You must really love to cook?

I get the question a lot: "You must really love to cook?" It isn't that I love to cook really. I don't mind cooking. I certainly do a lot of it. More accurately, I feel like it's my duty as a mother to feed my son proper food.

It comes naturally to mothers to catch their children when they fall. That's how I feel about healthy food. I watch Mikey like a hawk at the playground so he doesn't fall and hurt himself and I cook him good food at home so his body is healthy on the inside.

The immune system is what battles cancers that come a' knocking. Cancer is abnormal cells that divide and multiple. The body's immune system tries to fight and kill off these cells but sometimes it can't. And, cancer isn't just for adults so it is never too early to build up a young child's immune system. Cancer affects about 14 of every 100,000 children in the United States each year.

According to the National Cancer Institute diet is one of the four behavioral factors that we can control to help prevent cancer in our bodies. If I were to feed Mikey boxed cereals, processed snack foods, and dinners with no vegetables, he would have a weakened immune system and be vulnerable to diseases like cancer.

The best way to cut back on junk food is not to stock it in the house. Yep, I had a withdrawal period but I never looked back. Et Voila! My motivation to cook healthy foods is to give my child a fighting chance.

Diarrhea: what foods help?

I never thought that poop could explode out of a diaper and arrive as far up a baby's back as the shoulder blades. Wow! What a rough week! Talk about a bad spell of diarrhea and diaper rash. Here's what I've learned from this experience.

Day 4, I try specific foods:
On day 4, I realized that the diarrhea was not going away by itself, so I had to do something. I changed Mikey's diet to foods that I read help relieve diarrhea (he has no other symptoms). His poops solidified after 24 hours, but he was still pooping four or five times a day. He normally poops once. Here is a list of foods recommended by The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods:

• herbal teas
• vegetable broth
• fruit juices
• electrolyte replacement drinks
• equal parts of sauerkraut and tomato juice
• pears
• apples
• grapefruit
• carrots
• potatoes
• beets
• blueberries
• carob
• mango

My pediatrician recommended the BRAT diet:

• bananas
• rice
• applesauce
• toast

The American Academy of Pediatrics says that most children with mild diarrhea can continue to eat a normal diet. Given all this information, I am keeping to his normal diet while emphasizing these specific foods.

A 48 hours glimpse of Mikey's diarrhea diet:

Breakfast: pear juice (juiced at home), potatoes and eggs
Lunch: blueberries, yogurt
Snack: smoothie (milk, bananas, carob).
Dinner: rice cooked in chicken broth

Breakfast: I made him cream of wheat but he wouldn't eat it because it was too hot (even when it was cold!). So, he ate a slice of bread with almond butter.
Lunch: raisins, pasta with olive oil
Snack: smoothie (blueberries, rice milk, kefir, carob)
Dinner: apple juice (juiced at home), potato and onion soup over rice

Day 7, I try probiotics:
Hmmm. Diarrhea is persisting. There's no other sign of a cold. The advice nurse says it's a bug that we just need to wait out. In the back of my mind, I believe that the reason for his diarrhea is the antibiotics that he finished two weeks ago. The antibiotics cleared his cough and I am grateful, but it is no secret that they also wipe out the good bugs that help with digestion. I called my doctor to see what he thought about probiotics. He had the nurse call me to say that there is no proof that they work. I decided to bite the bullet and sprinkle a little probiotic powder into his smoothie. Now this might be coincidental, but his diarrhea cleared the next day.

Diaper Rash Remedy
Through all this I learned that sometimes common sense is the best solution to diaper rash. The last time I went to see Mikey's pediatrician for a diaper rash, he wrote a prescription for a $50 diaper rash cream and gave us a sample of a $250 diaper rash cream (both not covered by insurance). Our former, adored nanny recommend that we wash his butt with a little soap and water after each dirty diaper. She told us that her son's pediatrician recommend this for his diaper rashes. Racing for the kitchen sink with a squirmy 18 month old is not ideal, but the diaper rash was gone even when the diarrhea persisted.

Raw Milk and Cheese: I switched

Last week I purchased my first raw cheese. Two weeks ago I bought my first quart of raw milk. Buying these two products was a huge jump for me. I have to admit I was skeptical and thought raw milk and cheese would taste weird. But, after trying it out I like the taste of raw dairy better.

From what I've read, us humans have been drinking raw milk for thousands of years and only pasteurized and homogenized milk since the 1920s. Milk production was getting dirty around that time and so instead of cleaning up the farms the campaign for pasteurized milk began. The raw milk farms now are small and clean farms and the risk of disease from raw milk is less than from "big farm" pasteurized milk. Mark McAfee, founder of Organic Pastures Dairy says, "The typical conventional milk tank had either salmonella or E. coli O157:H7 detected about 30 percent of the time. In comparison, Organic Pastures has never had one pathogen – ever." I realize this guy is the founder of a raw milk company so please read more about raw milk here and here.

I want those enzymes, Vitamins C, B12 and B6, milk proteins, beneficial bacteria that pasteurization strips away. And, who cares if there's a little butterfat at the top of the milk. Homogenization's only purpose is cosmetic. It breaks down butterfat so it doesn't come to the top.

It was only a few months ago that I made the switch to whole milk. After that I switched to pasteurized but not homogenized milk. Now Mikey and I are drinking raw milk. We still drink pasteurized but not homogenized milk as well. I also use a lot of buttermilk and we are still drinking rice milk. I like to mix things up! I have been reading a lot of not so good things about rice milk lately so it might be on the outs soon. I should also mention that Mikey's pediatrician and my mother do not approve of raw milk. Oh, well!

Read this article in Harper's Magazine about raw milk.

Probiotics

Mikey, the kid who never gets sick, has a sinus infection and is taking antibiotics. To him, it's the best dessert that he has ever had...and he gets it for breakfast and dinner. I am, on the other hand, less than excited about it. I am trying to counter the side effects of my son's 10 days on antibiotics with food high in probiotics.

Probiotics
Probiotics are the "good" bacteria in our intestinal tract. Antibiotics tend to kill off the good bacteria that help you digest food, and so I am trying to feed Mikey foods that reestablish their population. I can't help but compare taking antibiotics to poisoning an entire lake to kill off one species of bad fish. In the process, hundreds of desirable fish our also sacrificed in the hope of a healthier lake in the future.

There are two ways to get probiotics back into our stomachs: supplements and food.

I haven't had a chance to talk to Mikey's pediatrician about probiotic supplements, but for what it's worth, my aunt likes the Natren probiotic supplements.

In the meantime, I'll focus on probiotic foods.

Here's a list that I got from the University of Michigan's Comprehensive Cancer Center:

yogurt fermented milk product
buttermilk fermented cow's milk
kefir fermented milk product similar to yogurt
tempeh similar to tofu, fermented soybeans
miso Japanese style fermented rice, barley, or soybeans
Kim chi Korean style fermented cabbage
sauerkraut fermented cabbage

My neighbor and nutritional mentor, Lydia, recommends Kombucha. Kombucha is a carbonated beverage created by a fermentation process that uses a culture of beneficial bacteria.

What do all these foods have in common? They are all fermented!

From Delicious Organics: Fermentation allows the bacteria, yeasts and molds to predigest and therefore break down the carbohydrates, fats, and proteins to create probiotics which offer friendly bacteria into our digestive tract. This helps keep our immune system strong and supports our overall digestive health.

So, pink, bubble gum flavored antibiotics may be for dessert, but fermented cabbage is for dinner!

P.S. As I am pushing this post live, Mikey's cough has cleared. I am relieved that the antibiotics did the trick and they weren't all for nothing.

Salt: so simple, yet so complicated!

I often find that nutrition information is conflicting—like when I recently did some research on salt. One book said that I should be eating refined table salt with iodine. Another advised me to use unrefined salt, which is sea salt and doesn't have iodine added to it. So what should I buy?

Initially, I learned that iodine is a mineral essential for normal thyroid gland function. The thyroid actually uses iodine to make hormones. My body needs the right balance of iodine, not too much, not too little.

At this point, I was ready to buy only iodized salt. But then I realized that table salt is refined salt and I like to keep away from as many refined foods as possible. Also, sea salt contains other healthy minerals besides sodium chloride that my body needs. In addition, too much iodine can be toxic to the thyroid gland. Hmmm. I have no idea how much iodine I am currently getting in my diet. What should I do? I want iodine but I also want the other healthy minerals that the sea salt offers.

I never thought to look at the ingredients in a box of salt. I thought salt was salt. I have several salts in my pantry because I was experimenting with different types to find one that would grind properly in my salt grinder (Zack's favorite wedding gift). I really should have been spending my time on buying the healthiest choice. But what is the healthiest choice?

Here's what I have in my cupboard right now as far as salt goes:

1. Hain Sea Salt with disclaimer on front of package, "This salt does not supply iodine, a necessary nutrient."
2. La Baleine with the same disclaimer, "This salt does not supply iodine, a necessary nutrient."
3. Morton Kosher Salt. No warning label.
   
4. Bulk coarse sea salt from Rainbow Grocery. Not sure, I need to go back and check.
5. Hand-harvested sea salt from Ile de Re, France. No warning label but this is unrefined salt so no iodine.
   
6. Big Tree Farms, Bali, handcrafted Balinese sea salt. No warning label but this is unrefined salt so no iodine.

I don't know if kosher salt is refined or unrefined, or iodized or not. I'm also unsure about the bulk salt, so I'm leaving those out of my equation. It looks like I have 100 percent noniodized salt. Okay, so I'm not getting iodine from my salt. Where else can I get iodine? How do I get the Food and Drug Administration's daily recommend amount of iodine (150 micrograms) without eating refined iodized salt? Here are a list of foods that naturally contain iodine:

Iodine content of selected food categories, in micrograms per 3 1/2-ounce (100 grams) serving. A kiwi is about 100 grams.

( From The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods)
Salt (iodized) 3,000 (that's a lot!)
Seafood 66
Vegetables 32
Meat 26
Eggs 26
Dairy products 13
Bread and cereals 10
Fruits 4

If I continue to feed Mikey real food, it looks like he'll get enough iodine. Seafood has the highest concentration. I'm off to buy some fish!

Recipe for an organized pantry: continued

The pantry organization project continues. I've carefully grouped all the food into nutritional groups (read here for more on this). And now that I've got all my jars in a row, I've realized that I'm overloaded with wheat and gluten complex carbs. Oh no! I have an entire shelf devoted to whole wheat items. It gets worse. Two shelves are dedicated to gluten grains. Let me explain why I'm upset.

First, I don't want Mikey to eat too much whole wheat. Whole wheat is healthful but Americans overeat it. Wheat is hard to digest and a lot of people are allergic to it without even knowing. So, my goal is to mix other grains into the diet.

Second, I don't want to feed my boy only gluten grains; I should include some nongluten grains as well. Nongluten grains are easier to digest than gluten ones and they allow Mikey's tummy to rest. By organizing my pantry, I realized that I have roughly 3/4 gluten grains and only 1/4 nongluten grains. One half of my gluten grains are whole wheat.

Here's how I organized my nongluten and gluten grains:

Big label: Nongluten grains complex carbohydrates
Small labels: basmati rice (wht/brn), brown rice, quinoa, corn (polenta), millet

Big label: Gluten grains complex carbohydrates
Small labels: whole wheat, oats, spelt, kamut

My pantry organizational project led me to research these two ingredients:

SEMOLINA
I came across this ingredient on the label of a bin at Rainbow Grocery where I often purchase "semolina spaghetti." I haven't a clue what semolina actually is so I decided to do some research. What did I find? Semolina is little more than a nice Italian-sounding word for "enriched white flour." White flour!?!? When I do feed Mikey flour, it ought to be whole wheat. Goodness, it seems everyone is out to trick me. I have to make the effort to research everything I buy. Little by little, I'm learning exactly what I'm feeding my little boy.

COUSCOUS
While standing in front of my pantry shelves with my couscous in one hand, I couldn't figure out where to put it. I thought it was its own grain. I did some research and pow! I found out that couscous is made from semolina. So, after we finish off the box in the pantry, I'm not buying it again. I'll focus on rice and quinoa and the other nongluten grains since they seem to be the foods that we're failing to consume.

Healthy diet: healthy marriage

Forgive me if I sound like a crazy freak, but I can honestly say that my marriage is better since my husband and I started eating healthy. In my nutrition books, I'm constantly coming across information about the healing aspect of eating good food. And now, I'm seeing it for myself. Just months ago, I was often so overwhelmed by the challenges of motherhood that I'd completely loose it when Zack would leave his jacket on the couch or book bag in the hall. Now, I can just ask him—in a nice, friendly tone—to move it. This civil approach seems so simple but before I couldn't ask him to do much of anything without getting upset about everything all at once. And I think my new composed nature is a direct result of the food that I've been eating. I feel centered and at peace. I rarely get overwhelmed and, when I do, I am able to keep my head on and stop my worries from boiling over into problems that I wasn't even thinking about before I got upset. That said, I'm off to devour a spinach salad!

A recipe for an organized pantry

Now, my husband really thinks I'm nuts! Last week, I organized our pantry, labeling all the food and arranging it into groups. Here's a picture of the Nuts and Seeds group. I'm hoping my efforts will help me vary our diet.

I took on this mighty organizational task after reading If It's Not Food, Don't Eat It by Kelly Hayford. Her book taught me that a healthy diet isn't only about eating natural organic foods. It's also about satisfying the body's need for nutrients on a daily basis. All the organic goodies I'm feeding Mikey are great but I need to make sure he's getting variety.

Here's a rundown of the dietary basics Hayford outlines in her book:

• Drink plenty of purified water daily (i.e., filtered tap water).
• Eat 2–4 fresh fruits a day.
• Eat 3–7 servings of fresh vegetables a day (a serving is 1/2 cup to 1 cup).
• Eat 1–3 servings of protein a day (organic animal or vegetable but not animal every day).
• Eat 1–3 serving of complex carbohydrates a day.
• Consume essential fatty acids daily.
• Eat a variety of different foods.

I'm certainly not going to measure out a 1/2 cup of vegetables to keep tabs on Mikey's nutrional intake—but I do want a rough idea of what he's eating and which foods fit into which category. So that's why I started to organize my pantry. I'm not finished and I'll need to create the same system in my refrigerator.

In the photo, you'll notice the reused and reusable jars. When I run out of something, I just bring the labeled jar to Rainbow Grocery and refill it. No bags, no waste!

These are all of my pantry labels:

Big label: Nuts and Seeds (Adults should eat a couple handfuls of these daily for the oils. For Mikey, I grind them in the blender and add them to recipes.)
Small labels: walnuts, pine nuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds

Big label: Dried Fruit (This is snack food. Mikey loves dried prunes and dates.)
Small labels: dried prunes, dried dates, raisins, dried apricots

Big label: Beans and vegetable protein
Small labels: white beans, black beans, lentils, kidney beans

Big label: Nongluten grains complex carbohydrates (Gluten is hard to digest so it's good to eat nongluten grains as well.)
Small labels: basmati rice (wht/brn), brown rice, quinoa, corn (polenta), millet

Big label: Gluten grains complex carbohydrates
Small labels: whole wheat, oats, spelt, kamut

Big label: Natural sweeteners (Replace refined sugars with these alternatives. White refined sugar is an antinutrient that depletes the body of vitamins, minerals, and enzymes.)
Small label: honey, molasses, maple syrup

And that's how far I've gotten. I'll send an update when I make more progress.

In her book, Hayford writes that if our nutritional needs aren't being met, we'll continue to feel hungry no matter how much pseudofoods we eat.

Keep cooking simple, cook what your body needs.

Whole milk yogurt: fills baby with nutrients, helps mom shed pounds

Today, my husband, Zack, returned from the store with lowfat yogurt for Mikey.

“Sweetie, Mikey doesn’t eat lowfat yogurt,” I said, using a gentle, nonaccusatory tone. “He eats whole milk yogurt.”

“Why?” asked Zack, sounding a little irritated.

“Because lowfat yogurt lacks nutrients that make it a health-promoting food,” I responded.

My response got me thinking: What nutrients are missing in lowfat yogurt? I turned to the internet, and I read up on one interesting and rare fatty acid that Mikey and I would get a lot less of by eating lowfat yogurt because it's found in milk fat: conjugated linoleic acid.

Conjugated linoleic is bottled up and sold as an expensive weight-loss pill. So while lowfat yogurt has less calories, whole milk yogurt contains fatty acids that help trim fat—specifically in the abdominal area! Most new mommies, who are carrying around a few extra pounds, love this. Mikey doesn’t need to loose weight but he needs the calories and nutrients that the fat in whole milk provides.

Conjugated linoleic isn’t just any old fatty acid—it’s a trans fatty acid! I see a bad word in there. It turns out that not all trans fat is bad for us. The artificial trans fat in Doritos is bad, but the naturally occurring trans fat in yogurt is good.

Lastly, conjugated linoleic has antioxidant and antitumor properties.

Bottom line: I am going to eat whole milk yogurt with my baby and cut back on the Hershey’s mini chocolates at work.

Read more about yogurt starting on page 252 of the Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron.

Online Reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugated_linoleic_acid

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/547232

Lemon: on television and in the freezer

Liz Lemon? Do you know this girl? She’s the lead in 30 Rock, a sitcom set behind the scenes of a Saturday Night Live–type show. Comic writer Tina Fey stars as Liz. Jack Donaghy, played by Alec Baldwin, is Liz’s boss, and he calls her “Lemon.” I find the name catchy, fun, and endearing, and I adore Liz’s principled and unflappable character. She can maintain her cool in the absurd situations that pop up throughout the screwball plots (she’d be the perfect mom). The show is a must-see, especially for busy moms who deserve a break and a good laugh.

All of this to say, every time I cook with a lemon I think of Liz Lemon. And when I think of Liz Lemon, I smile.

Although, making a special trip to the store to buy a lemon for two tablespoons of juice doesn’t make me smile. Before I tried the ice cube method in the Super Baby Food book, I either found myself wasting lemons or never having enough of them. When a recipe called for two tablespoons of lemon, I never had it. When I had two lemons sitting on my kitchen counter, nothing wanted lemon juice.

Juicing my lemons into an ice cube tray solves both of these problems. I squeeze the juice out of lemons as soon as I bring them home from the store—and they never go bad. What’s more, I have cubes of juice ready and waiting for any recipe.

Before I start juicing, I wash my hands because I always have to fish out seeds. I prefer to use a tool to help me juice, but Mikey is using my yellow juicing tool as a bath toy right now, so that’s out. The lemon cubes can stay in the freezer up to three months. One cube equals about one tablespoon of juice. I can get about two to four cubes per lemon. No more last-minute trips to the store for lemons!

You can read Ruth Yaron’s tips for choosing and freezing lemons on pages 437 to 438.

PS If you're enjoying this blog, please let more moms and dads know about it by linking to it on your own blog or using the link below to email it around. Thanks!

Spinach on my Mind

I am humbled and rejoiced by spinach. I am humbled when I clean it. I feel so primitive standing next to the sink clipping the leaves off the stems with scissors. The leaves are caked with dirt and I rinse them with warm water. I rejoice in the proof that, for once, I am buying food delivered to me straight from the earth.

I buy the Spinach heads. I've tried the already cleaned, already cut loose leaves, but they are at least twice the price and go bad much faster. It takes a little bit of labor to prepare spinach leaves for the week, but it's worth it, and they are so good for you.

Spinach contains twice as much iron as most other greens. Spinach is also one of the most alkaline-producing foods, making it useful in helping to regulate body pH (Murray). In general, we eat over acidic foods which decrease our pH levels. Low pH levels are linked to cancer and other diseases.

Fitting "super greens" as Ruth Yaron calls them into our diet isn't easy. It isn't complicated but I just never thought about it until I started cooking for my baby. The way I cook and think about ingredients has completely changed. Feeding my baby good food is in my control. Just as I want to protect my baby from a speeding car, I want to charge his body with all the vitamins and nutrients that he needs so he gets the best start possible.

Spinach is the answer for me right now. I add it in scrabbled eggs that I serve every other morning (eggs are high acidity by the way but good for baby for other reasons, remember "balanced diet"). I throw it on pizza. I make a salad. And if I still have some left over by the next Monday, I puree and freeze it for my spinach loaf, a Super Baby Food recipe (p.303).

I have gone back and forth weighing whether the time to labor over my spinach is worth the two dollars that I save and I've officially decide that yes it is worth it. I think the tipping point was freshness. I need my spinach to last a week to a week and a half. I also see the value in eating healthy foods and I am willing to use the little time that I have preparing it.

I swish the leaves around in the water with both hands. An image of women around the world bending over wash tubs comes to mind. Then, I let the dirt settle on the bottom of the sink and pull the leaves out so not to disturb the dirt from the floor of the sink. The water is a yellow green. I have already lost some valuable nutrients in the washing. I drain and rinse the sink, and then I do a quick wash again to make sure that I am not going to bite into a spinach leaf that tastes like a sandy hot dog on the beach. I take two plies of paper towels (attached) or one dish towel and slide it into a ziplock bag. The dish towel or paper towels should make a little pocket. Then, I slip the leaves in the middle. The water from the leaves is absorbed into the the dish towel or paper towels and that moisture keeps the leaves fresh. It always looks like a ton of spinach but spinach always shrinks when you cook it.

To add the spinach to my baby's scrabbled eggs, I take a large handful and roll the leaves into a big taco. Then, I chop them up and add them into the mixing bowl with the raw cracked eggs. Poor everything into a fry pan and breakfast is served in 10 minutes. My baby gobbles it down and so do I. I have peace of mind that I've started the day with spinach.

When I add the spinach to my pizzas, I like to steam the leaves first. My husbands hates the extra dishes, but I think it's better. If you just add the leaves to your pizza, they get a little burnt. But when you steam them first, they are nice and moist and cook very well. After I steam them, I chop them because I always like everything nice and small for my baby.

• Murray, Michael. The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods. New York: Atria Books, 2005.
  
• Yaron, Ruth. Super Baby Food. Peckvilel, PA: F.J. Roberts, 1998