Category Archives: nutrition

Is it fair to have children closely spaced?

health, nutrition, parenting

I started writing this post over a year and a half ago, and I had to smile when I recently checked my drafts file, since so many of the topics that I wrote about then are still things I think about!

There’s a lot of strong opinion on the topic of ideal spacing of one’s children.  This is a highly personal decision that is fraught with emotion – I know I’ve had a negative knee jerk reaction to reading some of what is written on this topic, and I’ve had to remind myself that people are entitled to do whatever is right for them.

I’d like to address to a particular sentiment regularly expressed by real food devotees, the nutritional argument.  Those in the real food camp (where I consider myself) try to follow traditional food practices – to eat food as it was eaten for generations, because this has been key in the health of many generations.   As we’ve gotten away from this inherent wisdom of our bodies, our collective health has suffered.

Many people have noted the significant spacing between children in traditional societies, and felt that this is important to implement in our lives.  This is in order to give a mother time in which she can rebuild her nutritional stores after being depleted by pregnancy (and breastfeeding).  An unborn child can only ‘take’ from the reserves that the mother has in store; if it’s not there, his body won’t be able to use it.  And by carefully spacing one’s children, each child can be granted his “birthright of perfect health” (sorry, lost the complete Sally Fallon quote I wanted to share with you).

Now obviously, since I’ve had nine children born within fifteen years,  you don’t have to be a math whizzard to work out that I haven’t followed the ideal child spacing of three to four years between children!    And I’m not going to be an apologist for that.  Rather, I want to question what I perceive to be a dogmatic belief that ideal nutrition trumps the value of bringing children into the world, as well as the idea that you can eliminate any variables in the development of an unborn child.

(Parenthetically, something that is usually not mentioned when making the argument about what traditional societies did regarding child spacing, is that this was accomplished in large part because men had several wives and weren’t intimate with each wife for a lengthy period of time after childbirth.  True, we can replicate traditional spacing by using birth control rather than polygamy, but long term usage of chemical birth control (versus natural family planning) comes with it’s own related health concerns.  (Edited to add: how timely that after posting this I saw Kelly’s post about the dangers of birth control!  Definitely take a look so you can see some of the issues involved.)

There are those who feel passionately enough about this topic that they are willing to not have another child at all if it means that he won’t be conceived from a position of nutritional strength.  I respect that this is their belief and priority, and there would be a lack of integrity for someone who believed this to make any different choice.  For me, it’s not a choice I have chosen, even knowing all that I do about how prenatal nutrition affects a growing child.

I’m going to write a post (hopefully sooner rather than later!) detailing the physical differences that I’ve noted in the  jaw structure of each of our nine children depending on what I ate during pregnancy as well as birth order.  And though I can see that some have better facial bone structure than others, I don’t believe in even the tiniest part of me that because one had teeth that were more crowded than another and needed braces, that I shortchanged them or made a mistake by bringing them into this world.

I believe that there’s an inherent value to having a child, a spiritual piece of eternity that a mother can be part of.  That doesn’t mean that no matter what your current reality is, that having a baby is a good idea right now.  As I said earlier, this is an extremely personal decision and I can only share the criteria that I personally use in determining if pregnancy is a good idea at this time – a woman’s physical and emotional readiness to nurture a child.

While there are nutritional concerns that the expectant mother would benefit by addressing when children are close in age by being particularly careful that she has a high nutrient diet,  I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that there are benefits to a mother and child to being spaced more closely.  Each child has a constant playmate and companion, which often develops into a close relationship that is maintained over the years.  When children are each other’s entertainment, this makes the physical aspect of parenting much easier than for a mom of a singleton or those who are widely spaced.

A mother absolutely should not deplete herself  to the point that she has nothing left to give.  But there’s a lot of ground between absolute physical exhaustion, and striving for the physical perfection of child.  It’s this sentiment of idealizing perfection that I’m disturbed by in the real food community.  I’m not a fan of striving for perfection in any area, since I think it’s stressful, depleting, guilt inducing, and not productive.  (Excellence, yes, but definitely not perfection!)

It’s true that the mother of closely spaced children isn’t likely to be able to replenish her nutritional stores like someone who has worked on it assiduously for several years without the draw from pregnancy.  However, let’s not forget that there’s plenty a woman can do to eat well during pregnancy to improve her unborn baby’s health.  This is not an all of nothing process.  (I’ve written about guidelines for high quality prenatal nutrition here.)

And on the other side of the equation, there are no guarantees in life.  There’s a conviction in the real food camp that if you eat well enough, nothing can go wrong with your child’s prenatal development.  Guess what?  It doesn’t always work like that.  It’s wonderful that there are so many things that we can affect with good nutrition, and this is very empowering.  But there are always going to be potential issues we can’t control for, as comforting as it is to think that we can.

What do you think the ideal child spacing is?  How has that worked for you and your children?  

Avivah

(This post is part of Monday Mania, Real Food 101, Fat Tuesday, Traditional Tuesdays, and Real Food Wednesdays.)

How to render beef fat

canning, frugal strategies, nutrition,
Five jars of cooled (white) fat, jar on right with melted fat still hot

Some things are so easy you feel almost foolish posting instructions on how to do it, and how to render beef fat (or chicken fat) is one of those things!

But since Chanukah began just last night and it’s traditional to fry foods in oil during this eight day festival, I’m going to go ahead and share an option for frying that our family enjoys year round!

Firstly, you’ll need to get hold of a good bit of beef fat.  This is also called suet.  There are different qualities of fat; if you have a choice, you want a big chunk of white fat rather than a blob of little pieces.  But either way, you’ll prepare it the same way.  We got a nice slab from the ribs, which is good quality fat.

If you want to make life more involved for yourself, then go ahead and dice the fat up.  Or put it in a food processor, or chop it.  I’ve seen all those things recommended.  But you know me, ‘why make more work than necessary?’ is my motto, so I just put the entire big chunk in a pot.

Put the burner on low, and let the fat slowly melt over the course of time – it might take up to a few hours, depending how much fat you have.  When it’s liquid, it’s called rendered – pour the fat through a strainer into a glass jar or container.  If you are going to refrigerate the fat and don’t care if there are tiny pieces of meat that end up in it, don’t bother straining it.  The beef particles will sink to the bottom of the jar.  I use this up so quickly that it doesn’t matter to me if it’s clarified (strained) or not.

If you have a big chunk, you might find that you can pour off most of the melted fat, but there’s still a chunk left.  Go ahead, pour off what’s melted, and keep melting the remainder – that’s what I did above, which is why one jar in my picture was in the hot melted stage while the others had already cooled off.

When the fat is liquid, it will be a lovely golden brown,  but when it hardens, it turns a pure white.  You can see that in my picture above.  (You can also see the little food particles at the bottom of the jar of melted fat on the right, if you look closely. )

You might be left with some tasty cracklings at the end of this – if you are, save them and use them to season another dish – it’s delicious!

Now, how do you preserve your rendered fat?  Assuming you’ve strained it, you should be able to keep this at room temperature for quite a while.  What I’ve liked doing in the past is rendering a large batch of fat at a time, pouring the hot strained fat into glass canning jars, and then immediately closing each jar with a new canning lid and ring.  It will seal as it cools, and will stay shelf stable for many, many months.

For those of you wondering why in the world I’d want to use something as artery clogging as beef fat, it’s because it’s not saturated fat that causes heart problems, but processed vegetable oils (yes, like the widely touted canola and soy oils).  They’ve done analyses of the stuff they’ve scraped out of arteries and it’s not saturated fat.  There’s lots of fascinating research about this and if you’re interested in reading some articles, here are some to start you off:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/01/does-dietary-saturated-fat-increase.html

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/08/saturated-fat-consumption-still-isnt.html  (This blogger has a PhD in neurobiology and has a number of excellent articles on different aspects of the research on saturated fat – you can do a search on his blog if you’re interested in reading more.)

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/saturated-fat-healthy/ (This is an excellent site and is filled with high quality information, but you’ll find a little bit of off-color language from time to time – just a warning for those who would be bothered.)

http://www.drbriffa.com/2010/01/15/two-major-studies-conclude-that-saturated-fat-does-not-cause-heart-disease/

The benefits in terms of cooking with beef fat are that it has a high smoking point, which makes it good for frying and baking.  Flavor-wise, I prefer to use coconut oil or palm shortening for baking, but find the beef fat adds a nice flavor to most other things.

Avivah

(This post is linked to Make Your Own Monday, Monday Mania, Homestead Barn Hop, Real Food 101,  Traditional Tuesdays, Real Food Wednesday, Works for Me Wednesdays, and the Real Food Hanukkah Blog Carnival.)

Dietary changes since moving to Israel

aliyah, frugal strategies, nutrition

I recently answered the question about how we’re adapting to the differences in availability of certain foods since we arrived in Israel from a philosophical perspective.  Today I’ll answer the nitty gritty details.  😛

>>How are you finding the price differences in food?<<

Food prices are for the most part higher here on just about everything but fruits and vegetables.  When you take into account that the average Israeli salary isn’t as high as in the US, food costs make up for a much higher percentage of income here.

But even in the US, I wasn’t buying food at retail prices; I had discounted sources or bought on sale for just about everything.  Therefore, I was able to feed our family of 11 a high quality diet on $650 a month.  Our budget hasn’t drastically changed – we’re budgeting 2000 shekels a month for food ($555) and so far this is working out very nicely for our family and the guests we have almost every week – but we’ve had some shifts in what we’re eating.  I’m including prices of some basics since I was asked about that in the comments section of a previous post.

If I mention a price and you’d like to figure out what it would be in dollars, the conversion rate is currently 3.6 shekels to the dollar; 2.2 pounds equals a kilogram, and 4 liters is about a gallon.  (Yes, I stand there in front of the display shelves in the supermarket doing these calculations in my head to figure out if things are a good buy!  I fortunately have to do this less and less as time goes on, though.)

Dairy – We used to use lots of butter, raw milk, homemade yogurt (from raw milk), kefir, organic cottage cheese and sour cream, and small amounts of hard cheese.  Now, we’ll occasionally have some butter or pasteurized milk, or maybe a yogurt or two, but dairy is no longer a staple in our home.  I can’t stand that soy fillers are added to ground meat and cheeses here to make them cheaper (this was a surprise to me the first time I looked at a package of frozen chopped meat that was on sale), so you have to really, really read the labels to be sure you’re getting what you think you are.

On a related note: I was invited to a party last week at which I was the only English speaker, and when I looked at the so-called natural juice on the table, I saw it had artificial stabilizers added.  I chose to drink water instead, but the woman next to me asked me why I put the juice down.  I told her, and since everyone else at the table was listening, they showed me the ‘no artificial colors or preservatives” claim on the front, and then one of them turned the bottle around to show me where it said it in English (in case I didn’t get the point!).  I turned the bottle to the ingredients and showed them – in Hebrew – the problematic ingredients.  They couldn’t believe it.  Lesson – you must read labels carefully!

Back to dairy.  The least expensive cheese that doesn’t have soy fillers in it is about 42 shekels a kilo when bought at the counter (ie not prepackaged, so it’s the cheaper way to buy).  Milk is between 4.50 – 5 shekels a liter.  Butter is about 7.50 shekels for 200 grams. An individual unsweetened yogurt (150 – 200 grams) is about 1.20 – 2.35 shekels, depending on the fat content (sour cream is on the higher end of this price).  Cottage cheese is 5 shekels a container on sale; I don’t remember how many grams this is, maybe 250 (I haven’t yet bought it) but it’s about a cup.  These prices aren’t for organic or raw dairy products.

I’ve been unable to find raw cow’s milk, and the raw goat’s milk I’ve found is quite a drive from here.  I had a discussion with someone who raises goats and sells raw milk, but she was very adamant that it should be pasteurized before drinking.  She had some good points, basically about the importance of knowing not only the person who raises the goats, but each goat itself to see how it’s feeling that day to determine if there might be any infection that would transfer to the milk.   In any case, I don’t have a vehicle and renting a car to get milk once in a while would be a big expense.  (The cost of the raw goats milk was 7.5 shekels a liter.)  So due to cost and quality concerns, I’ve chosen to drastically minimize dairy, to the point of just about eliminating it.

Eggs – I used to buy pastured eggs directly from the farmer for an amazingly low price and used them very freely – it was common to go through two dozen eggs just at breakfast.  Here for non-pastured eggs I’m paying 27.50 shekels for 2.5 dozen non pastured eggs.  Organic eggs are much, much more.   We still use plenty of eggs, but closer to thirty dozen a month instead of sixty dozen.

Chicken/meat – Though we’ve cut down on the eggs and dairy, we’ve switched to more poultry.  This is an area where I think we are able to compensate a lot for the nutrients we used to get in milk and eggs.  I buy a lot of chicken giblets, a very nutritious organ meat, and use it almost daily for lunch (purchased on sale for 7 – 8 shekels a kilo). We usually have chicken on  Shabbos (the price of chicken varies drastically by kosher certification, ranging around 10 – 28 shekels a kilo for a whole chicken).

A lot of the beef in Israel is raised in Argentina, where the vast majority of animals are pastured.  I buy this once a week for Shabbos (when I can get it on sale for 3 kilos for 100 shekels).

Liver – I wrote a while back about my experience kashering liver.  After undertaking to kasher 20 pounds of beef liver, I was so burnt out that I didn’t reattempt it once we used up that huge batch.  However, in light of the lack of raw milk and high quality eggs, liver is again reentering the picture in our home.  🙂

Dd17 bought a two handled rectangular grill thingy that I can kasher the liver with on our stovetop when she was in Jerusalem a couple of weeks ago – there was nowhere in our city that they’re sold and I was really happy she was able to find it!  (Liver is very bloody and since Jews are forbidden to eat even a drop of blood, liver has to be roasted in a special way to ensure no blood is left in it before eating – this is called kashering.)  We kashered the first one kilo batch of chicken livers a few days ago, and it went pretty quickly, so last week dh picked up another four kilos.  By purchasing these on sale, I pay between 18 – 20 shekels a kilo.  (If you buy them kashered, the price goes up to around 100 shekels a kilo.)  This isn’t something that we need to eat lots of since nutritionally a little goes a long way; I’m planning to use about a kilo of liver a week for our family.

Broth – We are able to buy chicken bones for 4 shekels a kilo on sale, and usually have a pot of broth in use in some way.  We use this as a basis for soup, grains, and of course, with dh being on GAPS for over 1.5 years, broth is a staple for him.  In the winter I particularly enjoy drinking it instead of hot tea.

Fats – This was the thing that took me the longest to come up with some good choices after we moved and caused me the most frustration.  In the beginning had to use regular oil (soy and canola) from the store.   That was the worst since we haven’t had things like that in our house for five or six years and I think they’re nutritionally damaging, versus  less than ideal.  We used a lot more extra virgin olive oil during this time than usual.  Fortunately, we now have palm shortening for most baking and cooking (9 shekels a kilo).

I bought beef fat for 13 shekels a kilo last week  (the butcher discounted it down from 25 shekels a kilo for us – here the fat sells for almost as much as the meat!) and rendered it.  We use extra virgin olive oil for salads or to add to hot foods after they’ve been cooked.  None of these are cheap options but this is an area where I’m willing to spend more. I also try to regularly buy avocados, which range from about 6 – 8 shekels a kilo.

Produce – We still have lots of fruits and vegetables, and this is an area where we spend less in Israel than we did in the US.  I used to limit myself to produce that was under $1 a pound.  Here I’ve been limiting myself to produce under 4 shekels a kilo (this has gotten a little harder with the cold weather approaching and I might have to bump this up to 5 or 6 shekels a kilo at some point), though I occasionally go over for something like avocados, and can still find a good selection to choose from.

Beans – Legumes are famously known as budget stretchers, and of course we continue to incorporate these into our diet.  They average between 5 – 8 shekels a kilo when purchased unpackaged in the bulk section (prepacked is more like 8 – 11).  We soak and sprout all legumes to mazimize the nutritional value and to increase digestibility. 

Nuts – Since I believe that grains are best in limited quantities, I spent a lot of time a couple of years ago experimenting with nut flour recipes to minimize our grain usage – pie crusts, pizza crusts, muffins, desserts of all sorts – I got very good at this!  I was able to buy nut flours in bulk (50 lb sacks) for up to $4 lb.  Here, nuts are very expensive.   In my recent bulk order, I got 50 lb of sunflower seeds, the cheapest option, which is still not exactly cheap (17.20 a kilo plus 16% tax – sorry, I know that’s annoying but that’s how it’s itemized).

Sesame paste (tahini) is the only other affordable nut/seed option that I can think of.  Sesame seeds are about 10 or 11 shekels a kilo; tahini is about 20 shekels a kilo.  We make a batch of techina every week and use it as a dip for veggies.

Grains – I brought my grain grinder along, but thanks to someone’s recommendation, didn’t buy an adapter in the US for it (they said it was a waste of luggage weight and something we could easily buy here).  This was a big mistake.  When we got here, we learned that the transformer we need in order for it to work on the 220 electrical currents here was ridiculously expensive, over 600 shekels.  I’m planning to buy one from the US and ask my mother to bring it to me when she comes for our upcoming bar mitzva, but until then, I have to lay low with our usual grain grinding.

For the last few years I’ve been using primarily freshly ground hard white wheat or spelt when baking.  Without my grinder available to use, I’ve been using white flour, something that I haven’t used in many, many years.  Unless grain is freshly ground (due to the high phytase content), there’s a lot of controversy about if whole wheat or white flour are less damaging due to the phytic acid issues.  I’m not convinced that whole grain flours that have been sitting on the shelves of the store for weeks (at best) are a great source of nutrients, and there are definitely digestibility issues.  I’m not going to idealize white flour, believe me, but I’ve chosen to do this although I could get whole wheat flour for about the same price as white.  It’s a question of what’s the lesser of two evils and I’m not really happy with either choice.  I’ll be thrilled to be back to grinding our grains in the near future.  Using white flour keeps me very conscious to use it minimally and keeps me from falling into the thinking that as long as its freshly ground flour, then it’s healthy.  (I don’t think flour is ideal even when freshly ground and sprouted, but I do believe that those things make flour as ideal as it can be.)

Sweeteners – My staples in the past were organic sucanat (used for all baking), real maple syrup, honey, and xylitol.  I brought some xylitol and one 12 pound container of honey with me; the xylitol because it’s not available for purchase here and I use it for toothbrushing; the honey because I had already spent the money on it, and was able to use it to weigh down a suitcase of clothes that was full but under the allowed weight.  I was really glad to have brought it since honey is so expensive here but that’s finished now – we went through it much more quickly than we generally do since since organic sucanat isn’t available in Israel, and I used more honey.

But I also have bought – gasp! – white sugar.  I don’t believe that brown sugar, demerara, rapadura, or any other of the supposedly healthy forms of sugar are actually of much value, and definitely not worth spending extra money on.  (I did all this research about three years ago when learning about sucanat.)  I’ve shifted my cooking to lots of savory foods rather than sweet in order to minimize the use of sweeteners that are either nutritionally empty or very expensive – there doesn’t seem to be anything in the middle.  I don’t make the healthy muffins and quick breads that I used to serve many mornings for breakfasts, since with the ingredients I have now they wouldn’t be healthy enough for me to consider it nourishing food.  I’ve mentioned before that I cut the amount of sweetener that recipes call for in half, and this generally brings it down to the level of sweetness that our family is comfortable with.  Flour and sugar are now mostly saved for Shabbos challah and desserts, which I’m basically okay with since it’s so limited. 

Our food remains unprocessed and everything is made from scratch, which is also a big factor in our food budget remaining so low even while here in Israel.  I hesitated about sharing how much we spend monthly because I’ve noticed two tendencies people have when seeing this information: a) to gloat because they spend less, or b) to be discouraged because they spend more.  I hope that everyone realizes that this is just our budget, and that this isn’t the place to compete or compare.  If someone wants to cut their budget, I’ve shared extensively over the years about how to cut costs in this area (look in the frugality section), and this has helped many, many people get their food costs down significantly.  If someone thinks we spend too much, well, this is what we’re comfortable with, and we’re not looking to get down to the bare bones.  We enjoy having guests, and we enjoy having nice meals – you can see from what I’ve shared above that there are things we could cut out if we were looking for the cheapest possible food. 

Okay, I’ve spent ages writing this up!  Is this helpful or interesting information for you?  Is there something you would have liked to know about that I didn’t mention?  Have you ever had to shift your diet to accomodate local availability, and how do you feel about it?

Avivah

(This post is part of Real Food Wednesday.)

When raw milk isn’t available, what’s best?

health, nutrition

>>In your opinion, if one doesn’t have access to raw milk, is it better to use a substitute milk (such as almond milk) rather than pasteurized milk? (pretending for a second that price wasn’t a consideration).<<

I was discussing this with a pregnant guest a couple of weeks ago.  Her husband is a proponent of alternative nutrition with a very different approach than mine, and at his suggestion she stopped eating dairy and minimized animal proteins while pregnant.  I shared with her my conviction that in pregnancy, protein is critical (see the guidelines I suggest here), and when asked for what I considered to be good sources of protein, responded with: raw milk, meat, chicken, eggs.  Then we started talking about what to do when raw milk isn’t available.

This is where her husband’s view and mine converged.  Until I learned about traditional food practices about six years ago, I didn’t give my children dairy at all.  When asked by others about why they were so healthy – practically no ear infections, infrequent colds, etc – I always credited not eating dairy as being the main cause.  I felt that dairy products were mucus causing, bacteria laden products that were best avoided.  You can imagine that it was a mental shift when we started drinking raw milk!

Raw milk is a real food, and pasteurized milk is a processed food.  How they’re used in the body is different, and I still strongly lean toward avoiding milk if it’s not raw.  When it comes to pregnancy, I told our guest that I while it’s not an ideal food, I thought the benefits of pasteurized milk outweighed the disadvantages, in accordance with Tom Brewer’s protein guidelines for pregnant women.

Substitute nut milks have their own issues of limited nutrient absorption, so this is far from a black and white issue, and I haven’t seen research that scientifically demonstrates whether  your body is left with more nutrients if you drink pasteurized milk or substitute milks.  I like the taste of milk and so do my kids, so based on that alone we’d be happy to drink it regularly.  But nutritionally, my personal choice since moving here is to leave milk for an occasional treat, and to increase broth and liver intake to boost nutrient intake and compensate for the lack of raw milk.

I’ve made a substitute sesame milk using tahini paste as a base (whiz it up with a lot of water and a little bit of sweetener), which I’m not crazy over but the taste is fine and it’s high in calcium.  (It’s easier for me to use prepared techina as a dip for vegetables to get the nutrients in that way, rather than drinking it, so that’s what I do.)   Making your own nut milks can cut down the cost significantly, if that’s the route you decide to go.

So my not-so-scientific-this-is-just-my-personal-opinion  is, for pregnant women, it might be worth it to drink pasteurized milk rather than nut milks as a protein source.  Otherwise, go for the alternative milks to avoid congestion issues while enjoying a milk substitute, and look into other ways to boost nutrients from other foods.

Avivah

(This post is part of Real Food Wednesday.)

When your food budget is limited…coming to terms

frugal strategies, nutrition

>>Now that you’re in Israel, and the food available is different than the food available in the US, and the prices different as well (not to mention different bulk things available), I was wondering how or if your focus on healthy foods changed…. I was wondering how you prioritized health and made do with what is available here.<<

Rather than go into detail about the specifics of how our diet has changed since we moved to Israel three months ago – I’m happy to share about that in another post if there’s interest – I’m going to share how I think about the nutritional limitations that I’ve felt, and I think many others do, when seeing that the amount of money available doesn’t extend to the the foods they feel are necessary to buy for an optimum diet.

Last year was a difficult year for me in many ways; I often felt like I was chasing my tail, and as a result, I wasn’t cooking as well as I had in the past.  We still had a healthy diet – but too often I’d get discouraged because I was looking at what I wasn’t doing, rather than all that I was doing.  But what I was doing was still significant!

I really enjoy learning about nutrition, and I enjoy feeling like I can take concrete steps to nourish my family.  This is something I’ve enjoyed learning about since I was 17, and I’ve been blessed to have been able to continually learn more and make nutritional improvements over the years.  But there’s a fine line between doing all that we can nutritionally, and developing an unhealthy perfectionism, an attitude of all or nothing.

It’s so easy to get trapped by this, and because it’s coming from a good place, of wanting the best for our families, it can be harder to see that we’ve crossed the line of balance.  Sometimes, people end up feeling that no matter how much they do, it’s never enough.  I certainly did.

I had to mentally recalibrate then, and I periodically have to recalibrate now.  Good nutrition isn’t about an all or nothing approach.  It’s a journey, and sometimes you’ll have different tools available to you than other times as you walk this path.

One of the tools for the journey is money.  Some of us have more, some of us have less.  Accessibility of certain foods is another too.  Physical energy to prepare food from scratch and shop is another tool, desire to learn more is another tool.  The support of our spouses is a tool, the willingness of our children to eat what we make is another tool….there are so many tools!  All of us have some tools in abundance, and other tools are kind of spotty.

When I focus on what  I’m missing, it’s going to keep me from seeing all that I do have!   And to gloss over the amazing abundance we’ve seen over the years because it didn’t provide for every single thing I would have dreamed of would be almost criminal.  Over the last five years, our monthly food budget has ranged from $400 up to $650 (for our family of 11) while living in the US.  It’s been hard for many people to imagine how we fed our family on this amount, let alone kosher, healthy foods – but we were able to integrate many wonderful nutritional components into our way of eating.

Whenever I would go food shopping, I would often feel that G-d made sure I found wonderful bargains, and helped me meet people who were able to help us further expand what we had available (farmers I was able to buy from directly, store managers who were willing to sell to me at wholesale prices, etc).  We were provided for in so many ways.  I felt that our money was blessed and it was able to stretch so much farther than seemed likely!  Does that mean that I had everything I wanted? No. But I had everything I needed.  Big difference!

Of course there were things that I would have liked to have been able to afford.  And now there are things here in Israel that I wish were available or affordable.  But if I get frustrated about what I can’t have/do or get stuck on what I wish I had, it keeps me from seeing and appreciating all that I do have.

Getting stuck in negativity is a bad place to live from, and certainly a bad place to eat from!  Even the best food can’t fully nourish you when you are filled with negativity.  I believe that the frame of mind you eat in also affects your health, and eating less than ideal foods from a place of gratitude and joy is going to do good things for you.

Focusing on all that I have, validating my efforts, and trusting that we’ll be sent the tools that we need for our journey to health and in every other area of life, help me feel at peace with the constraints that I’m often faced with.

Avivah

(This post is part of Real Food Wednesday.)

How to make olive leaf tincture

frugal strategies, health, home remedies, nutrition

I firmly believe that in every locale, there are potentially medicinal plants that will be of value to you.  However, it means letting go of thinking there are certain herbs that you must have – for example, in the US I had easy access to plantain, dandelion, and burdock, and it’s a mental shift for me to not feel like I need them when those were well within my comfort zone.

Here in Israel, there are olive trees all over.  And I already knew that olive leaves were good for you, since I bought them a couple of years ago as part of a big herb order.  Seeing the abundance of olive trees here on our very first day prompted me to learn more about how I could include this in my natural medicine chest.

First of all,a little about olive leaves (the following is from the Bulk Herb Store website, where I ordered my herbs from):  Olive leaf is a natural antibiotic and antioxidant that can help or prevent many diseases. The active compounds have been reported to act as an anti-microbial agent, which slows invaders enough for the body’s natural immune system to react. It exhibits powerful anti-parasitic and anti-fungal properties that fight over one hundred viral and bacterial conditions. The result is a natural antibiotic and antioxidant with similar effects to garlic and onions… It also works to lower high blood pressure, reduce cholesterol, improve respiratory response, improve skin health, heart disease and fatigue. Olive leaf can rejuvenate your vitality and energy, enhance your immune system, supports your cardiovascular system and promote general health and well-being.

An easy way to use olive leaves is by making tea with them – just brew the leaves with some water, mix in a little sweetener, and drink up!  I also used a concentrated olive leaf tea to wash down ds12’s foot when he had cellulitis.  Be warned that the effective ingredient in the olive leaf is bitter, which is why I suggested sweetener!

So that’s one way to use it, but I like something even faster – having a big family means that I have to find ways to accomplish what I need to as effectively as possible.  There’s also a limit to how much tea you can drink, and when you’re really under the weather, it’s likely you’d like something that will be powerful and effective, without leaving you bloating and running to empty your bladder every fifteen minutes.

Enter olive leaf tincture.  (Read here to learn how amazing olive leaves are – I felt so lucky after learning all about them that I can easily harvest them for free here.)  Making a tincture means that you draw out the medicinal qualities of the herb, and simultaneously preserve it for long term use.  Ideally this can be done with alcohol, though in the past I’ve chosen to use vinegar and glycerin to make tinctures, since I thought my kids would prefer those flavors.  Alcohol stores the best, though.

The instructions for making olive leaf extract/tincture are ridiculously easy:

1) Wash the leaves well, chop finely or shred in a food processor, then  place in a glass jar.

2) Cover with 80% proof vodka.  (A funny story – I asked dh to pick up some vodka at the store for me to make this.  When he went to get it, an elderly Russian man approvingly commented to my husband, who tried to explain that he was getting it for medicinal purposes.  I had also asked dh to pick up some lemon juice for salads, and when a little later in the store the same elderly man saw dh holding the bottles of vodka and lemon juice, the man smiled knowingly and smirked, “Right, medicinal.” )

If you’re using fresh leaves, then the ration of leaves to vodka is 1:2 or 3; ie, if you’re using 8 ounces of leaves, then you’d need to cover them with 16 – 24 oz of vodka.  If you’re using dried leaves, the ratio is 1 leaves: 5 vodka.

3) Seal the glass, and let it sit in a dark place for at least two weeks, but up to six weeks.  (Mine was ‘brewing’ for almost four weeks.)  Shake it every once in a while and make sure the leaves are all covered by liquid; add more vodka if you need to.

4) After two weeks, you can now strain it out.  If you have those wonderful amber colored dropper bottles (like I did, but gave away before we moved, sniff!), then pour it in there for easy use.

5) Use your tincture!  Here’s a good site with information about how to determine your dosage.

Avivah

(This post is part of Monday Mania, Homestead Barn Hop, Traditional Tuesdays, and Real Food Wednesday.)

Round 2 – dealing with cellulitis

health, home remedies, nutrition

This week I’ve relearned a lesson that I thought I had learned really well by this point in my life – not relax and leave things in the hands of the experts.

A day or two after completing the antibiotics for the skin infection he aquired when he got chicken pox, ds12’s leg started swelling up again.  He showed it to me in the evening, and we got an appointment first thing in the morning.  The doctor was sufficiently alarmed to get us an appointment with an orthopedist right away – literally, we got pushed to the top of the list of people who had been waiting weeks for an appointment.

I was very grateful we were able to see someone so quickly, since the pediatrician told us if the orthopedist wasn’t available that morning, he’d need to send us to a local hospital with an orthopedist on staff.  His concern was that the skin infection – officially called cellulitis – could spread to the joints and lead to arthritis.  (If you’re a medical person and that doesn’t quite make sense, keep in mind that this conversation was in Hebrew and included some medical terms I’m not yet familiar with, so I might have missed some nuances or details.)

The orthopedist prescribed a different antibiotic (which I was glad about, since the option had been to give him intravenous antibiotics), and home we went, prescription in hand.  We also started giving ds vitamin c at this point, about 8 – 10,000 units that day.  The next evening, ds12 showed me his leg – it was now hurting him a lot, and the infection was clearly spreading to his foot from his ankle.  (I could tell because the skin was flushed red, and when I put my hand to his foot, it was very hot.)  At this point, I wasn’t going to tell myself he had been on antibiotics for a day and a half, and it would probably kick in soon.   Because if I was wrong, the consequences could be serious.

This was a little frightening, particularly as I don’t have a strong feeling of trust in the orthopedist that we saw – no doubt he’s competent, but he was very quick and very brusque.  I tried to picture what he would say if we returned, and it seemed he would either brush us off and tell us it was nothing (I’m far from a worry wart, and it was clear to me it was definitely something with the potential to turn major in a very short time), or tell us it was an emergency and to get to the hospital. Where they would….I don’t know what, give him more antibiotics??

I decided we would take him to the orthopedist in the morning (if still necessary), and in the meantime, would get more actively involved in the healing process with the hope being we could reduce the infection before morning.  So I gave him cream to put on the pox mark, which was swollen tight, along with all the skin around it.  A short while later, it started oozing pus – I’m really glad I didn’t see this, since dd15 was there and said it was the second most disgusting thing she’s ever seen in her life (the first was a goat abscess being treated – JB, you know what she was referring to, right?:)).

(Don’t read the following if you’re squeamish.) What was so hard for her to watch was as ds lightly touched the skin next to where the pus was oozing out, a huge amount of thick green pus suddenly burst out, streaked with red.  They told me about this a few minutes later, and I was actually happy to hear this news, since I felt some of the infection was being released from the body, hopefully rather than being passed into the bloodstream.

We rinsed the area with hydrogen peroxide, then sprinkled sodium ascorbate (vitamin c) on the wound opening.  At the same time, we had been upping his vitamin C intake dramatically – about 30,000 by the time he went to bed.  A little later, it started oozing pus again (but not dramatically like before), and we did a hot compress, followed again with hydrogen peroxide and vitamin C.  And prayer.

When he woke up, I felt his leg and foot, and the heat was gone.  I was so thankful.  There was no more pus coming out, and today, we continued with massive doses of vitamin C – 50,000 units – we’ve never experienced a child taking this much without shedding the excess – but it means his body is using it all.  He’s continued the hot compress routine.  (Of course he’s still taking the antibiotics.)

Tomorrow we’ll continue the vitamin C, but decrease the dosage, and start to put salve on the wound instead of vitamin C to heal the skin and start to close up the wound, which thanks to all this excitement has gotten bigger than the original pox mark.   No tests have yet been done to determine what kind of bacteria we’re dealing with, but it seems to be a powerful strain to not have responded fully to the first round of antibiotics, and then to not respond quickly to the second round, even though it was at the very beginning of the infection.  I’m mentally prepared that we will probably need to stay on top of this for a few months to be sure it’s really and truly gone; if I’m wrong and it’s easily finished in a week, I’ll be delighted.

When ds12 took the first round of antibiotics, he didn’t do anything else.  I mentioned that I wanted him to use the salve I made and take vitamin C, but I didn’t make sure he did it.  I guess I was a little complacent, feeling like I had done my part by getting him to the hospital, giving him the prescribed antibiotics, and it would all get better without any more active involvement from me than reminding him daily to take his medicine.

This entire experience was a good reminder for me as a mother to stay very actively involved, even when working with medical professionals.  You can’t relax and assume it will all be okay because you’re doing what someone else told you (as nice as it would be to relax a little) – you still have to keep a constant eye on things and watch, watch, watch.

What would a medical professional have told me to do in this circumstance?  Not what I did, that’s for sure.  But it doesn’t matter  – the main thing is that ds12 kicks this infection.  And I hope the healing process will continue in a straightforward way from here on out.

Avivah

How to get kids to take fish oil

dental health, health, nutrition

A couple of years ago, I did extensive research to find cod liver oil that had kosher supervision.  But I didn’t succeed.

I very much wanted the dental benefits of cod liver oil, but thought that since our diet was rich in bone broths, lots of butter, free range eggs, raw milk, kefir, and fermented vegetables, the emerging teeth of the littles would probably be fine.  I was overly optimistic, and I’m frustrated with myself for not giving them the cod liver oil, since you have until the age of three to improve their facial bone structure.  So it’s too late for ds4, who has very closely spaced teeth (and as a result, had cavities between most of them – brushing wouldn’t have helped), and ds2 has crowding on his lower jar (I saw this when his baby teeth emerged, but hoped there would be improvement – there wasn’t).

From my experience, a good diet is only enough to maintain health, not to significantly improve underlying issues.  (I keep meaning to write about my anecdotal observations on dental structure based on our nine children, and our diet at the time.  Remind me if I forget, okay?)  So we’ll now be using cod liver oil, which I just bought for the first time last week, and I just hope it’s not too late to help ds2 with his dental spacing.

Regardless of the benefits to dental health, there are lots of benefits to taking cod liver oil (or other fish oils, as well).  But getting it down is the hard part.  You know all those stories from a couple of generations ago, about kids running away and hiding when they were sick to avoid their mother dosing them with cod liver oil?  I’m sure it wasn’t much of an exaggeration.

None of our kids are picky eaters, but every one of them grimaced (ds2 tried repeatedly to wipe his mouth out) and told me how bad it was.  But it’s so good for their health, so how to get it down?  Here’s my strategy so far, for unflavored cod liver oil (I decided against the flavored oils for a couple of reasons):

I give them each a shot glass with a teaspoon of cod liver oil in it. For some, I immediately give them a chaser of thick, sweet nectar from the peach compote I recently made.  Ds4 surreptitiously tried to pour his shot glass into the sink while I was giving the others their glasses, and b) what worked for him was to mix the nectar with his cod liver oil.  c) I take mine immediately followed by a teaspoon of lemon juice – it cuts the flavor immediately.  d) Dd16 told me she mixed hers with rice and spices, and it was very tasty.  🙂

Ds18 went back to Jerusalem today, and asked if he could take one of the bottles of cod liver oil with him.  If he has a different strategy, I’ll add in his suggestion to this post at a later time.  🙂

How do you get your children to take supplements or medicine that they find unpleasant?  What kind of supplements do you think are worth the effort, and why?

(This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays.)

Avivah

Medical permission to go back to school

aliyah, nutrition

Well, the holidays are over, the kids are over the chickenpox, and they’re all back to school.   For those who were concerned about ds12, thank you so much for asking; thank G-d he is doing much better!  All any of them have left of the chickenpox are some residual pox scabs, which are rapidly disappearing.

The day after we sent ds9 back to school (before dd11 and ds12), we got a call telling us to pick him up – they needed a letter from the doctor that he was allowed to be there.  So he came home and I took him, along with three other kids, to the doctor that morning – my first time going to a doctor here.  (Dh took ds12 to the emergency room at the hospital, so they also didn’t go to the doctor.)

The pediatrician was pleasant.  He did a quick basic exam on each of them – height, weight, heart, spine.  He made a note in each of their files that they had chickenpox, and then told me the school nurse would probably request that they have their booster shots for the chickenpox.

I thought I might be misunderstanding something (because of course all these conversations are entirely in Hebrew), so I said, “But they had the chickenpox already, so why would they need a shot?”  He told me that they’ll have to get the booster shot so they don’t get chickenpox.  I told him that didn’t make sense, they had it and now have immunity so why would a shot help?  He said it’s to keep them from getting it again.  I responded, statistically it’s a very small percentage of people who get chickenpox more than once, and it didn’t seem logical to give all the kids a booster shot for a childhood disease they already had that people usually only get once, to keep them from getting it again.  He told me he’s just letting me know the school nurse will want them to have it.  Okay, fine.

So we got letters for all of the kids that they’re clear to go back to school, and I asked if this is something they have to have every single time they miss school because they aren’t feeling well.  He said it depends on the school policy, and to speak to them.  I rarely need to take the  kids to doctors, so the idea of taking them for a note every time they have a cold and stay home for a day or two isn’t appealing.  I have to get used to this school frame of mind, I guess.

This morning we got a call from the school nurse – I was washing dishes so my hands were wet, so dh took the call.  When I realized who it was, I mouthed to him that I wanted to speak to her, and after the first sentence with her telling him they wanted vaccination records for ds12, he passed the phone right over.  🙂  She told me they need ds12’s vaccination records, and since we came from the US and the vaccination schedules are different than in the US, he’ll have to have make up shots to be sure he’s on track with the Israeli vaccination schedule.

In Israel, kids have their vaccination records at school and can be vaccinated without your prior knowledge at school.  It’s not like the US, where they just want to know that your kids have had the necessary shots.  But a school nurse vaccinating my children without me knowing about it isn’t acceptable to me.  Fortunately, I was mentally prepared for this issue, because I think you really have to come across very confidently the very first time something comes up.  It cuts down on the conflict significantly.  Otherwise you’re at a big disadvantage and you end up getting into long and protracted arguments from the position of being on the defense.  I told the nurse his medical records will remain with me, and that I will take care of any vaccinations he needs with the doctor myself.  If you don’t submit their records, they can’t receive vaccines at school.

This was a very short and pleasant conversation.  She told me they will need an authorization on file that I refuse to allow my child to be vaccinated at school, and said ds12 can pick up the standard form from the school office to bring home for me to sign.  It’s nice when something is so easy!

Avivah

Related to the chickenpox issue was an interesting experience I had when I took the kids to shul on Simchas Torah.  They hadn’t been contagious for several days, but still had pock marks.  I was astounded to have virtually the same conversation with almost every single person who looked at them.  It went like this:

“Chickenpox?”  Me – ‘yes’.  “We don’t have chickenpox here, everyone is vaccinated.”  (Me, thinking to myself, do they think I brought it over from America with me??)   Me – “No way! None of my kids in the US have ever got it, and within five weeks of arriving here, my five year old caught it from someone in his class – and there were eight kids in his class who all had it the same time as him.”  “Really?”  Me – “Definitely.  And anyway, even kids who are vaccinated can get the chickenpox.”  Them – “Yes, but it’s a lighter case.”  Me – “Yes, but the point is that they get it.”

Then two pregnant women told me they never had chickenpox, and one said she got a vaccination because of the danger to her unborn baby.  The other didn’t and told me she wants her kids to get chickenpox, but not until after she gives birth because of the above concern.  So I said, “You see, it’s not so simple not to get chickenpox when you’re young because then you can end up in more complicated situations like this.  Better the kids should get it young, have immunity, and not have to worry about it later on. ”  Them – agreement.  LOL.

And now a staph infection…

aliyah, health, home remedies, nutrition

(In case this appears in your inbox, don’t be worried – I just corrected the title of this old post and sometimes this causes it to post as something new.)

We’ve had a doozy of a time trying to get our health insurance established here in Israel.  To recap, as returning citizens, every family member over the age of 18 has to pay almost 10,000 shekels each (approximately $2700) in order to start our membership in the local health care clinics.  Half of this is refunded within a few weeks, the other half is refunded after a year.

Dh and I figured this expense into our plans, but we didn’t anticipate all of the difficulties in taking care of what we thought would be pretty straightforward.  The weeks stretched on, we repeatedly went to the National Insurance office, and dh and I finally decided to stop trying to fight a battle that can’t be won.  We were at the point that we needed to have the refunded money in hand already to cover our living expenses for the coming month, and had very little faith that if we did pay the money, that we’d get it back. We’ve just seen too much inaccuracy and incompetency, and we didn’t want to risk money we need for our living expenses on office clerks doing what they’re supposed to do, after seeing that they don’t know what they’re doing.  And we were warned that they like to get as much money as they can, and refund as little as possible.  We can’t afford to not get our money back as promised.

So dh went to the local health clinic to find out about getting private insurance for the next four months (after six months of being a resident, the national insurance will automatically kick in without having to pay the large fees).  When he got there, the clerk looked at the computer and told him that I and the kids are already covered!  This was such a nice surprise, and it came just in time.

Ds12 has had a really bad case of chickenpox.  He was burning up for a few days, the inside of his mouth is covered with pox and it makes it very difficult for him to eat or drink anything, and to top it off, he has an infected ingrown toenail that I’ve been working on treating for the last couple of weeks but still looks pretty bad.  I was relieved that we were able to bring down his 105 degree fever, though it went back up to 102 yesterday afternoon.  (I shared about natural chickenpox remedies here , and in the comments, shared some of what I was doing about the fever.)

You know the phrase, ‘no rest for the weary’?  Well, that’s what came to mind when the morning his fever broke, just a couple of hours later he showed me his noticeably swollen ankle.  This worried me, and I asked dh to make an appointment with a doctor – I didn’t yet have any of the info about the health clinic or I would have taken care of it myself.  He went to make the appointment, and an hour and a half later, ds18 told me that ds12’s foot was turning black and he was losing feeling in his toes.  Yes, this freaked me out.

I was so anxious that by the time dh got home a very short time later, I was really uptight.  He said there was a line at the clinic, and because of the Sukkos holiday, the clinic closed mid day instead of at 7 pm,  so he made an appointment for the next morning since he didn’t think it was urgent.  “Tomorrow??  No, no, now, he needs to be seen immediately, it can’t wait until tomorrow!” – yep, I was really stressed.  I rarely take my kids to the doctor, and the very fact I had asked for the appointment was a sign that it was important.

Ds18 told me that ds 12 overheard me talking to dh and it was making him stressed out and to calm down.  But at times when I’m afraid I’m dealing with something serious I don’t have the tools for, the unknown combines with my desire to take the very best care of my children possible and feels like a huge emotional weight.

Ds called the clinic to find out what kind of medical help was available.  Oh, nothing, until tomorrow morning.  How can we live in a city with 52,000 people and there’s no medical help for that amount of time?!?  Well, it seems there’s some kind of emergency station a few minutes away from us, but it’s not clear to me what kind of help is available there, and when the nurse on the phone heard ds’s symptoms, she said there are sometimes complications of chickenpox in older kids that affect their joints and it sounded like that might be what’s happening, and to get him to an emergency room right away.

Easier said than done.  Since our move, we don’t have a car, and we don’t even know where the closest hospital is.  This is such a huge difference from having a car and a major hospital five minutes away, which was our situation until two months ago.  Since moving to Israel,  I use public transportation (and enjoy it!), but taking ds to the hospital by bus wasn’t an option.

We called a couple of friends with cars to ask if they could drive us to the emergency room in a neighboring city, but they weren’t available.  We then called the person we hired a number of times to pick up the furniture we bought from private sellers on a number of occasions to ask him to take us, and as soon as he heard we needed to go to the emergency room, said, “I’ll be there right away”.  And he was.   He’s not a close personal friend, and we called him assuming we’d pay him a few hundred shekels for the drive.  He insisted on waiting two or three hours at the hospital, and when he brought dh and ds home, refused payment.  Can you imagine that?  He said the main thing is that my son is healthy.  We are so blessed with good people in our lives.  (Dd16 made a couple of big gorgeous loaves of challah that we’re planning to take to him today as a tiny token of appreciation.)

At the hospital, they took an xray, and when the podiatrist who was supposed to look at it finally arrived, the xray wasn’t loading for him on his computer.  He was impatient, took a quick look at ds’s leg, and told dh that there was no need to take the xray, it’s not a joint problem and not directly connected to the chicken pox, but is a skin infection that gets into cuts or wounds (in this case it was next to a pox).  (This is what ds12 told me earlier in the day, that the pox right next to it was hurting and he thought it was connected.)  That was a relief.

Dh asked him about the ingrown toenail (which looks bad and though I’ve been treating it, would like to know it’s healing properly), and the doctor says, “It’s an ingrown toenail.”   Umm, yes, we know that.  The question is, is it healing normally or do we need to do something else?  “Come back another time for that, right now we’re dealing with the foot.”  Is he joking??  He’s a foot specialist looking at swelling a few inches from that toe, and after they were waiting two hours for him, he can’t take one minute to tell us anything without making a separate visit?  Sheesh.

He prescribed antibiotics and an antibiotic ointment for the foot, as well as a painkiller.  This is the first time ds12 has ever taken antibiotics or used an antibiotic cream (none of our kids except ds18 have taken antibiotics until now – ds18 had them twice).  I don’t know if it’s any better than the salve that I made that we use, but we’re giving him antibiotics and continuing to keep doing what we’ve been doing (mega doses of vitamic c, chicken broth, olive leaf tea) along with adding in probiotics to offset the negative effects of antibiotics.

So thank G-d though it looks bad and it’s very painful, this morning he was limping but able to walk on the foot (last night he had to walk like a crab, sideways, and pull his leg after him), and hopefully it will be better soon.  It’s a relief just to know what you’re dealing with, you know?

And ds didn’t mind the trip to the hospital – dh bought him some ice cream (ds told me the cafeteria was basically a small room filled with snacks – you’d hope in a place dedicated to healing this wouldn’t be the case!), and during the drive there, he enjoyed seeing an Arab “from a thousand years ago” in traditional garb with a shepherd’s crook herd twenty goats down a sidewalk in the city of Nahariya, which is where the hospital he went to was.  Social studies.  🙂

You want to hear something funny but not funny?  Last night, ds12 told me he got worried when he heard that I was worried.  (I tend to be pretty laid back about heath issues and handle things that come up with out getting too worked up.)  I told him that I got worried when I heard ds18 describe his leg to me (as above), and ds12 said, “What? I didn’t say I lost feeling in my toe!  He touched my toe and I said it didn’t hurt!”  And it wasn’t turning black, either, though the healing skin is a darkish pink color, it was just ds18’s way of describing it – so though I’m glad we took ds to see a doctor and had already asked dh to make the appointment before ds18’s description, my extreme worry was based on the equivalent of ‘broken telephone’!

And PS – this morning dh went to the health clinic and the computer now says that I don’t have health insurance.  🙁  Apparently it was delayed in processing all the relevant information.  But the kids still do, and we had it in place when we really needed it!

(This post is linked to Real Food Wednesdays.)

Avivah