I let my food nazi-ism slide the last week. We ate some wonderfully de-lish tortilla soup...which I had to get the recipe. It ended up being way beyond my personal guidelines....I just couldn't wrap my brain around dry ranch dip being Daniel fast friendly, and ultimately it is so full of preservatives I think I'd rather come up with a wholesome replacement in the future.... so I skipped that ingredient and just turned the other cheek as I poured in the ranch beans with its "less than 2%" banned ingredient content...and oh yes, the whole wheat tortillas with all those preservatives are definitely a no, but we've managed to almost finish off the 3rd package in less than a week. I had migraine headaches every night I ate the stuff though. hmm, chemicals I imagine. Can't wait on working to reinvent this recipe in a nourishing traditions way and add it to our food menu...in the future...the distant future since we've eaten it about 6 times in the past 10 days and still have leftovers in the fridge. I did find out that its pretty good after being put in the blender and used as burrito filling.
Physically speaking we lost weight (those hard to get rid of, last 8 pounds for me and Eric lost 15 pounds....though he says "I didn't loose weight; I gained health" ), we broke food addictions (chemicals and sugar) and we've seemed to encounter a natural portion control in our eating habits IF we choose pay attention to our bodies and not focusing on the food in our mouth....let me tell you it is so much harder with my favorites.
I broke the fast about 15 minutes after PB called it done...I tested a few crumbs from Corban's birthday brownie cupcakes. It is a new recipe that is friendly to Corban's gluten and dairy free diet. I'll share the recipe AFTER everyone has taste-tested them tomorrow. Eric brought home my favorite..Mr. Mambo's cheese enchilada's. Oh it was hard to not just gobble it all down, but I focused on eating it slow and saved half of my enchiladas for another day. After the first few bites I noticed an odd feeling in my gut, but dismissed it. But 2 hours later my tummy had it's own ideas about the food and afforded me some quiet reading time you know where. I checked out my Nourishing Traditions cookbook and reconfirmed in my mind WHY I need to make changes in our dietary lifestyle.
The fast was the easy part. Holding ourselves to our own standard (and finding a new standard) is a whole new ballgame. But I've been preparing for this day and all last week was quite productive in the kitchen, so I feel at least I'm getting a good start!
We tried out soaking pecans, walnuts and pumpkin seeds and making "crispy nuts" that were very good and nutritionally superior to raw nuts and seeds. We also tried soaking brown rice over night and it was much fluffier, the kids didn't even notice that it was brown rice. I bought a sprouting lid for my mason jars so I can try soaking and sprouting our legumes and other whole grains, but it may be a little while before we introduce them back into our diet...we consumed about 10lbs of beans the past 3 weeks!
Tuesday, I made some garlic-lemonade for the boys who haven't been feeling so great. The dragon breath and burps leave little to be desired, but it seems to really help with the symptoms.
We got our Dairy delivery, raw whole milk, raw cream and cheese on Wednesday from a great friend who let us "hitch-hike" in on her co-op order. THANK YOU!!!!
Thursday, Parker and Perry helped me make a 10 day supply of butter. It's been a while since I last made it, so hopefully it won't take an hour and a half on the next go around! We made it in two batches, as I'm not sure how much is too much for the mixer...maybe next go around I"ll whip up the butter in separate batches, then "clean" it all together as that seems to be the most time consuming part. We made 38 ounces of butter and got 24 ounces of buttermilk out of 4 pints of cream...I think those are decent results. I have one pint of cream that I'm saving to make whipped cream for Corban's birthday cupcakes. Next dairy run, I plan to try making cream cheese and whey The whey will be used to make lots of lacto-fermented vegetables and condiments which provide essential nutrients for proper digestion.
Wednesday, we got our first shipment of coconut oil. I couldn't help but grin at the thought of asking Eric to open it for us as I struggled to lug the 5 gallon bucket through the living room and heft it up on the kitchen table. The kids were as excited as me and wanted to test it out by the spoonful....which of course we did as soon as dad got the lid off for us! He detests the stuff, but I sneak it in when I can. It's tricky.
I made a gallon of yogurt on Friday and a half-gallon of Goat Yogurt for Corban on Saturday. It is amazing to me how much switching to goat dairy HELPS him! With in 5 hours of consuming the milk things start changing for the better. I need to get better at regularly making trips to the Goat farm. I really have no excuse considering its just over 1 mile from the house.
We already use vinegar and water for most of our cleaning, and make our own laundry detergent on occasion, so I decided to try my hand at making some body-care products starting with toothpaste and shampoo. I think both recipes will need some adjustments..but they work wonderfully well. I brushed my teeth before bed and they still felt "dentist-clean" this morning (I guess that is actually hygienist clean, huh?)
So, I guess we're still in progress in figuring the new and improved Johnson family diet. Mr and Mrs Johnson seem to have
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