We enriched grains once we found that refined grains were producing deficiency diseases. Synthetic nutrients are hard on the liver, though, and some I believe are relatively toxic like D2. It’s far better to eat food – there is so much we don’t know about how our bodies work, what our bodies need, and what foods provide.

One train of thought:
Convenience foods are 10 to 100 times more costly than the original food – just compare the cost of potatoes by weight to the cost of instant potato mix. So we are spending more money, getting less food, far less nutrition and developing malnutrition, including obesity as a result. Obesity and its companion diseases and debilities, costs our society a HUGE amount, from health care dollars, through lost productivity not to mention the pain of losing limbs and loved ones.

Well, I have had to listen to one of these recordings three times just to “get” some of it. But I am moving forward, even if I don’t understand what I understand. I’m hearing “lectins” and the fact that grains are seeds, which are created expressly to pass through the digestive systems of animals that eat them, so that they can sprout. So grains are made to be relatively indigestible until they sprout, when they become a vegetable.

I am not a bread person at all. I have a bread maker, and I make a mean hot biscuit once a week, but I feel lousy if I eat grains at each meal. Some folks, including those in my house, think there is “nothing to eat” if it’s not on a slice of bread. So making bread and biscuits is a compromise. I’ve never noticed any digestive issues per se, just low energy possibly from having breads too often.

*NEWS FLASH*
I don’t know if it is because of the hypnotic influence of this course, but I’ve had a ‘flu along with the rest of my household and now I can’t eat wheat without getting painfully bloated, tired and irritable. And sleepless! And terrible things happen in the washroom. I tried one day on and one day off, and it’s definitely bread, crackers and other wheat sorts of things. My housemate made nut flour cookies, then spelt flour cookies. I feel bad with only a little bit, though. *sad and at a loss for eating*

The “traditionally prepared grains” I eat are??? Injera once or twice a month? The occasional real sour dough? I’ve got to figure this soaking thing out.

This whole soy debate has me horrified. I’ve been on a soy based diet since my teens. Being allergic to dairy products since birth – I was sick as a baby because I was so allergic to the cow milk formulas – soy has been my friend. I’ve escaped all of the medical problems Dr. Daniel mentions = my fertility was rampant, my thyroid fine etc. Possibly soy has not harmed me because I have never consciously eaten highly processed soy, fast foods, hidden or GMO soy. The white beans sit happily in my cupboard waiting for me to soak them overnight to make soy milk with in the morning. How can it be SO WRONG?

I have just invested half my weekly food budget in raw almonds so I plan to switch my regular soymilk making to almond milk making. Maybe replace half our soymilk consumption with rice and almond milks.

Then there’s the tofu habit around here – we buy a bucket on Wednesdays from a little tofu factory for $2.50 ad my youngest loves to eat it with Bragg’s sauce and dressings after daycare.

After I decompress, I’ll go to the good doctor’s soy alternatives website.

Some Experiments
We made ginger beer, saurkraut, almond milk and injera. We have three sets of very dark, very out of focus, very large photos taken with our housemate's broken camera with no viewfiunder that I can't get usable just yet, but I am working on it!

So we started our experiments with making ginger ale/beer.
We used a big glass jug, a funnel, water, fresh ginger, bread yeast, lemon juice and fair trade demerrara sugar.

We finely grated a tablespoon of the ginger.

then added everything into the bottle through the home made funnel.
I shook it to dissolve the sugar and left it on the fridge for 4 days. When I opened it, it showered a litre of ginger beer up to the ceiling and went everywhere. the half litre left in the bottle was good though. I am guessing that following the instructions to let it ferment 2 days would have been a good idea.

UPDATE:
I've made gingerale regularly since the first experiment, and now I'm out of sugars - there's just molasses, 1/8 cup of sucanat. 1/3 cup of maple flakes and maple syrup now. I guess I must go buy some acceptable sugat if I'm going to continue!

But tonight I started a new batch of gingerale and I'll open it up Sunday evening. I used maple flakes instead of sugar. Maple flakes are simply dried maple syrup. My mother took a bag of these to Australia and back for some strange reason, and then gave them to me, unopened, last year. It's not that I'm going to buy more - they're in plastic and no doubt much more costly than evaporated cane juice, sucanat and whatever other bulk natural sugars Karma Coop stocks.

I rate this experiment 10/10.

SAUERKRAUT

I initially tried to shred the cabbage for the sauerkraut using my food processor, but this chopped everything too finely, so I switched to hand chopping. I put a layer of cabbage, then sea salt, then zucchinni from the garden, then minced garlic, and repeated. When the bowl was full, I mashed it up with my hands until a liquid layer formed. I put this in the glass jar. Then I repeated the whole procedure through 3 cabbages! Finally, I pressed the cabbage material under the liquid with a tea saucer and put the lid on. It's on top of the fridge now. We always have some sauerkraut in the fridge from our coop - now it will be even more local!

UPDATE:
The sauerkraut was enjoyed when I fed some helpers after a few days, but I haven't touched it since and there's now quite a colony of mold on top. I am wondering if it will spread, if I should have put the sauerkraut in a dark place, a cooler place? Or maybe it doesn't matter and I just need to scoop the moldy stuff off when I'm ready to decant the crock.

ALMOND MILK

The almonds I rinsed a lot, then soaked overnight, then blended with filtered water in the morning. I added sea salt and pitted dates while blending. Then I strained it into a glass bottle for my daughter to take to daycare. I accidentally carried it around with me all say, and shared it during after yoga tea. The verdict: bland but very digestible.

UPDATE

While I got "into" making almond milk every day or so, no one in the house has gotten "into" consuming it. Consequently, there has been a rash of off, separated almond milk around here, alas. The store bought stuff is outrageously sweet. I haven't figured out the right rhythm to making and mixing it into the store stuff so the kids don't notice. Worse, I'm missing soy, the almond milk is just too perfect somehow. I'll try to get back into the shake in the morning thing and see if I get used to it.

INJERA

The injera is a little frightening. We used wheat flour instead of teff, and the mixture is very watery. I am hoping that the film on top of the water is healthy! Teff has its own microbes to ferment it properly. Who knows what the wild yeast are doing under the dish cloth on top of my fridge! We'll try injera pancakes tomorrow morning.

UPDATE

I forgot about making pancakes with the injera and ended up after 3 days with seriously rotten goop. I don't think wheat is the right ingredient here. I am tempted to buy injera now, though.

My friend Nate the artisinal baker is going to give me some real sour dough for Christmas! I have a line on some of that stuff you ferment your water with, too. I probably should try some commercially made stuff first. And my housemate aspires to making sprouted grain bread! Well, that's another adventure...

You can see the photos in progress here: http://www.fanbox.com/socnet/Desktop.aspx?opg=http%3A%2F%2Fprofile.fanbo...