Simple Food ~ Sane Life

My brother sent me this story years ago, while I was contemplating love in my life.  It has nestled into a warm wonderful place in my life.

Enjoy the sweet wonderful story for Valentine’s Day

Perfect Heart

One day a young man was standing in the middle of the town proclaiming that he had the most beautiful heart in the whole valley.

A large crowd gathered and they all admired his heart for it was perfect. There was not a mark or flaw in it. Yes, they all agreed it truly was the most beautiful heart they had ever seen. The young man was very proud and boasted more loudly about his beautiful heart.

Suddenly , and old man appeared at the front of the crowd and said, “Why your heart is not nearly as beautiful as mine.” The crowd and the young man looked at the old man’s heart. It was beating strongly, but full of scars, it had places where pieces had been removed and other pieces put in, but they didn’t fit quite right and there were several jagged edges. In fact in some places there were deep gouges where whole pieces were missing.

The people stared – “How can he say his heart is more beautiful?” they thought.  The young man looked at the old man’s hearts and saw its state and laughed. “You must be joking,” he said, “Compare your heart with mine, mine is perfect, and yours is a mess of scars and tears.”

“Yes,” said the old man, “Yours is perfect looking, but I would never trade with you. You see, every scar represents a person to whom I have given my love. I tear out a piece of my heart and give it to them, and often they give me a piece of their heart which fits into the empty space in my heart, but because the pieces aren’t exact, I have some rough edges, which I cherish, because they remind me of the love we shared.

Sometimes I have given pieces of my heart away and the other person hasn’t returned a piece of their heart to me. These are the empty gouges – giving love is taking a chance. Although these gouges are painful, they stay open , reminding me of the love I have for these people too, and I hope someday they may return and fill the space I have waiting. So now do you see what true beauty is?”

The young man stood silently with tears running down his cheeks. He walked up to the old man old man, reached into his perfect young heart and beautiful heart, and ripped a piece out. He offered it to the old man with trembling hands.  The old man took his offering, placed it in his heart and then took a piece of his old scarred heart and placed it into the wound in the young mans heart. It fit, but not perfectly, as there were some jagged edges.

The young man looked at his heart, not perfect anymore, but more beautiful than ever, since love from the old man’s heart flowed into his. They embraced and walked away side by side.

-Author Unknown.

Remember, we all have hearts like the old man – sometimes we forget to be greatful for the scars.  Here () have a piece of mine!

Peace & Love,

Karyn

My day typically begins by joining my friend Kristen, and her golden retriever Kiley, for an early morning run.  On Sept 16^th, the eve of a run, Kristen text messages me to tell me we will have another runner joining us in the morning and to be on time!  She explains that he is her friend, neighbor, new at the running scene and has signed up for a half marathon.  A half marathon?  For a first race?  She’s got to be joking.

No, she is not.

The next morning, I meet Alistair Wheeler.   Running will never be the same again.

For a guy who despises early mornings, and running, Alistair showed up, in many ways, as you will read in his story. I was curious as to why he chose to run early mornings.  During our 10 weeks running together, his stories and humor made those early morning and long runs enjoyable!  His dedication to complete this race drove him to push beyond what he envisioned were his physical limits, and has inspired me to train for a 2010 marathon.  I admire and respect Alistair, and others, who employ/use their capable bodies for the higher good of those who cannot, like his nephew David, and others who suffer from cystic fibrosis.

And I agree with you, Alistair; it is not easy or fun to run alone.  Remember, you’re a runner now, so running partners become essential running gear  :)

The difference: drive, motivation, accountability, camaraderie.  The cost: priceless.

Brava!

Enjoy Alistair’s amazing story below.

Alistair Wheeler’s First and Last Half Marathon

If I had asked you a year ago which of the people you know would be the least likely to run a half marathon the chances are I might have made your top ten. Fast forward to July 14, 2009 and I received an E mail from my colleague, Rene Russo suggesting I join her and others in the Las Vegas half marathon with a taunting “you might even enjoy it” in closing. Unable to ignore taunting I signed up.

Now let me tell you about the enjoyment of running as promised by Dr. Russo.

First your trainer tells you that your running shoes, which used to be called sneakers, aren’t good enough. This is strange because I distinctly remember going wild and buying the pair that cost $24.95 at Discount Shoe Warehouse. Now you get to go to the runners’ store where they don’t let non-runners in and you get to buy a new pair of sneakers, oops, running shoes, which cost $249.95. If you have ever wondered about the difference between sneakers that cost $24.95 and running shoes that cost $249.95 I can explain. The running shoes come with pre-installed cheese graters that shred your skin when you run, leaving you limping in a pool of blood at the side of the road.

Next stop is the same running store where you buy Body Glide. Body Glide is actually a tube of bacon grease that you smear onto your feet and any other body areas that take your fancy to prevent the cheese graters from doing their thing. Lesser mortals can buy bacon grease for a nickel but because it is packed in a little plastic tube especially for runners it comes at the bargain price of $19.95.

Now we’re running and the cheese graters are rendered ineffective. This is the moment when you reach longer distances than you have ever even driven before and your calf gives up. Easily fixed, a massage or two will cost you $50 and you will be right as rain. WAIT. You’re a runner and massage is now called physical therapy and the price has gone up to $149 per hour. However, for the first time in your “training” there is good news. Once a “runner” has spent over $400 on physical therapy he/she is entitled to buy build ups for his/her sneakers to prevent recurrence of the calf strain. Build ups cost $5. The bad news; now you’re a runner and you have running shoes instead of sneakers they are called orthotics and cost $50. Wait a minute, didn’t we used to get two pairs of sneakers for $50?

All injuries abolished you can now run without limit of distance or time. This means you will need energy and should take some chocolate with you to boost your blood sugar. Not so fast buddy, you’re a runner, remember? Now you need to get our energy more quickly so avoid the time taken to chew chocolate and take a tube of Gu gel which will immediately burst into your blood stream. The difference? About $50.00. The really funny thing is that Gu gel is also used to make dental impressions and sets in your mouth to make one massive lump which prevents respiration. Failure to breathe results in glycogen depletion and it is imperative to restore your glycogen stores before you shuffle off this mortal coil. Perhaps resort to your favorite brand of jelly beans “The Jelly Bean Company” and swallow a few for a penny or two. Should work. Not so fast buddy, you’re a runner now and you have to buy “Runners Beans” they are still made by The Jelly Bean Company and the difference; about $15.00. More strange stuff; read the nutritional information and Runners’ Beans don’t even contain glycogen.

Thanks Dr. Russo, I hadn’t expected to have this much enjoyment until I got to my death bed.

I had planned to write to you to ask for a donation toward my medical expenses. However, as I write, my nephew, David, is lying in a hospital bed (yes guys, the jokes are over) as he often does, due to cystic fibrosis and its complications. I carry the gene but do not have the disease so by a quirk of fate I am 50, fit and healthy. Ugly has nothing to do with this, OK? So instead I am hoping that 100 of my friends and acquaintances will donate $10.00 each to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation thereby raising $1,000 toward research. It would mean a lot to me and more to David. It might actually allow me to enjoy the race on December 6th. And Dr. Russo, I think you owe me a $20.00.

You can donate by clicking the link below. You may see a reference to the Boston marathon, just ignore that, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation doesn’t work with Boston. I will run in Vegas and the money will go direct to CFF. On behalf of myself, David and everyone born or yet to be born with Cystic Fibrosis I thank you, whether you donate or not.

http://www.cff.org/LWC/Alistairs1standLastHalfMarathonLasVegas

P.S. I sent this to a friend and she laughed so hard at his humor that she had to make a contribution!

Peace,

Karyn

During one of my many visits to Tatnuck’s Bookseller, a particular book title piqued my interest: All is Forgiven MOVE ON by Janice Taylor. The subtitle of the book had me giggling “Our Lady of Weight Loss’s 101 Fat Burning Steps on Your Journey to Svetlsville.”

Ok, she got me. I was enticed to sit with the book and read a bit of it. Within a few pages, I was captured. Bought the book and read it. I devoured it! Fantastically written, hysterically funny, and very poignant. Genius!

The title of the book serves it up deliciously well. One of my favorite aspects is the Forgivercizes.

Throughout this blog post, I include some of her Forgiversize quotes.

As a Health Counselor, this is one area where clients get really stuck. Stuck in the mucking around. I’ve been stuck in that muck many times myself. Learning that forgiveness is the step before being able to move on. As my dear brother taught me during his recovery process, “Forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself.”

I whole healthfully agree with Janice’s statement that forgiveness can result in a positive shift in one’s health. Releasing excess weight in its many forms

Forgiveness is a key role in breaking the patterns of behavior that no longer serve us. Or no longer work for us. Feminine vs Masculine terminology, respectively.

Forgivercize: The “Tell the Truth and Nothing but the Truth Excusercize.”

Before forgiveness, there needs to be awareness and ownership. A consciousness. Even when we are made aware of a condition, or an impending one, if we are in some phase of denial, and unconsciousness, we do not totally own the situation or our body. A common phase of denial includes blame, reasons, excuses. All part of the process. We are grieving the loss of a reality we allowed for ourselves.

Consciousness & ownership comes when we are honest with ourselves with regards to our role in the situation, and begin to understand the message of the issue that our body is sending us through manifestation.

Forgivercize: Get to Work and Declutter! Toss it out, now!

Forgiving oneself is a substantial piece to our healing process and a healthy life. You cannot change what has happened, so forgive yourself your trespasses! There is a completion once we can forgive and be able then to move on to the next step, removing that old baggage we kept hidden from ourselves, and toss it out. This leaves us with more energy to focus on moving forward, moving on. Healing, living life, enjoying food, and our bodies!

Forgivercize: Behavioral Tweaking Encouraged

Moving on! Have fun exploring new avenues to feel healthy, sexy, vibrant and energetic. You now are entering a life with new healthy patterns. Some of your comfort behaviors only need to be tweaked, not drastically changed. Continue the practices you have created through the evolution of forgiveness and moving on. Take notice of your body every day, at regular intervals. Notice how it looks and feels. Now thank yourself and your body for the greatness, lessons and good health.

Forgivercize: Planting seeds

The area of growth has been chosen, through awareness and ownership; the space for the seed created by forgiveness; the seed of moving on, is now placed where it can grow, nurtured by all we can now give ourselves in health and happiness.

Create as many spaces as you need and keep planting those seeds of Forgiveness!

Your actions can plant the seed of thought for others to activate and exercise in their lives.

Remember: Forgiversizes are exercises that anyone and everyone can do to manifest a healthy life. Go get Taylor’s book for simple food for a sane life!

Peace,

Karyn

Yesterday’s post addressed the impact parents can have on their child’s food at school. The kitchen cupboards and refrigerator were also swung open for a reality check.

Charity begins at home. Donate the time and energy to your health and your family’s health. The results from this generous health donation will pay forward immediately and throughout your lives regardless of where you dine.

For parents who feel they ‘battle’ with their child to eat healthy foods at home, I want to share with you, Angela Russ’ tips. There are ways to make it fun and easy for the kids, simple and sane for the parents.

Collaborate with your family to create your own fun tips list!

Enjoy!

Fun Ways to Get Young Children to Eat Healthier

By Angela Russ

1. Prepare Healthy Meals Together

Engaging children in the preparation of kid-friendly healthy dishes is so fun and so very messy, but children are more likely to eat something that they have helped to prepare. Don’t forget to dine together. Children who eat meals with their families tend to have better diets, not just because meals are planned, but because of the positive examples that are set at the table.

2. Get Creative

Make silly food faces out of fresh fruit and vegetable slices, and come up with amusing, silly names for the healthy foods you prepare. You can become a consummate actor or a verbal Picasso to get them to taste something new.

3. Pack Snacks Together

Children can also benefit from packing snacks for the day, or packing for a picnic. When planning a long-term getaway, encourage them to help with bagging individual portions of fruits, chilled veggies, cheese sticks, crackers, trail mix, water, 100% juice boxes, and other good choices.

4. Take Children Shopping

Young kids love to play grown-up. On a real excursion to the grocery store, allow the children to pick a new fruit or vegetable to try at home. Let them weigh their choice, bag it, and put it on the conveyor belt. Once home, let them help you present it to the family. Try to avoid flying through each aisle like a secret agent on a mission. Slow down and turn shopping into a learning experience.

5. Plan a Family Taste Test

Slice a variety of apples such as, Fuji, Granny Smith, Red Delicious, and McIntosh. Set out a variety of breads such as Sourdough, Rye, Potato, Whole Wheat, Pita, and Tortilla. After each taste test, compare the various textures and characteristics while you talk about your favorites. A great time to do this without spending a great deal of money is during dinner at a buffet.

6. Show Kids How to Grow Food

Many local growers are happy to share the farming experience with young children if you call ahead of time. Take a trip to your local farmer’s market where you will often find fun activities for kids. Children are more likely to eat fruit or vegetables that they have grown and picked themselves. Use a planter, or assign a small piece of your yard to start your own private garden.

Find coloring books or read books that introduce fruits and vegetables as characters, or have interesting stories that revolve around healthy foods. Books such as I Will Not Ever Eat a Tomato, Counting Pumpkins, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Food for Thought, and Eating the Alphabet: Fruits and Vegetables from A to Z make for some great fun and educational reading. A quick and easy resource for nutrition and health education books for children is found at NeatSolutions.

Did you hear this infamous cry in your high school cafeteria moments before food would start flying around the room? Rarely aimed at anyone in particular, the various food groups just catapulted around the room in hopes they would splat on a target. This, to me, is one way the parent-child-school food relationship appears.

It’s an enormous random food fight when it comes to what works to get kids to eat healthier while in school. Until a recent conversation with a pharmacist friend, the notion in my head was focused on the ‘getting the children to do something’ piece.

During our time together, I learned that my friend’s daughter was about to enter all day kindergarten. How fun! My friend was concerned. She showed me a list she was creating of foods and recipes that her daughter may like that, as she stated, ‘would allow her to fit in with the other kids.’ Whoa!

A little background: My friend is a great mom, and feeds her family very healthfully, consuming organic whole foods. She delighted in sharing with me how much her daughter enjoys eating homemade healthy foods and snacks.

Mom was not worried that her daughter would not eat what she packed, if it was her normal fare.

Mom’s concern focused on her daughter fitting in with the other kids, having what they had and yet not eating unhealthfully. WOW. This was quite an awakening for me, especially since my parenting days that have to consider school cafeteria food are long gone. A diligent parent’s dilemma that I had not thought of.

It’s the creation of a shift in the child’s relationship with food from a comfortable home, a loving, healthy place in their life, to something that is now dependant on the judgments and choices of others.

I had to wonder why, if the child was happily eating healthfully, it would be necessary to almost force a change upon her, and how many other parents are in this dilemma. As a mom, I can empathize with my friend, in wanting things to go as smoothly as possible for the child. It’s never easy to have them be picked on.

Most of the current focus has been, and rightly so, about healthy school foods. As parents and as a community, we have a responsibility to our youth to guide them and feed them healthfully.

As parents, we play the major nourishment provider for our children. Your role is primary and simple: Feed your children healthy organic whole foods. Open your cupboards, refrigerator and freezer and get honest with yourself about what is there, and your relationship to food.

Your children will make good choices if you do. Be their best example, be their leader, their hero. Show them that you care about what you & they are eating, and share, through their eyes, the excitement with them about why.

Processed food companies play their role in getting people excited about junk food. The advertising is mind blowing. Create that same result with excitement for healthy foods!

Cease Fire! Everyone, take your place in the lunch line and play your part. No need to be slinging the food blame at one another.

Start building a better process now for future generations.

There are many fun ways to entice and empower children to make healthy food choices, while connecting with them in a whole new way.

A colleague, Dr Susan Rubin is by far one of the best resources for parents and schools.

I encourage you to play on her site, Better School Food. Take advantage of the abundance of tools and her expertise.

Here is an excerpt from Dr. Rubin’s website:

Action Plan for Better Food and Healthier Kids

Enjoy being Food Adventurers, together as a family, school and community.

Declare Peace: Peace Meals

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down … hmmm, but what if the sugar is the medicine?

Working in the medical field, the phrases practicing medicine and dispensing medicine have always intrigued me. Early on it started with the question of how is it that one person can practice medicine while another can dispense it? What is medicine? The root is med-, which means to heal.

Most definitions will state that medicine is treatment. Consider this idea: medicine is ‘teachment.’ I’m going to step up to the plate here and state that a medicine of any type or practice teaches the whole of a being, including the physical body. Throughout life we learn lessons, and it’s not just our brains that learn, our bodies and spirits do also.

Once a food enters the body, there is a beautifully orchestrated cascade of effects. The food is teaching and reminding the body how to utilize itself. What we consume becomes who we are in the amazing eco-system of each body. Honor that, and observe not only in your own body, but also in the body of society what medicine we are learning from the foods that we consume.

Many health reports over the past few years have been about the rise of Type II diabetes, particularly in youth. The nemesis for diabetes is, of course, sugar. Sugar, however, is not their problem, it is their medicine.

Sugar? Medicine? How can that be?

Sugar is teaching them about their bodies in so many ways. The sweet sugar flavor enhances the pleasure principle. Where is the sweetness in their life? Why is it being replaced by consumption of sugar? It is natural for humans to crave pleasure and avoid pain. Sugar tastes good; we feel comfort, and expanded relaxation. Hence, immediate gratification and no immediate pain.

By removing processed food, which is loaded with sugar, from the diet, an absence of sugar is created. On a simple level, this teaches the body to utilize what it needs from other sources. The body finds its own sweetness elsewhere if we allow it to happen. The emotional body within us also craves sweetness, and the sugar is now teaching that part of our being to stop and seek out healthier choices.

Sugar is considered a Yin food in the modern world of the Eastern tradition. It is very flowing, relaxing, and expansive. Think about when you are craving sugar. Is your body telling you it needs a flow of fuel to continue moving, as is the case with athletes? Relaxation after a long day? Stress relief?

Stop, look closely from all angles, how are you using the sugar? What teachment is that for you? How are you assimilating the sugar, and what is the teaching role there also?

Medicine in its healing and teaching forms offers a world of possibilities and growth for each of us. As you come to understand the concept and practice of sugar, and other medicine, be aware of your body, mind and spirit. As you consume food, stop, and see how it feels for you, and listen to what your body is telling you. Some lessons are immediate, and others show up over time as patterns.

So, what is YOUR medicine? Are you listening? How are you teaching the world?

Eat in Peace,

Karyn

Today I decided to tackle cleaning up my deck. This may not sound like a big task to most people, but if you’d seen how out of hand the plants, vines, etc on and around my deck got the past year you’d understand the ‘task’.

Now there is room to do yoga on my deck! How cool is that?!?! J Anyone want to join me?

Why is it that my deck became so overgrown with nature, and overwhelmed with clutter? This past year became that way in my life … inside and out. I will begin to share this journey with you of perspective and transformation and how it relates to health. How can this new perspective open up your world about health and what’s happening in your personal environments? Where’s the reflection? How do you feel when it’s cleaned up? J

One practice of yoga is alignment, both spiritual and bodily. So, deck yoga is a wonderful place for me to be in my life. Outside in the fresh air and nature, my own property/space, I can begin a new practice of freestyle moving meditation and alignment such as yoga.

The out of doors can represent in many interesting ways the ‘outside’ of our life, that which is just beyond our body. This is why many people find their spiritual place in nature. And why there are varying preferences to what they prefer in nature, yards, woods, surroundings.

Fantasize about the areas in nature that you prefer and why that may be. They are all wondrous and gift filled experiences. What part of nature to you becomes a ‘religion’, and what part is free and spiritual? How wonderful that we can experience and enjoy the beauty of both. Now I invite you to cross that over into your own life.

In every aspect of your life, and health where and how can you find enjoyment in the religion and spirituality of each, and how do you see them supporting each other for peace and harmony?

How does this coincide with food? Simple food & A Sane Life. Every aspect of our lives parallels each other, and that includes our health. Our food in life stretches way beyond what we eat.

Where are you religious about what you eat? And where are you spiritually free? Both are wonderful places to gain nourishment. Cleaning out the judgment from society and the outside world that entangles us in what should be in a space, or on our plate, leaves room for what we want to create there. I invite you to clean off your societal impression of what should be on your dinner and life plate, and create with the empty space with what nourishes you. Leave room for dessert!

Last month I had an interesting request from Dr Susan Corso. She asked me to write a blog post about meal replacement bars.

I read this request a few times and thought, is she serious? I knew she was, so what was the catch? Was there some spiritual challenge she had in mind? She knows my philosophy when it comes to food.

Perplexed as I was, I knew the best thing to do was to reply with clear, peaceful honesty.

In general, I am not a fan of the concept known as “meal replacement.” Even if you are having a bar, a shake or a smoothie, even if you are one of the Jetsons and your meals pop out of a machine called the Food-A-Rac-A-Cycle.

I am all about simple food for a less complicated life, so I get that there will be special circumstances where we need to have smaller, easier, often portable, nourishment to get us through our present process.

In Susan’s return email came the special circumstances. She was looking for information for her unique wonderful self in a particular circumstance. Cool! Now we’re cookin’ J That made the response simple and easy.

Because Susan is a lover of raw foods, Larabar was my first choice. The other two bars that I suggested were GoRaw and Macrobars. Susan tells her story in her May 27^th
Seeds blog post

Let’s return to the concept of meal replacement. Walk with me on this …

My initial response is, of course, why would anyone want to replace a meal? Any meal? Our bodies are counting on us for healthy nourishment everywhere in our lives.

Will the real meal please stand up?!

We have been raised in a family of thought that a meal has to be a big production with a balanced variety of foods EACH TIME! Please take that pressure of your plate. I invite you to consider this easy concept:

The word meal is wonderful! Its meaning is of food, time and measurement according to the OED. The emphasis is on time. TIME. FOOD. There is always time for food. And health reflects the food for time, a lifetime. So, the meal replacement concept more appropriately addresses the amount of time we have to spend at any given point in our lives with our food, our bodies and our health.

We can make it all work! It’s really simple. J Look at what the situation is, the amount of time you have, and there are plenty of healthy choices to blend it all together nicely.

Here are some wonderful portable choices to consider:

Fruits: apples, pears, peaches, oranges, bananas, grapes

Veggies: carrots, celery, green beans, sugar snap peas

Nuts and seeds: any and all, raw, unseasoned

Dried fruit: any and all, unsulfured and no added sugar or other additives

Yogurt: organic, unsweetened

Larabar, GoRaw and Macrobars.

Kiwi is one of my favorite fruits. Despite that, I would avoid kiwi sometimes because it is messy and tedious to prepare. Then a friend taught me a cool concept—Kiwi-cups! All I have to do is slice the top off the kiwi, scoop out the sweet fruit flesh with a spoon, and enjoy! This is much easier and healthier than the packaged fruit cups for kids. (Yes, they can be sliced and re-capped ahead of time to pack in lunches!)

As you go forth and make simple, healthy, conscious choices with each food, remember, when it comes to each meal, timing is everything!

Peace,

Karyn

Dairy, a Darwinian dilemma amongst foodies. I was, as most of us were, raised with the idea that we are supposed to drink milk. The famous advertisement … milk, it does a body good, was very true, but only when the milk that was available was healthy and nutritious!

Years ago I heard an opinion from a friend and colleague, that milk is for babies. An interesting belief! We, as humans, are the only species that consumes another’s milk into adulthood.

My son, Steven’s answer to that, between mouthfuls of salad, was: “What if we are the only species smart enough to utilize the milk of another mammal?”

Wow! Profound!

How is it that we are the only mammal or species smart enough to utilize another’s milk? Dairy is an amazing topic of discussion. It can speak to the evolutionary process, the survival of the fittest, and natural selection.

As babies every mammalian species needs a mother’s milk to survive. Humans have been able to override that natural selection process through the use of other mammal’s milk, including another female human, or other processed nourishment.

Babies are born with, and continue to produce, the necessary amount of lactase enzyme, necessary for digesting lactose, milk sugar. The production of this enzyme declines or disappears after weaning. Most adult humans have very little of the lactase enzyme. So, no big surprise when clients show up with lactose intolerance … maybe. I say maybe because some people, although they show up as lactose intolerant, are in fact intolerant to the milk protein called casein.

So does this mean that the original belief is correct? It is, and so is Steven’s.

We can consume milk products into adulthood with little problem through the practice of fermentation or souring of the milk. The souring process breaks down the lactose and predigests the casein. This yields yogurt, clabber and kefir.

Another interesting walk through the pasture takes us to the benefits of raw milk that our ancestors enjoyed. Raw milk, from cows that have been allowed to be the true grass fed vegetarians they are meant to be, unadulterated by hormones and antibiotics, is very healthy and contain a full complement of nutrients and enzymes to simplify the digestive process.

The pasteurized and homogenized milk products in grocery stores are not the quality product you want to consume. Pasteurization destroys essential enzymes and nutrients, including calcium, that occur naturally in milk. Some of the nutrients are artificially added back in after processing. If you are diabetic or on a candida elimination diet, please be aware that the pasteurization process alters the lactose, the milk sugar, making it easily available for absorption. Homogenization contributes to heart disease.

All is not lost! We can still choose to utilize other mammals’ milk to nourish our bodies as adults. Sally Fallon, the author of Nourishing Traditions, and President of The Weston Price Foundation, supports the campaign for Raw Milk, and speaks of the benefits and consumption of raw milk, and products made from raw milk.

I am intrigued and excited to be on the adventure of making my own yogurt after an inspiring conversation with a young colleague and friend over dinner recently. Thanks, Daria!

Given our ingenuity, survival instincts, and desire for waste-less consumption, are we really the mammals that are smart enough to utilize another mammal’s milk?

You decide about whether or not dairy works for you. If you desire to venture into the world of raw, find your local Raw Milk dairy farm at Raw Milk.

Milk is the food of the feminine, of the Mother. Allow it to nurture your body!

Peace,

Karyn

As I write this, it is Memorial Day weekend, a time dedicated to honoring those who served our country in the military and dedicated their lives for our freedom and happiness. How appropriate that we honor them with a weekend of parades, and cookouts with family and friends!

Is this weekend the start of cookout season for you? Cookouts typically include a chef cooking over a hot appliance, well known as the grill.

Many colleagues and friends feel a sense of relief at this time of year when it comes to dinnertime and weekend events. We can throw something on the grill for dinner. Sounds simple! And it is. Except for when it isn’t.

Alas, grilling food can be a challenge to those of us who are concerned with healthy preparation and eating. I am someone who is aware of the carcinogens, specifically HCA’s, that develop from charred (burned) meats, poultry and fish. This was a personal venture for me, as I pondered my decisions about outdoor cooking.

Does this mean we should all throw out our grills and never enjoy cooking outside again? You decide what is best for you! (I’ll even tell you a food secret: mostly, attitude about healthy and not healthy foods makes them healthy and not healthy for us! But that’s another post entirely.)

Interestingly, The American Heritage Dictionary defines grilling as: To question relentlessly; cross-examine.

How does your body feel when you are being “grilled” about an issue? Can you feel the stress and changes in your muscles, your entire body structure, your digestive system? Do you feel burned out?

Anatomically our muscles are structural and life-sustaining, so it is no surprise that our muscle foods, meats, poultry and fish, develop carcinogens from brutality of grilling.

Since we are calling the event a cookout, let’s change the energy and health of the meal to Outdoor Cooking. Much more peaceful and healthy

How can we enhance the health of our cooked-outside meats?

Enter: Herbs!

One way to infuse the benefits of herbs into our diets is through oils and tinctures. Oils make a great marinade base for meat, poultry and fish. It makes sense to marinate these foods with herbs, but which ones? The herbs with the highest known antioxidants are in the mint family. My favorites for marinating grill delicacies are savory, rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, and sage.

Further research on this topic turned up a study at Kansas State University by professor J. Scott Smith.

“Cooking meats with natural antioxidants decreases or eliminates HCAs on meat,” Smith said

Prof Smith’s most recent studies on this subject include a variety of spices, including Thai spices and cinnamon.

Is a healthy carnivorous burger what you are craving? If you know this is what you enjoy on occasion, make your own ahead of time with the herbs listed, and try some Thai spices!

Here are 4 easy ways to reduce the carcinogens in your outdoor cooked meats and fish:

1. Marinate before cooking! This will reduce formation of the carcinogens and add flavor
   
2. Choose leaner cuts of meat, fish, or poultry instead of hot dogs, high fat burgers and sausages.
   
3. Trim off any extra fat. This will reduce incidence of flame-ups that burn the meat.
4. Pre-cook the meat or fish to almost done, and finish cooking on the grill.

I invite you consider your grilling techniques in both your outdoor cooking and your conversation. Be gentle with your food and your body.

Peace,

Karyn

http://www.uark.edu/depts/fsc/news-htm/news.spring07.htm#brush