Bread Snob

I have officially become a bread snob. This winter I began baking my own again after the camper adventure. This weekend I resorted to my back-up bread maker for a quickie loaf :) Yuck! Like sawdust. I'd rather buy store stuff.

Largely irrelevant now because bread is a thing of the past for me. After several weeks of very low carb diet-no bread, pasta, rice, or potatoes- I ate some of that yummy homemade bread--what a stink! I have discovered that my system really just does better without the carbs. I don't know if the gas was the gluten or just a dearth of GI bugs to handle all the carbs.

I am back to low carb/no gluten now. Anybody have any good spelt recipes?

The Sustainable Food Pyramid

I heard an interesting hour of discussion on Wisconsin Public Radio today. Featured was Paul Roberts author of the books The End of Oil and The End of Food, and most recently an article for Mother Jones Magazine Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008. His main point is that our current models of a sustainable food economy will not work on a much larger scale-as in billions of people. There are parts of the article I can agree with, but Sky Vegetables and vertical farming? The future of sustainable food is not so 'pie in the sky'. It is dirty and plain and unglamorous and lies in our OWN hands (and does not create controversial magazine articles). I believe food will become more and more expensive and this will force changes, just as the high gasoline prices hit people where it hurt the most-the pocketbook. This is the only way mainstream America will change.

Back to the sustainable food pyramid. According to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation sustainable Good Food has 4 qualities: Affordable, Fair, Healthy and Green. I don't think we can create an industrial food economy which is all of these things. If you think of all these qualities as points of a pyramid; the closer you get to affordable the further you are from fair, etc. You can't have it all. The only way I see all of these coming in one package is to produce my own and eat local. No more coconut shrimp for me, its cranberries, maple syrup and Point Beer!

Hormones and Mood

The last of the ice in the woods



After some reflection and alot of reading, I have come to understand my extreme mood swings a little better. In the span of a day I went from hopeless, anxious, mad as hell to calm, energized, enthusiastic. All I needed was my period. This has been a pattern I never picked up on because some months I am fine. If I am exercising and relatively low stress I don't fall apart. There is even a name for it PMDD-premenstrual dysphoric disorder.

There is some interesting info out there on the relationship between estrogen, progesterone and cortisone. Biology is SO cool. The human animal is such a finely tuned machine and then we do things like caffeine and HFCS and hydrogenated oils.

Rose and Christy both have my excited to share the view from my home with you. There will be two 'homes' to view: the suburban house (the home to my body and mind) and our rural escape-my Dad's place (the home to my heart).

We just spent two days of our spring break at ArkWorks Farm and I realized that I cannot be torn between homes. We had planned to split our time this summer between house and camper, with my main gardening efforts at the farm. As much as I love it there, I can't do this-I will be setting myself up for frustration and stress. I can be happy at either place, but not both. We need to choose-the yardstead or the farmstead, I can't and won't try to do both. So another round of discussions for DH and I. This is important, and is worth going over again and again if needs be.

must....have.....coffee

I started my (modified) detox plan by dropping coffee. Even with green tea to ease me through-I enjoyed a crushing headache for three days. I was a royal witch at work on Saturday! Apologies to my employees! Today I feel better, no headache, not tired. I am sleeping better now-no more waking up through-out the night.

I am also trying to eat as much raw food as possible-lots of salads, fruits, raw nuts and water, water, water. I miss sugar! But I do enjoy tasting the texture and naunces of plain yogurt flavored with fruit instead of the too-sweet homogenized Yoplait I usually eat.

I came across an interesting bit of info about protein-(we eat too much of it!), apparently there are cultures who maintain health at 10-25 gram of protein per day. Hmm, think our food pyramid is a little lopsided? I also saw on Yahoo news today, a new study which shows too much red meat and processed meats are bad for you. Really? Huh,who would have thought?
Anyway I feel good, optomistic and ready for the fruit juice fast (2 days max)!

PS Horse manure/wood shavings: I have a good supplier-how do I use? is it too hot to use fresh, I was going to till in fresh manure this spring.
Kris

Detoxification

I need an intervention! I don't like how run-down I feel. I feel closer to 68 instead of 38. My brain is foggy, I often can't find the words I am looking for, my memory is poor (this is NOT a new symptom). I just feel so tired and numb 50% of the time. I know I feel better when I exercise and stay away from simple carbs completely along with limiting even the whole grain carbs. I also feel better with a chance to play and unwind each day. I have gotten into a bad rut-and the difference between a rut and a grave is the depth of the hole!

Long story short-I have 5 days off for spring break and I would like to seize this time to perform some detoxification. I realize that the detox may only be in my head, that there will be some placebo effect gained by the effort of taking control back into my own hands. But rituals are very powerful things.

I am considering a raw food only, limited fast. Any suggestions out there? My herb craft is very rusty, I will be doing alot of research into any suggestions made-no following blindly! I plan to reduce my caffeine and refined foods intake over this coming week leading to my 'spring break'.

In other news-I (minimally) pruned the apple tree, no luck yet in an organic dormant oil. My seeds finally arrived, mostly from Baker's. I will start the tomatoes, peppers and cabbage this weekend (about 9 weeks from our historical frost free date). The solar hot water class is next weekend. Our bunnies got some lovin'. We should see a litter in 30 days! No luck yet on the Silver Fox doe. I also resisted the impulse to buy a new car. My (paid for) 2002 Saturn will do just fine for us for a while longer. I was almost seduced by the new car tax breaks and the hybrid tax credits until I did the math on monthly payments. Told you veterinarians are cheap!! I'll keep putting the payments into savings.