Tips and Prep Work for the Future

A few months ago I came across Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and started reading it. First, this is an awesome book that everyone should own......not rent from the library, BUY IT. There's simply too much information in the book to get any real benefit from it if you don't own it. In short, Sally Fallon talks about the importance of eating a wholesome diet that is prepared in a traditional way. Nourishing Traditions starts off with a introduction section which gives detailed information about the difference components of food, i.e. fats, carbohydrates, proteins. The introduction section is the first 78 pages of the book. Pages 79 through 620 are all receipes, awesome recipes that address every aspect of cooking and eating that ANYONE, including me, could phantom. The remaining 56 pages are appendices, including a sources section, that are really helpful if you're really trying to make a change to cooking and eating in a more traditional manner. 

In the future a lot of my cooking posts/experiments are going to hail from information I found in this book as well as a few traditional cooking blogs. Having said all that, if you would like to experiment along with me you need to know about an important bit of information that I found out recently and do some prep work. 

Important Information

While reading The Healthy Home Economist blog, I recently came across a post entitled "Whole Grains Cause Cavities?" The blog's author, Sarah, attended the 2010 Wise Traditions Conference, where author Remi Nagel presented. During the presentation, Mr. Nagel made an observation about traditional cultures that had been somewhat overlooked in the past: Traditional cultures typically do not use the entire grain, they remove the bran. He suggests that bran from wheat, spelt, rye, kamut, barley, corn, millet and oats be removed through sifting or sieving. Rami Nagel also suggests that whole grains MUST  be soured first to significantly reduce phytic acid. Phytic acid, aside from hindering the absorption of mineral in grains, is a major cause of why whole grains cause cavities. According to Sarah,  Mr. Nagel states the best method for souring grains, thus significantly reducing phytic acid is to soak grains in a mixture of filtered water and liquid whey. The ratio is 1 cup of grains to 1 cup of filtered water plus 1 tablespoon of liquid whey. 

Prep Work

All that information lead to your prep work. Sarah did a great step-by-step post and video of how to make liquid whey (yes, you have to make it yourself). Please watch that and complete the steps. 

Also, grind and sift your grains. Put them in the freezer when done. 

Lastly you're going to need some sort of fabric bowl cover. As soon as my camera is done charging I'm going to do a tutorial on how to make awesome reuseable bowl covers and we will be all set to start on start preparing food in a traditional manner. 

Until next time, 

Kellan

P.S. I'm SUPER excited about this!!!!!!!

Belief and Faith: Luke 8:40-48

I'm going to stray away a little on today's post from what I usually write about. If you've read the purpose of this blog you know that I write this as a means of sharing my experiences with trying to live a healthier and greener lifestyle, and to me that includes working on my relationship with God. I believe that it's important to work on the spiritual aspects of my life as well as they physical, thus from now on there will be the occasional posts about faith. Having said that, I've been in conversation with God a lot lately regarding some aspects of my life and yesterday I had a serious revelation that I feel that I need to share with as many people as possible.

The Faith to Make Things Happen

Have you ever wanted something, prayed for it, had God speak to you telling you that he would bless you with it and then didn’t receive it? Have you ever wondered why? Do you then question if God had really spoken to you or if you were simply all in your mind? I’m going to be honest, I have. Actually I often find myself in this situation and as I’ve been earnestly working on myself lately I wanted to know why. I asked God to show me why these situations occur in my life and I was honestly a little shocked by the answer: We often don’t receive our blessings because we don’t truly believe that God is and can.

Now I’m sure after reading that one line some of you reading this are pissed off. You thinking “Of course, I believe God is and can.” But do you really? Truly think about how you live your life and the words that come out of your mouth. I’ll give you an example from my personal life. At the age of 17, I began having debilitating migraines that grossly affected my quality of life.  I spent countless hours in the hospital and racked up a lot of money in hospital bills. I’ve had pretty much every neurological test run on me possible and from a medical prospective, nothing is wrong is me.  I’m perfectly healthy. No doctor could explain why I continued to have these migraines and the medication they gave me didn’t work, they were stumped and eventually I accepted that this problem would just be a part of my life. I didn’t have them very often so it wasn’t that big of a deal or so I thought. Recently I began having migraines back to back, again the doctors ran tests and again found nothing wrong. I changed my eating habits, my lifestyle and it changed nothing. Finally I became desperate and in my desperation turned to God. I prayed to God asking him to heal me. The next day I woke up and I felt better, everything seemed so clear, it was as if fog had been lifted from around me.  This went on for a few days and then one day I ate something that under my new healthy diet I shouldn’t have eaten and I didn’t drink the amount of water that I was supposed to drink and as the night came to a close I began being fearful of what the next day would bring. I began to fear losing the clarity that I had recently received or even worse having a migraine because of what I had eaten and what I hadn’t done. A few days later I did have a migraine, in terms of pain it was mild but it took a lot out of me. I was in bed, in the dark for almost 36 hours.  When I came back to my right mind I began to pray and ask God why this was happening to me. I believed that God was trying to teach me something but I couldn’t figure out what it was, today God revealed plainly the purpose behind all this. He was trying to get me to understand this point: People pray and say that they have faith in God but then act and/or speak is a manner that is contradictory to what they just professed. I’ll go back to the example I just gave regarding my migraines. I prayed and asked  God to heal me but then when I did something that went against the “lifestyle changes” that I had made in an attempt heal myself, I freaked out and became fearful  of what the outcome would be based on those actions. If I truly believed that God had healed me would it matter that I only drank 50 oz of water instead of 75 or that I ate Little Caesar’s pizza for dinner? No. Now I should try to be as healthy as possible, which would include being properly hydrated and eating a wholesome diet? Yes, of course but one day of compromise shouldn’t make or break me. My healing isn’t due to anything that I have done or could ever do, my healing comes from God. If I could have healed myself, I would have been healed a long time ago.

God lead me to Luke 8:40-48, which gives an excellent example of someone with a similar situation. When I compared myself to the woman in Luke 8:40-48, we had a lot in common.  The Bible says that the woman had been afflicted with hemorrhages, bleeding, for 12 years. She had spent every penny she had and no one could help her. At this point, this woman had to believe that her affliction was a part of her life, as I did. She understood that there was nothing that she could do to heal herself but she believed that Jesus could heal her. Think of how great her faith must have been, she believed so much that Jesus didn’t have to take the time to acknowledge her, that He didn’t have to touch her, she believed that if she touched his clothing that she would be healed.  What could we all do if we had faith like that?

The second thing that I took from this woman is this: When you have faith that God is going to bless you move forward as though you’ve already received the blessing. When the woman explained to Jesus why she touched Him, the Bible says “In front of all the people, she blurted out her story – why she touched him and how at that same moment she was healed.” Now let’s be completely realistic for a second, this woman suffered from hemorrhages aka bleeding, so I wouldn’t imagine that she suddenly felt herself stop hemorrhaging and yet when we presented her case before the crowd she told them that at the same moment she touched His robe she was healed. If you think about a situation in your life in which you’ve asked for something and it seems like nothing is happening have you ever considered the possibility maybe nothing is happening because you haven’t moved forward. So let’s give this point a real life scenario. Let’s say that your dream in life is to own a business. You pray about it, but that’s all you do. You never actually act. How is God supposed to make your business prosperous when you never start it? It’s just as important to move forward as it is to believe that God can and will. The act of moving forward is a outward expression of the faith that you have in God and the belief in what He’s promised you. What’s holding you back? What step do you need to take to start receiving your blessings? I know it’s cliché but everything starts with a leap of faith. 

Until next time, 

Kellan