>>I was wondering if you purchase raw milk? I know you have linked to the Weston Price foundation before and I know they are very supportive of drinking raw milk. I was just curious because it really intrigues me. I have actually been doing some research on it and was thinking you would be a great person to ask and then this post reminded me to ask you.<<

 Yes, we do drink raw milk. 

>>I am thinking about trying some for my family. We are not big milk drinkers, in fact I do not drink it at all, but I have been researching all of the health benefits and think it is definitely worth a try. Did it take a while for your family to adjust? <<

 We also weren’t milk drinkers before discovering raw milk – I can probably count on one hand the amount of times my kids had milk in their lives.  I had never even heard of raw milk as a possibility until three years ago, and I did a lot of research and reading before I was even willing to consider the possibility that dairy could be good for you. It didn’t take any of us any time to adjust, physically.  The harder part was thinking of milk as something that had a positive nutritive value – I had always attributed my kids’ good health to staying away from dairy products.  My husband was reluctant to try it, because he had allergies when he was younger to milk, but was surprised to have no reaction to raw milk.  Many people who can’t tolerate dairy find that they can digest raw milk just fine, thanks to the nutrients not being denatured.

>>I was told to take a probiotic (which I do anyway)for a week or so before consumption.<<

That seems unnecessary to me, but probiotics are good to take at any time, so it couldn’t hurt!   But having just a small amount and seeing if you have a reaction would be prudent, if you’re concerned.  I’d be more cautious about suddenly using something like kefir, which is a powerful probiotic – in that case, to avoid your system suddenly cleaning itself out, it’s good to start off taking just a small amount and giving your digestive system a chance to adapt. 

>>Also with such a limited shelf-life, do you freeze the milk?<<

Both farmers I bought from told me that the shelf life was a week.  But we found that the milk stays fresh in the fridge for two weeks in the summer, three weeks in the winter.  I think they are choosing to err on the side of caution – when I questioned one of them a second time, he said that they find it stays two weeks but don’t want to take a chance of someone’s spoiling before that and getting upset.  Remember that I get it the day it comes from the cow, so it hasn’t been sitting around.  I refrigerate what I think we’ll use within two weeks, and put the rest in the freezer.  Interestingly, raw milk doesn’t spoil in the way that regular pasteurized milk does because of all the good bacteria in it – it changes form as it gets thicker and more sour, but remains useable and good for you.  So even if you had it sitting in your fridge for six months, you could use it (it’d be more like sour cream by that point).  Pasteurized milk putrifies, though, and I’d hate to think of doing anything with it but pouring it down the drain once it started to go off!

Freezing raw milk changes the consistency, but not the flavor.  The cream, since it hasn’t been homogenized, will freeze into tiny pieces and stay in tiny pieces after defrosted.  Not bad, but not as smooth once it’s defrosted.  If you blend it up with some fruit, it’s not noticeable.  We definitely prefer it before it’s frozen, but no one turns up their noses afterwards!

There’s alot of misinformation and disinformation out there about raw milk, and most of what people say comes from simply not being educated about it – like too many things, there’s an excessive amount of fear mongering that comes from ignorance.  But the taste is great (some people notice a difference more than others) and the health benefits are wonderful, so if it’s something you can get hold of, it’s a good addition to your family’s diet.

Avivah

Last night I decided to try soaking some nuts again, thanks to the encouragement of blog reader Chava.  (Here’s why I soak nuts.)  I had some unroasted walnuts that I thought would work well, so I soaked them overnight in water with sea salt.  Early in the afternoon, I strained them out, rinsed them, and put them in the dehydrator at 145 degrees (my oven doesn’t go low enough and over-toasted the nuts I tried in the past).  And since four cups of walnuts only took up one tray, I chopped up a bunch of purple onions I bought at .29 lb and prepared four trays of those, so the dehydrator wouldn’t be running for just one tray.

After dinner, I took the tray out, and they were done perfectly.  The kids and I tasted them, and we all agreed that they are good – they hardly tasted any different than they usually do.

I’m so glad I tried to do this again.  Now that I see how easy it is, and the results are good, I’ll try to integrate this on a regular basis.  The easiest way to do it would probably be to buy and then prepare a large batch of nuts at a time, so that they are all dehydrated at one time.

Avivah

Here are the companies I’ve ordered coconut oil from.  The first is Omega Nutrition.  I order in five gallon buckets, and you have to call to get the pricing on that.  They may not know what to do with you because you aren’t a restaurant, but just tell them your friend ordered a big bucket and you know it’s possible, and they’ll figure it out.  🙂    They have the extra virgin and regular organic.  I’ve ordered both in the past.

I more recently discovered Mountain Rose Herbs – they also have two kinds of coconut oil, but only one is suitable for eating (the other is for cosmetic use).  It’s a raw high quality oil.  Their prices for five gallon buckets as well as smaller containers are on the page I linked to, and their prices are lower than Omega.  But you’ll have to clarify about the status of their hechsher (kosher supervision) on your own; they say it is kosher and it is a raw and unrefined product.  But as I said, you’ll probably want to clarify with your lor.  I use it but prefer recommending Omega for this reason.

Even in large amounts, coconut oil isn’t cheap.  And I’ll warn you ahead of time that shipping is also expensive because the bucket is so heavy – probably about forty pounds or so; figure in about $40 per 5 gallon bucket for shipping.  But – it lasts a long, long time, and stays without needing any refrigeration.  As I’ve said before, I economize in a lot of areas of our food budget, and that creates room to buy the more expensive things like this.  I do kind of dread when I have to place my coconut oil orders, though, because it’s so expensive, even though it’s in the budget!

Avivah

 >>Can you explain a little bit about soaking flour (and other grains as well)? Do you use an acid medium? Do you soak all your grains?<<

Soaking grains and flours is something that traditional cultures have done for many centuries, tapping into an intuitive wisdom that I think we’ve lost.  They didn’t need the scientific explanations of why it was helpful; they must have sensed a difference when they ate things prepared one way or another.  But I found it helpful to learn more about it when I first encountered the idea, which seemed foreign to me.

Basically, whole grain products and the flours made with them are a source of many nutrients.  The challenge is that they also contain large amounts of phytic acid, which binds with the nutrients when ingested, and escorts them right out of your body.  So in order to benefit from the nutrients, you need to do something to neutralize the phytic acid.  That something is soaking the grains in an acidic medium, and there are a number of options to use: apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, whey, buttermilk, kefir, and plain yogurt are the ones that come to mind, but there are probably others that I’m not aware of.   

 I’ve tried using apple cider vinegar/lemon juice as an acidic medium.  It’s added by the tablespoon (1 T. acv and one cup water: one cup grain) and even though the amounts are small, my kids didn’t like the sour taste so I don’t use that anymore.  I’ve used whey, but that’s not something I often have around. When I made cheese, I had a good amount left over from each batch, and if I get around to making cheese on a regular basis, that would be a good option.  And I have a small amount when I let the kefir I make sit too long and it separates.  To use whey, you use a tablespoon and one cup of water in place of the liquid called for (just like the lemon juice or apple cider vinegar).  But what I’ve preferred using has been either kefir or plain yogurt.  It does change the flavor, but not so much that the kids grimace.  🙂  Seriously, it tastes fine with the yogurt as a soaking medium.  For baking quick breads like pancakes and muffins, it adds a very nice, light texture. 

I don’t soak all of my grains, though I’d certainly be better off nutritionally.  Some grains are more important to soak than others, since they’re so much higher in phytic acid.  That’s what I focus on.  The highest of them is oats, and that’s the grain that I most regularly soak.  This is very easy – I put half the water the recipe for oatmeal calls for in the pot the night before, and add some plain yogurt.  The next morning, I add the rest of the water and it cooks up very quickly.  When I prepared the baked oatmeal for today’s breakfast, I mixed it up the night before, and let it sit overnight before baking it.  (I’ve been wondering about the value of butter as an acidic medium, since it’s composed of lactic acid, so it seems to me it should work fine, too.  But I didn’t look into that, it’s just my own mental conjecturing.)  The hardest part is planning ahead so that you have the flour soaked and ready to be used when you want it, and a menu plan comes in very handy here.

The grains we use the most are brown rice, kasha (buckwheat), and millet and all of them are low in phytic acid.  So I don’t soak them, particularly since I usually prepare them for meat meals, and the options for soaking that I like are dairy.  I do usually cook them with a broth that has often been made with an acidic medium, though (adding a small amount of apple cider vinegar when making stock accomplishes this very easily).   

As far as flours go, I fall very short in this area.  Initially I soaked, sprouted, and then dehydrated wheat before grinding it to bake with.  I was very displeased with the quality of the flour.  It probably would be fine for cakes or cookies, but not for yeast breads.  And it was a long process to prepare it in that way, and didn’t seem worth it for mediocre results. 

But I do try to soak flour when I can, though definitely not always.  This is only when I’m baking for dairy meals, usually breakfast muffins, quick breads, or pancakes.  I’ve found that soaking the flour overnight gives a very nice light quality to those things, and adds a pleasant flavor, too.  In those cases, I generally soak the flour at a ratio of 1 cup flour to 1 cup  of thinned yogurt or kefir.  Other than this, I don’t use very much flour in our meals.  The main exception that comes to mind is baking challah, for which I unapologetically use freshly ground, unsoaked, unsprouted flour. 

I also soak beans overnight at the very least, though I don’t always sprout them.  I tend to sprout them more in the summer just because they sprout so much faster in the heat. I never soak or sprout seeds or nuts.  I wasn’t happy with the results I got when soaking nuts, and decided not to pursue that further.

I don’t use wheat germ, or wheat/oat bran, because I think it’s best to eat foods in the complete package, not one part or another.  If I did, I’d try to soak them as much as I could, treating them like flour.  I also stay away from puffed wheat products, and very rarely have rice cakes, because the processing for these foods has been shown to be harmful.  I sometimes have shredded wheat for breakfast or baked wheat crackers (like shredded wheat in cracker form), but I don’t fool myself that they’re healthy.  I consider them treat foods that are best used in small amounts. 

I’ve learned to adapt most recipes so that they nutritionally conform to guidelines I feel are helpful, though I don’t always post my adaptations when I share recipes.  If something says flour, I may or may not soak the flour as described above, but generally it can be done without drastically changing the recipe. 

Avivah

I think that almost everyone knows that margarine is bad for you, though most people probably don’t know just how bad.  In the kosher kitchen, women often feel that whether it’s healthy or not, they don’t know what else they can use for baking.  Others argue that the cheapness of margarine justifies its use, but I don’t agree. It is cheap – and I’m always up for a good deal – but it’s a false economy. By shopping carefully for the bulk of your groceries, you’ll be able to create room in your budget for the expensive high quality ingredients you can’t get cheaply.  We got rid of margarine and all so called healthy substitutes (eg. Earth Balance spread) a long time ago. The fun part is that it’s really easy and the healthy alternatives work just as well but taste better.

We use butter for dairy meals (I stock up when it’s $2 lb), and coconut oil for baking for meat meals. We buy two kinds of coconut oil – a) extra virgin raw, which still has coconut flavor – because of the flavor it is harder to use in cooking/baking; b) organic but with the coconut flavor removed – I use this for all baking, except challah, when I fall back on regular vegetable oil. I buy it by the five gallon bucket, and it’s not cheap (though it’s lots cheaper than by the little containers in the store), but I think it’s worth the price for our health – it’s a major factor of why I can now consider the baked goods we eat to be in the ‘good for us’ category.  It seems we keep going through this faster and faster all the time. 

We use extra virgin olive oil for salads, not much else. When I roast a chicken, I save the gravy in a container in the fridge, and the fat at the top that congeals is shmaltz – great for frying veggies for a meat dish, and the gravy that congeals below the fat is a delicious addition to grains or stews. I do the same thing with lamb and beef, but I use those less often.

Several months ago, an email friend who follows similar nutritional guidelines that I do recommended another high quality oil to me – palm oil.   I started to look into it, discovered that there are actually two kinds of palm oil – palm kernel oil, and palm fruit oil.  The palm fruit oil has a stronger flavor and color, and I was looking for something that would be a good substitute for the regular coconut oil – specifically, with a bland flavor for baking.  Palm kernel oil was the solution.  I began researching buying it in bulk quantity (it seemed pretty expensive to me to buy in the 24 oz tubs in the health food store) but didn’t see it through – the company that had it certified kosher didn’t answer their phones, and the emails I received in response to my pricing queries weren’t clear.  So I put it on the back burner.

But then I finished my bucket of regular coconut oil, and was dismayed to find a huge price increase when I went to place my order.  So when I went to the health food store (somewhere I rarely go into), I bought several containers of palm oil.  If I hadn’t been tipped off about this by my friend, I would have walked right by it, because of the way it’s labeled.  It’s made by Spectrum, and marked as Organic All Vegetable Shortening – and to me, shortening is a word with only negative nutritional connotations.  But in spite of that, it really is just pure palm oil.   It’s pure white and flavorless, so it’s perfect for non dairy baking.  I went to the health food store on their 10% discount day, so it was a little under $7 for a 24 oz container.

Some of you may be reading and cringing at the thought of all that saturated fat.  Doesn’t everyone know that saturated fat bad for you?  Actually, it’s not.  If you want to start learning more about fats, what’s good, what’s not, and why, start with this link: http://www.westonaprice.org/knowyourfats/index.html.  It’s very helpful in dispelling a lot of the nutritional miseducation out there surrounding fats.

Avivah

I was planning to order a 50 pound bag of sucanat today, so that I’d have plenty in stock to tide me over for a while.  I called the supermarket that was going to order it for me, and they gave me a choice of two kinds of sucanat.  Because I didn’t want to order the wrong one – I only want the true unprocessed sugar cane juice in granular form – I called the bulk supplier for the supermarket to ask about it.  The representative was very helpful and read me the ingredients on the packaging of each, which let me know that what was being sold as ‘natural sucanat’ is basically sugar with molasses added in, and it’s the organic sucanat that I’ve been buying in smaller amounts all this time (from Wholesome Sweeteners).

BUT – she told me they haven’t had received any shipments of it for months!  And they have no idea why they haven’t been getting it, or when they will get it.  This is a massive food bulk food distributor that supplies most of the health food stores within a several state radius, and I was quite dismayed to hear this.  Sucanat is the main sweetener that I like to use for baking, and I don’t know what I’ll use if I can’t find this that nutritionally will be as good, and I have less than ten pounds left.

So off I went on a search at my local health food store for sucanat.  No luck.  the people working there had never even heard of it!  I did find turbinado sugar, but wanted to research it before buying it, since most of the so called healthy sweeteners are heavily processed.  Many people say that rapadura, sucanat, turbinado, and demerara are interchangeable, but nutritionally there are significant differences.  So I went home and did some research to clarify this for myself, since it’s been a while since I looked into it all and the details are fuzzy.

As expected, raw sugar and turbinado are basically the same thing, and I don’t want to use either of them.  Even looking for sucanat can be misleading (as I personally learned this morning) since some things are labeled as sucanat but are basically glorified brown sugar.  The easiest way to tell if you’re getting the good stuff is to just look at it – if it’s grainy granules, then it’s rapadura or sucanat, and if it’s crystalline, then it’s  what I want to avoid.

So tomorrow I’m going to make some more calls and find out what local stores have rapadura, as well as if it’s possible to buy it in bulk.

Avivah