Shopper's Rut: Why do I need to avoid this?

Shopper's Rut Defined: buying the same 'ole fruits and veggies every week:

• bunch of bananas
• few apples
• an orange or two on occasion and maybe a pear here or there
• stock of broccoli
• pre-washed & prepared lettuce of some sort
• carrots
• maybe a cuke or bell pepper
• perhaps some celery because it is easy

Why Should You Avoid This Same 'Ole - Same 'Ole Produce Shopping Experience... (Hint: to avoid eating the same things day after day, week after week!)

• Variety in fruits and veggies creates variety in the vitamin, minerals, anti-oxidants, and phytonutrients your body is graced with. There are so many nutrients in food that we have not yet discovered. Opting to eat produce that varies with the season opens your body, your body cells, to receiving all of these nutrients.
• Phytonutrients fight oxidative stress, inflammation, and allow your body to heal for disease prevention and disease healing (You want this, trust me and yes, your body is capable of healing from any disease. It is how we are genetically programmed. The "you must take this drug for the rest of your life" medical mentality erases the fact that the body has the ability to heal.).
• Mixing up your fruit & veggies provides your body with different kinds of fiber, the roughage in food. Fiber, complex carbohydrates are good on so many levels. See below for some gut bug info.

• Your taste buds, eyes, nostrils, hands, and brain will be happy for the variation in sensory stimulation. All the colors, textures, smells, and tastes are an amazing way to stimulate your neural pathways. Think of that beautiful summer salad on your plate and then the slow rotation into fall and winter veggies giving us tantalizing root veggie and cabbage slaws. Then there is my favorite winter veggie... beets!  A winter, cooked beet salad with walnuts & feta cheese is a taste bud tantalizing change from the same ole - same ole steamed or sauteed broccoli. 

Above picture borrowed, with permission, from the website of Martin's Farmstand, Potsdam, NY.           Look at the seasonal abundance available in Northern NY!  Go to their website and have fun clicking on the "previous newsletter" links. The pictures from the farmstand, the farm fields, and gardens are amazing. Lush and juicy, fresh, local, and seasonal food everywhere!  And all this food is tended to with love by wonderful people.  For your fall & winter veggies... give them a call.

Looking for a winter CSA in Northern NY State?:  

• Kent Family Growers, 
• Birdsfoot Farm, 
• LittleGrasse FoodWorks  OR check out
• GardenShares website to find a farmer close to you that sells produce, meats, cheeses, milk, herbs, spring plants, etc.

Try these ideas to eat more variety in your fruits and veggies:

• Get Creative in the Kitchen
• Eat Seasonally Fruits & Veggies & Naturally Rotate Your Phytonutrients
• Use Root vegetables instead of grains to add plenty of complex carbohydrates and starches to your eating habits. This is good gut pre-biotic food that feeds the gut bugs you want to survive and thrive in your intestinal tract. A healthy gut microbiome is a self-responsibility tool in your personal medicine bag to prevent intestinal disease, auto-immune diseases, cancer, and a host of other preventable human ills. And food is your easy, at home medicine!
• Grate veggies on a grater (or use a fancy spiralizer); use these grated veggies instead of pastas. Depending on the veggie, I use some raw and gently saute' others.
• Learn what fruits & berries grow in your area, what their season is, and freely indulge in them.

More recipes: http://www.paulayoumellrn.com/recipes/

Tip for the Week, Month, & Year: Create seasonal variety in your whole food eating habits not just around the produce you eat. Variety bathes your awesome body cells in different nutrition daily, weekly, and with the seasons of the year.

Your body's health WILL thank you! (Your local farmers will thank you too.) 

Souped Up Soup!

Yesterday I posted about my "take a peek into the produce bins and concoct some sort of soup for dinner" experience in the kitchen.  I commented that tonight's soup would be similar but with sautéed celery instead of the kale. (My apologies on the typo about "now add the onions and garlic" as it was supposed to be add the onions and kale. I fixed that boo-boo.)

OK, so the planned soup just got souped up. I discovered 4 buttercup squash, from Old Market Farm, in my garage last eve. Now I did not exactly lose them, they were just momentarily forgotten. I decided to get them into the house before they froze and started rotting on me.

So I roasted the squash this AM. Revving the oven up in early AM helps to warm the chilled downstairs after a cool night.

To make this soup quickly, on an eve after working all day: get the squash steaming first, before you sauté the celery and onions. Cut a small to medium buttercup squash in half, remove seeds, and put into a pot of water that has about 1 inch of water on the bottom. When water starts to boil, reduce heat to a gentle simmer, and cook squash for about 20 minutes. It will be ready when you finish with the sauté and soup prep. 

Kitchen Advice: Never boil your veggies in a pot full of water; steam in the least amount of water you can get away with and not go dry. This goes for potatoes you are cooking to mash. Less water means less nutrient loss. Pour off cooking water into a coffee mug, let cool, and drink. Get every cell enhancing mineral and nutrient any way and every way you can!

Now get going on the celery & onion saute'!

• Sauté the medium sized onion, cut into small chunks, and the celery leaves in bacon fat from local, pasture raised pigs, no nasty curing chemicals added. (Use whatever you like for gentle sautéing: pasture raised butter, coconut oil... I would avoid most vegetable oils but that is another blog post and story!) The celery will sauté quickly, add the celery after the onions are just about finished.  This way you do not over cook the celery leaves.
• Add approximately 3 1/2 cups of goat's milk to the blender with 3 big cloves of the Birdsfoot garlic.
• Add the onion and celery to the blender.  
• Plop in big scoops of the squash, at least use one half of the cooked squash. Be careful scooping the squash out of the shell as it is hot and a steamed squash gets mushy not rigid like an oven roasted one. (Add lots of butter and sprinkle with curry, the other half of the squash, while it is still hot so the butter melts. Mash the butter and curry into the squash. Put into a dish and take to work tomorrow!)
• Sprinkle in, oh maybe 1 tsp. of medium heat curry powder (Nature's Storehouse or the Potsdam Food Coop). I use more curry with squash or pumpkin soup because the squash flavor can handle it without being overwhelmed. Besides, the spices in curry are amazing healers!
• Blend until the consistency and smoothness you want in a cream soup is achieved.
• Pour in soup pot and gently warm.
• Ladle into soup bowls and add a pinch of unrefined sea salt, if desired.

Don't forget the beet gratings!  Beets soup up the soup in several ways:

• fiber
• nutrients
• raw veggie with dinner
• contrasting color to the pretty orange soup (this artsy cooking style feeds the heart, mind, and soul!)
• beets are used as cancer therapy in Germany and Russia!  Why wait to use as therapy; prevent health problems now!

Quickly grate the beet using my metal cheese grater. I sprinkled the beet gratings on top of this generously curry seasoned cream of squash/celery soup.

If the pot is big enough, or the eaters few enough, you will have left overs for lunch or later dinners this week!  OR... freeze in a wide mouth, quart Ball canning jar (leave head space for expansion during the freezing process) and enjoy in a week or two!

Cheers and happy, healthy cooking!

Medicine or Poison? How will you LOVE your body cells?

I had a few comments about the healthy kid's birthday parties that went something like this... "Oh come on, shouldn't kids be allowed to have fun once in a while?"

My question was and always is this:  "When did fun become an opportunity to poison our bodies?"

When it comes to making decisions about health, healing, and disease prevention is not common sense a space to work from?

This is not a harsh mindset, in the least.  Read on for a holistic healer's reality check on cell nourishment.

Close your eyes and visualize a holiday or family celebration 200 years ago.  See and smell all the foods being served to celebrate the occasion or event.

All those foods ARE 100% whole, locally grown and produced, and in season!  There was absolutely no other way.

200 years ago Twinkies, gummy worms, soft drinks, Dorito chips, hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, etc., etc., etc. absolutely did not exist.

Visualize that party again.  People ARE having fun AND they are not filling their bodies with modern, factory made, food "products" poisons.  They are whooping it up, dancing, singing, merry making with friends, family, and neighbors all the while surrounded by whole, cell nourishing foods.

It is your choice with every fork full:  poison or nourishment?

Say NO to refined, corporate sponsored, factory made, cell degenerating products.

Say YES to healthy, cell enhancing, whole, local foods and party it up with the ones you love... all at the same time!

The possibilities are endless!  Focus on what you are inviting into your life:  real food and the vibrant health that comes from indulging in them!

Be Well.  Eat whole foods and make your body cells sing and dance.  Love yourself and other people; prepare them healthy food!

Paula

eBook Give Away 

Have a friend sign up for my health and healing blog, both of you receive a free eBook!!   I have 10 copies to  give to the 1st five pair of "referral friends!"

When I email the book to your friend, have them reply to my email and give your name as the referring friend.  I will zap a book off to you too!

Gospel of the Slaw

So, you may be wondering if I have lost my mind, maybe a new chapter has been added to the Bible that you did not hear about yet, or something weird is going on... well, it is none of the above.

I have the best encounters with people I work with, one on one and in group settings.  People are truly amazing when we allow them to be at their very best.

I am often encountered with the "I eat nothing but salads and I still cannot lose weight" issue.  I try to explain that summer vegetable salads, in the fall and winter, are very cooling to our body.  Summer veggies are for summer eating.  When we summer cool ourselves, in the winter, we also slow our metabolism.

Want to rev up that metabolism with warming, winter nourishing veggies?  Try a root veggie and cabbage slaw.  Recipe below.

Now for the title, it goes back to the people I meet thing I mentioned above.  An endearing client labeled my slaw recipe as the "Gospel of the Slaw" and paid the good recipe forward to many friends and family members.  The slaw is a great way to get yummy, raw veggies into your winter diet and keep it all seasonal.

Be well, eat slaw.

PS  Grating a butter nut squash and spicing the salad dressing with cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, ginger, and vanilla is another fun way to enjoy raw winter veggies.

Root Veggie & Cabbage Slaw

Assemble enough vegetable to feed the people who will be gracing your dinner table, red and green cabbage and root vegetables:  beet, parsnip, rutabaga, celeriac, carrot, purple carrot, turnip, winter storage radishes (bigger than the summer salad radishes), kohlrabi, salsify, burdock, horseradish, etc.

Fine chop red and/or green cabbage

Grate, on a metal cheese grater, root veggies. Pick root veggies you grow or can acquire locally.  I use 2-4 root veggies with the chopped cabbage, choosing different root veggies with each meal.

Add a grated apple.  My kids eat more, and more willingly, when the juicy sweetness of a grated apple is part of the salad.

Mix together in a bowl with the above dressing

Cover and refrigerate until meal time.  I make this dish last and serve immediately with every fall and winter meal.

Optional:  add a few raisins, add walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds… just make it yummy for you.

Salad Dressing

1 cup organic extra virgin olive oil

1 cup raw apple cider vinegar

1 tsp. organic prepared mustard; preferably made with apple cider vinegar, not grain vinegar

Dash unrefined sea salt

Dash fresh pepper

Crush clove of garlic

Herbs to taste:  rosemary, basil, oregano, thyme, parsley

Optional: 1 – 3 tbsp. dark maple syrup or sucanat unrefined sugar

I make this dressing in a Ball, wide mouth, quart canning jar so I always have it available for dinner salads, whatever the season.

Local Food Abounds, Health Benefits Innumerable

What's in the bowls, you ask?

Fresh, raw grape-apple sauce made from local concord grapes (across the road from me) and local apples (Thank you, Anna Campbell!).

I have been making this fresh, every morning, by chopping apples with their skins intact and putting them into the blender.  Pull grapes from their vines, seeds and skins intact, and toss into the blender.

Blend on high speed until a well blended sauce, pour into bowls and enjoy!

BENEFITS:  The benefits of local foods is that the nutrition is intact. The food is fresher as it has not been transported thousands of miles.  Apples and grapes are an amazing cleansing AM food for the liver and colon.

The skins are loaded with phyto-nutrients.   The grape seeds, well, they are too.  People pay good money for grape seed extract and yet spit the seeds out of the grapes they are eating.  What?  Grind them up, glean the benefits of the seeds!

The nutrition in both fruits is low sugar and feeds the body cells with an amazing array of nutrients (most of which we know nothing about nor have a name / label for them!).  It is a fall food to enjoy until they are gone, knowing that next season they will be back to enjoy again.