Living Healthfully: Kale Chips

The smallest member of our family decided way back when he was just a small babe that if anything green was spread out on the table in front of him, it had better be a crayon or playdough -- because, surely, no solid, green foods would slip past his lips if he had anything to do with it.

Over the past two years that he's been dinning with us at the table, I've strategized a million ways to get green into his daily diet; my only plans that have worked include blending spinach into the macaroni and cheese sauce.

So when John made kale chips in our dehydrator in a few weeks ago, we were pleasantly surprised to find we needed to devise a war strategy to sneak a few Kale Chips out of his hands for the rest of us to enjoy.

A recipe like that deserves something like a praise chorus, but I'm settling for just giving it space here on the blog instead. 

I hope this one is as magical for you as it has been for us.

John's Newly Famous Raw Garlic Kale Chips

Ingredients:

- One head of kale {I love the curly kale!}

- 1/4 cup of sprouted* sunflower seeds {We use Kaia Sprouted Sunflower seeds with garlic and onion}

- 1 medium lemon, juiced plus the zest from the peel

- 1/2 teaspoon of Himalayan pink salt

- 2 cloves of garlic

- 1/2 cup of water

Directions:

1. Wash and spin dry kale in salad spinner or dry with towel

2. Cut the kale leaves off of the middle stem and then cut them into 1/2 inch chunks or strips

3. Place all ingredients EXCEPT for the kale into a blender until the mixture is smooth

4. Place dry kale into a large mixing bowl and pour the mixture over top of the kale, using your hands to thoroughly coat the kale with the mixture. 

5. Place coated kale on dehydrator trays and spread it out over the trays to ensure even drying

6. Dehydrate at 110 degrees F for about six hours. Turn the trays and continue to dehydrate until the leaves become crunchy. {I prefer mine to still be slightly soft instead of totally crunchy.}

7. Pry the chips from your children's hands so you can get at least one bite before they totally disappear. 

Don't have a dehydrator? Bake the chips in the oven at 375 for about 15 minutes or until edges are crispy. Watch the chips closely while they bake! If you use the oven, the chips are no longer considered raw, by the way. 

* All grains, nuts, beans and seeds should be soaked before cooking and eating because soaking removes toxic substances like that are enzyme inhibitors, making for easier digestion where more nutrients are able to be drawn into the body. 

Bigger Picture Moment: Brought to You by Chemically-Infused Grapes and Exploding Watermelon

Every Thursday, we share the harvest of intentional living by capturing a glimpse of the bigger picture through a simple moment.

Want to join us? Simply capture your moment in whatever fashion speaks to you. Then:
1.Grab the Bigger Picture, Simple Moments button {code to the right}.
2. Link your piece.
3. Encourage the two {or more} people who linked their moments before yours.

After linking, you might find your moment shared at our community site for Bigger Picture Blogs.

Live. Capture. Share. Encourage.

That's the essence of Bigger Picture, Simple Moments; we're looking forward to walking together in intentional living this week.

****
He drapes small arms covered in angry red welts heavily over my shoulders as I carry him upstairs.

“But I didn’t think the grapes would make me sick, mom.”

Anger wells in my throat, threatening to escape through hot tears.

I’m almost certain it wasn’t the actual grapes; rather, I’m pretty sure it’s what was sprayed on the grapes that’s causing his little immune system to swell and attack, rendering my normally energetic boy lethargic and wholly uncomfortable.

We wait, watch to see if the swelling spreads to his face, and when it does, we resign to giving him antihistamine as a last resort to curtail any bigger allergic reaction from exploding.

My heart hurts as I watch him fall asleep, finding relaxation from the reaction.

And I think of the mothers who have children with life-threatening allergic reactions or who are really sick.

This isn’t the way our bodies are supposed to react after eating food.

Adding another log onto the fire burning in my mind about why we choose locally grown or organic products, I resign in my head to sell our house, buy a plot of farm land and begin my own organic non-commune commune.

Because what our bodies are really rejecting when they develop diseases like cancer and diseases and in some cases even allergic reactions, are the toxins that are slathered, sprayed and doused across our food, sown into our soil, saturated in our streams.

****
Maybe I sound a little melodramatic?

Maybe it seems like I’ve jumped off the end of the "sort of crunchy" pier straight into a pit of sustainably grown, organic granola?

I’ve been mulling these thoughts in my mind – whether I’m over reacting.

Are some alergic reactions and cancers and disease actually stemming from what we’re doing to our land with the use of chemicals and growth agents and overuse of antibiotics?

Is it all blown out of proportion?

My gut says to trust these instincts, these thoughts to avoid chemicals and food that’s been altered from its original state – but maybe I don’t have enough organic soil upon which I can build some sort of natural foundation.

****
I open Twitter and come face to face with a study.

Dr. Greene tweeted about how the President’s Cancer Panel acknowledged that “we face ‘grievous harm’ from chemicals that surround us every day and that we have ‘grossly underestimated’ the amount of illness caused by these exposures – illness ‘that could have been prevented through appropriate national action.’”

Like with cancer, I have to wonder if we’ve also grossly misunderstood the link between chemicals and allergic reactions – since allergies are the immune system’s over-response to things like corn, soy, cow’s milk, peanuts and wheat, all of which are some the most altered and sprayed crops, the likelihood of the immune system wanting to fight when those things are ingested seems highly probable to me.

I mean, think about it. Really, really think about it.

What are we eating?

It’s a lot more than just food.

****

Watermelons are exploding in China from the over use of growth-inducing chemicals.

They have been deemed unfit for human consumption.

So the exploded melons are being fed to pigs and fish, both of which will be consumed by humans.

Have we forgotten the concept of food chains?

Cows across the vast expanse of our United States are being fed genetically-modified, subsidized corn, which they cannot naturally digest, instead of prairie grass.

Grass neutralizes the acidity in the cow’s gut; corn doesn’t.

So e-coli actually builds up in the cow’s gut, giving way to e-coli outbreaks in our beef.

Our smallest, weakest suffer and fall.

Have we neglected nature in favor of science and production?

Last year, the journal Pediatrics releases a study citing that the U.S. could save $13billion dollars per year if 90 percent of mothers nursed their babies for the first six months instead of feeding them formula.

What does that say about the diseases that can be prevented by feeding babies a milk that’s specifically designed for them AND a milk that kills cancer cells?

Have we allowed Who-Code Violators like Nestle to push an agenda more focused on profit than health?

A young woman is diagnosed in 2003 with a rare, incurable stage four cancer.
She researches chemicals and food and cancer and places herself on a Crazy Sexy Diet.

She survives and is thriving.

Have we lost our allegiance to our bodies and replaced it with feeding our cravings?

And in a small town, in the most northern suburbs of Chicago, a small boy innocently eats grapes from the bottom drawer of his refrigerator after his mother bought them, ignoring her gut instinct regarding the purchase of non-organic, mass produced fruits and vegetables.

And his body rejects them in an angry flare of hives; he recovers.

His mom returns the grapes to the store, only to learn that they are cleaned with a chemical agent while on display.

Have we downplayed our instincts, ignored our gut feelings to the point of detriment?

In a succession of bigger picture moments, her instincts are realized, embraced, no longer to be ignored.

Chemical residue on grapes – a gentle reminder noticed and taken with gratitude that ignorance of instinct {and even nature's way} is only bliss until the body begins to break.

And I've got to learn to listen before the weight of it all, the stress of the overload begins to break the bodies we feed.

Healthy Living: An Experiment in Eating

After G. tried to con me into feeding him processed, packaged "unfood" last weekend, I wrote about making the hard and often unpopular decision to eat mostly real foods -- non-processed, un-enriched and preservative-free foods {though we have our moments, just like everyone else, where we've been known to eat a Frosty or something}.

And Jade, a smart, witty writer who is currently working to stop sex-trafficing of women in Thailand, left an amazingly insightful comment on that post detailing her struggle with weight and experience with food of both America and Thailand.

Totally intrigued, I asked her if she would please fully share her experiences here. And thankfully for me {maybe you, too?}, she obliged. I think you'll be happy you stopped by today.

****

Do you ever feel like, despite your best efforts to be healthy or lose weight, there is something beyond your control sabotaging your efforts?

That, no matter how hard you try to make informed decisions about the food that goes in your mouth, there is some hidden power greater than yourself working against you?

Meanwhile, you’re left beating yourself up for the times you “slip”?

I do. All the time. And I’m kind of thinking that maybe I’m not the only one who does.

Hyacynth most graciously asked me to write a post on this topic because I, like she, have come to distrust what the American food industry tries to tell us is “food”.

Let me explain the angle I’m coming from here. If you knew me in real life, you’d probably know that weight is an issue that plagues me.

I’m one of those people about whom well-intentioned family members might (and did) say, “If she just lost a few pounds, she could be pretty.” Almost there, but not quite. I used to try really hard to eat healthily, choosing fresh fruits and vegetables from the local Farmer’s Market, cooking a lot at home so I could weigh and calculate every bite, and fighting with myself to exercise regularly.

I also had an insatiable sweet tooth, and every night was a battle with myself between soothing the beast craving sweets now and hating myself or being plagued with guilt later. I could be good all day, and then lose it come 8 p.m.

I blamed myself. A lot.

But there was a quiet part of me that kept popping up and saying, “Being a healthy weight shouldn’t be so friggin’ hard.” And a suspicious part of me noticed that when my skinny Thai cousins came to the U.S., they all started putting on pounds.

They all started having to do exercise and watch what they eat. Meanwhile, everyone I knew who spent a significant amount of time abroad came back having lost weight. And we’ve all wondered about the French who consume a steady diet of cheese, and bread, and cream and wine and still manage to walk around looking svelte.

I began to think that maybe it’s not food that’s the problem. It’s something in the food. We can see all the chemicals and preservatives, corn and sugar, and all kinds of unnatural things listed right on the side of all our packaged foods.

I can eschew the packaged stuff. But I still eat meat. Meat that has been fed on a diet of corn because it’s cheap, and stuffed with growth hormones to make it look plump, and additives to make it look pretty on the shelf longer. (Food, Inc. is a really good documentary that goes into this, if you’re interested in looking into the subject further. I also highly recommend Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.)

So, three months ago, when my husband and I packed up and moved to Thailand, I made a secret deal with myself. I wouldn’t make a special effort to control my diet here. I would eat what I want when hungry, stop when I was full, and when our scale arrived in our package of stuff shipped from the U.S., I would see what happened.

We ate out almost exclusively. This is a big shift for someone who used to almost always cook at home. But we’ve been eating mostly food served at the street stalls or local mom-and-pop style restaurants. A lot of it is fried. I’ve eaten way fewer veggies and way more rice. Meat is probably about the same.

Portion sizes here are significantly smaller, but here’s the kicker: I actually like that. In the States, I would eat until full and sometimes until stuffed. If food is in front of me, I can’t say no to it. But here, the food tastes amazing, but I happily stop at “satisfied”. There’s room for more, but I prefer not to feel full. I might eat less at a particular meal, but I probably eat more over the course of the day.

Meanwhile, we also enjoy desserts (donuts, pastries, coconut snacks…the gelato here is fabulous) on a fairly regular basis. (Before we came, I think it had been at least 5 years since my last donut.) We don’t hold back on the sweets. If we want them, we’ll eat them. BUT I don’t have the crazy sweet tooth I used to have either. Most times, I’m not interested, or I’ll think “maybe in a few minutes.” And then forget about it entirely.

This is not like me.

And also? We’re totally not exercising. By all accounts, the way we eat and don’t exercise, we should have gained weight. I could barely wait for our scale to arrive to find out what the effects were.

And then on Monday, our moment of truth came. Our stuff was delivered and we pulled out the scale. My husband, who is naturally pretty skinny, in three months without even trying lost FIFTEEN pounds. (!) (Full disclosure: he also drinks significantly less beer here.) The pants he sent in shipping? None of them fit anymore.

And me? I lost between 5-8 pounds. And this is me, a person for whom losing weight without trying ranks right up there with unicorns on the scale of likelihood.

I won’t take this as license to eat unhealthily. Because I do care about my health and heart, even if the pounds continue to drop, I will be more circumspect about the food I eat from here on out. But there is definitely something I learned about how the food I used to eat created cravings, while the food here seems to satisfy them.

All right, so we can’t all get too excited because this experiment is in no way backed up by real science.

It has a test group size of 2.

And very little in the way of controls.

But I share this because all my instincts are telling me that all that extra junk our food industry puts in our food has a real effect on our health. These things the industry adds to cut the costs of production or increase sales, I really am starting to believe have an effect on us. Even if they don’t necessarily add calories directly, they may still have an indirect effect.

Particularly, what I suspect could be the case is that they change the nature of cravings. They make us want to eat more, especially of things that contain sodium and sugar.

I don’t blame the farmers. (Ok, maybe I do give an evil side-eye glance towards the mega-corporations like Monsanto.) But I do think the costs for our health could be given a higher weight against the bottom line, even in economic times such as these.

The problem is, honestly, these are tough choices to make. It’s a difficult truth, but often we have to make a choice between nutrition and convenience. It’s made even more difficult when the convenient choice is also the cheaper, more affordable one (at least at face value), especially when you’re raising a family and are short on time and money.

However, the real question is: would we choose differently if we knew more? If we really knew about what effects those extra chemicals and preservatives and additives have on us?

Maybe we would choose differently.

Maybe we wouldn’t.

But at least the power to make that choice would be ours. We would no longer be fighting some unnamable force.

And we wouldn’t be sabotaged by the very hands that feed us.

Jade blogs at Tasting Grace. If you don't already know her, I hope this served as an awesome introduction to a very talented woman.

Living Healthfully: Digesting our Food Choices

It's Sunday morning during our vacation, and G. is lounging around in his underwear while riffling through a basket filled with 100-calorie snack packs.

I ask him what he's doing.

"I'm reading the ingredients to see if this is a healthy snack, mom," he says.

This is the point where I stop and pause before continuing any external dialogue with my kiddo.

My heart could be doing at a happy dance at the moment with my oldest seemingly displaying a desire to carefully choose his food.

Buuuut, if I'm going to be real, I know that's not what he's doing this time.

First of all, he can't read.

Second, we've had this discussion before about NOT eating these little snack packs of cookies and crackers; he's simply trying to talk me into allowing him to indulge in food.

Well, I use the term food loosely, because a lot of those ingredients, they are not actually, you know, food.

That's a hard concept to explain to a 3.5 year old who has actually seen people {including a younger, unaware version of his mother -- me} eat the contents of those packages before.

Because why on Earth would someone eat something that's not food, he asks?

Sigh. I know, right?

Why would someone eat something that's not actually food?

Speaking from experience, I think I know the answer: Because the definition of food has so radically changed during the past few decades.

Whereas food used to be defined as a digestible, nutritious plant or animal based product naturally found in nature, we now abide by a new definition:
whatever is tasty and technically digestible.

Forget that much of what we consume has been concocted in a chemistry lab rather than harvested in a field or grown in a pasture.

Instead of eating products that are the fat of the land we're consuming science projects that are making us the fat of the land.

And perhaps we're just not passionate about our food anymore.

Let's take, for example, the ingredients in one of the 100-calorie snack packs:

enriched flour, sugar, fructose, glycerol, vegetable oil with TBHQ for freshness, dextrose, meltodextrin, non-fat dry milk, apple powder, strawberry puree concentrate, mineral whey, invert sugar, cornstarch, soy lecithin, leavening, salt, datem, cellulose gel, natural and artificial color, citric acid, mono and diglycerides, cellulose gum, sodium citrate, malic acid, color added, sodium alginate, caramel color, xanthan gum, tricalcium phospate, red #40, vanilla extract, BHT.

I'm not going to go into the fact that two of the three first ingredients in the product are sugar. And I'm not going to spend time discussing how a few ingredients later more sugar is listed. Twice. I'm also not going to get into the whole "enriched" flour thing.

Simply, I'm just going to point out that the items bolded have been chemically created in a science lab. What exactly is red #40 anyway? Or BHT? Or artificial flavors? Or TBHQ?

Really, I won't spend time dissecting what these ingredients do to a body when consumed in larger quantities {which is entirely possible if all you're eating is precessed food} beyond saying that unnatural ingredients seriously compromise the way our bodies were intended to function.

Rather, if we don't know exactly what these ingredients are, why are we consuming them or allowing our children to consume them? Why are we not more passionate about our food and where it comes from and what it actually is?

We wouldn't turn our kids loose in a forest preserve and allow them access to any of the wild berries or plants growing because we know some of them may contain toxins that are poisonous to our bodies.

So why turn them loose in the grocery store aisle where so many of our foods now contain known {and even more worrisome -- unknown} chemical concoctions that react similarly to toxins when built up in the body? {Remember the whole saccharin debacle?}

And why on Earth are we allowing marketers and studies paid for by ginormous processed food companies dictate what we deem safe for our families to consume when those studies' interests are marred by these companies' interests in profit rather than consumer health?

And how is it that we fall for the lie that 100 calorie snack packs are healthy simply because they are 100 calories? So is probably my TSHIRT, and I wouldn't eat that.

And doesn't anybody intensely, passionately care about the food we're eating?! ---

Snap back to reality at the sound of a small voice: "Mommy, what can I have for a snack?"

I collect my thoughts, try to cool my boiling blood and refocus.

"How about some raspberries?" I ask.

"I looooove raspberries!" he exclaims.

As he happily pops the raspberries into his mouth, I realize something -- an epiphany of sorts.

It's NOT that we're void of passion concerning our food; actually, it seems to be quite the opposite -- we ARE emotionally attached to our food otherwise there wouldn't be such a hard and tight cling to these processed foods.

Perhaps, the passion we must learn is one for our bodies, switch our loyalties from what we're feeding ON simply to the very bodies we're feeding.