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By Stanley A. Fishman, Author of Tender Grassfed Meat

The flu, especially H1N1, is big news today. The words “Swine Flu” invoke fear and even panic.

The general focus on dealing with the flu is with vaccines and drugs. However, your body’s first line of defense against the flu, real food, is all but ignored.

Hippocrates of Cos is perhaps the most famous physician of all time. He is known as the father of medicine. He wrote the Hippocratic Oath, which used to be taken by all doctors. He is famous for his dictum, “First, do no harm.” What is not so well known is that Hippocrates advocated using food and other natural methods first, before anything else was tried. Drugs would only be used if the more natural methods failed, and surgery was used only as the last resort.

I have followed Hippocrates’ advice, and it has worked very well for me, my family, and others.

The First Line of Defense—Broth

Traditional peoples knew which foods could heal and prevent many illnesses. This knowledge was gained by observation, sometimes over thousands of years.

After much research, I have combined a number of these traditional healing foods into one broth. I call this Quadruple Healing Broth. We have found this broth to be a cold-buster and a flu-stopper.

Chicken soup is one of the most famous home remedies for colds and the flu. Recent studies have found that chicken soup has anti-viral, anti-bacterial, and anti-inflammatory qualities. The nutrients in a good chicken soup will strengthen your immune system, giving your body the nutrients it needs to heal itself.

Onions were prized by the ancient Egyptians, the ancient (and contemporary) Indians, and many other peoples for their healing qualities.

Green onions were valued by the Chinese, who often ate them daily and used them to treat colds and the flu.

Leeks were also used by the ancient Egyptians for healing all sorts of ailments, and were so loved by the Welsh that leeks became a symbol of Wales, signifying pride, strength, and health.

Garlic was used for healing by the ancient Egyptians, the Indians, the Chinese, and many other peoples. Garlic has many anti–inflammatory, anti-viral, anti-bacterial, and immune-boosting qualities.

However, it must be understood that all foods used for healing by traditional peoples were organic and were not GMO. Modern factory versions of these foods are very different and just will not work. The chicken soup was always made from scratch. You cannot pour health-giving nutrients out of a can, or extract them from a bouillon cube.

Quadruple Healing Broth is the cornerstone of our Hippocratic first line of defense. At the first sign of a cold or flu, we sip plenty of this broth, hot, not scalding. Usually, a few cups of this broth (sometimes only one or two), is enough to stop the cold or flu in its tracks.

However, sometimes you cannot sip broth because you are throwing up or coughing. This led me to develop two food-based remedies, one for vomiting and one for coughing. I came up with both of these after researching a large number of Ayurvedic remedies, and trying a few combinations.

Food-Based Vomiting Remedy

You will need the following ingredients:

1 organic onion, peeled

1 (2-inch) piece of organic fresh ginger, peeled, sliced, and crushed

Pure filtered water, (reverse osmosis water is best, but distilled water will also work)

1.Make ginger tea. Place the ginger in a small pan with two cups of filtered water, bring to a boil, and simmer uncovered for ten minutes. Remove from the heat.

2.Grate the onion into a bowl, using a hand grater. Place the grated onion in a clean, chemical-free cloth (cheese cloth works fine), and squeeze the cloth-covered onion over a bowl until no more juice drips through the cloth. You should have a tablespoon or so of juice in the bowl. Immediately place the juice in a small cup (like a shot glass), and have the sick person swallow it all at once. It goes down easier if the swallower holds their nose shut with the other hand.

This should stop the vomiting immediately.

The onion juice should be made just before using. It should be taken immediately after being made, and should not sit in a bowl.

3.10 minutes after the onion juice is taken, one tablespoon of strained ginger tea should be taken.

4.Every 15 minutes for the next hour, take one tablespoon of strained ginger tea. This will help rehydrate the body and prevent further vomiting.

5.After this hour, small sips of broth can be tried.

If vomiting reoccurs, the whole remedy should be repeated. Usually, this will not be necessary.

Recently, a teenage boy who had the swine flu was vomiting every few minutes. He stopped vomiting after he swallowed the onion juice. Several hours later he gulped down a cold drink and threw up once. He took the remedy once more and never vomited again. The next day he was almost completely well.

Food-Based Coughing Remedy

You will need the following ingredients:

Organic turmeric

Organic raw honey

This remedy could not be easier. You mix one-quarter teaspoon of organic turmeric with one teaspoon of the honey, then swallow it. It should provide immediate relief from any cough. You can repeat this every four hours, as needed.

Recently, a woman with severe immune problems caught the swine flu. She was treated with Tamiflu, but developed a constant, horrible wracking cough that was so bad she could not sleep. The cough medicine prescribed by her doctor did not help. She had tried the remedy using non-organic turmeric, and it did not help. I convinced her husband to get organic turmeric. She took the remedy again, and her cough was reduced to a very mild, occasional cough, and she was able to sleep. She never had a bad cough again. She went on to make a full recovery from the swine flu.

The Second Line of Defense—Supplements

What does a family do on the rare occasion that the broth does not kill the flu? We use a product created by Doctor Mayer Eisenstein of Homefirst Health Services. This product consists of vitamin D3 with probiotics. The web address for this product is as follows:http://homefirst.com/natural-pharm-store/vitamin-d/pro-d-5-with-probiotics-1.html

Doctor Eisenstein, a true Hippocratic physician, explains how to use the product at the bottom of the page.

This product, taken with the broth, has never failed us.

The Third Line of Defense—The Doctor

This would be to go to a doctor. Hopefully, a doctor who listens to his or her patients, is open to alternative remedies, and is much more than a pill pusher. I have not had to go to the third line of defense for over five years.

Real food has enabled me and my family to defeat colds and the flu for years. Unlike drugs, the only side effect is that real food improves your general health and immune system.

The following recipe for Quadruple Healing Broth is taken from my cookbook, Tender Grassfed Meat: Traditional Ways to Cook Healthy Meat.

Quadruple Healing Broth

Makes 6 to 8 quarts

4 to 6 pounds assorted free range chicken parts and bones, such as wing tips, backs, necks, carcasses from a roast chicken, legs, wings, etc.

Enough filtered water to cover the bones by 2 to 3 inches

½ cup organic, raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar

Assorted Root Vegetables

1 large organic leek, carefully washed, and chopped

1 large or 2 medium organic onions, peeled and chopped

1 bunch organic green onions, roots trimmed off, chopped

1 bulb of organic garlic, peeled and slightly crushed

For Simmering

Several chicken giblets

½ bunch organic Italian parsley, including stems, each stalk cut in half

2 tablespoons coarse unrefined sea salt

1.Peeling and crushing a whole bulb of garlic may seem like a lot of work. It is actually quite easy with the proper technique. You need a heavy cleaver or rolling pin. Separate the garlic cloves out of the bulb. Place the clove on a wooden cutting board, and press down hard on it with a rolling pin, or the flat of a cleaver. The clove will crack, and the skin will pop off easily. You may need to make one small cut at the root end of the clove to remove the remaining skin.

2.Put the bones and scraps of meat in the pot, except for the giblets. Add the water and the vinegar. Let sit at room temperature for 1 hour.

3.Add all the vegetables. Heat the pot until the water begins a strong simmer. This will take a while due to the large volume of ingredients and water.

4.When the water is close to boiling, remove all the scum that rises to the top with a skimming spoon. This can also take a while, but is necessary.

5.Once the scum is gone, add the giblets, parsley, and the salt.

6.Cover and simmer gently for 12 to 14 hours.

7.Using a ladle, strain into jars, cover, and refrigerate once the bottles have cooled down. The fat will rise to the top, and will solidify in the refrigerator. This fat cap will help preserve the broth. The fat should be removed before the broth is reheated.

I am not a doctor, and the above is not intended to be medical advice. Quadruple Healing Broth is a food, not a medicine. By all means, see a doctor if you want medical advice. The above is just a description of how some families deal with colds and the flu.

Read more, great Pennywise Thursday posts here: http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/2009/10/pennywise-platter.html

Read more, wonderful, Fight Back Friday posts here: http://www.foodrenegade.com/fight-back-friday-october-16th

Here’s a link for Stanley’s cookbook. It’s a wonderful book and I highly recommend it! – Mom

I love vanilla extract and like to use organic, but it’s really expensive, so I decided to make my own.  It was surprisingly easy.  Split the bean and put them in a jar – I used a half-gallon mason jar but you could also use a quart – pour over the vodka and let it sit for around 2 month in your cupboard, shaking occasionally.

As I ended up making a half-gallon of extract, I bought a supply of 2 and 4 oz jars and made pretty labels so I could give them away as gifts. I think next time I’ll get some 8oz jars too.  When the extract was all decanted into the jars, I scraped the inside of the leftover beans and saved all those bits of vanilla in a little jar as Vanilla Paste. You can use that interchangeably with vanilla but you’ll get all the nice little bits, which is especially nice for ice cream. In the picture the jar on the left has the paste, and the left over beans and vanilla are in the jar on the right. I ran out of bottles.  Also I put one of the beans, or half a bean for the smaller bottles in with the vanilla. I think they look pretty and will keep the flavor up.

I bought my vanilla beans at https://www.starwest-botanicals.com/

I got ¼ of a pound, which they say gives you 30-35 beans for $32 dollars, which is a great price for organic vanilla beans. They were very fresh and now I have some left over for other recipes too.  Oh, and I bought my vodka at Trader Joe’s, their brand, a big bottle for $10.00. I would try to find organic vodka next time, but I couldn’t find any for this recipe. I just now found it on the web for $12 for a 750ml bottle, not bad! 

Considering that organic vanilla can run you from $6 – $12 dollars for a two ounce bottle, with this recipe you can make it yourself for around $1.30 per two ounce bottle. That’s a big difference.

Ingredients:

8 cups Vodka

24 vanilla beans

You can quarter this recipe and use a quart jar if you’d like, then you’d only need 6 vanilla beans.

Cut the vanilla beans, the long way, from the bottom (the top has a little stem) all the way up to the last inch and stop there. That way the bean is almost split into two but it stays intact at the stem.

Put the split beans into your jar, and cover with vodka.  You can push the bean down so they’re totally covered and then fill the jar almost to the top.  Put the lid on and put it into a dark cupboard.  You can shake it every few days or not. I shook mine just a few times over the eight weeks.  I also wrote the date on the top of the jar, on a sticky note, so I’d remember when it was eight weeks.

After the eight weeks is up, you can flavor it if you like.  You can use a little simple sugar syrup or a little dark rum, 1 tsp. per cup of vodka.  I used the rum.

I made the labels using Avery 2×4 inch labels and thought they came out really pretty. These will make great holiday gifts, plus we’ll have lots of vanilla for ourselves for a long while too.  Enjoy!

See  more great gift ideas at the Handmade Gift Carnival here: http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/2009/11/handmade-gift-carnival.html

Read more, great Real Food Wednesday posts here: http://kellythekitchenkop.com/2009/10/real-food-wednesday-101409.html

Ten Homeopathic Remedies to Use during the Flu Season and Swine Flu Epidemic of 2009

We’ve used homeopathy, successfully with our kids and ourselves for many years. Here’s a great article on flu remedies.  You should be able to find them at any health food store. For more information about homeopathy, visit Melanie’s site, listed below,  http://homeopathyhome.com/ is a great resource also.  Mom

by Melanie Grimes, citizen journalist

Homeopathy has been very successful in treating the symptoms of flu and the Swine Flu pandemic of 2009 has been no exception. Homeopaths gather symptoms from a large population and discern what is called a “genus epidemicus”. The genus is the remedy, or group of remedies, with the symptoms of most people who have a particular flu. These remedies are therefore the most likely remedies to treat a particular flu strain.

The Swine Flu showed the typical symptoms of a regular flu with the exception of high fever and chills. As for the genus epidemicus of this flu, there are a few variations of this flu, so a few remedies have been required. This is much the same as in the Flu Epidemic of 1918 when two remedies were used to great advantage and a near 100% survival rate. The remedies mostly used in that flu were Bryonia and Gelsemium.

Remedies that homeopaths have found useful in treating this 2009 flu season include:

1. Ferrum Phos is always a good remedy to use in the first stages of flu. Ferrum phos can be taken in the 30c potency. Even the 6x potency, sold as a tissue salt, can stop a flu in its tracks. Ferrum phos can be alternated with Natrum Sulf during the first days of the flu.

2.Dulcamara is useful at the onset of a high fever. The Dulcamara cough hurts from muscular soreness. This flu is frequently brought on by cold, damp weather.

3. Nux vomica treats a flu with chills and pains in bones and joints. The irritability and chills are very marked.

4. Gelsemium treats a low fever, and is also a good remedy if you have not been well since the flu. Gelsemium patients experience weakness with shivering.

5. Arsenicum treats a burning fever that is accompanied with chills, restlessness and anxiety. The person needing Arsenicum is usually thirsty but only drinks small quantities at a time. They can have burning pains.

6. Bryonia is good for type of flu when the person does not want to move. The mouth is dry but they are thirsty.

7. Rhus tox flu can be accompanied with aching bones, restlessness, and a red tipped tongue. This is another remedy that is useful when the flu is brought on by damp weather.

8. Belladonna treats a high fever that comes on suddenly. Other accompanying symptoms of Belladonna include heat and redness.

9. Eupatorium perfoliatum experiences severe bone pains with great thirst.

10. Baptisia is a good remedy for flu, especially if it’s centered in the gastro-intestinal track. This remedy can be helpful in the early stages of the flu. The person needing Baptisia can be weak, listless, and feel sore.

The above remedies cover the general conditions and treat the flu symptoms that most have experienced so far. Try these homeopathic remedies to help speed your recovery during the flu season of 2009.

Originally published May 15 2009

About the author

Melanie Grimes is a writer, screenwriter, journal editor, and adjunct faculty member at Bastyr University.She has written an eBook on natural treatments for the flu, available at her blog.

A trained homeopath, she also raises alpacas and is an avid spinner. She is the editor of the homeopathic journal, Simillimum, has been a medical editor for 15 years, won awards as a screenwriter, taught creative writing, founded the first Birkenstock store in the USA (www.mjfeet.com) and authored medical textbooks.

Follow her blog, and get her ebook on Natural Remedies for the Flu is available at:

http://melanie-grimes.blogspot.com/

Read more, wonderful, Fight Back Friday posts here: http://www.foodrenegade.com/fight-back-friday-october-9th/

Join Organic Consumers Associations campaign to mobilize one million consumers to end Monsanto’s Global Corporate Terrorism.

Below are just a few reasons to join OCA’s campaign:

Multi-Billion $$ Monsanto Sues

More Small Family Farmers

Percy Schmeiser is a farmer from Saskatchewan Canada, whose Canola fields were contaminated with Monsanto’s genetically engineered Round-Up Ready Canola by pollen from a nearby farm. Monsanto says it doesn’t matter how the contamination took place, and is therefore demanding Schmeiser pay their Technology Fee (the fee farmers must pay to grow Monsanto’s genetically engineered products). According to Schmeiser, “I never had anything to do with Monsanto, outside of buying chemicals. I never signed a contract.

canola field and tractorIf I would go to St. Louis (Monsanto Headquarters) and contaminate their plots – destroy what they have worked on for 40 years – I think I would be put in jail and the key thrown away.”

Rodney Nelson’s family farm is being forced into a similar lawsuit by Monsanto.

Support Schmeiser, Nelson and hundreds of other farmers who are being forced to pay Monsanto to have their fields contaminated by genetically modified organisms.

Sign OCA’s “Millions Against Monsanto” petition. These petitions will be physically delivered to Monsanto and related court hearings.

Monsanto Brings Small Family Dairy to Court

Oakhurst Dairy has been owned and operated by the same Maine family since 1921, and Monsanto recently attempted to put them out of business. Oakhurst, like many other dairy producers in the U.S., has been responding to consumer demand to provide milk free of rBGH, a synthetic hormone banned (for health reasons) in every industrialized country other than the U.S. Oakhurst Dairy

Monsanto, the number one producer of the rBGH synthetic steroid, sued Oakhurst, claiming they should not have the right to inform their customers that their dairy products do not contain the Monsanto chemical. Given the intense pressure from the transnational corporation, Oakhurst was forced to settle out of court, leaving many other dairies vulnerable to similar attacks from Monsanto.

Monsanto Hid PCB Pollution for Decades

Anniston, Alabama CitizensANNISTON, Ala. — On the west side of Anniston, the poor side of Anniston, the people grew berries in their gardens, raised hogs in their back yards, caught bass in the murky streams where their children swam and played and were baptized. They didn’t know their dirt and yards and bass and kids — along with the acrid air they breathed — were all contaminated with toxic chemicals. They didn’t know they lived in one of the most polluted patches of America.

Now they know. They also know that for nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents — many emblazoned with warnings such as “CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy” — show that for decades, the corporate-giant concealed what it did and what it knew… (Read more…)

Monsanto’s Agent Orange: The Corporation Continues to Refuse Compensation to Veterans and Families for Exposure to the Toxic ChemicalChild at Vietnam War Memorial

The negative health effects, due to exposure to Monsanto’s Agent Orange, have been well documented over the past three decades. The dioxin in Agent Orange has been accepted internationally as one of the most toxic chemicals on the planet, causing everything from severe birth defects, to cancer, to neurological disorders, to death. But Monsanto has successfully blocked any major movement towards compensating veterans and civilians who were exposed to the company’s Agent Orange.

Long before Agent Orange was used as a herbicide in the Vietnam war, Monsanto knew of its negative health impacts on humans. Since then, Monsanto has been unsuccessful at covering its tracks and has even been convicted of fabricating false research documentation that claims Agent Orange has no negative health effects, other than a possible skin rash. Thanks to Monsanto’s influence, the Center for Disease Control also released a report claiming veterans were never exposed to harmful levels of Agent Orange.

Agent Orange VictimAs a note, from 1962 to 1970, the US military sprayed 72 million liters of herbicides, mostly Agent Orange, on over one million Vietnamese civilians and over 100,000 U.S. troops. As a result, within ten years of the close of the war, 9170 veterans had filed claims for disabilities caused by Agent Orange. The VA denied compensation to 7709, saying that a facial rash was the only disease associated with exposure.

In 2002, Vietnam requested assistance in dealing with the tens of thousands of birth defects due to Agent Orange. In order to avoid medical compensation expenses, Monsanto continues to claim this now banned chemical is not toxic. (Read more..)

Taxpayers Forced to Fund Monsanto’s Poisoning of Third World

Monsanto has also been implicated in the indiscriminate sale and use of RoundUp Ultra in the anti-drug fumigation efforts of Plan Colombia. Of the some $1.3 billion of taxpayers’ money earmarked for Plan Colombia, Monsanto has received upwards of $25 million for providing RoundUp Ultra.

Damaged Banana CropsRoundUp Ultra is a highly concentrated version of Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicide, with additional surfactants to increases its lethality. Local communities and human rights organizations charge that Ultra is destroying food crops, water sources and protected areas in the Andes, primarily Colombia.

Paradoxically, the use of RoundUp Ultra has actually increased coca cultivation in the Andes. As local farming communities are increasingly impacted by RoundUp Ultra fumigations, many turn to the drug trade as a means of economic survival. Regional NGOs have estimated that almost 200,000 hectares have been fumigated with Ultra under Plan Colombia.

Monsanto’s Roundup Pesticide Killing Wheat

Monsanto also produces the most commonly used broadleaf pesticide in the world, glyphosate–or Roundup. In addition to its inherent toxicity as a chemical pesticide, Roundup has now been found to aid the spread of fusarium head blight in wheat. This disease creates a toxin in the infected wheat, making the crop unsuitable for human or animal consumption. Canada’s wheat industry is currently being ravaged by this disease. At the same time, the widespread use of Roundup has resulted in the formation of “super weeds” — unwanted plants that have developed an immunity to these pesticides. Read study linking Monsanto’s Roundup to Cancer.

Monsanto Takes Ownership of Public Water Resources

Polluted Farm Water

Over the past century, global water supplies have been contaminated with the full gamut of Monsanto’s chemicals, including PCBs, dioxin and glyophosate (Roundup). So now the company, seeing a profitable market niche, is taking control of the public water resources they polluted, filtering it, and selling it back to the people. In short, Monsanto is making a double profit by polluting the world’s scarce freshwater resources, privately taking ownership of that water, filtering it, and selling it back to those who can afford to pay for it.

Monsanto’s GE Seeds are Pushing US Agriculture into Bankruptcy

Genetically engineered crops are causing an economic disaster for farmers in the U.S. So says a new report released by Britain’s Soil Association. The report is a massive compilation of data showing GE crops have cost American taxpayers $12 billion in farm subsidies in the past three years. “Within a few years of the introduction of GM crops, almost the entire $300 million annual US maize exports to the EU had disappeared, and the US share of the soya market had decreased,” the report said. In addition, the study says that GE crops have lead to an increased use of pesticides, while resulting in overall lower crop yields.  Read more here: http://www.organicconsumers.org/patent/exposed091702.cfm

Cotton Farmers Going Bankrupt from Monsanto’s GE Cotton

In India the financial figures for the recent cotton growing season have finally been crunched. Indian Cotton FarmersiaAlthough Monsanto convinced many of India’s farmers that buying the more expensive GE cotton seeds would result in higher yields and better cotton, the reverse is actually true. Crop yields for GE cotton were 5 TIMES LESS than traditional Indian cotton and the income from GE cotton was 7 TIMES LESS than conventional cotton, due to Monsanto’s cotton having lower quality short fibers. As a result of the insurmountable deluge of debt accrued from paying more for the GE seeds and having a weak crop, more than 100 Indian farmers committed suicide in the last year. Read more here, http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/bt_cotton.cfm

Join Organic Consumers Association, Millions Against Monsanto campaign here,

http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm

There are a lot of great action alerts on the page to sign as well.

I found this recipe on the Sprout People website: http://www.sproutpeople.com  We used organic extra virgin coconut oil, for the oil, which worked great. You could also use butter.

We’ve bought some terrific sprout mixes from them, including Amber Waves of Grain (a mix that contains: wheat, barley, rye spelt, triticale, oats, kamut, sesame, millet, amaranth & quinoa) – which we used to make this bread. It’s a great recipe and was a big hit with the teenagers.  Our three loaves were gone in three days!

You can use any grain to sprout, the Amber Waves of Grain mix, Wheat, Rye, Kamut, Quinoa, Spelt, Triticale, etc.   Start sprouting your grain 2-3 days ahead so it’s ready for when you want to make your bread.  I started sprouting the grain Friday morning and we made the bread on Sunday. I also used all whole-wheat flour, that I ground from spring wheat, right before we made the bread. Oh, and I made it in my mixer, which worked great. We only did a few minutes of hand kneading when we put it out on the lightly floured surface.

Combine in a large bowl:

2 1/2 cups warm water

2 scant Tbs. active dry yeast

Allow the yeast to proof (bubble) for 5 minutes

Stir in:

½  cup extra virgin coconut oil

½  cup honey

1 tablespoon salt

2 Cups Sprouted Grains – we ground them up in the food processor – you can use them whole if you’d like too.

4 cups flour – any combination of wheat, rye and white you like

Mix well.

Cover and let this “sponge” sit 45-60 minutes.

Stir down and gradually add:

3-4 cups flour -any combination

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth.

Place dough into a greased bowl – turn it over and around to coat the whole of the dough. Cover and let rise until doubled (60-90 minutes).

Knead dough down in the bowl, divide and shape into 2 – 3 oblong loaves. Place in well-greased loaf pans and cover.

Let rise 60 minutes or until almost doubled.

Bake at 375º for 35 to 40 minutes.

Remove loaves from pans and cool on wire racks.

Makes 2 – 3 loaves.  Enjoy!

Read more, wonderful Pennywise Platter Thursday posts here: http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/2009/10/pennywise-platter-thursday-108.html

Read more, wonderful, Fight Back Friday posts here: http://www.foodrenegade.com/fight-back-fridays-october-2nd

We love Naan Bread and this is a very easy recipe.  We grind our own whole wheat flour and depending on my mood (and how much flour I have ground), I use all whole wheat or ½ whole wheat and ½ unbleached white flour. If you buy your whole wheat, I recommend organic whole wheat pastry flour as it’s lighter for baking. This recipe makes 8 big, or 16 small pieces of naan bread. If you don’t have three teenaged boys at home, like we do, feel free to cut the recipe in half. You can also take ½ of the dough and put it in the refrigerator, instead of letting it rise.  It will last up to a week and you can take the rest out, let it rise and bake another day.  You will be surprised at how easy these are to make.  You do need a pizza or hot stone.  We got one a few years ago for $10 and use it all the time. You can use them for breads, pizza, even to reheat any kind of bread.

Ingredients:

2 ½ cups lukewarm water

2 tsp dry active yeast

6 cups organic whole wheat flour  – or ½ whole wheat, ½ unbleached white

1 tsp salt

Dissolve yeast in water. Allow the yeast to sit in the warm water for around 5 minutes until it blooms (bubbles).

Add half the flour, a cup at a time, stirring until incorporated.

Sprinkle in the salt.

Add remaining flour a cup at a time.

Shape into a ball and let rise until double in size.

Pre-heat oven to 500 F

Divide dough into portion sizes.

Flatten each piece into an oval and let rest for 10 minutes.

Wet fingers (very liberally) and “dimple” surface. This will help to make the dough very thin.  After you dimple, just before you put it in the oven, you can sprinkle things on top.  We usually drip a bit of olive oil and then sprinkle some minced garlic or Celtic sea salt.  You could also use pepper, hot pepper, whatever you’d like.

Transfer onto a hot baking stone.

Bake for about 5 minutes or until top is golden and bottom is brown and crusty. Once they’re out of the oven you can spread a little butter on, just before you eat them.   Enjoy!

Read more, great, Real Food Wednesday posts here, http://kellythekitchenkop.com/2009/09/real-food-wednesday-93009.html

Read more, great Pennywise Platter Thursday posts here, http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/2009/09/pennywise-platter-thursday-101.html

We drink raw milk, and we make fresh kefir with it too.  This summer I decided to make raw milk ice cream. It was delicious.  Note: I do use raw eggs in this recipe.  If you use raw eggs it’s at your own risk. I only use local organic eggs – soon to be from our own back yard chickens.  If you are not comfortable using raw eggs the recipe works well with pasteurized eggs, like eggbeaters, too. I’ve made it both ways.

If you want to read more about why we love real, raw milk, click here:  http://realmilk.com/

I’ve made many types of ice cream and with many recipes you need to make the mix and then chill it for a few hours or overnight.  This recipe is super easy because you just mix it and put it in your ice cream maker.

If you’ve never made your own ice cream it’s really worth the effort.  You can find many different machines, including an attachment for your Kitchen Aid mixer, that make great ice cream.

I got the original recipe in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream book and tweaked it a bit to make it my own.  This book and David Lebovitz’s Perfect Scoop are my two favorite Ice Cream recipe books.

In the picture, the ice cream was just done. We put it in the freezer for a few hours after and it firms up beautifully.  It makes enough to fill two (empty and cleaned for re-use) quart yogurt containers.

Ingredients:

2  large organic, free range eggs, or equivalent amount of eggbeaters (see note above)

3/4 cup  organic sugar

2 cups organic raw cream, heavy or whipping

1 cup organic raw milk

2 tsps. Vanilla extract

You can make it in a mixing bowl or with a stand mixer.  Whisk the eggs until light and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes.

Whisk in the sugar, a little at a time, then continue whisking until completely blended, about 1 minute more.

Pour in the cream, milk and vanilla. Whisk to blend.

Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze following the manufacturer’s instructions.  You can mix in anything you like towards the end of the freezing cycle.  Enjoy!

Read more Fight Back Friday posts here: http://www.foodrenegade.com/fight-back-friday-september-25th

Jeffrey M. Smith, the brilliant author of Seeds of Deception has released a wonderful video, called Everything you HAVE TO KNOW about Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods.

You can watch the video here or at his site, http://www.responsibletechnology.org/GMFree/HealthRisks/NewVideoPage/index.cfm

Everything You HAVE TO KNOW about Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods from Jeffrey Smith on Vimeo.

If you watch it here at Moms for Safe food, I highly recommend that you visit Jeffrey’s site, http://www.responsibletechnology.org  as well.

Jeffrey M Smith is an international best selling author and is the leading spokesperson on the health dangers of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). He documents how the world’s most powerful Ag biotech companies bluff and mislead critics, and put the health of society at risk.

He has a wealth of great articles and you can find a wonderful, free, Non-GMO shopping guide that everyone should have a copy of.

Thank you Jeffrey, for all you do!

Mom

Read more, great, Real Food Wednesday posts here: http://www.cheeseslave.com/2009/09/23/real-food-wednesday-september-23-2009/

Below’s a link to Jeffrey’s bestselling book, Seeds of Deception.  I highly recommend it too.

by Chris Hedges

Our most potent political weapon is food. If we take back our agriculture, if we buy and raise produce locally, we can begin to break the grip of corporations that control a food system as fragile, unsafe and destined for collapse as our financial system. If we continue to allow corporations to determine what we eat, as well as how food is harvested and distributed, then we will become captive to rising prices and shortages and increasingly dependent on cheap, mass-produced food filled with sugar and fat. Food,

along with energy, will be the most pressing issue of our age. And if we do not build alternative food networks soon, the social and political ramifications of shortages and hunger will be devastating.

The effects of climate change, especially with widespread droughts in Australia, Africa, California and the Midwest, coupled with the rising cost of fossil fuels, have already blighted the environments of millions. The poor can often no longer afford a balanced diet. Global food prices increased an average of 43 percent since 2007, according to the International Monetary Fund. These increases have been horrific for the approximately 1 billion people-one-sixth of the world’s population-who subsist on less than $1 per day. And 162 million of these people survive on less than 50 cents per day. The global poor spend as much as 60 percent of their income on food, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.

There have been food riots in many parts of the world, including Austria, Hungary, Mexico, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Yemen, Mauritania, Senegal and Uzbekistan. Russia and Pakistan have introduced food rationing. Pakistani troops guard imported wheat. India has banned the export of rice, except for

high-end basmati. And the shortages and price increases are being felt in the industrialized world as we continue to shed hundreds of thousands of jobs and food prices climb. There are 33.2 million Americans, or one in nine, who depend on food stamps. And in 20 states as many as one in eight are on the food stamp program, according to the Food Research Center. The average monthly benefit was $113.87 per person, leaving many, even with government assistance, without adequate food. The USDA says 36.2 million Americans, or 11 percent of households, struggle to get enough food, and one-third of them have to sometimes skip or cut back on meals. Congress allocated some $54 billion for food stamps this fiscal year, up from $39 billion last year. In the new fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, costs will be $60 billion, according to estimates.

Food shortages have been tinder for social upheaval throughout history. But this time around, because we have lost the skills to feed and clothe ourselves, it will be much harder for most of us to become self-sustaining. The large agro-businesses have largely wiped out small farmers. They have poisoned our soil with pesticides and contaminated animals in filthy and overcrowded stockyards with high doses of antibiotics and steroids. They have pumped nutrients and phosphorus into water systems, causing algae bloom and fish die-off in our rivers and streams. Crop yields, under the onslaught of changing weather patterns and chemical pollution, are declining in the Northeast, where a blight has nearly wiped out the tomato crop. The draconian Food Modernization Safety Act, another gift from our governing elite to corporations, means small farms will only continue to dwindle in number. Sites such as La Via Campesina do a good job of tracking these disturbing global trends.

“The entire economy built around food is unsafe and unethical,” activist Henry Harris of the Food Security Roundtable told me. The group builds distribution systems between independent farmers and city residents.

“Food is the greatest place for communities to start taking back power,” he said. “The national food system is collapsing by degrees. More than 50 percent of what we eat comes from the Central Valley of California. What happens when gasoline becomes $5 a gallon or drought sweeps across the cropland? The monolithic system of food production is highly unstable. It has to be replaced very soon with small, diverse sources that provide greater food security.”

Cornell University recently did a study to determine whether New York state could feed itself. The research is described in two articles published in 2006 and 2008 by the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems. If all agricultural land were in use, and food distribution were optimized to

minimize the total distance that food travels, New York state could, the researchers found, have 34 percent of its food needs met from within its boundaries. This is not encouraging news to those who live in New York City. New York once relied on New Jersey, still known as the Garden State, instead of having food shipped from across the country. But New Jersey farms have largely given way to soulless housing developments. Farming communities upstate, their downtowns boarded up and desolate, have been gutted by industrial farming.

The ties most Americans had to rural communities during the Great Depression kept many alive. A barter economy replaced the formal economy. Families could grow food or had relatives to feed them. But in a world where we do not know where our food comes from, or how to produce it, we have become

vulnerable. And many will be forced, as food prices continue to rise, to shift to a diet of cheap, fatty, mass-produced foods, already a staple of the nation’s poor. Junk food, a major factor in obesity, diabetes and heart disease, is often the only food those in the inner city can buy because supermarkets and nutritious food are geographically and financially beyond reach. As the economy continues to deteriorate, the middle class will soon join them.

“It is clear to anyone who looks carefully at any crowd that we are wasting our bodies exactly as we are wasting our land,” Wendell Berry observed in “The Unsettling of America.” “Our bodies are fat, weak, joyless, sickly, ugly, the virtual prey of the manufacturers of medicine and cosmetics. Our bodies have become marginal; they are growing useless like our ‘marginal land’ because we have less and less use for them. After the games and idle flourishes of modern youth, we use them only as shipping cartons to

transport our brains and our few employable muscles back and forth to work.”

Berry, who lives on a farm in Kentucky where his family has farmed for generations, argues that local farming is fundamental to sustaining communities. Industrial farming, he says, has estranged us from the land. It has rendered us powerless to provide for ourselves. It has left us complicit in the corporate destruction of the ecosystem. Its moral cost, Berry argues, has been as devastating as its physical cost.

“The people will eat what the corporations decide for them to eat,” writes Berry. “They will be detached and remote from the sources of their life, joined to them only by corporate tolerance. They will have become consumers purely-consumptive machines-which is to say, the slaves of producers. What… model farms very powerfully suggest, then, is that the concept of total control may be impossible to confine within the boundaries of the specialist enterprise-that it is impossible to mechanize production without mechanizing consumption, impossible to make machines of soil, plants, and animals without making machines also of people.”

The nascent effort by communities to reclaim local food production is the first step toward reclaiming lives severed and fragmented by corporate culture. It is more than a return to local food production. It is a return to community. It brings us back to the values that sustain community. It is a return to the recognition of the fragility, interconnectedness and sacredness of all living systems and our dependence on each other. It turns back to an ethic that can save us.

“[The commercial] revolution … , ” writes Berry, “did not stop with the subjugation of the Indians, but went on to impose substantially the same catastrophe upon the small farms and the farm communities, upon the shops of small local tradesmen of all sorts, upon the workshops of independent craftsmen, and upon the households of citizens. It is a revolution that is still going on. The economy is still substantially that of the fur trade, still based on the same general kinds of commercial items: technology, weapons, ornaments, novelties, and drugs. The one great difference is that by now the revolution has deprived the mass of consumers of any independent access to the staples of life: clothing, shelter, food, even water. Air

remains the only necessity that the average user can still get for himself, and the revolution has imposed a heavy tax on that by way of pollution. Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat.

“The inevitable result of such an economy,” Berry adds, “is that no farm or any other usable property can safely be regarded by anyone as a home, no home is ultimately worthy of our loyalty, nothing is ultimately worth doing, and no place or task or person is worth a lifetime’s devotion. ‘Waste,’ in such an economy, must eventually include several categories of humans-the unborn, the old, ‘disinvested’ farmers, the unemployed, the ‘unemployable.’ Indeed, once our homeland, our source, is regarded as a resource, we are all sliding downward toward the ash heap or the dump.”

© 2009 TruthDig.com

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should

Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.”

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/07-3