NT task thread... - Page 2

[treehugger]

Originally Posted by The Hidden Life

Some people also call it "native nutrition" because the idea is that you are eating things the way they would have been prepared in the days before processed foods and such.

LeeAnn

I know you can't read tone of voice on these things so please don't take this the wrong way. I am totally new to this NT thing, but how do you know they would have gone through all this process of fermentation, wouldn't the fermentation have occured naturally due to lack of refrigeration?

I don't mean this rude at all I am interested in how they have come to this conclusion.

Thanks

[myjo]

treehugger, you're not being rude, questions are good! Most of the suggestions in the cookbook and online articles are based on things that Weston A. Price found out about how native peoples processed their foods for consumption. He traveled around the world looking for pockets of civilization where modern depleted foods had not yet made inroads to the native diet. He studied these native peoples and examined them for signs of either health or disease, and for the most part found that the people who stuck to their native diet were very healthy and well-built, and those who did not ended up with poor bone structure and dental caries.

In his studies he also took careful note of the way in which the foods were prepared. Most cultures had ways of lacto-fermenting dairy and/or carbohydrate foods to make things like kefir, fermented coconut milk, poi, fermented oats (scottish), and fermented veggies (think saurkraut). The recipes in Nourishing Traditions are adapted for modern cooks to be as similar as possible to the way traditional foods were processed and cooked.

[hrheka]

Intentful lady, I completely understand your meat frustrations. Even though I live in the Big Apple its really hard to find good meat. In my neighborhood we have a regular grocery that doesn't even carry organic meat let alone grass fed. the health food stores are inconsistent with what they carry and walking & the subway with my daughter in a sling is too much. the farmers market is great but really far away and lots of heavy stuff + daughter....Soooo I order stuff online. I try to order enough to last a few months so I don't feel bad about having stuff shipped so far for just me. There are alot of places on line w/ beef, poultry is a bit harder.

So I finished my tasks for the day plus some. I made:
+pickled daikon
+rinsing beans
+made cilantro pest w/ cripy almonds!
+started dinner

tomorrow I'd like to:
+start another nt beverage (not so sure about the haymakers oat water)
+start a bread (not sourdough because I still need to get some rye)
+make stock
+find a dehydrator

[cjr]

I'm going to be lurking for awhile. I went to the bookstore to find NT and it was $40CAD and the wild fermentation was $35CAD at my healthfood store. Way too much. So, I went to amazon and they have both for $31.50USD plus $8 to ship them to me in Canada. I should save about $30CAD this way. However, I lost my wallet and had to cancell my credit card so I have to wait until I get the new one to order it.

Anyway, I browsed through it at Chapters and it looks very interesting. I already do a lot of NT cooking, I think, but I would really like to get into it. My biggest problem is dividing my time so I can manage to make everything from scratch. I have a few things down pact, but this thread will really help.

[Brisen]

Oooh, this is just what I need!

I have *written up* a schedule to try out, but it hasn't been happening in completion.

Mon night -- soak oatmeal, start sprouts
Tues -- soak flour for baking
Wed -- make batch of yogurt; bake; lacto-ferment something (saurkraut was planned for this week); cook a roast or a bird
Thurs -- make stock; soak oatmeal; start sprouts
Fri -- make big pot of soup & freeze for later meals; soak flour for baking
Sat -- make yogurt; bake; make stock

So far this week, I've made a batch of soup and am making stock. But not when I had it written in the schedule.

I also have a meal schedule, but it's not all NT. Dh loves his pasta.
Breakfasts rotate between eggs, oatmeal, and fried mush. We usually have hot chocolate with breakfast. (I figure it's the most healthy way to deal with my chocolate cravings. I use very little sugar and cocoa.) And we usually try to have fruit -- cut up oranges or grapefruit, bananas, apples.

Lunches are either soup or bread with meat gravy and left over veggies.

Dinners -- right now I have written up a schedule, but I need to tweak it. We have fish twice a week, pasta once a week, stew once a week, baked beans and grilled cheese sandwiches, and a meat-and-potatoes roast night.

I'm hoping to make more beans, especially for the summer (I love bean salads), make some salad dressings and mayonnaise, and get into the habit of making a lacto-fermented drink at least once a week. Oh, and crispy nuts. And my rrl/dandelion/nettle tea. So much to do....

[unfrozncavegrl]

I never knew what NT was until now. I do many of the things as prescribed in NT, mostly out of a need to save money and of course to be healthy. Certainly, I could do a whole lot more.

This is great and I too will be lurkin' and learnin'.

This is a bit off topic.....a question that I could not seem to get answered on the weston price site: what do you use for home and body care? Currently I use baking soda vinegar and other pantry items for everything.

Thanks mamas. You are a wealth of information!

[treehugger]

Originally Posted by myjo

In his studies he also took careful note of the way in which the foods were prepared. Most cultures had ways of lacto-fermenting dairy and/or carbohydrate foods to make things like kefir, fermented coconut milk, poi, fermented oats (scottish), and fermented veggies (think saurkraut). The recipes in Nourishing Traditions are adapted for modern cooks to be as similar as possible to the way traditional foods were processed and cooked.

So these people acutally took the time to ferment their foods on purpose? Was it for better digestion? Or overall health? Thanks for answering all my questions I can't help myself it is all so interesting.

I wish I could afford the book and my dumb little library ain't got nothin'

[cjr]

I wish I could afford the book and my dumb little library ain't got nothin'

It's $15 at Amazon. One more post and then you can go sell something on the trading post to get the money to buy it. It's $40 here in Canada, when hubby gets home I'm ordering it.

[HerthElde]

cjr, through amazon.ca, it's CAD$44.15 for both, including shipping
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASI...913851-8368860

[mountain mom]

Thursday tasks:

Make final batch of youghurt from this weeks milk....done

Start the stock already, stop procrastinating!!! Well I have good reason, its been beautiful weather wise here and we have been out of the house all week. The bison bones are too long to fit in my crock pot so I have to be home to cook them up.

Tonight is stock night!!!

After playgroup....get part of the groceries done.

Thats about it for today, I am pretty caught up for the week...cept the stock :

[Gale Force]

Originally Posted by treehugger

So these people acutally took the time to ferment their foods on purpose? Was it for better digestion? Or overall health?

You're right treehugger -- it wasn't necessarily by design but by necessity. Our refrigeration methods make fermentation unnecessary and, as a result, most of us do not have access to an abundance of beneficial bacteria in our foods. A big part of NT is fermentation out of health necessity, not food preservation necessity. Fermented foods help digestion, but a healthy digestive tract is a healthy body. It seems that I read that the immune system health is 70% your digestive health.

[Gale Force]

This thread reminds me that I have a couple of drinks I need to check.

I have been busting my tail on some other things and can get so off track. I did manage to dot he following in the past 24 hours:

Soak quinoa for breakfast tomorrow
Strain some chicken stock

I'll strain kefir and my orange drink soon, very soon.
And I'll hope that food appears on a plate in front of me. :

[hrheka]

So I started my stock and it smells so yummy! I havn't made any bread yet. I decided to make the cheater's buttermilk yeast bread from nt until I place another bulk order and can get some rye. I totally forgot about another NT drink because while the oat water tastes nasty it really settles my stomach and is somehow soothing so I guess I'll finish it off. I think I'm going to order a dehydrator now. My daughter loves crackers but dehydrating in the oven just ties up my oven for too long.

I made some fermented raspberry jam and am hoping to try it in the next few days on some yummy bread!

Tomorrow I don't think I have a lot to do, I'm thinking about making my first roast tomorrow, so I guess I should take it out of the freezer. I have lots of fermented yummies though so I think I'm pretty set tomorrow!

[Queen Gwen]

Fermented raspberry jam? Details, please! I made the apricot before -- is it like that?

I need to dump out the beet kvass I made earlier this week and scout out some new beets, remembering to trust my intuition about how good the beets are (I suspected they were old and lifeless, so I should've passed on them).

Just got kefir grains from RuthLa, so need to go write on calendar to check on it in a couple of days.

My whole routine has been whacked out by dh's new list of food sensitivities. All my food prep energy has been focused on figuring out what I can make that we can all eat. I'm in a funk. If not for these threads I'd probably toss in the towel on NT right now.

[intentfulady]

Queen Gwen, You are not alone. We too have multiple food restrictions which complicate life. Definetly complicates NT stuff.

Like Yayayaya, It doesnt look like sneaking in spelt is gonna be the answer for the fact that wheat is NOT our friend.

I'll be chucking the 25# bag of spelt.

I'm just gonna have to take it slower. And being a perfectionist doesnt help, cause I wanna do it all right, NOW!!

HAng in there.................I am

(: Colleen

[hrheka]

Okay so my bread is on its final rise, I'm about to put my pot roast in the oven and my sprouts are sprouting nicely.

I'm pretty set up so I don't think I have much prep tomorrow but I just got Wild Fermentation so I'm sure that will change by the time I look at it more. I already think I might make the black eyed pea tempeh tomorrow. I also think my sprouts will be done tomorrow & my daikon should be fully fermented.

The jam came out nice, I think its actually called preserves in NT but Isadora thinks its yummy. Next time I think I'm going to add the Pomoma's Pectin after its fermented. We're going to put it on our french toast sunday morning!

[mountain mom]

Sounds yummy Hreka!

Do post about making tempeh, thats sounds very interesting.

1)My bison stock is simmering as we speak.

2)I need to pick up more rapadura and then change over my water kefir.

3)Go to the market in the AM to get groceries for the week

4)Make aduki bean burgers...need to tweak a recipe to be NT friendly!

[The Hidden Life]

Originally Posted by treehugger

I know you can't read tone of voice on these things so please don't take this the wrong way. I am totally new to this NT thing, but how do you know they would have gone through all this process of fermentation, wouldn't the fermentation have occured naturally due to lack of refrigeration?

I don't mean this rude at all I am interested in how they have come to this conclusion.

Thanks

I understand.

Fermentation occurred accidentally and then on purpose, when people decided they liked the results of their "happy accident."

Today, we tend to think of fermentation of something that happens when foods go "bad." But it's just another process of food preparation and preservation. Remember, in many parts of the world, food must be grown and harvested in a very short time and made to last for several cold winter months. Thus, we have salting, curing, smoking, fermenting, etc.

We know that these methods existed because of several reasons. One, people wrote about them. Whether in histories (even Caesar writes about food) or in actual cookbooks (usually of rarified dishes for the nobility) there are thousands of descriptions of how food was prepared in the days before over-processing and year-round refrigeration. Two, some people in some cultures still prepare foods in the traditional ways even today. For instance, kimchee in Korea is often still made in pots buried in the garden where vegetables and spices are left to ferment (or rot, depending on how you like it) for months.

As for taking the time to do these things, well, yes, they did. There are certainly quicker ways of eating foods. But over time people either learned that these methods of preparation made foods last longer and with a few ingredients, made it possible for many more people to eat fresh foods in some quantity. Think: you have a fresh carrot. You could either just eat it raw and be done with it or if you have a bunch of carrots you could add some salt and perhaps other spices and seal them up and ferment them, thus preserving them to eat later with your family in the dead of winter.

I've noticed even in the Little House on the Prairie books that the Ingalls family often did not eat the things Pa brought home right away. They ate meat fresh if there was extra, but most often they preserved it and socked it away. Same with vegetables. They didn't usually harvest one a day and make a salad, they waited until most of the crop was at its peak then harvested and preserved, eating just a few fresh vegetables. Preparing for the lean months was an all-consuming task.

As for people realizing they were more digestible, I think that is a very subjective thing. I mean today we eat oatmeal rather than uncooked rolled oats and a glass of water, why? Because it tastes better, I guess. I don't think you could argue that inherently we know that grains are better for us when they are soaked and cooked, but I guess through trial and error we learn when they sit well in the stomach and when they don't and luckily this is when our bodies are best able to take the nutrients from the food. I don't know what exactly to call this kind of thinking though...intuitive eating? I just started reading "Eat Fat, Lose Fat" by Mary Enig (a Weston A. Price board member) and she writes about how we instinctively crave things that are fatty and how we have become scared to follow our instincts (and of course how many fatty foods today are made improperly or contain modified and harmful fats).

Anyway, that is probably more than you wanted to know.

Keep asking questions!
LeeAnn

[intentfulady]

So I'm not the only Little House fan?

we read them over and over years ago, and I too gleaned tons of simple living inspiration from them !!

Oh, the good old days!!

[hrheka]

I didn't think I was going to do much NT prep except for a simple dinner but we visited my fave health food store and I got a bit carried away with their goodies. I swear this store is run by Nt'ers they have tons of raw cheese, rapadura, 3 kinds of celtic salt in bulk, pasture fed chicken & beef & dairy, lots of great seasonal veggies and lots of crazy raw food vegan crackers that are also very NT.

Anyway, I started a batch of kishk from Wild Fermentation. I also started a Kumquat Marmalade and the Lemon Punch from NT. I also just set some rice & lenrils soaking for dosas (I'm going to try the Wild Fermentation recipe instead of my normal indian cookbook).

Oh that reminds me, I need to go start some coconut chutney for that! I'll probablly start that in the morning. I'll also need my kishk and I'm sure I'll start some other crazy thing...maybe fish sauce?