What I ate today on the sugar handling protocol

Delicious food, and plenty of it!

Water first thing in the morning to hydrate after a long sleep.  If the stomach is hydrated well, it is protected and can do its job more efficiently.  I make sure I stop drinking a half hour before eating so as not to dilute digestive juices.  Since I want to eat within an hour of getting out of bed, this means I need to drink my water in the first half hour.  I try to drink at least a pint, or two glasses.

Since I had a lot to do this morning, and it didn't seem like I'd get a chance to make my first food within that hour, I had a quart of raw full-fat goat's milk to tide me over.  It offers protein and fat in small amounts, along with many other nutrients, enzymes, and friendly bacteria.

Breakfast is always high in protein and fat and low...or even devoid...of carbs.  Eggs are my favorite, with sausage or bacon to flavor them, or both.  Sometimes I'm in the mood for cheese, and will add that.  Leftover hearty soups or stews are a wonderful winter breakfast, too.  A nice, meaty chili works as well.  Today I had eggs with sausage and cheese, cooked in bacon grease.

 
Lunch was a large bowl of pork hock soup, made by roasting the hocks for an hour, boiling them for another couple of hours, removing them and picking off the meat, returning everything else (bones, fat, whatever was left) to the pot to simmer overnight.  This was strained and the usual soup ingredients were added....but no grains, pasta, or starchy vegetables were added.  Just carrots, rutabagas, scallions, herbs, onions, and garlic.  Very satisfying.

Snacks were a handful of crispy almonds and some fresh coconut, and a handful of fresh snow peas.  Also a half cup of mint chocolate chip ice cream, a mild cheat.

Two more quarts of water throughout the day....a full quart while lounging in the bath and getting dressed for work.  A pint in the car on the way to work, and another pint on the way home.  Oh, and another pint this evening.  I guess I got three quarts in today.

Tonight, for supper, we had spinach sauteed in bacon grease (we are out of salt pork, waaaah!) and some of our homemade sausage, and some organic carrots with plenty of butter and sea salt.

Later snack:  My special chocolate cake with chevre and berries.  In a 20 oz corningware bowl.  A generous portion with lots of whole milk chevre.

Notice nothing was skim, low fat, lite, etc?  Notice nothing was fortified with anything?  Notice nothing had a label with an ingredient list?  Notice that there was plenty of food and that it was all delicious and satisfying?

I noticed that, too.  This is how I eat to have great sleep and lots of energy, and the way Peter is eating to lose lots of weight.  Clients who are eating this way who need to lose weight are losing it, those who don't need to lose weight aren't.  One client joyfully announced, recently, that she was officially "obese."  Why was she joyful?  Because she'd lost 25 lbs. and was no longer "morbidly obese," and was always full and satisfied.  She reports weight loss every week....except once, when she gained two pounds back.  But she said, "Now I know exactly what I did."  She knows the principles, understands the science.  She can fall off the wagon with no surprises, then hop right back on with the same great results.

There are many principles and much science behind what we are eating and why it is transforming our health in this way, too much for this little blog post.  Be patient.  It is coming.  Soon.

Mint chocolate chunk ice cream

I was in the mood for ice cream.  Mint chocolate chip is my absolute favorite, so that is what I made.

Half cup ice milk pops hardening up in the freezer.

This recipe started last summer, when I stuffed a canning jar with peppermint from our garden, weighted it down with a scrubbed rock, and poured some 95% alcohol over it.  Vodka will do, and I've used it for years, but if you can get Everclear or something similar, it will extract even more flavor from your herbs.  Let it sit in a dark cupboard for at least a month.  Or longer.  Mine sat for about 11 months.  I strained it into a Grolsch bottle today.

A couple of weeks ago...or more....I started saving the most perfect, clean eggs for this.  Since this would be a raw ice cream, I wanted to use eggs that were unwashed, and for that I needed eggs that were pristine.  Please don't use grocery store eggs for any recipe that won't be well cooked.  Salmonella is very, very common in hens that live in the overcrowded and unnatural conditions of a commercial egg farm....even organic.  Organic on the label simply means that the hens were fed organic feed.  It does not mean they were scampering around in the grass, chasing bugs.  Find someone who has those hens and pay them handsomely for some eggs if you cannot keep your own chickens.

Only the most perfect, clean eggs were saved for the raw ice cream.

Only the yokes were used.  Aren't they a lovely color?

For this batch, I used about 13 cups of milk, 5-6 Tbsp homemade mint extract, 5 Tbsp arrowroot powder (a thickening agent to use instead of cornstarch to avoid genetically modified corn), 15 egg yolks, a half cup raw wildflower honey, a few squirts of stevia extract, and a couple shakes of sea salt.

Milk, honey, peppermint extract from last summer.

This mixture was whirled around in the blender to thoroughly mix it.  I tasted it and added a bit more stevia and a bit more mint extract (I'd originally used less than the amount listed above, that number is accurate.)  I had to blend it in three batches.

Frothy goodness!

Next, I needed ice.  I froze some in juice containers left from making quick wine for the folks.  This is easy to crush by simply tapping it with a hammer on the back steps, and putting the resulting crushed ice in a bucket.  It will not come into contact with the ice cream, so it needn't be clean.  When I was a kid, we would break off icicles to use for this purpose. 

Smashing the ice.

The ice cream mixture was put into the freeze container and everything was set up carefully.  That s-curved thing you see is actually the paddle that will churn the ice cream as it freezes, giving it a grainy texture as the ice crystals form.

Setting up the freezer container.

To make the ice really cold, I layered it with rock salt.  Again, this won't come into contact with the ice cream, no worries!  The salted ice goes in the blue bucket, outside the metal freezer container of ice cream mix.

Yup, the same stuff you use on the sidewalk.

Set up in the basement scrub sink, no special clean-up necessary after it is done.

All I had to do was plug it in and leave to go do my evening chores and milk the goats.  I had to come back and check on it every few minutes to add more ice and salt as that melted and the ice cream froze.

I diced some 80% chocolate, the good stuff, about 6 oz.  You can certainly use more, but that is what I had in the house.

Chopped 80% chocolate.

Finally, after an eternity, I heard the noisy motor stop downstairs.  When the ice cream gets very thick, the motor can no longer turn it and it jams.  Time to unplug it and take a look:

Taking the lid off.....look at that color!

That lovely color is from the egg yolks and a little from the mint extract.  Unlike commercial ice cream, mine has no green dyes in it.  This is really ice milk, so it will freeze quite hard and is a little grainy.  Unlike commercial ice cream, mine has no antifreeze in it (yep, that is what I said, google it) and is not loaded with sugar, which prevents the hard freezing as well.  Using cream instead of milk would make it a little less hard, and this is how I would make it if I had access to raw cream.  Goat's milk is naturally homogenized and unlike cow's milk, the cream does not rise to the top.  Well, a little does, but most stays mixed within the milk.  I would need a mechanical cream separator to extract the cream, and they run about $4-500, which I really can't justify.  That's ok, I like the ice milk just fine.

Because it freezes hard, I like to make pops with it instead of storing it in one big container.  I did run out of little cups so I put two small containers in the freezer.  These will need to sit at room temp for a few minutes in order to eat them.  What I usually do is just let it thaw a bit, then eat around the edges, and put the container back for another time.  Shhh, don't tell on me!

This ice cream makes a very healthy snack, as it is really a frozen eggnog.  There is very little sugar in it....a half cup of honey to 14-15 cups of ice cream is not much sugar.  I may just have some for breakfast tomorrow.

Farm breakfast

When feeding the chicks this morning, I took a few steps towards the fence by the woods to peek at my mushroom logs.  There were a few that were ready to pick, so I snagged 'em for supper.  Meanwhile, two smaller ones ended up in my breakfast.

A few shiitakes from our logs.

A generous sprinkle of salty feta, made from our goat's milk.

Sausage from our hogs, herbed from our garden, and the shiitakes.

Eggs from our pastured hens....that yellow yoke is unmistakably from healthy hens!

Aaaahhhhhhh.....breakfast!

This was so good, I may just have it for lunch today, too!  Worth the trouble?  Oh, yes!

Teaching the chicks to forage.....safe from hawks

I don't really need to teach them.  They instinctively know what to do.  I just have to give them access to suitable forage, and keep them safe from predators.  This is how we do this here at Blue Viola Farm.

  These chicks will be 8 weeks old tomorrow.

A couple years ago my dad and I build this hoophouse aka chicken tractor.  This is a way to keep chicks...or in some cases, full grown chickens....on pasture while still keeping them contained and safe from most predators.  We only had to purchase 4 2x4's, two of them eight feet long and two of them ten feet long, and three cattle panels for the frame of the walls and hoop.  We had chicken netting, tarps, and the door (that rusted thing you see in the picture below, something that a friend found in a dumpster where he works and that has had many uses here ever since....it is fantastic for setting on a wheelbarrow for sifting compost.)  The door is simply wired in place for hinges and there is a snap wired on the other side to hold it closed.

Light Brahma hen visiting....note the size difference.

Here is a view of the entire hoophouse.  It got warped last fall with that freakish, wet snow storm we had in October, even without the tarps in place.  But it still works just fine.

Bricks are used to fill any chick-sized gaps when we move the hoophouse each day.

We do this so they can have access to fresh grass and weeds, and we attach ropes to the corners of the tractor (so-called chicken tractor because it moves) and drag it very slowly to new grass, watching for chicks that might get crushed.  Haven't squished one yet.  They learn pretty quickly to rush to the new grass.  It really is amazing how much fresh greens they will eat, given the opportunity.  It is a large part of their natural diet, along with plenty of bugs.

This is why the netting covers the entire chicken tractor.

Now that they are outside...they went into this new home at six weeks of age, once they were fully feathered and could withstand temperature fluctuations without a heat lamp....they get fed a diet primarily of whole grains.  I slightly sprout wheat and oats for them, any small grains will do.  Barley is great, but I can't get it here.  They also get a small amount of whole corn in the afternoon.  Some of the chicks are still a bit small to handle the whole kernels, but they seem to find smaller pieces to eat.

For the protein portion of their diet, I still feed catfood, but only when something more natural is not available or if my schedule is just too tight.  Otherwise, they get fresh goat's milk, whey from cheesemaking, chevre that is getting past its prime, meat scraps from making broth, and worms that I dig from our organic vegetable gardens as I prepare the soil for planting.  I can fill a quart container about 3/4 full of earthworms in a few minutes.  This is the chicks favorite food, hands down.  Wings down.  Beaks down?

Most importantly, they get no soy, not a speck.

I love this brown and white spotty Icelandic chick.  Hope it is a pullet (young female.)

 

Ginger hopes for grain, while Peach stands on the board that I took off the hoophouse to take pictures of the chicks.  Plummy scratches her back with her horns....don't you wish you could do that?  Tilt your head and scratch that itch between your shoulder blades?  Ahhhhh.......

Once the chicks are close to full size, I'll start letting them out to mingle with the rest of the flock.  I'll lift their hoophouse onto concrete blocks on one end so they can come and go without interference from the goats.  Then I'll start training them to join the rest of the flock in the coop at night by carrying them in just after dark.  The hens, anyways.

The roosters can continue to live in the hoophouse until fall, when the weather cools and it is time to.....er.....fill the freezer.  Our roosters have a fantastic, happy, natural life and only one bad day.  Unlike commercial chickens, for whom the reverse is true, when their final day offers them release from misery.

There are growing numbers of small, local farmers that are raising their poultry in such a natural and healthy manner.  Not surprisingly, the meat and eggs from such birds are very, very healthy for us.  If you can't raise your own meat bird or keep a few hens for eggs....and most communities do allow a few backyard chickens....get to your local farmer's market and talk to people.  You'll find someone nearby who has properly-raised poultry and eggs to sell.  It will be double or triple (or more) the price in the grocery store, but you can enjoy truly healthy food without thinking about the concentration camp conditions that the animals were kept in.

In the spring, it is not unusual to have someone in the neighborhood with a few hens running loose.  Often these people have excess eggs to sell.  Go knock on their door and ask.  Eggs will keep in the fridge for four months if not washed (ask for unwashed clean eggs if you plan on storing them.)  Feel free to buy while they are available and stock up.  Do the same if you keep a few hens.

When I was a kid, we lived next door to a commercial egg farm, the type with the "battery" cages.  Five hens stuffed shoulder to shoulder in wire cages above a manure pit.  A conveyer brought them their food and water, and they laid their eggs on the wire bottom of the cage.  The cages had a slight tilt and the eggs would roll out to a gutter and a person would roll a cart along the aisles, collecting the eggs twice a day.

The fumes would make your eyes water.

Those hens never did this.    Or this.

As a kid, I learned to mimic the sounds those hens made.  As an adult, when I finally kept a some hens myself, I learned that the only chicken sound that I could make was that of a hen frightened and upset.  That was the only sound I'd ever heard.  I was rather disturbed at this realization.  This was a very large part of our decision to start to raise chickens for meat as well.

I'm asked often how I can do this, raise them and then eat them.  If I'm going to eat chicken....humans are omnivores....how can I not?  It is not because I am cold-hearted, rather, the opposite is true.  I know not everyone can do this, either because of their location, time factors, or the ability to look at a live animal one day and have it on the dinner table the next.  But everyone can support local farmers who have taken cruelty out of meat.  Don't be someone who rails against the likes of Michael Vic and then supports that behavior and worse in the grocery store.  Vote with your dollars.  Buy good meat, poultry, and eggs.  It is so worth it.

Never enough baby goats!

It is time for some baby goat updates.  They are growing like weeds!

Bartlet and Lilly

Cute weeds, that is.  These kids....so close in age that I can't help but think of  them as triplets....are full of health and life and vigor.  Their personalities are already starting to stand out.

Ginger's twin bucklings, 3 weeks old today, I call Cortland and Bartlet.  Yes, I know they'll get new names when they go to their new homes, but I have to sort them out in my mind.  All my goats are named after plants, and since the oldest buckling is huge and white, he is named after a large apple.  Bartlet is sweet and tan, so he gets named for a pear.  And Lilly, five days younger, is so feminine, even more so next to her feisty brothers.

Bartlet, Lilly, and Cortland

Cortland is always in the front, the first to run up to me, the one who demands the most attention in a boisterous way.  He will be a fun goat, and will be bold and a loyal friend, a great pet.  And huge.  He will clear a LOT of brush for someone and enjoy every single bite.

Cortland practicing his brush-clearing skills

Bartlet was the snuggler right from day one.  He is the one that would leap onto my lap and push against me for warmth and affection.  I don't allow this anymore....even at only three weeks old, these kids are far too big to be competing for my lap.  I stand when with them now.  They still get plenty of pats and scratches, but I must consider their behavior now as to how they should behave when fully grown.  Climbing and any pushiness with the horns is not tolerated, rather, they are firmly pushed away.  They are already getting the idea, and last night Cortland got on his hind legs a few times to reach for me, then didn't touch me with his feet.  Good little boy!

Lilly scooting past big brother Bartlet, and Bartlet still turns it into a hug of sorts.

Lilly still gets her feet on me from behind while I am working with her brothers.  I finally figured out that she was asking to be held, so I can avoid this behavior by picking her up shortly after they finish their bottles.  I hold her and talk to her and give her some special time, preparing her for the special relationship with the future person who will ultimately be milking her twice a day.  Once she has a few minutes of "me time," she is ready to be put into the fray and have some frolicking with her siblings.

A few very short videos:  

Why it is so stinkin' hard to get pictures of this crew.

A minute of quiet exploration and play.

Now this is devotion! Or hunger. Probably hunger.

Why do I have goats?  This is a question that I am often asked.  It was suggested to me some years ago by a naturopathic doctor that raw milk might be healing to my digestive tract.  Yikes, was she crazy?  Did she know that a mere teaspoonful of dairy products would make me very sick, with much pain, for at least two days?  Now she wanted me to drink it by the cupful....and RAW???

This was the first time I heard the name Weston A. Price.  She suggested that I do some research on www.realmilk.com and www.westonaprice.org.  Intrigued?  Here is a great place to start....a very short video by my heroine, Sally Fallon Morrell, on real milk.

It took me well over a year of reading and research before I got brave enough to consider trying raw milk.  I even payed surprise visits to farms within an hour's drive to see if I wanted to buy raw milk from them.  I didn't.  I did not see cows on pasture, in fact, I didn't even see any pastures, just closed barns full of confined cows on a gorgeous day.  One farm has a little muddy paddock that was empty but had cows in it recently, but not a blade of grass in site...within a fence, that is.  Plenty of grass, just not that the animals had access to.  Other farms had small pastures with cows in them, but a closer look revealed that these were the dry cows.  Once lactating, they moved indoors onto cement floors and had all their food carried to them by humans.

I gave up.  I bought a pregnant goat.

Ginger in her third season.

The day finally arrived when I would try my very first sip of milk in over 25 years.  I was a nervous wreck.  I had a supply of Benedryl and planned my sip to take place just before two days off from work.  I took a timid gulp and waited.

The feeling overwhelmed me.  It was a feeling of desire for more, an instinct that told me that this white liquid was something my body wanted and needed and would not rebel against.  Funny thing is, I don't even like plain milk.  Yet I was strongly, irresistibly drawn to it.  I drank an entire cup.

I was fine.  In fact, my mouth watered for more.  To this day, years later, my mouth waters when I milk the goats.  And I still don't care for the taste of a glass of plain milk.

And yes, indeed, it was immensely healing to my digestive tract.  This became very apparent after the first season, when I needed to dry off my doe (gradually stop milking her so she could put her energy into her current pregnancy) and would be without fresh milk for about ten weeks.  Many symptoms of my previous long-term struggle....ok, I'll say it, cover your eyes you delicate souls: daily diarrhea.....came back during this time without real, raw milk.  The next year I was ready and froze many bags of milk for use during this time.  Yes, we must breed the does each year in order to get plenty of milk.  Pregnancy and delivery of babies is what triggers lactation in all mammals.

Plum is a "first freshener," or a doe who is on her first lactation.

It soon became apparent that we would be keeping dairy goats for a long, long time.  We can easily consume 2 or more gallons a day....no, not by drinking a gallon apiece, rather, most of it is made into cheese (raw cheese, which cannot be purchased in the US unless it is aged for at least 60 days.  This means no chevre, no cottage cheese, no May Gouda....) for use throughout the year.  Most of this cheese is made during the spring, summer, and fall, when the does have access to green, growing pasture.  Other things we do with the milk include making kefir, yogurt, chowders (yes, I can tolerate real milk even if it is not raw), shakes and smoothies, ice cream, etc.

Even my feral cats have become quite tame through their twice daily dose of raw milk.

 Sketcher now lets me pet him.  It was three months before I even saw him when he first arrived on the farmlet.

Johnny Cat startled me one day by sitting very close while I milked, purring rather loudly.

Even the cats know what is real food.  Why is it so hard to get real milk?  Vote with your wallets, dear readers, if you have access to real food of any type.  Pay a little more, create demand.  It is so worth it.

The spring of fruit

The spring of fruit...that is what I'm calling this one.  We completed the raspberry bed, dug holes for currants and gooseberries and are awaiting the arrival of the bushes  Now the grape arbor is completed.

This time Goldie is supervising.  Until she gets fired from the job.  Soon.

Disclaimer:  We have no carpentry skills.  Just determination and a circular saw and hammer and a drill.  This project is simple enough for such skill-free people such as the hubster and I.  I'm sure you could do a much better job.

The entire project cost less than $80, and was financed by money from selling goat's milk soap.  I try to make the farmlet finance itself whenever possible.  This way I figure the resulting grapes will be free.  This is one of my favorite words, even more than "clearance."  Here is how we did it:

It started with a couple of impulse-buy vines.  One survived in spite of severe neglect for two years.

Working off existing fence posts, we set four more posts.

The size was based on a cattle panel, $20 at TSC.  With a coupon.

Filling the post holes once the posts are level.  We did two at a time, securing them with the top boards before back-filling the post holes.

After the frame was secured, the cattle panel was stapled in place.

Enough for a Sunday afternoon.  It is looking like an arbor.

Two innocent hens in supervisory positions.

An argument breaks out over which employee deserves a bonus.

The employee deserving the bonus steps in to separate the squabblers.  Supervisors are both fired and escorted to the coop to clean out their desks.

Monday:  Install the grape vines and finish some details on the arbor.

Add boards under the panels for support.

Move the Concord grape vine from the front yard.  There is a small sign of life, and where there is life, there is hope...of grapes one day.  This vine was given to me by an elderly woman for whom I was raking up acorns to feed my pigs two falls ago.  We had a great time chatting about many things.  I went home with acorns, walnuts, and a grape vine.  Her very simple arbor inspired mine.

That original Catawba vine put down roots everywhere that the vine was touching the ground.  I divided it up and got four from the one.  I hope they all survive.  If not, I have grape insurance in the numbers.

Two of the four vines, Catawba if I remember correctly.

The finished and planted arbor.  I completed the project by sprinkling the bare mounds of dirt with white clover seed to crowd out weeds.

Why are we going through all this effort?  I am becoming more and more disturbed at what passes for food in the grocery stores, and all the chemicals that are sloshed onto the whole foods.  I got a book from the library a couple of years ago that was written to teach aspiring organic farmers how to get through all the rules and regulations, explaining each one in real farming terms.  I read it hoping to learn some methods.  It left me disturbed at how many loopholes there were....for example, otherwise toxic items can be used to fertilize crops if they are composted first.  Composting doesn't neutralize all chemicals, and no testing is required to see that any bad stuff remains.  Although I will still purchase organic foods over non-organic, they are still far safer....it was quite eye-opening to see that what I pictured as organic farming is NOT what is happening, especially on a large scale.

And the large scale is scary, too.  I just don't trust the huge Food Giants integrity when they offer organic items.  Sorry.  Can't do it.

The solution is to grow as much of our own food as we can, adding some items each year.  The care and maintenance gets easier each year and becomes habit.  The savings in our food bill are enormous.  The health benefits are incalculable. 

To complete this project, I'll still need to move some of the perennial flowers that are under the arbor....bee balm, purple coneflower, and a butterfly bush.  Simple enough.  Our backyard makeover is almost complete.  Whew!  Can you fit a food bearing plant or two in your yard?

Reading less, sleeping more

I'm not getting my usual amount of reading done lately and I'm thrilled.  I can't even get through a brochure and I'm ecstatic.  I used to read books, magazines, etc, for 1-3 hours every day.  Now I read for about 5 minutes.

I have to change my routine so I can get my reading done.  It is awesome.

Those who know me well know that I had a pretty healthy diet.  I ate based on the research of Dr. Weston A. Price, and was much healthier for it.  The food is delicious, and this quest set my husband and I on a path that led us to raising a lot of our own food.

At a WAPF potluck, hosted on our farmlet some time ago, I met a woman who was a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner.  When I found out what she did, I peppered her with questions for the rest of the afternoon, and also followed up with several emails and phone calls.  There was also a naturopathic doctor there, and another NTP student.  All agreed that this training was for me.

They were correct.  It was an amazing journey.

Early in the program, we paired up with fellow students to evaluate our current health status as it relates to nutrition.  I was stunned to see that I needed a LOT of help nutritionally.  How could that be?  I was doing SO much to eat only nutrient dense foods, properly raised and properly prepared.

Well, it is not just about what you eat.  It is also about how your digestive tract is working to assimilate those nutrients.  Then there is the component of how stable your blood sugar is....this is critical to health and well-being.  Mine was off the charts.....bad.  With my great diet.  I was stunned.

The digestive issues didn't surprise me, as I'd been struggling with this my entire life.  Increasing food allergies, all to healthy whole foods, was my big concern.  I wondered what I'd eat in my old age, as I was adding to my "do not eat" list every year.

The blood sugar thing....that was the shocker.  I ate a diet pretty devoid of all sugar and white flour.  Sugar was a rare treat, and was usually in the form of honey or maple syrup in very small amounts.  By rare, I mean no more than once every other week or so.  Considering most people today in the US eat close to a half pound of sugar a day, I was pretty stinkin' low on sugar.  And someone else out there was eating a pound a day to make up for what I wasn't eating.

So why am I reading less and sleeping more?  My blood sugar has stabilized.  It no longer spikes up and down throughout the day.  Did you know that the body can only handle one spike a day?  And not every day?  It wears the adrenal glands out.  They freak out with every dip and spike.  Add to that all the stress we are under, and add on top of that a nightly dose of stressful entertainment in the form of stress-inducing tv shows, movies, sports, and video games.

One of the best health changes that I can't ignore is my new-found energy and ability to sleep well.  I used to read every night to fall asleep, often for a couple of hours.  Then when I felt sufficiently sleepy, I'd reach over to turn off the bedside lamp.  Many times, that simple action would wake me up fully and I'd have to turn the light back on and read for another hour.

For years, I got my best sleep in the morning.  Since I couldn't get to sleep before 1 or 2 AM, I'd often sleep until 9 or 10 AM.  If I didn't, I would not have energy to give to my evening clients.  My husband referred to me as a diesel....you know, slow to start on cold mornings....or any morning.

Within a few short weeks of changing my eating habits to rest my adrenal glands and stabilize my blood sugar throughout the day, each and every day, I started to fall asleep rather quickly.  I read for 5 minutes or so and fall asleep while reading.  I can turn off that light and I'm back to sleep as my head hits the pillow....I finally understand that expression!

Best of all, I wake up naturally, well rested and refreshed and without an alarm clock.  This happens between 6:30 and 7:30, but mostly between 6:45 and 7:20.  Unless it is raining, then it will be closer to 7:30.  I have energy to get stuff done, and you should see the projects that are getting completed here!  The hubster has more energy, too, and the weight is melting off him.

The food is SO good, too, and not devoid of treats in any way.  We had our first apple pie in a while this week.  Instead of making a full size pie, I made two tiny ones, so we wouldn't overdo it.  We won't be doing this every day, but it sure was good.  For daily treats, we rely on chevre, black bean cake, and nut bombs.  Soon, homemade ice cream will be added to this list.  All of these treats are really small meals of nutrient dense, healthy foods.  All stabilize, rather than spiking, the blood sugar levels.

I am also enjoying helping others adjust their lifestyles for improved energy and health with nutritional therapy.  My clients have different healthy foods in their fridges and cupboards than I do, not having goats and chickens, but here is a peek into mine:

A peek inside my fridge this week....white, white, and more white!

Spring in my fridge.....lots of milk and cheese!  You will also notice that there are NO processed foods or drinks.  You see veggies, jars of soup, jars of chevre layered with fruit, gallons of milk gathering for cheesemaking, eggs from our hens but in cartons given to me.  You see jars of lard and saved  bacon grease and the supplements for my dogs.  There is a jar of strawberry rhubarb sauce, made without sugar of any kind.

Behind this you might see more veggies, raw almonds, 3 year miso, beets, and whatever pickled (fermented, no vinegar or heat) vegetables are left from last summer's garden...a few garlic dill cukes and some hot peppers.   Oh, and if you know what to look for, you can see 3 types of goat cheese:  chevre, feta, and gouda from our goats.

In the door (not shown) are vinegars, homemade wine, water, chai tea concentrate, kombucha, cheese making cultures and rennet, wine yeasts, butter, injectibles for the goats, a bag of plum pits in soil conditioning for spring planting, a bag of wheat flour that I ground myself from organic wheat, home made mustard, and some olive and sesame oils.

For convenience foods, see the soup and the jars of chevre with fruit, the nuts and the cheese.

The contents of my fridge change with the seasons and what is fresh and available.  For the next few months, lots of space will be devoted to milk and cheese.  There will be many trips to the cellar fridge with gallons of milk and finished wheels of cheese to make room in the kitchen fridge for daily foods. 

Trust me when I say my fridge didn't always look this way.  I'll confess....there was a time when Diet Coke was a main feature, as well as many packaged products, margarine, and lots of sugary snacks.  It was a journey to change my habits and my tastes....and to get the hubby on board.  He was on a different time schedule, but is fully on board now and enjoying the food and the weight is melting off him. 

If this overwhelms you, you are not alone.  Try adding one or two healthy foods to your fridge...and your diet....each week or each month, and eat/drink those first, before allowing yourself to have what you are used to.  I weaned myself off Diet coke that way....I forced myself to drink water before I could have some Coke.  I reduced my intake from 2 liters a day (hangs head in shame) to a can or two a day.  Then someone told me of the connection between aspartame and macular degeneration, which I was diagnosed with at age 40...with no family history.  I did a little research.  The soda in my fridge and cupboards was poured down the drain, and I never had another sip again.  Ever.  It was just not worth going blind.

A great start in adding healthy foods is.....BACON!  Yes, bacon from pastured pigs is a health food.  Run, don't walk, to your local farmer's market or the local chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation and find some in your area.  You can thank me later.