Remember a few posts back when I said that I was taking a six week cooking class based on the book Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon? You don’t?? Oh well that is OK! Well I recently finished the class and it was so great. Here is a brief overview of the class:
Week 1 – Cultured dairies Week 2 –Fermented fruits and veggies
Week 3- Homemade broth Week 4- Soaking Grains
Week 5- Sugars, Oils and Fats Week 6- Trip to Earthfare, Beverages
First let me back up. Last year about this time I started doing some research on eating healthier because I have always been a low fat eater and I ate pretty healthy or so I thought but I really thought for my age I should just feel better in general. Throughout my research I kept running across information on eating real whole foods. I didn’t know a lot but I knew that I was interested and I poured over Passionate Homemaking and Heavenly Homemakers blogs and watching Food Inc. Some of the ideas seemed very foreign to me. Making most things from scratch and cutting out processed foods seemed like a smart idea but eating full fat foods seemed a little crazy. Then I was introduced to the book Nourishing Traditions and everything it said made so much since to me until I got to the recipes! I was basically like huh????? I didn’t have a clue how to really get started so I just started trying to make snacks from scratch and switch to mostly organics. After a few months the only thing I had to show for my “hard work” and research was an additional 7lbs. I slowly crept back to my old way of life and had slowly started to lose the extra weight that I gained. I still knew that I wanted to make changes but I still didn’t have a clue at how to do it. I happened to see that a class was getting ready to be offered based on Nourishing Traditions just down the street from me. I was so excited and talked a friend into taking it with me. I can’t tell you how great this class was and I am so excited/nervous to start making these changes again. Before when I made changes I was pretty much just eating lots of homemade whole wheat baked goods but that was about it. Now I have lots of new goals and I have already started making some changes. Here are the changes I have made so far:
Switched to raw milk (Emily LOVES this milk)
Switched to coconut oil and dumped canola and vegetable oil
Buying very few processed foods
Buying mostly organic
Buying only grass-fed beef, free-range organic eggs and organic chicken (which we eat a lot less of now b/c it is expensive)
Switched from sugar to Sucanat
Soaking most of my grains – you can read more about that here
I still have a long long way and truthfully I know just enough to know what not to do and not enough of what I should do but I am so excited about this journey. I will share my successes and failures off and on. I will also soon share my “to do soon” list of new things I plan to try making.
