Avivah Werner

Category: nutrition

  • Ways to include coconut oil in your diet

    Since I recently wrote a little about some benefits of coconut oil is to your health, maybe you’ve been thinking about including it in your diet but wondering how much to take and how to take it.  The recommendation I’ve generally seen is to take 3.5 – 4 T. daily, spread out throughout the day.  The reason to take it regularly instead of all at one time is it helps to keep your metabolism running strong all day.  However, start with a smaller amount, like a teaspoon at each meal, and slowly build up.  That way your body can get used to it – otherwise you might experience a strong cleansing reaction which is positive for your health but not pleasant.

    – Shakes/smoothies (since it chunks up, coconut milk may be more useful)

    Mix into hot tea, coffee, milk

    Bake with it, using it to replace shortening, margarine, or butter.

    Saute or fry foods with it.

    Spread it on bread or crackers like butter.

    Use it as a salad dressing base, mixed with 50% olive oil so that it will pour more easily and not chunk up when poured on cold salad

    Pop popcorn with it.

    Make healthy desserts with it – my favorite way is to make healthy chocolate.

    Spread it on your skin – it will be absorbed and help nourish you from the outside in!

    If you already use coconut oil and have some great ways to enjoy it, please share them with us in the comments section!

    Avivah

  • Nutrition and Physical Degeneration – the book

    Several books on nutrition have been mentioned in the comments recently, but not everyone has access to a library that carries the books they’re interested in, or even any library at all!  Dr. Weston Price wrote extensively on his travels in the 1930s to many places where he was able to observe the native culture as well as the effects of modernization on the health of younger generations.  The title of his book is Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects.  This book is the starting place for anyone interested in the traditional foods approach to eating, and if this is all you can read, it will be enough.  I thought that some of you would appreciate being able to read it for free online here .   

    There’s also a huge amount of information online about this approach to healthful eating, which is what I initially started with and stayed busy with for a long time.  When I was finally able to get the books, I appreciated being able to systematically get the information, since it was cobbled together in my head from here and there.  But there honestly hasn’t been much that I’ve read that came as something totally new after all of my online reading.

    I hope this is helpful!

    Avivah

  • Kefir soda

    >>What do you guys drink? Just water, or do you make other drinks? What drinks do you make, and how? <<

    This was a very timely question, since I was planning to post about our newest adventure in culturing. 🙂 

    Generally, we drink only water.  That doesn’t include milk or kefir for breakfast, and we have herbal teas in the winter, but basically that’s it.  I very rarely buy juice – maybe twice a year at the most.  I never buy soda – never.  This past winter, I got some juice concentrate, thinking it would be the most efficient way to mix the vitamin C powder the kids take when they’re starting to feel under the weather; rather than buying and wasting a large prepared container of juice, I could just take out a spoonful at a time.  But BH, it was a healthy winter and we didn’t need to take vitamin C often so the concentrate has stayed in the freezer and I was wondering what to do with it, except use it to make juice sweetened jam.

    It occurred to me that I could transform a very low quality food (the juice concentrate) into something of nutritional value if I cultured it.  Before Pesach, a friend offered me water kefir grains but it wasn’t until a few days ago that I got them.  Water grains are used for culturing juices or a water/sweetener/fruit mix.  I mixed up the grains with a can of concentrate and a quart or so of water, and let it sit on the counter for a day.  As it cultures, the sugar is ‘eaten’ by the kefir bacteria. Then we strained out the grains and drank it – couldn’t be easier!

    This is a new project so I can’t give you lots of different recipes I’ve tried.  So far I’ve made it three times with orange juice concentrate, and the kids really like the results.  It becomes fizzy and less sweet as it cultures and turns into kefir soda (though you don’t want to leave it too long because it can become alcoholic).  How long you culture it will depend on the temperature in your home –  our house is pretty warm in the summer since we don’t use air conditioning so it cultures very quickly.  

     When I run out of concentrate, I’ll use the following recipe: 

  • 1-2 tablespoons water kefir grains
  • Filtered water (I didn’t use filtered water but it doesn’t seem like I killed my kefir grains; I’ll try to remember to next time)
  • 1/4 cup sucanat or sugar
  • 1 teaspoon molasses (only if you’re using white sugar)
  • Piece of an egg shell, rinsed (half of the egg shell will do)
  • 1/4 c. fresh or frozen fruit, whatever flavor or combination you like – there are lots of possibilities

    • There are a couple of ways to do this:  1) Some people like to mix all of the ingredients at once and do a one time ferment.  This means putting everything together in a glass jar and leaving it on your counter until it tastes ready to you.

    2) Others prefer to do two separate ferments.  That means first culturing all the ingredients except the fruit, straining out the grains and then using the fermented water together with the fruit for a second ferment.  Supposedly this keeps the kefir grains pure. 

    After the kefir soda is ready, I put it into a glass jar in the fridge.  If you want to be fancy you can get glass bottles that you can fill individually.  This is a good juice or soda substitute because it’s filled with good probiotics, so not only does it taste great but it’s good for you!  And it’s very inexpensive, too!

    Avivah 

  • Canning and kashrus questions

    I’ve gotten this question several times; since I posted the answer in a comment a while back, I think most people haven’t seen it. So I’ll put it up as  a post to make it easier for everyone.

    >>so, i have a few preliminary questions for you, when you have time to answer. first, how do you deal with kashrus with used mason jars? i will ask our rav, but i am wondering how you hold on kashering, etc. <<

    We kasher used jars – you need to make sure they’re spotlessly clean and then completely submerge them in boiling water.  It doesn’t matter what they were used for before.  This was what we were told by Rav Moshe Heinemann, who is head of the Star-K kashrus agency.

    >>second, do you know if a pressure canner can be used for both meat and dairy? again, i will ask our rav, but am wondering what you do.<<

    I don’t use it for both, only for meat, because the jars don’t seal until after they’re out of the canner.  Until then, juices leak out and make the pot very definitely meat.  There’s very little that most people would can which is dairy, so only using a canner for meat doesn’t present much of an obstacle.  The only dairy thing I’ve canned is butter, and that doesn’t need a pressure cooker, just a standard large pot for water bathing. 

    >>third, have you found a use for the screw on lids for the mason jars? when i buy new round things that seal the jars, they always come with the screw on parts too, so i am getting an increasingly large pile of gold bracelet things. do you do anything creative with them?<<

    Oh, good, now I can help you save some money. thumb.gif  Stop buying the packages of lids that come with rings!  You only need to do that in the very beginning, since the rings are resusable.  More of them just creates clutter, and who needs that?  What you need to look for instead are the boxes that have only lids – they contain 12 lids each and average in price at about $1.50 – $2; they look like this (this is an affordable online source – I bought a case from them last year).  Since it sounds like you’re aquiring a large collection of bands, put most of them away in storage, and bring them out when the ones you’re currently using start to get rusty and need to be replaced.

    Avivah

  • Curried Carrot Sauerkraut

    Here’s the recipe for my latest fermented vegetable experiment which I slightly adapted from Baden:

    Curried Carrot Sauerkraut

    • 1/2 head green cabbage, finely chopped or shredded
    • 1/2 head purple cabbage, finely chopped or shredded
    • 6 – 7 carrots, shredded
    • 1 small onion, finely chopped
    • 1 – 2 cloves garlic, minced
    • 1 1/2 – 2 T. curry
    • 2 t. salt (I use coarse Celtic)

    Mix all of the vegetables together, and then mix in the curry.  Pack the mixture into glass jars. Add filtered water until the combined vegetable juices (if any) and water just cover the vegetables; add sea salt to the top.  Make sure that all of the vegetables are covered with liquid.  When there isn’t enough liquid, the vegetables on top will get moldy instead of fermenting.  Leave about an inch between the top of the liquid and the jar to allow room for the juices to expand.

    Cover with a tight lid or a cheesecloth and rubber band/ canning jar ring – the second option allows the gasses that build up to be released so you don’t find liquid leaking out all over your counter the next morning.  Sally Fallon of Nourishing Traditions says that because lacto fermentation is an anaerobic process, once the fermentation has started the presence of oxygen will ruin the final product, but I’ve tried it both ways (with tightly fitting lids and with cheesecloth) and haven’t found that to be the case.  Leave it on your counter to ferment for a few days or as long as it takes until the vegetables are all soft.  If the cabbage kind of squeaks in your teeth when you eat it, it needs to ferment more.

    There are a couple of things to be aware of in the summer.  The first is that because of the heat, the liquid will evaporate more quickly from the jar, so if you don’t use a tightly fitting lid you need to check it daily to be sure that the vegetables are still covered.  The other thing is that things ferment much more rapidly in the heat.  The faster something ferments, the stronger the flavor will be.  Cabbage needs to ferment longer than some vegetables;  I like to let it ferment for 4 – 5 days on the counter, and then transfer it to the fridge to continue the fermenting.  Since it continues fermenting in the fridge, but more slowly, it has a more mellow flavor.  If you ferment it at room temperature in hot weather, the flavor will be stronger.

    You don’t have to use a mixture of green and purple cabbage, but I think it looks pretty so that’s why I did it.  It has a nice medium purplish color when it’s done.  This is meant to be eaten as a relish or condiment to your meals; I enjoy it in small amounts but find the flavor gets to be too much if I have a large serving.

    Avivah

  • Non-edible ways to use coconut oil

    Coconut oil is an amazing food, and literally a book could be written (and has been!) on how it works and all the many ways it can benefit your health. Unfortunately it’s gotten an unfair and undeserved rap and people don’t know what an incredible food and health supplement it is.  I’m hesitant to write a post like this because there’s no way I can do justice to the benefits of coconut oil.  But I’ll try to sum up some of what I consider the major points – there’s a lot of research out there if you’re interested in learning more about coconut oil and understanding how it affects the body.

    People automatically hear coconut oil and think ‘saturated fat- isn’t that bad for you?’  First of all, saturated fats aren’t bad for you.  I know, it’s hard to believe since that’s not what we hear in the mainstream media.  But the mainstream media is the last place to turn to for accurate information on anything, including nutrition.  Saturated fats actually play a very important role in maintaining your health – consider that for centuries peoples across the globe stayed healthy while eating large amounts of saturated fat, and it’s only since the early 1900s when artificial and processed fats were introduced into people’s diets that we started to see things like heart disease (to be more accurate, I think the very first documented heart attack was in the 1870s but it was still rare until the 1920s).  What’s a problem are fats that are oxidized (ie damaged), which all of the processed polyunsaturated vegetable oils are; it’s these oxidized fats that lead to many of the prevalent diseases of today.

    Next, coconut oil is comprised of medium chain fatty acids.  That means that it is processed differently in the body than most fats.  Coconut oil is very easy to digest because medium chain fatty acids don’t require bile salts to be digested.  It contains high amounts of lauric acid, something found abundantly in mother’s milk but otherwise can only be found in large amounts in coconut oil and palm oil (butterfat has a small amount).  Lauric acid converts to monolaurin in your body, which strengthens your immune system and helps fight all kinds of illness.

    Coconut oil aids immune function and is a protective antioxidant. It’s anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, and anti-viral:

    • Anti fungal – helps combat candida, athlete’s foot, diaper rash, cradle cap – ds16 used this recently for less than a week and no longer has athlete’s foot, something he’s tried to get rid of for at least two years.  Ds22 months once had diaper rash caused by thrush when he was 9 months old – I put coconut oil on his bottom and it killed the thrush, literally peeling the top layer away and leaving perfect skin underneath.  (When I changed his diaper I found what looked like a layer of dead skin, which was actually the dead fungus – it took only two applications.)  It’s also helpful in combatting cradle cap – rub it into the baby’s scalp.
    • Anti – bacterial -bacterial illnesses include throat infections, earaches,  strep
    • Anti viral – viruses cause a wide variety of illnesses, and antibiotics aren’t effective in combatting them.  These viruses include the flu, measles, and HIV.

    When you’re feeling under the weather, up your intake of coconut oil.  In some parts of the world where coconut oil has been used for generations, it is literally drunk as a tonic when people begin to feel unwell.

    Helps expel or kill worms, lice, and parasites – when I thought my toddler ds had worms (dd saw something when changing him but I didn’t see it myself), I put coconut oil on the anus, in addition to giving him raw carrots to eat and increasing his consumption of coconut oil.  We didn’t see any signs of anything after that.

    Helps protect liver, supports thyroid function, improves brain function (even found to be helpful for Alzheimer’s patients ).  It is thermogenic – that means it boosts your metabolism and raises your body temperature.  The increased rate of metabolism means that it’s helpful for weight loss and will give you a natural energy boost. If you’re perpetually cold (a sign of thyroid and/or adrenal fatigue), consuming coconut oil will help warm you up.

    Skin cleanser – my teens think this is the best anti-acne skin treatment – they use the oil cleansing method, with expeller pressed coconut oil as the oil of choice.

    Skin moisturizer – anything you put on your skin goes into your body just as if you ate it, so what you put on your skin is much more important than most people realize.  Not only doesn’t this have chemicals, it has substantial soothing and healing powers. Protects skin from sun, can be used in placed of sunscreen.  Dd14 commented to me on how soft her face feels now after using it as a skin cleanser.

    Hair conditioner – use as a deep oil treatment to nourish your hair; leave on overnight and then wash out in the morning.  I’m planning to try this with one of my shaitels sometime soon.

    Toothpaste replacement – I sometimes dip my toothbrush in it and use it to brush with (I thought of doing this after noticing coconut oil was a main ingredient in tooth soap).

    Base for creams, salves, and more – we made an herbal skin salve and used coconut oil for the base.

    Oil pulling – this is the oil I used on the periodic occasions that I do oil pulling.

    I’ve seen coconut oil recommended for so many different things that it’s hard to believe one food can be so widely beneficial, but the reason it’s so healthy is because of the factors I listed in the very beginning – being a medium chain fatty acid and rich in lauric acid.

    Bruce Fife has written a book about coconut oil that I’d recommend if you’re interested in learning more – The Coconut Oil Miracle.  It’s very easy to read.  He also has a website, and there’s a lot of information online available, if you don’t mind it taking longer to put all the info together.  If you like more technically written books, then Mary Enig is the top lipids researcher in the world and knows her stuff inside out – I haven’t been able to get her book on fats – Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol.  Together with Sally Fallon she’s also written Eat Fat Lose Fat that includes information on coconut oil.  I personally prefer Mary’s writing, but any and all of these books are worth reading.

    Avivah

  • Time for canning again!

    I haven’t done any canning for a while. I haven’t had the energy or desire, and I haven’t needed to.  But yesterday I went down to my basement to take something out of the freezer- the freezer that dh told me needs to be replaced because it’s not working properly – and found everything on the door half defrosted and everything in the main section encased in a thick layer of ice.

    What to do?  First of all, I took out three frozen turkeys to make room for some of the items from the door that could be refrozen without a problem.  I also took out a 9 x 13 pan of shredded potatoes, and was able to chip out a couple of containers of cottage cheese and butter.  After moving some things from the door into that space, I was shocked that I couldn’t even tell I had taken anything out.  How in the world is it possible for there not to be noticeably more space after taking out three turkeys??

    (This raised the question in my mind if it’s possible that maybe I buy a little too much food?  But I quickly banished that thought.)

    Anyway, now I needed to find something to do with the turkeys.  One was already roasted so I put that in the fridge to defrost for Shabbos dinner.  The other two I decided I’d have to can.  I used the pressure canner as a pressure cooker, cooking them one at a time, and couldn’t believe how fast they were done. You know that cooking two solidly frozen turkeys would take hours, right?  I’d usually have to put one in the oven and the other in our electric turkey roaster, both of which would have added lots of heat to the house in the hours of cooking.  I just love the efficiency and versatility of my pressure canner – it’s been a much more valuable purchase than I expected. 

    Well, since I was going to can them I didn’t need them to be fully cooked, so once the pressure was up to 15 pounds I cooked them for just 10 minutes, the same as for a defrosted whole chicken.  That was enough to cook the turkeys almost totally!  If I had left them in another 2 minutes, they’d have been done all the way throught – as it was, they were just a little pink in the very center.  When one was done, I put the other one in.  Within about 2 hours both turkeys were done.   They were finished cooking early enough in the day that I was able to debone and then can them  today, too, and they were finished before it was even late in the evening.  They’re now cooling on the counter, and all of them sealed except for one.  That one will go in the fridge.  All of that turkey amounted to 6 quarts (we ate some of it or it would have been 7 quarts) and I canned a quart of broth; the other broth was used to cook the rice for tonight’s dinner. 

    Six quart sized jars on a shelf will take a lot less room than two turkeys in the freezer!  Now I’m going to have to put some effort into using the frozen veggies in the freezer before going out shopping for fresh vegetables.  And hopefully we’ll soon find a good used freezer at a good price.

    Avivah

  • Breakfast shakes

    >>Shakes for breakfast are my favorite things. What do you put in yours?
    I generally like to put in either yogurt or milk or leben, whatever soft fruit i have in the house, like strawberries, grapes, peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots, etc… bananas (preferably frozen, but non frozen is also ok), and lately i’ve also been adding wheat germ, whole sesame seeds, and flax seeds. Depending on the sweetness of the fruit i either may or may not add some sort of thing to sweeten it. It comes out delicious.<<

    What’s great about shakes is that they’re so versatile, easy, and tasty!  You can put just about anything in and it will turn out great!  For my shake today I’ll have 1 c. raw whole milk, 1/2 c. kefir, 1 raw pastured egg, 2 bananas, and 1/2 oz coconut oil.   For the kids I’ll be using bananas, milk, and peanut butter for the kids, with some coconut oil thrown in.  But really it can be anything that is around the house – if I had to say a recipe, it would be milk/kefir/yogurt with fruit and some kind of fat.  (Sometimes I prefer to have the coconut oil separately because when I use frozen fruit it clunks up into tiny pieces. )  I don’t add any sweetners – a ripe banana adds a good amount of sweetness. 

    I find that a shake is a super breakfast – it’s very filling, packed with nutrients, and especially helpful to me with a month old infant, easy to make and to drink. 

    Avivah

  • How to freeze bananas

    When you have bananas that are starting to get a little too ripe, don’t think you have to eat them all or throw them away!  By freezing them at that point, you’ll be able to get lots of use out of them at your convenience.

    There are several different ways to freeze them, and the way that works best for you will depend partially on what you want to do with them when you take them out of the freezer.  My preference is to 1) peel them, and freeze them whole in large ziploc bags to prevent freezer burn.  Some people like to 2) peel them, and then slice them before freezing – it probably does make it easier to defrost and use a smaller amount.

    Another choice is to 3) peel the bananas and mash them.  Package them in small amounts in plastic bags or freezer containers, putting the amount you would use for a recipe into one bag (eg 1 cup).  This is perfect for having prepped bananas for banana bread or cake.  You can add a tiny bit of lemon juice if you’re concerned about them discoloring. 

    The last choice is to 4) freeze them in the peel.  I don’t like this option, but some people do.  One thing that has been said as a benefit of this is that the peel protects them from freezer burn (though my peeled bananas in bags do fine); it also elimates any prep time.  The reason I don’t like it is: a) the peels get brown and look unappetizing, b) it takes up more room in the freezer, and c) it’s lots easier to peel fresh bananas than frozen.

     But if you do want to freeze your bananas unpeeled, here are some tips for using them: 

    Score the peel lengthways with knife and gently open.  It can take up to 2 hours for them to defrost, and will be very mushy when thawed.  If you don’t want to peel the banana, you can cut off the top and squeeze out the banana mush.  It may sound unappetizing but it works. 

    I’ll try to write another post on some ideas of how to use all of these frozen bananas!

    Avivah

  • Coconut oil as sunscreen

    >>I just wanted to let you know that I ordered 5 gallons of  extra virgin coconut oil and after calling Omega, I think I got a good deal. the price was $226.89 with Free shipping and no tax! http://www.organiclivingfood.com/pc-56-1-coconut-oil-virgin-cold-pressed-organic-raw-kosher.aspx

    The price of mountain rose herbs is still much better, but they were out. If I remember correctly you weren’t sure about a hechser, but it says they are certified: http://www.mountainroseherbs.com/OQK.html Is it just that you don’t use that hasgacha?<<

    Thanks so much for sharing this information!  It can be discouraging to see how expensive coconut oil is, and finding good deals is very helpful.  Even the good deals are a lot of money, though; it helps to remember that when you buy such a large quantity, it will last you a long, long time! (Edited to add – I just called Mountain Rose Herbs and as of today, Friday June 19, it’s back in stock – $149 for 5 gallons, $37 for 1 gallon.)

    As far as Mountain Rose Herbs, their price was much better (I don’t know what it is now, and when I checked last week, they were out of stock and the price wasn’t listed).  I called them about the hechsher, and whatever it was, it wasn’t something I’d rely on for most other things. However, extra virgin coconut oil is very minimally processed and even this minimal hechsher was fine (according to those we ‘hold’ by); some say that it doesn’t need any hechsher  – as always, ask your LOR.

    Since I’m posting about coconut oil, I’ll share something that’s useful to know for the summertime.  Did you know that by eliminating your intake of harmful oils (like typical vegetable oils such as canola or soy, margarine) and adding coconut oil to your diet, you will improve your skin’s sensitivity to the sun?  A lot of people who were fair and used to burn all the time found that they began to tan instead due to the coconut oil and the beneficial affects on their entire bodies.  If this sounds like an impossible connection to you, then I’d just comment that what goes into our bodies affects every aspect of how they function.  You know the computer term GIGO (‘garbage in, garbage out’)?  It applies very much to people and their health, and though we may not see the direct connection, the connection is there.  If you have bad fats in your diet, do you think that it will affect how your skin reacts to the sun?  Or to aging?  Of course.

    I’ve also read that it can be applied as a sunscreen and is effective in that way, too.  Since the skin absorbs what is put on it, this is an equally viable way to use coconut oil (and could be a good option for those who want all the health benefits but don’t like the flavor).  That’s one reason I’ve been opposed to chemical sunscreens for years – I have almost never put them on my kids – all those poisonous chemicals to ‘protect them’ from the sun (especially since I think the sun is beneficial), isn’t a good trade off in my mind.  One year the counselor in my dd’s camp refused to let her swim because she hadn’t brought any sunscreen, and I had to call and tell her that I would take responsibility for the results of my dd swimming for a half hour without sunscreen.  She probably thought I was a neglectful and ignorant parent.  One of my kids did once get a slight sunburn on the back of his neck – it was my ds7, who is the fairest of us all.   That was only once and that was before we made these changes to our diet; though I’ve never used coconut oil as a sunscreen (heard about it after last summer), that’s what I’d use now if I felt there was really a need for it.

    One thing I’m not clear about is if expeller pressed coconut oil is as effective as extra virgin in this regard.  It seems like it should be helpful, even if not as beneficial, just as it is when used as a food.  Since the expeller pressed is so much less expensive, I’d rather use that for applications such as these.  If any of you know more about this, please chime in and educate me!

    Avivah