacking in nutrients, but it’s not going to poison most healthy people. (Yes, some folks should never eat wheat of any kind, and some, like diabetics, are definitely harmed by eating refined grains. But it’s not the white flour that is the real problem, it’s that body’s ability to utilize it.)

White flour is a food, not a poison, and it may very well have a place in a healthy diet.

To Soak or Not to Soak?

A few years ago when I was looking into the soaking grains issue in depth, I said that people would know the series was over when I posted an article called "To Soak or Not to Soak" with my final recommendations.

After a while, I realized a few things:

1. The research was very conflicting.
2. I probably was not qualified to really make an informed recommendation on the entire issue, because of the point above, the shifting of research as the years progressed, that I’m not a professional researcher or scientist, and the fact that I was running out of time and motivation.
3. There’s no perfect answer for everyone. Some people need to soak or sprout their grains because they feel badly if they don’t. Some people’s bodies don’t do well with any grains. And other people actually feel better if they just eat refined grains.

Then our family discovered a probable gluten sensitivity, and my energy and efforts really needed to be devoted to learning about baking gluten-free and grain-free, so I sort of dropped the subject of soaking.

People would email and ask over the years if I ever made a final decision, but I never got back to the series. I just didn’t know where to go with it.

I’m still not qualified to make any recommendations or final decisions, but I can share my opinion and what we’re doing on a regular basis in our family.

1. There is some research, both anecdotal and scientific, to show that soaking grains does positive things to make grains nourishing.
2. Soaking doesn’t take very much more time – sometimes just a few minutes here and there.
3. In our family, we’ve cut down on grains in general quite a bit, which is probably the best way to deal with the issue.
4. We do soak oatmeal and brown rice, and I soak homemade rolls and tortillas when we eat wheat at all.

So my answer to "to soak or not to soak" is to do what works for your family. If people’s guts hurt after eating unsoaked whole wheat bread, you should make a change. Whether that means soaking, sprouting, sourdough or avoiding wheat/grains is up to your personal test kitchen and family laboratory.

There’s no perfect answer.

In our house, I’m not going to freak out if we eat unsoaked whole grains, but I prefer to soak whenever I can, which is easier because I already had the habit formed. I do think I notice that unsoaked oatmeal feels heavier in my gut, but I’m willing to admit that it may be a psychological thing too, happening because I’m watching for it to happen.

I’m also trying to use more common sense and not freak out if we’re presented with white flour products or white rice, which may be even healthier and safer than whole grains, depending on who you ask.

I still believe, as I did when I started the series, that sourdough is the healthiest way to consume whole grains. In reality, though, I haven’t had a sourdough starter going for over two years since we started avoiding most gluten – but it’s on my list to get a gluten-free starter going, and I even have the recipe printed. Sometimes, life gets in the way.

Finding the Balance

The whole issue of grains has become quite sensitive and personal for many people, and there are definitely vehement supporters of any perspective, especially the grain-free proponents.

I was disappointed that so many on Facebook took a stance of food elitism and vilification. I do appreciate opinions, but far more important to me is exploring all sides and presenting a balanced perspective. I’ll leave you today with some nuggets of wisdom from the community on Facebook.

I really appreciate what this reader said:

“I know people have twisted the phrase Everything in moderation to be an excuse for eating garbage, but I think that once you get out all of the truly non-food and overly processed stuff from your diet, everything in moderation makes sense.”

On the flip side, it is rare that anyone is eating an ideal diet 100% of the time, and I feel that it’s detrimental to others to act like you are.

Making people feel stressed out about their choices isn’t helpful. Plenty of people have consciously evaluated the way their family reacts to whole grains vs. white flour and found that they hurt after eating whole grains, even "properly prepared," and do not after eating white flour.

There’s another group of people who have fewer choices because of their socio-economic status.

Please don’t tell those folks that white flour is going to poison them.

I tend to use the lens of traditional foods, which makes common sense to me – that foods that people have been eating successfully for hundreds if not thousands of years should have prime place at the table. Foods and "foods" that have been around for less than a century are treated with great skepticism and usually avoided.

It may surprise you to learn that the idea of mixing white with whole wheat flour may actually be closer to what traditional cultures ate than 100% whole grain bread. Read more in 3 Expert Takes on the Value of White Bread.

Butter Believer also has a great post finding the balance: Is White Flour Really All That Bad? She says:

I don’t think it’s worth freaking out over every exposure to white flour. If you are a healthy person and eat a mostly healthy diet, I truly don’t think a little conventional white flour — and yes, even a little bit of the toxins that accompany it — every now and then is going to really hurt you.

Most of the gals in the KS community are similarly infused with common sense and balance. I loved these two comments on the Facebook thread (and so did a bunch of other people as demonstrated by a plethora of "likes"):

I used to think it was poison. I used to think sugar and regular noodles and almost everything else unhealthy was bad or dangerous. Until I started living again. I still try to make better choices but nothing will happen if I use white flour once in a while. I am sane. My kids do not have a crazy momma anymore. The kitchen cabinets are now stocked with everything and my kids don’t go crazy anymore when they are out of the house and see candy, white bread and junk cereal. It’s all food. We have to choose the healthier of the foods, but it’s still food! Live and make the best choices you can. Stress and fear of everything is sometimes just as bad as occasionally eating the crap.

I have a tendency personally to go overboard on stress a bit, so I need to bring myself back to center and remember that my kids need to see a balanced mommy, too.

I find it so sad that people will use terms like "less then ideal" in reference to a topic like this because that seems like the diet of that person must be 100% correct when I would bet its not. What is it with people being on a high horse about this topic?

White flour is food, and I think some people need to be focus on being thankful they have the budget, accessibility, etc, to make the choices they male for their family… Instead of looking down their nose at everyone about their choices. I would much prefer someone uses white flour for homemade things as opposed to premade mixes… And while we are at it, let’s mention that not everyone is as fortunate as some of us who can make the choices we want for our family.

Also, in an emergency, would you classify white flour as a non food? I highly doubt it. If we want to educate and empower others to make "better" decisions, well I think we need to focus on the benefits of one thing over the other, i.e. the positives, instead of it being a chance for someone to pat their own back about the way they do things while looking down at others.

I think I’m going to bake a loaf of my favorite oatmeal honey bread today, using yeast, and unbleached white flour (gasp), I guess to some its not better nutritionally then the alternative of going to the store to buy a loaf of white bread. Whatever. I will enjoy it with some raw honey drizzled on top.

With that, I’m off to make pancakes for my family. They’re grain-free this morning because I forgot to soak buckwheat flour last night. After all this conversation, I’m tempted to make white flour pancakes, but we’ve kind of maxed out our "80/20" living (20% junk as long as 80% is nourishing) over the weekend. Plus, I’m not sure where my bag of white flour is.

What’s your take on white flour?

Stay tuned for more common sense this week, including sun exposure, evaluating new diet plans, "How Much is Too Much?" and more!

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If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

Disclosure: There are affiliate links in this post to Amazon from which I will earn some commission if you make a purchase. See my full disclosure statement here.

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Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to think critically, question everything, use logical perspective, and above all, seek to cultivate common sense…for the rest of your life.

This is no one-week, learn-a-new-skill mission, folks.

As I mentioned yesterday on Facebook, this week is “common sense week” at Kitchen Stewardship.

There have been quite a number of topics and thoughts brewing in my head recently, and one common theme is quite simply common sense.

Perhaps I’m naïve, but I’d like to think I have a healthy dose of common sense, whereas it seems like many around me are lacking.

The conversation on Facebook when I mentioned the phrase kind of confirms my suspicion: That common sense isn’t common anymore. It’s practically become something that needs to be taught (not to you, of course).

Choose Your Own Side

Swallowing something anyone tells you – even me, dear kitchen stewards! I’m just a (frightfully busy and multitasking) human being – is not a good idea without examining it on all sides first.

If you read an opinion, are given some research to back something up, stumble across a new diet, read warnings about something on the market, or generally are trying to figure out, “What do I eat? What do I buy?” then you need to make sure you can find and understand all the sides of the story.

For example, one of my former students, now a junior in high school, contacted me this spring as a source for a school project he was doing on organic meat. Although I know the choices I make for my family, I also know I’m still muddling through the issue and don’t know everything. I had a great time answering his questions, but I also wanted him to be well-rounded in his research and not just seek out a source that would support his opinion.

I sent him to my longtime challenger here at Kitchen Stewardship, “Tonya,” who always brings the voice of big agriculture (and little agriculture) to the conversation whenever I talk farming. I knew she would be overwhelming for him, but I felt it was important not to let him get away with one-sided research. In order to be your own person and choose your side, you have to know what they all look like. Once a teacher, always a teacher!

Asking the Questions

If this post is “Common Sense 101,” our curriculum goal is to learn to ask the right questions.

When evaluating any information, I like to step back and ask things like:

• What is the source? Personal opinion, expert in the field, actual scientific research? If research, how big was the study? Was it peer-reviewed? The more sources, the better – always.
• Who stands to gain from the information? Follow the money…
• How does this line up with what people did a hundred or two or three hundred years ago? I believe in a just God who created the world for His beloved children; how does this information reconcile with a benevolent Creator? (Yes, some will say that any faith is in opposition to logic, that faith is the antithesis of common sense. My senior year high school term paper, for an atheist teacher, was on the subject, “God exists.” Logic can get you to God, but it does still take a leap of faith to get to religion. I choose to take that leap. Period.)
• What are the long-term effects? Does anyone know the long-term effects?
• How does my personal experience and the experiences of my family and friends reconcile with this information?
• What are the risks of either side? The benefits?
• Is there anything immoral involved?
• Is the person giving me the information open to other ideas, or are they so attached to their belief that constructive discussion will never happen?
• What do the naysayers say? Dig as deeply into the “other side” as you do into the side that seems right at first.
• Can I sustain it, or will this new information suck all the joy out of life and have unintended repercussions?
• Does it make sense? Does it fit into the big picture?

I’m quite looking forward to talking about things like white flour, sun exposure, traditional foods, new (fad?) diets, and American obesity with you this week, all through my hyper-critical lens of…common sense.

We’ll seek the balanced middle ground together (or the far end of the spectrum, if it’s sensible and correct!) and have fun – and good discussion, I imagine – doing it.

The Common Sense Posts

Here’s what we’re talking about:

• That Whole Grains Question: Is it Time for “To Soak or Not to Soak?”
• Balancing Sun Exposure with Sun-O-Phobia
• How Much is Too Much? (if you eat eggs, almonds, coconut…you’re going to want to explore this post)
• …more coming!

Sale on Common Sense

No, common sense can’t really be bought, but Common Sense Health can. This eBook by Laurie Neverman has captivated my eyes today (when I was supposed to be writing). She has the most concise, compelling, and dare I say, sensible arguments for lots of things, from organic gardening (I learned a ton of new tricks) to earthing to avoiding GMOs (a subject I may just have become truly scared of). I learned more in a few minutes about dry brushing and the benefits of cold showers than I would have imagined, and I have a few pages marked to show my husband when he gets home.

So.

If you’d like to buy common sense…it’s 25% off this week just for you guys, and Laurie also has a great giveaway going for 3 copies of the eBook plus some neat items to get your natural living journey kickstarted.

Click HERE to read more about the book and enter the giveaway.

If you bought the Extreme health Library bundle sale, you already have this title. Go ahead, time to open it up!

———————————————

I’d love to see more of you!  Sign up for a free email subscription or grab my reader feed. You can also follow me on Twitter, get KS for Kindle, or see my Facebook Fan Page.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

Disclosure: There are affiliate links in this post to the eBook from which I will earn some commission if you make a purchase. See my full disclosure statement here.

Common Sense Health 25% off

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And the survey says…60% of you order food online.

That’s even more than the number who have ordered KS eBooks, by quite a bit.

Don’t worry, my feelings aren’t hurt – I’m glad you’re smart enough to prioritize food over information, because hey – you gotta eat. Plus, I give plenty of information and recipes away for free, and that can rarely be said about food (except maybe in this post).

When I took a survey of readers here at Kitchen Stewardship in December 2012, 60% really did check the box for ordering food online. I feel pretty safe in assuming that the new order-your-delivery-pizza-online feature is not what these fine kitchen stewards are referring to.

Whether you live in a rural area without health food store options or simply find it easier or less expensive to shop via a screen than a trip to a store (moms of toddlers, raise your hands), it can’t be denied that people are increasingly ordering lots more online, including food. It’s no longer a fringe thing.

I hope you’re already familiar with Wise Choice Market, as I’ve mentioned them before, but in case you’re not – and especially if you’re in one of those groups who really needs to order online for whatever reason – I’d like to introduce you.

Wise Choice Market seems to be becoming a one-stop-shop for Weston A. Price foodies. They began by selling just one product: naturally fermented, raw, organic vegetables. They’ve now expanded into

• traditional organic bone broth
• sprouted yeast free breads
• gluten and dairy free bread
• ikura (salmon caviar)
• healthy (soaked) cereal
• soaked nut butter
• healthy potato chips
• and even dairy-free (coconut) ice cream

All shipped frozen to your door. Convenience at its best!

Sprouted Breads

We had some of the sprouted manna bread this morning for breakfast. Each loaf is made not from flour, but actually baked with the whole grains intact. The bread is dense, to be sure, but they taste great and really fill you up.

One note: they come frozen and unsliced, so you want to plan to let it partially thaw out, maybe half on hour on the counter, the first time you serve it. Then you can power through it with a bread knife, cutting the whole loaf and freezing again in slices, which can be toasted right from the freezer.

Real Bone Broth

Although of course I think you should make your own chicken and beef stock, there are times you just might need to buy some, including if you can’t source good chicken, truly don’t have the time, or perhaps are too exhausted, like if you’re starting GAPS and have heavy die-off reactions.

I remember reading about a blogger on GAPS intro who paid her friend to make broth and sauerkraut for her because she could barely get out of bed. That was the first thing I thought of when I read that Wise Choice Market was going to begin carrying chicken and beef stock, made traditionally with a vinegar soak, organic vegetables, sea salt and a 24-hour cook. If you don’t have a friend you could hire to make it for you, there aren’t really options other than this brand. It’s expensive…but it’s truly, truly delicious. I wouldn’t even use my sample in soup; I drank it all, one cup a day.

Fermented Vegetables

Similarly, there aren’t a lot of traditional, raw, organic cultured veggies available on the marketplace. So many brands pasteurize their stuff or don’t ferment things long enough. For once, here’s a company who isn’t choosing to do things the fastest and easiest way.

If you want to prioritize fermented foods and don’t have time to smash cabbage and make sauerkraut or kimchi, I thought the cultured veggies were delicious and last a long time if you take once spoonful a day (or with each meal), even though the bags look small at first (they’re compressed).

The picture above is the only other person in my family who will eat them, although we’re working on the kids. John is literally ravenous for fermented black radish there, and at 22 months now, he still gets about as excited when I get the jar of ferments out as when he catches sight of the bag of chocolate chips.

That’s the way the whole family reacts, by the way, whenever we splurge and get the amazing soaked cereals from JoshEWEa’s Garden, resold by Wise Choice Market. They are truly a treat, but nothing to feel guilty about!

The Giveaway

Wise Choice Market’s offer today is super generous:

One lucky reader will get a prize package valued at $105, including:

• Selection of 8 types of organic fermented vegetables
• One each of chicken broth and beef broth

Some Happy Winners!

The winners of last week’s Tattler canning lid giveaway from LPC Survival are:

• Elizabeth (cameogirlemh@…)
• Mary L. Palmer

Congrats, ladies! Please email katy at kitchenstewardship.com with your mailing address, phone number, and whether you’d like wide or narrow mouthed lids by midnight on Monday, 6/10 – we hate to have to draw new winners for this one!

ENTER HERE

Giveaways at Kitchen Stewardship are run via a survey, which means comments on this post do not count (and will be deleted). In the long run, this is quicker for you if you go for extra entries.

There are 6 possible entries! Here’s what you can do to win:

1. *Mandatory entry: Sign up for the Wise Choice mailing list here.
2. Subscribe in a reader or via email to Kitchen Stewardship (or tell me if you already do).
3. Tell me if you “Like” Kitchen Stewardship on Facebook.
4. Tell me if you “Like” Wise Choice Market on Facebook
5. Follow @kitchenstew on Twitter
6. Tweet this: “Giveaway @kitchenstew’s this week: Organic Fermented Vegetables and Real Bone Broth, worth over $100! #realfood [INCLUDE URL HERE]”
7. Subscribe to the KS Monthly Newsletter (or tell me if you already do) – this is totally different from the RSS feed for daily posts – new content, once a month, and some summer menu plans for free when you sign up.

Remember, comments here DO NOT COUNT. You must use the survey form.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Rafflecopter, powered by random.org’s integer generator, will choose the winner, who will be announced on the blog and will receive an email. The giveaway is open to continental U.S. residents only. Entries will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. EST on June 13th and I’ll post the winners the following week.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

Disclosure:I received products for my review at no charge, which of course did not affect my opinion in the least. Giveaways are paid advertising and a great thing for my readers. See my full advertising disclosure here.

Official rules and small print stuff: 1) No purchase necessary to win 2) must be 13 or older to enter and have a mailing address within the sponsor’s boundaries (see above) 3) only one survey entry per person 4) odds of winning depend on number of entries 5) employees of Kitchen Stewardship, LLC or sponsoring company not eligible for participation 6) contest sponsored by Wise Choice Market 7) prizes must be accepted as is and are not redeemable for cash 8 ) Kitchen Stewardship, LLC and sponsoring company are not liable for any injury or damage to persons and/or things as a result of the acceptance of the prize offered. 9) This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.

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C.O.R.N.

Everything-but-the-kitchen-sink.

Leftovers night.

“I’m-afraid-of-what-I’ll-find-when-I-get-to-the-back…”

Call it what you want, but everyone needs to get rid of some leftovers sometimes, right?

We eat a lot of leftovers here at the Kimball house. In fact, when we have fewer than three different options for leftovers to grab for lunch, we feel deprived, and if we are all home on a weekend and don’t have any leftovers for lunch, we’re a bit lost (and hungry). I even ended up making a whole new meal like I’d make for dinner at lunchtime on Sunday, a rarity.

Typically we have the opposite problem: We need to use up some stuff in the fridge to make space for new stuff.

(C.O.R.N. is an acronym for “Clean Out the Refrigerator Night,” by the way.)

As much as we enjoy just eating our leftovers straight up, sometimes three bean soup for three days in a row starts to get a bit old.

What’s in There?

I love recipes that can help me look into the fridge, say, “What’s in there?” and then make something new out of it. In this case, veggie fried rice is also an excellent way to get something to eat when I have practically nothing on hand, as long as there are some frozen veggies to tap into.

And better yet, it’s super, super, fast. Almost faster than just steaming broccoli and adding salt and pepper, I kid you not.

The only caveat is that you need to start with cooked rice, which means one of three things:

1. You plan ahead and cook some rice well before suppertime so you’re ready to put this together.
2. You plan way ahead and schedule a meal that uses rice for the day or two before, then make a double batch.
3. You start a new habit – anytime you make rice, make a double or triple batch and freeze the leftovers in two or four-cup servings. You can put a bag of frozen rice on the counter for half an hour and easily get it out into the pot for dinner.

When Rice is Ready…

…lots of things come together easily and quickly. Number three up there has been a new habit of mine, and I rather enjoy it.

I’ve been testing out a Vitaclay Smart Cooker, which is a rice cooker and slow cooker in one, and it makes it really easy to make 3 or 4 cups of dry rice at a time (it can do up to 8, but I haven’t gone farther than 4 yet).

(The Vitaclay is not my favorite, if you’re wondering – other than being a fine rice cooker and being made of safe materials, I can’t find much more good to say about it, unfortunately. It’s definitely no substitute for a real slow cooker. If I was in the market for a rice cooker alone, I’m sure this less versatile Vitaclay would be great if other brands didn’t use safe materials for less money, but I would shop around first.)

The point is that when I make 3 or 4 servings of rice, I end up ready for many of our meals throughout the week. I can do a quick stir fry or this fried rice side dish if I haven’t planned well, and I can plan all sorts of things that call for rice while I’m meal planning dinner, knowing that I won’t have to soak it the night before or be home an hour before dinner in order to get the brown rice started.

I haven’t done it yet, but I could even make a quick rice pudding dessert or rice-based porridge for breakfast. I always think I make more than we’ll really need, but then I rarely even end up with any to freeze.

My next goal is to branch out to other grains: I need to convince my husband to give quinoa a chance, and I might try spelt and see if the gluten content is tolerable for my husband, who also doesn’t like the texture of little grains like millet, sadly. Any other whole grain ideas for me that are versatile enough to use like rice? I should check the KS group at Plan to Eat – have you seen that there are over 60,000 recipes to tap into there? If you’ve been avoiding trying PTE because you don’t want to input all your recipes, you can at least give it a try with the 30-day trial and all these new recipes.

This fried rice recipe was inspired by Shaina’s beautiful spring fried rice over at Food for my Family – she is a much better chef than I am, so her version is more culinary (a real wok, fresh ginger, for example) and uses veggies you’ll bump into precisely at this time of year (garlic scapes, pea pods). Mine is just quick and simple because I did it without taking the time to pull up her recipe! I’ve re-tested it a few times since then, though, don’t worry, and it’s gotten good reviews from friends when I served it for this “company meal.”

Recipe: Fried Rice with Any Vegetables

Print

Recipe type: side dish

Author: Katie Kimball

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 5 mins

Total time: 15 mins

Yield: 4-8

Ingredients

• 1-2 cloves garlic
• 1 Tbs. sesame or olive oil
• diced red pepper, about 1/2 cup
• ~1 c. frozen peas
• ~1 c. frozen corn (organic)
• 1/2 c. frozen green beans
• 1 c. frozen broccoli
• 1 Tbs. rice vinegar
• 2 c. cooked brown rice
• 1/4 tsp. turmeric
• 1/4 tsp. powdered ginger
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/8 tsp. black pepper

Instructions

1. Press the garlic and set aside to maximize health benefits.
2. Heat the oil over medium heat in a pot or deep pan large enough to fit everything (or a wok, if you’ve got one).
3. Add the diced peppers and any other vegetables that are not already cooked. (Frozen veggies are blanched and will do fine added in the next step.)
4. Saute until limp/cooked.
5. Add the vinegar and garlic and saute for one minute.
6. Add all the other ingredients and cook over low to medium low heat, stirring often, until everything is heated through.
7. Serve warm with optional soy sauce.

Notes

* Just about everything except the rice is optional, including the sesame oil, vinegar, spices and veggies. Switch out to your heart’s content!
* It’s the turmeric that makes it yellow.
* If you use raw green beans, mushrooms, or broccoli, etc., you’ll want to put the lid on during the sauteing time so that they actually get cooked through.
* All my frozen veggies are from Costco lately, since they have great prices on organic and the green bean quality is like no other frozen green bean I’ve ever met. (Did you see my awesome list of what I buy at Costco?) Unfortunately, I learned the broccoli is from China. Not ideal.

2.2.8

 

You really can use any veggies you have on hand, from a bag of mixed frozen veggies to half a carton of mushrooms that will go to waste if you don’t use them, from any greens you can chop to broccoli, fresh or frozen. I’ve used anywhere from 2-4 cups veggies, depending on what other sides I have going (i.e. do I need a grain side dish or a veggie side?).

What’s your favorite “use it up” recipe?

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I’d love to see more of you!  Sign up for a free email subscription or grab my reader feed. You can also follow me on Twitter, get KS for Kindle, or see my Facebook Fan Page.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

Disclosure: There are affiliate links in this post to Garbage to Gourmet, Tropical Traditions, and Vitaclay, from which I will earn some commission if you make a purchase. Plan to Eat is a KS sponsor receiving their complementary mention. See my full disclosure statement here.

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I just packed the last lunch of the school year.

*sigh of relief*

(Yes, I packed it in the morning. My son didn’t miss the bus…but it’s possible he had to run down the sidewalk. Morning Katie often scolds Nighttime Katie for giving her all the work, but Nighttime Katie is not the sharpest pencil in the box.)

As we move into summer, I have a lunchtime challenge for you to avoid monotony and maximize nourishment at the noon hour. Check out the healthy food challenge and some resources for lunches over at the Attune blog today:

If you hear a strange noise on the first Sunday evening after school gets out for the summer, it’s me.

Cheering.

Maybe jumping up and down.

All because I won’t have to pack a lunch five times that week.

And realistically, I often do most of the packing in the morning, but I know I should do it before I go to bed to reduce the a.m. rush. (Really, I should follow my own advice from the simplifying real food post and pack as I’m making or cleaning up other meals. Life is not always ideal.)

I know that just as it’s easy to get in a rut when packing school lunches (string cheese again, anyone?), we can quickly fall into a pattern when eating lunches at home.

Whether it’s PB&J, cheese and crackers, or soup and salad every day, if you find yourself getting monotonous at lunch, I want to challenge you to think outside the box (but still inside the “healthy food” box).

Read my 5 Keys to a Healthy Lunch and the Summertime 7-day Challenge right HERE…

Of course, I just realized that my son starts a summer camp right away on Monday, so I’ll be…well…packing a lunch. Perhaps my celebrations were a mite anticlimactic…

Can’t wait to hear your good ideas – see you in the comments over at Attune!

Disclosure: I am a paid writer for Attune Foods.

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