Real Food Friday Feast - Grains Part 2

So, you read the previous post and, even knowing all of that, you simply cannot do without grains in your life. I understand. Grains are kind of like the security blanket of food. When you serve a bowl of curry, what would you serve it WITH if not a roti or naan bread? Stew goes best with rice, soup is just finished off so nicely by dipping bread into it and what would life be without an alfredo pasta?! This is how we've been trained to eat and it's extremely hard to cut out our comfort foods.

I'm not an absolute extremist. I don't believe in adhering so strictly to something that it sucks all of the joy and excitement out of your life. That is why I don't believe in diets. As I've said before, the way you eat should always just be a constant way of life for you. It shouldn't be about counting calories at certain meals and cutting this on a Tuesday and only eating that on a Friday, for 2 months of your life. You would very quickly become bored and disillusioned when it didn't work out.

So I say, if you want to eat grains, eat them, but do it properly. There ARE some people who just can't eat grains and never will be able to and you might need to prepare yourself for that if you suffer from IBS, like me. I personally would recommend cutting gluten out of your life for good. It is just so bad for you, there is very little that can be done to make it more friendly to your body. Most grains contain gluten but some are worse than others. The main offenders are wheat, barley and rye. I'd also recommend cutting out refined, white flour, which is used in everything that you can buy off of a shelf, unless otherwise specified.

Here is what we know about white, refined flour: When researchers really took a good look at it, they realised that it was completely lacking in the nutrients that could be found in whole grains. One of these researchers was Dr. Weston Price who "noted in his studies of isolated, so-called "primitive" peoples that when white flour and other devitalised foods were introduced into these communities, rampant tooth decay and disease of every sort soon followed.... Even orthodox nutritionists now recognize that white flour is an empty food, supplying calories for energy but none of the bodybuilding materials that abound in the germ and the bran of whole grains." - Western Price Foundation.

The thing is, there are whole societies who survive predominantly on grains, and yet they are whole and healthy. So, what is the difference there? The difference is that western civilization is entirely cruel to their grains, where other societies treat them with the respect they deserve! Sounds crazy, right? Not so if you remember what I said yesterday about grains having a built in self-preservation shield, just like animals have camouflage, sharp teeth or speed, to thwart predators. If you walk straight up to a lion and try to stab it, it WILL punish you pretty severely. In fact, you probably won't come out of that one alive. The same applies to grains. You can't just do what you want with them and expect to come out of it whole and healthy. They are only trying to protect themselves. You would do no different if you were under attack.

The antinutrients (like lectin and phytates) in grains are part of the seed's system of preservation - they prevent the seed sprouting until the conditions are just right. Plants need moisture, warmth, time and slight acidity in order to sprout. So, when I say, be kind to your grains, I mean, prepare them properly by PROVIDING them with all of those ideal conditions to encourage them to sprout and make all the nutrients they contain, available for you. By being kind to them, you are being kind to yourself too. Grains consumed day in, and day out, without being properly prepared, will ultimately lead to a deficiency in minerals and nutrients and IBS, or worse.

Just consider this; the animals that live primarily off grains and other plants have at least 4 stomaches, plus extremely long intestinal tracts that provide the right conditions to break down the antinutrients. Humans have one stomach and a short intestinal tract in comparison. We can digest meat quite easily, but plants are not so kind to us, unless we prepare them properly. Orthodox nutritionists, as well meaning as they are, don't realise the harm they are doing when they tell us all to eat our whole grains. Even worse, they tell us to eat them without fat. Grains should never be eaten alone. Vitamins A and D, which are found in animal fats like butter and cream, help us absorb calcium, phosphorus, iron, B vitamins and the many other vitamins that can be found in properly prepared grains. Eat your porridge with full cream milk and it will do you a thousand times more good than cold breakfast cereal consumed with skim milk will ever do. It also tastes so much nicer!

There are a few ways that you can prepare your seeds and grains, to make them be kinder to you. Please remember that none of these methods will work with refined grains. Once they have been refined, it means they have been heat-treated (among other things) and any grain that is heat-treated will keep its antinutrients intact. There is NO life in these refined grains and there is pretty much nothing you can do to save them.

Sprouting:

This is really easy actually. I'll use brown rice as an example.

• Place your rice in a glass jar and poke a few holes in the lid of the jar if you don't have a proper sprouting jar
• Fill the jar with enough water to cover the rice
• Place the lid on the jar and put it in a warm place and leave for 12-24hours
• Drain the water, turn the jar upside down and let it rest at an angle to allow any excess water to drain out
• Use straight away OR rinse and drain every 8 hours until you want to cook it.

You will see little white spots developing at the tips of the rice after soaking it. That means it is sprouting and, if you leave it for a couple of days, little sprouts will come out the rice. Soaking rice means it will also cook faster than just cooking it straight out of the packet. Sprouting rice actually looks pretty cool;)

Soaking and sprouting alone are not going to break down all the antinutrients, however. They will be sufficient with some grains, but grains like wheat, barley and rye may need more preparation because of all the gluten. Gluten is exceptionally hard to break down, but fermentation goes a long way to helping with that.

Fermentation: 

This is when the seeds, or even the whole grain flour, are soaked in an acidic medium like buttermilk, whey, yogurt, lemon juice, or vinegar before being cooked.

With seeds, it's a very simple process. You follow all the same steps as above with the rice but this time, you add a tablespoon or two of buttermilk, whey, yogurt, lemon juice or vinegar, to the water and leave it to soak for 12-24hours before rinsing and turning upside down to drain.

With flour it's not that much more complicated. The difference between baking with properly prepared flour instead of unprepared flour, is that you can't spontaneously decide to make something. You need to allow 24hours for the flour to soak. As long as you plan ahead, that shouldn't be a huge problem. This can be applied to whatever you are baking:

• Put the amount of flour required for your recipe, in a bowl
• Add about 1/2 to 3/4 cup water depending on how much flour there is. More flour = more water
• Add 2-3 Tbs of your acidic medium (buttermilk, whey, yogurt, lemon juice or vinegar) Again, if the recipe requires a lot of flour then add more of your acidic medium.
• Mix all ingredients
• Cover bowl with a cloth and leave on your counter top overnight (12-24hours)
• Follow recipe as normal

I HAVE spoken about fermentation and the benefits of it in this post and it applies to pretty much anything that you ferment. In this post, it only refers to grains but you can make so many things healthier simply by fermenting them. The advantage of using sourdough, which is what you will end up with if you ferment your whole grain flour, is that it makes whatever you bake, far more moist and gives it a lovely flavour.

One thing you need to be sure of is that the flour you buy hasn't been processed in any way. A way to be safe is to simply grind your own flour. If you have a grain mill, it makes things really easy but you can also use a coffee grinder. Making your own flour at home means you can be sure that the whole process has been done right from start to finish. If you have to buy flour, just make sure you don't buy it from Pick n Pay or any other grocery store. Go to a health store, or a dischem and buy whole grain. 

If you have IBS or celiac disease, you will benefit hugely by cutting grains out of your life altogether. I bake only with coconut flour and chickpea flour and it has made the world of difference to my life! If I must eat rice, I soak it overnight but I seldom do. I usually eat my stew with vegetables instead. There are always options for food if you cut grains out. You just need to make the adjustment and then it becomes like second nature to you. There is no rule that says we need to eat stew with rice or pasta. We only THINK we need to eat pasta, bread and rice, because that is what we've grown up with and it's comfortable. But the whole point of progress is that we now KNOW better. Having the knowledge means we have to do something with it, right? 

Armed with these tools, you will probably find your digestion starts to improve after a short amount of time. Try as hard as you can to cut store-bought food made with grains, out of your life, especially bread, which is utter poison to your body. 

I promise, your body will thank you!

Real Food Friday Feast - Home-made yogurt

Another busy day in the Lowe-Martin household! It's GLM's birthday tomorrow:) That means loads of preparations on my part. I've also got a big order heading to Durban tomorrow afternoon and I really want to finish it all today so that I can just spend the weekend spoiling my wife which is possibly one of my ultimate favourite things to do:) But I can't let all that get in the way of my daily post and so, here it is!

Today's Real Food Friday Feast recipe is... Home-made yogurt! But why would anyone want to make their own yogurt when the shelves at the grocery store are lined with so many different yogurt options? Well, you know what I'm going to say to that, don't you? Anything that is in a sealed package, on the shelf of a grocery store, is processed food and processed food isn't actually REAL food. In case you aren't sure why, read this post.

I really feel for people who stock up on yogurt on a weekly basis and dutifully eat it by the litre, thinking that they are doing wonders for their digestive system. The reality is that store bought yogurt has about the same nutritional value as a store bought caramel-toffee dessert: and that would be zero. The reason for this is that the yogurt is fermented for a very short period of time, sometimes as little as an hour, in order to turn out more yogurt at a time, and make more money (you didn't actually think they were bothered with making it healthy for you, did you?!) To make it worse, thickening agents are added to the yogurt BECAUSE they don't ferment for long enough, and fermentation is usually the process that thickens it.

So, that yogurt you are eating, actually has very little, if any, probiotics (read about some of the benefits of probiotics in this post) in it and it also has hidden thickening agents that you should really not be eating. To make it worse, most yogurt has so much added sugar that it really does have a similar calorie count to a caramel-toffee dessert! If you are feeding that to your kids, you are not doing them any favours, I promise you. Unfortunately yogurt has been labelled a health food and that means people buy it by the truckload, AND feed it to their kids because it's a convenient, easy, "healthy" snack.

Make a note of this: generally, anything that is easy and convenient, is NOT going to be good for you. It'll probably add a few more minutes to your day. But, those minutes added to your day, can ultimately be subtracted from your life in total, whether it leads to time spent in a doctor's room, or a hospital bed, or worse.

That is why I blog:) And actually, home-made yogurt is SO easy, it'll take you the amount of time you would have taken to get to the store and back, to actually make it and all it will cost you is the price of 1 litre of milk to make 1 litre of yogurt.

Something to bear in mind is that, if you are going to make your own yogurt, it would be a lot more beneficial to use a good quality milk. If you're not sure why, then read this post to understand why full cream, raw milk is the BEST milk for you. If you can't find raw, the next best alternative is Woolies organic full cream milk although, even that is heat-treated and pasteurised.

HOME-MADE YOGURT

A pot
A ceramic or glass dish with a lid
A whisk
1 litre of milk
1/2 cup yogurt (try to get a decent yogurt as a starter. Woolies sells an organic yogurt. You'll only need to buy it once if you are going to be making yogurt often)
Thermometre


Method:

• Turn your oven on to 50° celsius. (this is to create a nice warm environment for the bacteria to thrive in)
• Place the pot on the stove on medium heat so that the milk won't burn at the bottom of the pot. (On my stove this is about a 4)
• Pour the milk into the pot, leaving the lid off (to avoid condensation dripping back into the milk)
• The milk must gently come to a boil (keep an eye on it because it happens quite suddenly and I've been caught unawares a few time!)
• Remove the pot of milk from the stove, cover with a dishcloth and leave to cool
• Every few minutes test the temperature of the milk until it reaches about 40° celsius. (A food thermometre is best here but I STILL don't have one so I just use my digital one that I usually use when one of us is sick! It doesn't go above about 43° celsius but that's fine because you only need it to reach 40°!)
• When the thermometre reads 40° celsius, pour the milk into your ceramic dish
• Turn OFF your oven (you don't want to nuke the little bacteria;)
• Add the 1/2 cup yogurt and mix it in with a whisk (a fork will do if you don't have one!)
• Place the lid on the ceramic dish and stick the dish in the oven
• Leave for 24 hours
• After 24 hours, place the yogurt into a container and store it in the fridge. It will last for about a week or two depending on how fast you eat it.

You can use this batch of yogurt to make the next batch so always make sure to keep at least half a cup aside for when you next make your yogurt to avoid having to buy more. As long as you keep making it, your yogurt will only ever cost you the price of the milk. I pay R9 a litre so that is the price of a litre of yogurt for us!

I usually do this in the morning and then I leave it in my oven overnight and take it out the next morning. If you make some yogurt and suddenly remember you need to roast a chicken in the oven, firstly, DON'T FORGET TO TAKE YOUR YOGURT OUT before turning your oven back on and secondly, it will be fine if you take it out. Your oven will cool down within an hour of you turning it off anyway. As long as it has a bit of heat to kickstart the process, it will still ferment just fine. Put your dish on top of the oven and it will still probably feel a bit of heat from the chicken roasting anyway. Once you've roasted your chicken, let the oven cool a bit before putting your yogurt back into the oven. I learnt this the hard way when I managed to kill all the little bacteria in my yogurt by putting it back into a TOO hot oven!

That's it! Really simple and easy and yummy! You can add fruit, or honey, as you eat it, if the plain yogurt is too sour for you. I really recommend getting your kids, and YOU, accustomed to eating it plain if NOT with fruit or honey. Try to avoid adding sugar to food as it really takes away from the nutritional value. You'll find, with raw, full cream milk, it is deliciously creamy and tasty!

Have a super weekend!