Health, Home, & Happiness

Honey Apple Cake

2010-09-02T00:34:58Z

Feast of Trumpets is this week, and to celebrate I have a wholesome sweet cake for your celebration! Using sprouted wheat flour, coconut oil, honey, and apples- celebratory food can be both delicious and healthful.

Recipe for Honey Apple Cake

1-1/2 cup sprouted wheat flour (available here)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup coconut oil
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup pureed apples, skins on, core removed, this takes 2-3 medium sized apples. (applesauce is a fine substitution)
1/2 apple, grated or coarsely chopped
1/4 cup honey

Preheat oven to 325. Mix dry ingredients together. Combine wet ingredients. Fold together. In an 9x9 or similar sized pan that has been well-greased with coconut oil bake for 30 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

More about Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah) from The Family Guide to the Biblical Holidays:

The Feast of Trumpets requires a preparing of the spirit. Each person is to take time to look back in self-examination over the events and emotions of the previous year. This is a time of offering forgiveness and seeking reconciliation with others. The night before Rosh Hashanah, a special midnight service is conducted called Selichos (Repentant Prayers), which helps prepare the worshiper for the time of reverence. The mood is mixed; it is a serious, yet festive occasion- similar to American Thanksgiving.

The apples and honey in this cake represent the sweetness of the Lord and the sweet year to come. Other popular food items for the Feast of Trumpets are carrots, challah bread, dates, fenugreek, and leeks. A roast or fish is a wonderful main dish, grassfed meat can be found on my resource page.

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Real Food Learning- Something for Everyone!

2010-09-04T19:37:29Z

I wanted to tell you about two new e-courses that are starting up soon that I know you will enjoy! Kelly has Real Food for Rookies and Kristen has Real Food Nutrition & Health.

Real Food for Rookies: This class is for those of you who want to eat more whole foods for the health benefits, but are overwhelmed at the thought of purging your pantry, the fortune you’d pay to buy all organic and sustainable food, and are SURE your children (and maybe husband) will rebel. Kelly actually did this whole food transformation (from the standard American diet to all whole traditional foods) while her children were in elementary and middle school so she has been there/done that advice for those who want to do the same thing. I get asked about this fairly often, “just how DO I get older children to switch to traditional foods without fussing?!’ and to be honest I don’t know! I just don’t have experience in that area, so I’m glad that I can point you to Real Food for Rookies to show you how!

Now, it’s not just for families, you might want an introduction course on why you should be eating full fat dairy, why cereal is, in fact, not heart healthy, and how you can eat real food while not making food preparation into a career or blowing the budget!

If this sounds like something you need, sign up today! It’s less than $10 a class, and classes start soon.

Real Food Nutrition & Health: This class is especially geared at homeschooling students, age 12 and up. I’ve read her textbook and it’s fabulous. Easy to understand, but it doesn’t cut corners and explains exactly why whole foods are necessary for good health. What are your children learning about nutrition? While I love teaching my children (we’re a homeschooling family as well), I do think that once they’re older they will benefit from taking classes such as this one from people other than just mom! This e-course would be a perfect way to do that, right in your home, on your schedule. There even is the option to have coursework graded for you, lessening the amount of work you need to do! If you choose to have the course work graded, there is a discount for enrolling more than one student (contact me for details). If you don’t want the coursework graded, all children in the same household can use the same registration! This is a fantastic deal!

Real Food Nutrition & Health Textbook from FoodRenegade on Vimeo.

Why you should look into taking E-courses even though you have a bunch of books already:

I’m taking the e-course Surf and Turf right now (I believe you can still sign up, but we’re well into the course so you’d have a lot of catch up to do)- I really enjoy watching videos and listening to nutrition information because I’m an auditory learner. I can learn by reading (and I enjoy reading) but when I hear information it really sticks in my brain. Ann Marie was just talking about the benefits of fish roe, and showing us the bottle that she has, and lo and behold, I remembered to scan that isle of my health food store even with two squirmy kids in tow, knowing exactly what I was looking for! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve forgotten to look for something that I was just reading about. But since I had both the visual and auditory information planted in my brain a few days prior, I was easily able to put it into action.

It’s also something that easy to do together as a family. By watching a video, you can both learn and relax at the same time. Hubby and I watched the first lesson of Surf and Turf together, which was about how food impacts a person’s mood, and then had a great discussion about how important it is to make healthy eating a priority.

Go sign your kids up for Real Food Health & Nutrition and yourself up for Real Food for Rookies today and get ready to put this learning into action!

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Review: Country Living Grain Mill- It’s the best there is!

2010-09-03T13:00:43Z

I’m thrilled to announce Country Living Grain Mills is now a sponsor of Health, Home, and Happiness! I have admired their top-quality grain mills for years, and now I’m the proud owner of one. I’ll admit that the two nights after it came, hubby and I were both up well past bedtime playing with our new ‘toy’. If you’ve been looking to get your husband more enthusiastic about real food, an industrial-quality grain mill that he can hook a motor up to just might do it

I wanted to review this splendid mill for you. The Country Living Grain Mill is made in the USA, backed with a lifetime warranty, and is made by people who really believe in what they’re doing- which is key to making the best quality product. They’ve researched and refined their design, the materials used, and the production process; providing us with the perfect grain mill.

What I love about the Country Living Grain Mill:

That it’s Made in the USA: I’m sure it would be cheaper if they had the grain mill made in China, but the folks at Country Living Grain Mill recognize the quality that comes from keeping the production in the US, and they value keeping their business within the US to help our economy as well.
The Industrial Quality.
It’s hand-crank: In a seminar about Waldorf education I went to a few years ago, I learned exactly how important it is for children to see and experience as many parts of the homemaking process as possible. They want to be involved, and they benefit from being able to be involved as much as possible. It is recommended to have a grain mill in every Waldorf preschool and kindergarten classroom for the children to use. I love allowing my children to be involved with this process.
Their goal in designing the Country Living Grain Mill was to make a mill that was the best possible- not take any shortcuts for profit. Read about how they came up with their milling surface and the history behind the grain mill here.
It’s the last grain mill we’ll purchase- this grain mill is designed for long term use.
It’s so easy to clean! I just brush the flour off the metal part that you see over the flour container, and that’s it! Very little to clean!

Who should own a Country Living Grain Mill?

Those who are committed to real food for the long term: I started out with a used electric grain mill- because I wasn’t sure I was going to really stay with this whole foods way of cooking. But now, 4 years later, I’m quite sure that I am and it’s worth it to invest in quality equipment for constant use.
Those who are gluten free: The Country Living Grain Mill not only grinds wheat, but also gluten free grains such as rice, millet, quinoa, buckwheat, and oats. Make up your own gluten-free mixes in bulk and save! I love the sweet-nutty flavor of sprouted buckwheat; I’m gong to try sprouting and drying some to grind and add in with my flour.
Families: For the reasons mentioned above, this is a wonderful experience for children to be able to take part in the grinding of flour.
Survivalists: Operational without electricity, anyone doing preparation to go without electricity appreciates this mill!
Those who appreciate being able to control all aspects of food production: The fineness of the flour can be adjusted easily by turning the knob. Anything from coarse meal to super fine flour is easy to make with fresh flour of your choice! We use local wheat grown right in our state with a medium-fine grind.

We’re really enjoying our mill, and I encourage you to go check out Country Living Grain Mills! Feel free to ask me any questions below in the comments.

We have: Country Living Grain Mill, Flour Bin, Corn and Bean Auger, and Lid Lifter.

* It is recommended to mount the mill to something that is attached to solid framing for easier use. We are having a fine time using it on our table, though, we will plan on mounting it to framing once we own rather than rent!

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Grassfed Ghee Giveaway

2010-09-03T01:12:05Z

While we have access to grass fed cow’s milk, and we enjoy that, the butter that I had been buying was just ‘organic’ not grassfed. So recently, based on the advice from the Weston Price Foundation (quoted below) I chose to purchase grassfed ghee from Pure Indian Foods, especially for our children. Ghee is butter with the milk solids removed- which makes it appropriate for even those allergic to milk protein, on the GFCF (gluten free/casein free) diet, and food connoisseurs of all kinds; ghee is clarified butter, which makes it superior for cooking and is widely used in Indian food preparation. I’m buying it mainly because it’s made from cows who have been eating grass, which provides so many health benefits especially for our growing children.

From the Weston Price Foundation:

Many factors in butter ensure optimal growth of children. Chief among them is vitamin A. Individuals who have been deprived of sufficient vitamin A during gestation tend to have narrow faces and skeletal structure, small palates and crowded teeth. Extreme vitamin A deprivation results in blindness, skeletal problems and other birth defects. Individuals receiving optimal vitamin A from the time of conception have broad handsome faces, strong straight teeth, and excellent bone structure. Vitamin A also plays an important role in the development of the sex characteristics. Calves fed butter substitutes sicken and die before reaching maturity.

The X factor, discovered by Dr. Weston Price (and now believed to be vitamin K2), is also essential for optimum growth. It is only present in butterfat from cows on green pasture. Cholesterol found in butterfat plays an important role in the development of the brain and nervous system. Mother’s milk is high in cholesterol and contains over 50 percent of its calories as butterfat. Children need the many factors in butter and other animal fats for optimal development.

One lucky reader now has the chance to win two 14-ounce containers, plus a sampler pack of grassfed Ghee from Pure Indian Foods!

First and mandatory entry: Click on the link below, sign up for their newsletter, and leave me a comment on this post on my blog letting me know you did.

Extra entries (leave a separate comment for each):

Follow Pure Indian Foods on Facebook

Follow Pure Indian Foods on Twitter

Follow Health, Home, and Happiness on Facebook

Subscribe to Health, Home, and Happiness’ Email or RSS updates

Stumble my page, or any of my articles that you enjoyed!

The giveaway ends September 8th, when I will pick a winner using the random number generator “And The Winner Is…”. Open to US residents with free shipping for the winner, International readers are welcome to enter, but must pay shipping if they win.

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Grain Free Banana Nut Muffins

2010-09-01T14:31:33Z

Grain Free Banana Nut Muffins

These dense grain free muffins are a wonderful accompaniment to soups as we move into fall. Leftover, they are sturdy enough for packed lunches and make a wonderful snack when toasted in a toaster oven. The bananas sweeten, but if you’d like you can add honey too. These taste so good it’s hard to believe there isn’t any wheat in them!

Makes 12 muffins

1 scant cup coconut flour
3 bananas, very ripe
5 eggs
5 tablespoons butter
1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons honey (optional)
1 cup walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Mix everything other than the walnuts. I used a food processor, but a mixer would work just fine too. Add in the walnuts at the end, reserving 12 to place on top if you’d like. Grease muffin pans well to prevent sticking. I used a stoneware muffin pan and greased it well with palm kernel oil; butter or coconut oil is fine to use too.

Fill muffin pans, evenly distributing the batter among all 12. Top with walnut if desired. Bake for 25 minutes, cool a couple minutes, then remove.

A Part of Wheatless Wednesday at Naturally Knocked Up!

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Simple All Purpose Salve- Coconut Oil and Beeswax

2010-09-01T14:46:41Z

My husband replaced his beloved Neosporin with coconut oil a few months ago for his fingers that crack from his work in construction. He says that coconut oil works better, but it is hard to get on since it’s thin, slippery, and solid at room temperature. I melted some pure beeswax into it and added essential oil, and we’ve been using this all purpose salve for everything; we use it as lotion, apply to dry cracked hands and feet, diaper rash, and to put on little scrapes and scratches, as lip balm, used as wood polish for our wood blocks, and even in a light layer to get my son’s hair to stay down for a picture.

How To Make Simple All Purpose Salve:

In a double boiler over simmering water melt 2 ounces of pure beeswax (I found mine at our farmer’s market for $1/oz or it’s available from Mountain Rose Herbs)

Remove from heat and add in 14-16 ounces of coconut oil; I used raw extra virgin for it’s antibacterial properties.

The heat from the water will melt the coconut oil easily, but not heating it so hot that you lose the properties associated with raw coconut oil. Coconut oil melts above 76 degrees, so that’s all we need to raise it up to.

If desired, mix in 30 drops of an essential oil of your choice- I used peppermint. At this point you can add powdered herbs to make the salve more therapeutic, but I opted to just keep it plain and all purpose.

Stir with a fork to evenly distribute the essential oil, beeswax, and coconut oil and pour into a lidded container to cool (cool with the lid on or off, it doesn’t matter). I poured it all back into my coconut oil container, but you can also divide it up into smaller containers to keep in different areas on the house.

Use as you wish!

You would think that since both coconut oil and beeswax are solid at room temperature, the mixture would also be solid- but the salve is creamy and easy to scoop out with your finger.

Don’t want to bother making it? Rose of Sharon Acres has specialty salves for purchase.

What natural remedies do you keep in your medicine cabinet?

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Banana Pancakes: Grain Free Protein Rich Crepes

2010-08-25T13:38:08Z

Banana pancakes, more like sweet little crepes, are so easy with just four ingredients! I wasn’t sure how well I’d like the banana with egg, so I hadn’t tried these though I’ve been hearing about them since we started eating without grains. Kat finally convinced me to try them They taste great, the banana/egg combination isn’t weird at all. I fried in palm kernel oil, though coconut oil or butter would work just fine too.

Simple ingredients:

Two eggs

An extra ripe (yellow all over with lots of brown spots) banana. Mine was in the freezer; I thawed it a couple hours so it could be mashed easily.

Butter, coconut oil, palm kernel oil, or ghee for frying.

Simple Directions:

Heat 1 tablespoon oil or butter in a cast iron or stainless steel skillet over medium-low heat. Mash banana with a fork. Whip in eggs and combine with a fork. Use a tablespoon to spoon the batter into the oil. Flip once set. The ones up top got more brown because I forgot about them, below they are cooked through without being browned.

See the bright orange palm kernel oil? It’s rich in beta carotene and the most often used oil in the rest of the world. I just got a quart to try- I like it especially to brighten up otherwise bland-looking food!

These simple pancakes are suitable for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet and the Gut and Psychology Syndrome diet - both diets work at restoring health through gut healing. Find out more about the benefits of a grain free diet at The GAPS Diet Online Store.

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Gut and Psychology Syndrome + Probiotic Giveaway!

2010-09-01T01:42:07Z

Yesterday I did a podcast with Ann Marie of CHEESESLAVE talking about how the GAPS diet is helping our family, especially my daughter who has developmental delays on the autistic spectrum. We are thrilled with the progress that she is making with the diet- it wasn’t until we started doing dietary interventions (which I talk about more on the podcast) that she started being able to learn, imitate, show affection, sleep through the night, and progress developmentally rather than regress further and further from typical development. I’ll try to talk more about this soon, feel free to email me with any questions and I’ll answer in a Q&A type post later on.

GAPS is Gut and Psychology Syndrome- it is a grain free sugar free diet that has protocols to heal the gut, which is really the root of the issue with many other health problems- Our family is not only are working on developmental issues with GAPS, but we were able to get rid of my milk allergy and my son’s eczema. We did that last winter, and we’re still doing great this summer!

I think the GAPS book is an important book for anyone interested in health to read- it really goes over how important the digestive system is for our overall health- it has an enormous impact on everything from autism to anxiety to allergies (yes, even hay fever!) even cancer and arthritis.

Now, I have a giveaway for you! GAPSDiet.com is giving away a copy of Gut and Psychology Syndrome and a 60 ct bottle of Biokult (the GAPS recommended probiotic)! There will be one winner who wins both the book and the probiotic.

And I have a winner! Those of you who need the book, do take advantage of the coupon code below (it’ll be up Sept 1st and continue for a week) to purchase it!
Your Winner
(confirmed)

Author: Debbie in GA
Comment:
I’m liking you on facebook!
~~To enter:~~

1. First and mandatory entry:Click on the link below and check out GAPSDiet.com -disable any ad blockers that might be blocking the link and tell me that you did so in the comments. Check out the site- there is a lot of information on there about the GAPS diet.

2. Second optional entry: Subscribe to my feed by Email or in a reader. (And leave me a comment below letting me know you did)

3. Third optional entry: ‘Like’ my page on Facebook. (And leave me a comment below letting me know you did)

I’ll pick a winner using the random And The Winner Is number generator on August 31st and notify the winner by email. After the giveaway there will be a coupon code for $5 off, so check back on the 1st! Valid for US and Canadian residents only.

Edited to add: I also have a 1-page handout that is geared toward parents of children with special needs who are just getting interested in a nutritional approach to treatment. Feel free to print it out and share it as needed!

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Shopping Locally- Farmer’s Market Visit

2010-08-25T05:02:14Z

Honey, eggs, squash, eggplant, sweet peppers, jalapeño peppers, garlic.

I’m going to see about dehydrating some of the squash for winter soups. The honey is buckwheat honey from Washington, where the farmers here moved their bees for the wintertime- it’s so much darker than the orange blossom honey that we got last time. Garlic is a great thing to buy locally or grow yourself- often supermarket garlic is shipped from China.

With the peppers, I want to try adding some jalapeños to the pickled carrot sticks that I just posted about at The Nourishing Gourmet, and try stuffing some as I saw recently on Mark’s Daily Apple (using beef bacon rather than pork)

Eggplant is proving to be well used in our kitchen this year, for use as rounds for ‘pizza’, in lasagna, or in stir fry it takes up other flavors so well!

What local food are you excited about using this week?
(part of Real Food Wednesdays!)

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Notes from the First Surf and Turf Lesson

2010-08-20T19:26:03Z

With the Webcam - Watching Surf and Turf and Snugglin with Mom

I’m so glad that Ann Marie is sharing her in-depth nutrition knowledge through the class Surf and Turf! Here are some notes I posted on Facebook as I was watching the class with my sleepy-but-not-napping little one. I thought you might find them interesting!

If you want to sign up, hurry, enrollment ends SATURDAY 8/21. Email me for a discount code!

‎’Health class’ for my 3 year old today is consisting of watching Surf and Turf. Ann Marie has already jumped into alternative cancer treatments and we’re only on the first video. Interesting stuff!

Lesson 1: Why Saturated Fat is good- talking about how when refined vegetable oils enter populations, the heart disease skyrockets. So sad Coconut oil may be therapeutic for people with Alzheimer’s disease.

‎”Junk moods come from junk foods… you can’t just stuff any old thing into the brain and expect to feel good afterwards” (the roll of nutrition on mental health)

One of the first things that suffers when we skip meals, reduce calories is serotonin (mental health!) Think: On again off again diets, being too busy to eat, eating empty calories…

Parmesan cheese is higher in protein (grams of protein per 100 grams of food) than roasted chicken, venison, and eggs. Interesting, I thought cheese was lower than meat and eggs. High quality protein is needed to convert to brain food for mental health.

The amount of people on disability due to depression in the recent years has tripled. One hundred years ago the diets may have been adequate enough in quality protein and omega 3 fatty acids to allow one generation to have poor eating habits (using up the reserves in the body), but now that we’re into the 2nd, 3rd, 4th generations who have been eating fake foods (refined carbohydrates, rancid oils, petroleum products) we just don’t have the nutrients any more to sustain our brains!

Isn’t this interesting? Go sign up now and join me as we learn things that will greatly impact our children and our children’s children!

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