Real Food Friday Feast - How to prepare nuts properly

This is not a meal as such but, given that so many of us rely on nuts as a snack, I thought it was time to go over how best to prepare them. Even more so now that everyone is following the banting diet (and I will blog my thoughts about this soon!) Have you ever noticed how, after eating a bag of nuts, your stomach is not altogether happy with you? Many of us, when we're out and about and getting a bit hungry, will grab a bag of nuts off a shelf and eat them thinking, incorrectly, that they are a healthy snack.

Nuts, like grains, have their own built in protection mechanism and eating them raw is, in the longterm,  going to do more harm than good for your system. The protection mechanism comes in the form of phytic acid. Sadly, we humans  have lost touch with our ancestral heritage of food preparation. Back in the day, everything was soaked, fermented, properly prepared and healthy and nutritious. These days we listen to all manner of food gurus who tell us raw and unprocessed food is better. Or we're told to eat a lot of high-phytate foods like store-bought whole-wheat bread and all-bran breakfast cereals and we think we're doing wonders for our bodies. Of course we would think that. The experts can't be wrong, can they? But raw is definitely not nature’s way for grains, nuts, seeds and beans. Even a lot of vegetables are easier digested when they're cooked.

To put it as simply as possible, the phytic acid in nuts makes the nutrient like phosphorous unavailable for your body. It attaches itself to the minerals ensuring that your body can't digest them. Phytate also inhibits important enzymes that we need to help us digest our food. A diet that is high in unprepared nuts and grains leads to tooth decay, nutrient deficiencies, lack of appetite and digestive problems. The problem is that phytic acid is present in SO many of the foods we all love to eat. That's why it's really important that we learn to prepare, and eat them properly.

I've said it a million times but I'll keep saying it, food bought in a store is ALWAYS prepared using the fastest, easiest, cheapest methods possible to increase sales and income for the various companies. They are in NO WAY interested in your health. In the interest of keeping up with the constant demand for fast food and convenience, the manufacturers have simply removed all of the old methods of preparing foods, cut corners and given us what hardly passes for food. We are told that all these foods are healthy. They WOULD be, if they had been prepared the way they were supposed to be, but, by the time we take them off a shelf they have been so chemically altered as to actually be completely toxic to your system.

Most people have no idea that they are actually suffering from mineral deficiencies due to all of this badly prepared "food" that we are eating. The amount of women suffering from osteoporosis is staggering. It's actually so common these days that women just accept that it will happen when they reach a certain age. That should never be the case but, because we have been incorrectly advised, women are suffering from mineral deficiencies which leads to unhealthy bones and osteoporosis, among many other things.

Aside from the phytic acid present in raw nuts, there is also the issue of vegetable oil being used when roasting nuts that are sold in grocery stores. For starters, roasting the nuts doesn't do much to remove the phytates and I have mentioned a few times how bad vegetable oil is for you. I would avoid buying nuts from grocery stores altogether, to be honest. If you buy them, buy them raw and then take them home and prepare them properly before you even think of eating them.

The preparation is relatively easy. It just takes some time, as most of these things do. I'd recommend buying a really BIG bag of raw nuts so that you will have some prepared nuts on hand whenever you need them.

You will need:

Lukewarm water
1 Tbs Salt (Use a good mineral salt like Himalayan Rock Salt)
4 cups of nuts of choice (this is not cast in stone at all. If you use less nuts, use less salt.)
A large glass jar or bowl

• Add salt to warm water 
• Mix until dissolved
• Pour salt solution over nuts
• Seal lid of jar or cover bowl with a dishtowel and leave in a warm spot for up to 12 hours (This depends on the type of nut but rule of thumb is that, the softer the nut, the less time is needed. eg. almonds need the longest, cashews need the least)

That takes care of the soaking part. Now, some people will just move the bottle of nuts to the fridge and eat them straight out of the water but those are the raw foodists and I'm just not into that kind of eating. I like my food to taste good! Soggy nuts sounds entirely unappealing to me.

There is also an argument that soaking the nuts isn't enough to destroy all of the phytic acid and that the nuts need to then be dehydrated or roasted for a few hours. I have a food dehydrator but I really love the flavour that roasted nuts have, so I go with roasting.

• Put your oven on to 50°C
• Drain the salt water out of the jar. (Pour it into your garden so you don't waste water)
• Spread nuts over a baking tray evenly
• Place in oven and roast gently for at least 4 hours (this will vary from oven to oven, as well as on how many nuts you are doing and on the TYPE of nut. Almonds take the longest.)
• Make sure you dry the nuts all the way through. I enjoy this part because you get to taste-test them;) If they don't dry properly, the will go mouldy and that will be a complete waste.

The salt gives the nuts the most delicious flavour because it soaks into the nuts. The nuts you buy at a grocery store have got NOTHING on these, I promise. I tested them on GLM too. She LOVED them. So did our friends. They just have an amazing flavour compared to the store bought ones and the beauty of it is you don't need to use oil to get the salt to stick. Because you soak them for so long, the salt actually gets absorbed into the nut and the nut retains the salty flavour. You can also experiment with different spices. I've added some cayenne pepper and cinnamon to some and all I can say is YUM!

Set aside some time and do this if you are a big nut eater. They really are an easy snack when you're on the road or just to slip into your kids lunchbox. The more you prepare at a time, the less time you need to spend preparing.

We are off to Sodwana Bay for a little holiday next week so I won't be blogging as I intend to shut down electronically but I will be back in action from Monday 10th November:) Have an awesome weekend!