What?! I thought whole grains were good for me!

My mother-in-law introduced me to the wonder that is homemade bread.  Then, I started doing some research into why my health was not so good.  What I discovered was that baker's yeast is a rather new invention (1868, but not wildly popular until after WWII) and not the tried and true, safe ingredient we've been led to believe.  I mean after all the Better Homes and Garden cookbook and Betty Crocker use baker's yeast to make healthy homemade bread so it can't be bad right?!  Actually, if you can find a cookbook older than probably 100 years they would all contain sourdough recipes, not yeasted bread recipes.  I would love to get my hands on some of those recipes!  

Anti-nutrients in Whole Grains:

Phytic acid is found in whole grains that have not been soured, soaked (I'll explain this at a later date) or sprouted.  The article "Be Kind to Your Grains" which comes from the book Nourishing Traditons by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, explains the following about whole grains:  "untreated phytic acid can combine with calcium, magnesium, copper, iron and especially zinc in the intestinal tract and block their absorption.  This is why a diet high in improperly prepared whole grains may lead to serious mineral deficiencies and bone loss."  

Gluten.  We've all probably heard about gluten allergies and celiac disease by now.  But, did you know that people who do not have serious gluten allergies probably could eat properly prepared bread?  Sourdough helps break down the gluten and makes digestion easier.  In fact, the rising rate of gluten allergies is being linked to the improper preparation of grains.  

Enzyme inhibitors also exist in whole grains that hamper the effectiveness of the pancreas. These exist because the part of the grain that we eat is the seed and seeds have enzyme inhibitors so that they can function properly (ie. not sprout until the conditions are ripe to grow).   These enzyme inhibitors put undo stress on our digestive tract making us more susceptible to infection later.  

Other benefits to sourdough:

Besides avoiding all of the anti-nutriets, sourdough actually increases the vitamin content of the bread.  Digestion of bread will be easier on the body and allergies are less likely to develop.  These are all wonderful things if you have a little one, like I do, who has a deep love for bread.  

For further research:

"Be kind to your grains"

"A Healing Protocol for Celiac Disease"

Scroll down to the middle of the page and read the findings on Sourdough bread.

"Wheaty Indiscretions"  

This article gives a lot of practical advice on what kind of flour to buy and if you don't make your own bread what kind of breads are acceptable to buy.

I'd love to hear your opinions on this matter.  When I first found out about this information it blew my mind, but made a lot of sense.  I hope everyone is enjoying their week.

I'm going to pretend...

For the record, I am pretending that the hard work I put into canning today produced more than 1 quart of tomatoes and 2 pints of pickled okra.  I wish I didn't hate wasting so much.  And, I know that later this winter when I make homemade tomato soup or put those tomatoes into a stew I will be glad; but, I will at no point this winter be thankful for the okra myself.  I may be thankful that someone else gets to enjoy the pickled flavor of a garden veggie, but I do not love anything preserved in the way of dill.  I do, however love bread and butter pickles.  Okay, I feel better now that I've got that off my chest.  :)  I hope you feel better too.!

Iron Deficiency...not quite

The first time I was "diagnosed" with anemia was when I had my first foot surgery my freshman year in college due to a sports injury (although looking back now this was probably the first sign that my nutrition wasn't right).  My foot would not heal from the incision.  It was supposed to close up after the first week, three weeks later it still hadn't.  The doctor assessed that I was anemic and put me on an iron supplement.  Instantly my energy levels soared and my foot slowly healed.  I asked the doctor if I was doing something wrong...should I improve something in my diet?  Oh no, he replied, this was just a fluke thing that should go away with time.   Well, the next time my problem popped up was when I was pregnant.  Again, I was put on a supplement and again, I asked if I should change something.  Oh no, this will go away after your pregnancy.  It definitely did not, so I took matters into my own hands and started eating foods rich in iron like broccoli and spinach.  I hate spinach so I started putting it into my pasta sauces, eggs, etc. so that I couldn't taste it, but I was definitely eating it.  This helped some, but if I went a week without having something rich in these regularly I felt my energy levels plummet (not exactly an ideal thing for chasing around a baby).  So I started researching, surely there was a way for me to keep my iron up without eating it everyday.  

My discoveries:

Vitamin B12 is needed to prevent anemia--only source is animal products--raw red meat (not trying this one anytime soon--and raw milk and raw milk products.  Pasteurization kills a ton of good stuff in milk.  Read about the safety of raw milk and what pasteurization does to milk here.  What convinced me to switch though, is that this is the way our ancestors have had milk for years and years and it did them a great deal of good.  Whole milk from the cow was considered a health food.  Take for example this quote from Laura Ingalls Wilder in Little House on the Prairie after the family received their first cow after settling in the prairie and they got enough milk to fill a small cup.  "Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura all agreed to give the milk to Baby Carrie" (171).  She would need the milk above all of them, but they drank the milk from that day forward.  It is a new concept to drink skim milk for health, but that will have to wait for a different post for full explanation.  My son would not drink pasteurized milk after I weaned him from nursing, however, a few months later when I gave him raw milk, he loved it!  He drinks it all the time now.  I've often wonder if it tastes better to him because it is more like what he is used to from nursing.

Phytates in grains.  The USDA promotes a diet rich in whole grains (ie. not white flour), this is wonderful, except that most of our grains today aren't properly prepared and are full of phytates.  Unless grains are properly prepared (ie. sourdough, soaked grains, sprouted grains--all ways our ancestors made grains by the way, before brewer's yeast was introduced) then the body may be unable to assimilate minerals such as zinc, iron, calcium and others.  Phytates (aka phytic acid) combines with iron, calcium, magnesium, copper and zinc in the intestinal track blocking their absorption.  

Iron needs things like fat-soluble vitamins that are found in butter and cod liver oil.  I took neither of these before these findings.  

For iron absorption:  the trace mineral molybdenum is needed in small amounts which can be found in lentils, liver, grains, legumes, and dark green leafy veggies.  I only ate dark green veggies and ill-prepared grains prior.  

So, I added a few new things to my diet--lentils, cod liver oil and raw milk, and I started making sourdough bread and soaked grains and viola!  My energy is much improved.  I'll be anxious to see what my blood tests reveal about my iron the next time my blood is taken; I think my levels will be right where they need to be.  

I'd love to hear any questions or discussion points you have on this topic.

Austen and Burney

The sensible thing to do would be to explain why I named my blog Austen and Burney; however, the thought had not occurred to me until someone commented wanting to know why.  Well, the short answer is I named my blog Austen after Jane Austen and Burney after Frances Burney because they are both writers who I admire both for their personal life as well as their works.

The Long Answer:

Frances Burney is one of the first female novelists to ever make enough money to support herself.  She heavily influenced later authors, especially Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thackery.  She lived a very interesting life.  Her father was known for music and brought a wide range of social elites and thinkers to the house frequently.  She was shunned by her father who favored her sisters because they were beautiful and Burney apparently was unable to read until 8 possibly due to dyslexia.  She did not marry until her forties and then traveled extensively through Europe.  I've read only one of her five novels, Evelina, and find it to be very much in the same vein as Jane Austen.  Burney creates a novel where the characters are challenged to follow society's standards and their own moral standards and somehow find themselves somewhere in between.  As much as I like the novel what really drives my passion for Burney is her non-fiction work.  Her diaries are amazing accounts of what 18th century life was like.  She did amazing things in her life like chronicle the Battle of Waterloo, the French Revolution and describe how she had a mastectomy without anesthesia back when surgeries of this nature were virtually unheard of.  Lastly, I'm drawn to her because she is unfortunately becoming rather obscure.  Her works are not widely known and are difficult to find in book stores.  Especially her non-fiction work which is such a shame.  One of my secrete passions is obscure female writers who write good novels.

Jane Austen is a stereotypical author for any woman to gravitate to right?  What poor guy dating a girl hasn't been forced to watch one of the Austen movies?  Well I'm sure there are some, but my husband isn't one of them.  He humors me, good guy.  :)  There is a very strong reason why women like her novels (and subsequently her movies) they are a story about Romance.  And women were designed to long for the Romance with the savior so we are naturally drawn to these types of stories.  Read the book Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge for a full discussion of this topic.  Aside from that though, Jane Austen writes with such intelligence and humor that her stories appeal to a vast audience.  My favorite aspect of Austen's writings however are her calls for social reform that are written in such a way as to not offend people of her day, but still make a strong case that will make a change.  She is able to get past "the sleeping dragons," as C.S. Lewis would say, because of her style that incorporates wit with truth.

As far as what can be gleaned from their writings, their letters, diaries, etc. it appears that both women were also deeply religious.  Their writings however do not preach, instead they instruct with truth to the heart of people and it is left up to the people to decide where this truth originates.  My goal is to allow my "life to speak louder than words," as a certain 90s Christian song says, just as these two women did.

 

Homemade Bread....How Embarrassing!

My husband, Peter, tells a story about how as a kid in junior high he was so embarrassed that his sandwiches had homemade bread and everyone around him had perfectly shaped store bought bread.  Now looking back he knows that his mom was actually giving him something that the kids around him weren't getting--some love in his food!  It was nutritious and tasty (way better than anything store bought for sure!  I've had it, it is scrumptious!).  Well I'm afraid my kids will be suffering from the same embarrassing thing.  I now make my own bread (after some expert instruction from my mother-in-law I gained the confidence to branch out and try some other types of bread).  All of my bread is now sourdough bread.  I chose to use sourdough for several reasons:  1.)  it is way cheaper to make!  2.)  it is more nutritious 3.)  it is the type of bread all of our ancestors made.  

Cheaper to Make:

By cheaper I don't mean cheaper than a loaf of $1 generic bread from Walmart,  I mean cheaper than making a whole wheat yeast bread.  My mother-in-laws tasty whole wheat bread was from the cookbook More with Less which is a Mennonite publication.  Obviously this recipe is frugal, but after making it even healthier by using only whole wheat (no white flour), using honey rather than sugar, and adding things like flax seed and wheat germ this was no cheap bread.  Even if you decided not to use the healthier version of the recipe you still had the cost of milk (which is rising every day), flour, eggs, yeast (which have you checked lately? it is not cheap!), oil and I'm sure a number of things I can't even recall off the top of my head.  My sourdough recipe is flour, water, buttermilk, butter and maple syrup.  That's it and it is super cheap! The recipe makes 4 loaves of bread.  The added bonus to sourdough is that it stays moist longer and doesn't mold nearly as fast as homemade bread (I still put all but the current loaf in the freezer to keep those fresh until we are ready to eat those.   Store bought bread doesn't mold very fast because they add a bunch of preservatives and conditioners to the bread which are all things I'm trying to avoid as chemicals and fake ingredients like preservatives seem to really agitate my allergies, but that is for another post.     

Sourdough is More Nutritious:

Okay, I started researching this and realized that this will have to be a post unto itself...I hope to post on this later this week, but until then I'll direct you here to read up on it if you prefer instant gratification.  :)  She probably will answer more thoroughly than me anyways.  I promise to bring some new information to the cyber table discussion though.  

Sourdough is the Way Our Ancestors Made Bread:

"Simple folks [back in the day] toiled in the fields long hours, had to be in good health and had little time for preparing moveable-feast style lunches to be quickly consumed in the furrows....[unspoilable (basically) sourdough bread was the answer].  A properly elaborated sourdough loaf acquires an unsurpassed  taste and an aroma that no cracker or porridge can ever match."  Jacques DeLangre Seasalt's Hidden Powers

My mother-in-law thinks that making bread is a spiritual act.  Think about that for a minute....Jesus obviously held bread in esteem or he wouldn't have broken bread with the disciples claiming "this is my body."  This was unleavened bread though.  Jesus performs two miracles with bread.  One where five loaves feed five thousand and another where seven loaves feed four thousand.  God values bread, he made manna and gave it to the Israelites who then ground it and baked it.  Sounds like a type of bread.   That is just my speculation though.  I did a quick search of the Bible and came up with 25x where loaves of bread are mentioned.  That's a fun thing to think about.  Plus, we instinctively know even now that a loaf of handmade bread is a special gift.  Doing the work of kneading with my hands, watching the bread "magically" rise and then smelling the bread while it cooks does seem like a small miracle to me.  Especially when I get to taste it straight from the oven with a little butter.  I feel like making the bread is an act of self-sacrifice of service to my family (I sometimes have to remind myself of this when my hands are tired of kneading the bread, it gives me motivation to keep going).  I'm providing a nutritious and wholesome piece of food that they will greatly enjoy.  Besides it blesses people not just when it is being eaten, but while the aroma of the baking bread fills the whole house all day.  I like that the bread I am making is a similar recipe to those that have been made by women for thousands of years.  How exciting!  I may be over zealous about bread, but isn't it a fun concept to think about?

You should get a hobby...

After 6 weeks of maternity leave I had to return to my job as an 8th grade English teacher.  I loved my job, but after my son was born I had less zeal to be at work and more of a desire to be at home with him.  Even though my husband was staying home with our baby, I hated that I was missing so much.  I was spending my life raising other people's kids and missing my own.  So after 2 months back at work I decided that was my last year of teaching.  My husband and I always intended to move back to New Mexico where we grew up at some point.  So during the summer break from school we packed up our house in Oklahoma City while the baby played in his jumper and moved back home to be around our family.  Jonathan was now 6 months old and I was enjoying being home with him full time.  Peter, my husband, came to me one day and suggested that I take up a hobby.  He said drawing while Jonathan was taking naps and such while he was home really helped him and he thought I needed something like that too.  Well I am not creative, nor am I good at coming up with new projects to keep me busy in an artistic sense.  So, I took up the mantle of natural living.  A lot of things helped push me in this direction, but that is for another time...