As we wrap up Crocktoberfest this week, I thought this easy recipe was appropriate. If you haven’t roasted a chicken in your crock pot yet… try it!

Not only is it the cheapest and easiest way I’ve found to make chicken, but you get a couple quarts of chicken broth from it too!

Ingredients and Tools:

• A whole chicken (Usually available for under $2/lb for even organic)
• 1 tbsp butter
• favorite herbs and spices (I add 1 tsp garlic granules or powder, 1 tsp sea salt, and about 1/2 tsp each of basil, oregano, thyme, and rosemary.)
• Crock Pot

How To Slow Cook a Chicken In the Crock Pot (Don’t blink or you’ll miss the instructions!)

1. Rinse chicken and make sure innards are removed.
2. Put butter in bottom or crock pot  and turn on low (butter is to prevent sticking, can use coconut oil).
3. Once butter melts, put chicken in crock pot (putting breast-down will make it cook faster)
4. Sprinkle with desired spices. (I’ve also heard of stuffing the chicken with an onion, apple or orange for more moistness and great flavor)
5. Put lid on and cook on low for 7-8 hours or until well cooked.

To Make Broth:

1. Remove chicken and pull meat off the bones but leave all the juices in the crock pot.
2. Put the bones back in the crock pot and add 1 small chopped onion, 2 ribs of celery, 1 chopped carrot and a little more sea salt.
3. Add 2-3 quarts of water (depending on what your’s will hold)
4. Cook on low overnight.
5. Strain bones and vegetables out.
6. Use within 3 days or freeze for later use.

Some other ideas for using your whole roasted chicken:

• Put a small colander on top of the chicken when almost done cooking and fill with veggies. It will steam them so you have the whole meal ready to serve.
• For the last few hours, put some medium sized sweet potatoes on top of the chicken and put the lid back on. Both will be ready for dinner.
• After making the broth, remove the bones, add some chicken back in along with a few cups of favorite veggies and you have an easy chicken soup (with tons of nutrients)

How do you cook a chicken? Do you make broth too? What’s your secret? Share below!

I had another post scheduled for today, but after I got a magazine in the mail from our local hospital (that I have somehow been subscribed to) and visited a friend who had just had a baby in the hospital, this was on my mind.

The article above is from the magazine from our local hospital.  It is supposedly “Your guide to a balanced meal.”

I’ve included the text of the article in bold below with my (highly cynical) commentary after.

Chances are your dinner plate is shaped like a circle, not a triangle. So it makes sense to think of your family’s food choices as part of a circle too.

Ok, we can chalk up one true thing from this article. My dinner plate is indeed shaped like a circle. I wonder how many government dollars it took to figure that out. As for the whole food choices being a circle, it reminds me of something I’ve heard before about food choices… oh yeah… “cause its the circle, the circle of life” (from the Lion King).

That’s the practical idea behind the government’s new MyPlate icon, which replaces MyPyramid. With MyPlate, what you see in the icon directly relates to what you put on your plate.

Brilliant yet again! That old Food Pyramid (which gave King Tut Heart Disease) certainly was outdated and all of us dumb people lacking in government credentials couldn’t really figure out that you were just telling us to eat lots of carbs, some fruits and veggies and very little meat, fats, oils and sweets. Of course, since your health advice has been such a smashing success over the last few decades, I can see why you’d want to update it!

An Easier Way To Eat Healthy. MyPlate is a simple visual reminder to build yourself a healthy plate at mealtimes. For busy parents, it’s a quick and easy way to tell at a glance whether children are getting a balanced meal too. Just remember these basic rules of thumb:

-Make Half the plate fruits and vegetables -  heavier on the vegetables. Include red, orange and dark green veggies and colorful fruits.

One thing we agree on! Vegetables (and some fruits) are good and you should eat them. Of course, you guys lump potatoes (a tuber and a starch), corn (a grain) and even french fried into this category, but we agree there. Also, I’d suggest more like half the plate of green, leafy veggies and some fruits on top, but that’s a small point of difference (I say tomato, you say potato, but whatever).

Thank goodness all of us busy parents have you to help us figure out what is healthy for our kids. Without you, we might never figure out that feeding them McDonalds every day or letting them drink soda is not a good idea. What a relief!

-Make the other half grains and protein. Emphasize 100 percent whole grains, like whole grain breads, brown rice and pasta. Select fish and beans for some of your proteins, and when you pick poultry or meat as your protein food, chose lean cuts in small portions.

Great idea (sarcasm). We should certainly eat more grains than protein, since protein is only vital to hundreds of reactions in the body and is needed for cell growth and repair. Grains on the other hand… we need lots of those (sarcasm again!) to be healthy and get our fiber. We definitely shouldn’t worry about the fact that they are not nearly as nutritious as proteins, vegetables or healthy fats. We should ignore the harmful gut-eroding glutens, lectins and phytates which are causing autoimmune disease at record rates. In fact, since a couple pieces of whole wheat toast skyrocket blood sugar just like candy (See FatHead for explanation), candy must be good for us too!

As for the 100% whole grain thing! Thank goodness for those wonderful bread plants and pasta stalks. I’m so glad they don’t have to grind the grains up into small particles, which would increase the surface area and make them affect the blood sugar even more!

We should definitely eat beans instead of meat too, because it has some protein (and lot of carbs). When we combine the carbs from the fruit over on the other half of the plate with the hearthealthywholegrains on this side and the carbs from beans, we might just be getting close to the 300+ grams of carbs we are supposed to be eating a day according to you guys, even if we are diabetic.

As for fats… those evil arteryclogging saturated villians… certainly they should be avoided. Never mind that they are needed for minor things like hormone production, satiety, healthy reproductive function and more and that they don’t actually make you fat (or cause heart disease)… avoid at all costs. Eat candy instead.

Pour a glass of fat-free or low-fat milk. You’ll get as much calcium and other important nutrients as from whole milk but with less fat and calories.

Oh yes, do that! Of course, the vitamins in milk like the synthetic Vitamin D in minuscule amounts do need fat to be absorbed, but who cares if you are absorbing them, as long as you are getting them! You can’t have your cake and eat it too (unless of course, you use wheat flour and count it as your hearthealthywholegrains).

And calories, those are the bad guys! It doesn’t matter at all if they come from grains and carbohydrates (which raise the blood sugar, get stored as fat and wreak havoc on the body)  or proteins (which are needed for important functions like cell repair) or fats (which are a much more dense and effective source of fuel). As long as we limit those calories, we are A-OK! In fact, someone once gave me a bottle of fat free, calorie free, salt free salad dressing. I might just drink the stuff!

And dairy, we need lots of that! Of course, all other animals don’t drink milk after infancy, but dairy is such a healthy source of (relatively nothing since they pasteurize and process it all out) everything, we should drink it too… maybe instead of the salad dressing!

Keep Portions Sensible! Think small dinner plate not supersized platter.

Well shoot… I was soooo looking forward to that gigantic salad I was going to have for dinner. but of course, that would be way more than half the plate of vegetables, so that isn’t good, and the other half would be lots of meat (and not the lean kind) with good ol’ fatty olive oil drizzled on top and nary a grain or dairy in sight. Yep, better not eat that! It won’t be nearly enough nutrients and way too much protein and fat.

What should I eat instead? Maybe a couple slices of blood sugar boosting whole wheat toast with some hummus, an apple and a potato… yep that would fit, as long as I wash it down with the fat free dairy…. sounds so much more nutritious to me!

And I should probably keep some of those super-healthy (sarcasm) 100-Calorie packs with me at all times so that I can eat small portions throughout the day because not eating every 2 hours would be like fasting, which would cannibalize my muscle tissue (or not!).

STEP UP TO THE PLATE. MyPlate was developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Wait, what? The U.S. Department of AGRICULTURE is telling us what we should eat? You mean those guys who approved Monsanto’s request to grow genetically modified crops and test them on their own? The same guys who bailed out Domino’s Pizza (lots of saturated fats there) to give the dairy industry a boost? That same organization who’s leader was once a top proponent for Monsanto’s push for genetically modified crops?

Now why would the USDA have any interest in telling us what to eat? They only regulate foods like corn, wheat, soybeans, processed dairy, factory meats…. oh wait! Oh… its all starting o make sense now! (Note to self: consider hiring USDA for brilliant marketing campaign)

It’s designed to translate the government’s 2010 Dietary Health Guidelines for Americans into practical information that you can apply to your meals. Together, these tools help you get the right number of calories for reaching and maintaining a healthy weight. That’s crucial at a time when obesity rates have hit epidemic levels.

How wonderful that we have those sweet, unbiased people at the USDA (who regulate all those heart healthy whole grains and low fat dairy) telling us to eat more heart healthy whole grains and low fat dairy. Surely, they are just concerned about the health of consumers and don’t care  one bit about where their funding comes from.

Measures like these will certainly reduce obesity, just as they’ve been doing for the last couple of decades under the government’s guidance (obesity rates have been rising). If only all of us dumb Americans had been smart enough to figure out that that pyramid thing was trying to get us to eat more whole grains these last few decades, we’d all be thin and healthy by now and heart disease and diabetes would be things of the past! (statistics show we actually eat less fat than we did a few decades ago).

[I'm practically choking on sarcasm by now, in case you didn't notice!]

Many people also don’t eat the variety of foods needed for optimal nutrition and health. Both adults and children often come up short on fiber, potassium, calcium and vitamin D.

MyPlate helps you to remember to choose a varied diet.For gauging portion sizes, the old guidelines talked about servings. The new oens refer to cups for fruit, vegetable and dairy and ounces for grains and proteins – units more familiar to home cooks

Yes, we need more varied whole grains! Of course, vegetables have more fiber and potassium… and foods like sardines and bone broth (lots of fat!) have more calcium… and we could get some Vitamin D from, you know, the sun… but we do certainly have to include those grains and dairy in our variety.

There are hundreds of fruits and vegetables, but we can’t let all that variety cover more than half our plates! where would the beans go? and the lean meats cooked in oxidized vegetable oils? Certainly, we must limit our vegetables to half our plate so we can make room for our whole grains and small portion of lean meat…

The article concludes by giving you resources to read more from the USDA (sorry, not linking to it!) and the hospital’s own website. You could even hire a dietitian to help you eat all that stuff in case you still can’t figure out that you are supposed to eat a lot of hearthealthy whole grains.

I wonder when the USDA and the medical community are going to figure out that these recommendations won’t really help anyone be healthy. Of course, where do people go when they get sick? The hospital!

What a coincidence!

As for me? The MyPlate recommendations won’t be on my plate! But this might…

What do you think? Is this article just bad health advice or a brilliant marketing scheme?

If you eat grain free, you likely eat a lot of eggs for breakfast. I’m always looking for new ways to mix up the breakfast menu, and this is the latest creation (not the best picture.. sorry).

I always used to enjoy Huevos Rancheros, but being grain free, the corn tortilla had to go. This is an easy adaption that tastes great! It’s so easy it hardly deserves a recipe…

Ingredients:

• Chorizo sausage
• 2 eggs (or more) per person
• salsa or enchilada sauce
• guacamole
• sour cream (optional)
• Cheese (optional)

How To Make Them:

This is one of my favorite fast summer dinner ideas. The kids love it, my husband loves it, and I love that it only takes one pan to cook

Sausage and Squash Stir Fry Ingredients:

• One 16 ounce package of link sausage (nitrite free if possible) I used nitrate free smoked beef sausage
• 3-4 medium to large summer squash or zucchini (or the equivalent)
• 2 onions
• 1 TBSP butter
• spices to taste: salt, pepper, garlic, basil, etc

How To Make It:

1. Slice sausage into thin slices, about 1/4 inch.
2. Brown them in a large skillet or wok until well cooked and browned
3. Remove sausage
4. Slice onion into thin slices and saute in the same pan until soft
5. While cooking, peel and slice summer squash and add to onions when almost done
6. Add spices to taste and additional butter if needed to prevent sticking
7. Cook for an additional 5 minutes or until squash is soft
8. Enjoy!

What’s your favorite “one-pan” meal? Tell me in the comments below!

I present to you my favorite salad ever! While our garden is (somehow) still producing strawberries, I’ve been eating this salad as much as I can! I’ve even eaten this for breakfast with eggs on the side. Sometimes, I add grilled chicken and it is an entire meal.

Ingredients:

• Spinach (or other greens)
• feta cheese
• strawberries
• cashews
• cucumber slices
• olive oil

How To Make It

1. Put vegetables on plate.
2. Top with Feta, strawberries and cashews
3. drizzle with olive oil
4. Enjoy
5. Repeat!

Since my husband is Italian, I’m always looking for healthy versions of Italian dishes that he likes. We had a lot of eggplant recently in the garden and CSA, and since all I’ve ever known to do with eggplant is make Eggplant Parmesan… I did.

This recipe turned out really well, and the kids, who have never been huge fans of eggplant, really liked it. I figured that some of you might be missing Italian foods now that you are grain free, so this is a healthy alternative.

Grain Free Eggplant Parmesan Ingredients

• 2-3 medium sized eggplants
• salt
• about 1/2 cup coconut flour (or almond flour)
• 1/3 cup arrowroot powder (can use more coconut if you don’t have this)
• garlic, salt, pepper and basil leaf
• 3-4 eggs
• 1 TBSP heavy cream (optional)
• 1 jar (24 ounces) of pasta sauce (check ingredients!)
• Parmesan cheese
• Mozzarella cheese
• tallow, lard or coconut oil

How to Make Healthy Eggplant Parmesan

1. About an hour before preparing, peel eggplant and slice into 1/4 to 1/2 inch slices. Place eggplant in strainer and sprinkle heavily with salt. Let sit for 45 mins to 1 hour. This sweats the eggplant and makes it much less bitter. Rinse well with water and pat dry
2. Put lard, tallow or coconut oil (about 1-2 cups) in a large skillet and turn on medium heat.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
4. Mix coconut flour, arrowroot, 2 T parmesan and spices in large bowl or on a large plate
5. Beat eggs with heavy cream, if using
6. Dip eggplant in egg mixture, then in coconut flour mixture and place in hot oil in skillet
7. Cook approximately 4 minutes per side until browned
8. As eggplant is finished, place in a 13×9 baking dish
9. Pour pasta sauce over the eggplant and then top with parmesan and mozzarella, if desired
10. Heat in oven until cheese is melted and sauce is heated.

I’m a huge fan of Caprese Salad, especially right now when tomatoes and basil are literally growing like weeds in the garden, but it isn’t very high in protein or fat and doesn’t make a good meal by itself. No worries, eggs fix everything! Enter the Caprese Omelet!

This omelet is very similar to the delicious salad version but with a much bigger protein punch. Tired of the usual bacon and eggs (say it isn’t so!), try this Italian variation! An omelet this good can’t be contained to just the breakfast realm, and it makes a delicious lunch or dinner also.

Caprese Omelet Ingredients:

• 2-4 Eggs
• 2 TBSP butter
• 1 small/medium tomato, diced
• 3-4 (or more) basil leaves, finely chopped
• shredded mozzarella to taste
• Olive Oil (optional)
• Garlic, salt and pepper (optional)

How To Make A Caprese Omelet:

1. Melt butter in medium skillet over low/medium heat
2. Scramble eggs with fork in a shall bowl and season with garlic, salt and pepper if desired
3. Pour eggs into skillet and sprinkle tomatoes, cheese and basil on one half
4. When eggs are partially set, fold the empty half over to cover the side with tomatoes, basil and cheese
5. Cook until set, flipping if needed
6. Remove and promptly top with more tomatoes, basil and cheese and drizzle with olive oil if desired

This is my favorite omelet (at least for this week!) What’s your favorite? Chime in below!

Shared at Fight Back Friday

Now that we are just on the verge of Tomato and Pepper season, I wanted to share this recipe for cultured salsa. Fermenting salsa is an easy way to make it last longer without canning and it adds a probiotic boost.

We eat and drink a lot of fermented foods, from Water Kefir Soda to Sauerkraut, and fermented salsa is definitely one of the easiest ways to get the benefits of fermented foods in your diet.

If done properly, fermented salsa will last months in the fridge or in cold storage and get more probiotics with age.

Lacto Fermented Salsa Recipe

Ingredients and Supplies:

• 2.5-3 lbs of tomatoes of choice
• 1-2 onions
• 4 (or more) cloves of minced garlic
• Fresh Cilantro to taste (I use 1/2 cup or more)
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1 lime, juiced
• 2 TBSP sea salt or celtic salt
• Spices to taste ( I use oregano, pepper, cumin, chili and cayenne)
• Peppers (sweet or spicy.. I use cayenne and habanero but sweet peppers work great too if you don’t like spicy!)
• 1/2 cup whey (make your own!)

How to Make Fermented Salsa

1. Chop tomatoes, peppers, onion and cilantro and mince garlic. If you have a food processor, your could definitely use it to speed up this step!
2. Toss all ingredients into large bowl
3. Add the juice of the lemon and lime
4. Add salt and spices to taste
5. Add whey and stir well to incorporate.
6. Pour into quart of half gallon size mason jars and cap tightly.
7. Leave on the counter for approximately 2 days.
8. Transfer to fridge or cold storage (oh, I wish I had a cellar or basement!)

Will last up to 8 months (that’s the longest I’ve tested!) if kept cold and flavor will intensify slightly over time. I find it actually tastes best after a couple weeks in the fridge to let flavors mingle a little more.

A Fast and Easy Tip

If you don’t have the time or ingredients to make your own salsa, you can get the benefits of fermented salsa by fermenting store bought salsa as well. If possible, use the fresh made salsas in the refrigerated section, but you can ferment canned versions also.

I tried this after reading this tip from Cheeseslave, and it works great. I had a lot of salsa that I had canned last year, and I’ve fermented it all before using it now to up the probiotic balance. I also fermented my homemade ketchup, barbecue sauce, pasta sauce, etc and they all tasted great!

What do you think? Is your kitchen a small scale chemistry lab? Do jars of foods in various stages of fermentation clutter your counter as they do mine? What’s your favorite?

While the outdated “Pyramid” was apparently too confusing for normal people to understand, the new “MyPlate” was designed to be easy to understand, and it is… insultingly easy!

It’s true that a visual representation of a plate may be easier to interpret for many people, but unfortunately, it is only going to help interpret the same bad advice.

The new MyPlate guidelines, pioneered by Michelle Obama, still suggest at least half of dietary intake come from starches and sugars (grains and fruit), less than 1/4 come from protein, and another 1/4 come from vegetables, which could also be starchy.

Dairy, presumably low-fat, is thrown in as an afterthought, that should be consumed as a liquid, preferably preceded by a “skim, 1% or 2%.”

Fat? Hmmm… I guess the $2 million dollar committee-based-effort just forgot to include the recommendation for any fat…

Maybe they missed all the recent information about major studies concluding that saturated fat doesn’t cause heart disease, or the meta-analysis showing no link between fat and heart disease,  or all the information presented by Gary Taubes in his (500 page) brilliant case against the lipid hypothesis.

Heck, a $2 million dollar effort can hardly be expected to examine all the information and present an unbiased conclusion, especially when the USDA is so busy subsidizing foods like corn, wheat, and soybeans to the tune of $20 Billion a year!

Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if the USDA were just offering these “guidelines” for free-thinking adults who are capable of buying their own food and making their own nutrition decisions. The problem is, these guidelines also dictate what children are fed at schools. (Though, this might be a good thing in some parents eyes)

Further restricting fat and calories is not only going to do nothing for the childhood obesity epidemic, it is harmful to developing brains of children. In fact, not getting enough fat, or getting the wrong kind of fat (like vegetable oils promoted by the USDA) has been shown to have a negative impact on IQ later in life.

Yet, this new government-generated graphic is supposed to lead us all on the path to optimal health, even though the food pyramid (which was basically the exact same recommendations) has done the opposite… not that any of us could follow it, because it was so confusing. (eyeroll)

You’ve probably caught on by now that I’m pretty peeved at this latest attempt to intervene in our nation’s health, especially because the advice being promoted is going damage health, not improve it (though I wouldn’t want government interference even if they were promoting the exact same thing I was).

I’m annoyed because fat is not the problem, grains and excess sugars and starches are, yet the mainstream medical/nutritional communities continue to promote these ideas as healthy.

If people want to make the choice to live on Pizza, hamburgers and soda, they should absolutely have that choice, in my opinion. It is the fact that many people are being misled into thinking that a “balanced” diet of grains, sugars, and vegetables with a little protein and very little fat is actually the standard they should look to for health.

I’m annoyed that the “experts” are still telling people that it is all about portion control and “calories in, calories out” while these same people, trying to follow that advice, are getting sicker! (Not to mention it is much more about hormones than calories!)

It makes me sick that healthy fats (saturated included!) are still being demonized, and disease causing omege-6 Vegetable oils are still recommended. (Still not sure on the fats issue? Watch this documentary for free now!)

What Is The Solution?

Step One: Stop looking to any branch of the government for nutritional advice (especially one that subsidizes agricultural crops!)

Step Two: Do your own research and take responsibility for your own health! (Don’t take my word for anything… research it yourself!)

Some other bloggers have written excellent takes on this as well (like here and here). Tom Naughton also has a great take on the issue as well, if you are in need of a good laugh!

For my part, I thought that a few changes could help the new MyPlate actually look like something that I would put on my plate. If I had to stick with the same model, it would likely look something like this:

But, then again, if I wasn’t limited to a measly $2 million dollar budget because I’d spent all my money subsidizing corn, wheat and soybeans, I might even design a really flashy plate that would help all of us who were “confused” by the pyramid to really understand what to eat. Though, mine would look like this:

Heck, it would even be better to eat a plate that always looked like this (courtesy of this great article):

Bottom line… if you want to be healthier, fill YourPlate with foods like meats, eggs, vegetables, avocado, coconuts, some fruits, raw full-fat dairy etc and limit anything canned, bagged, processed or frozen (especially if it contains corn, wheat or soybeans).

What do you think? Is the new MyPlate a step in the right direction or merely a more insulting way of offering bad dietary advice? What would your plate look like?

With Kale in season right now and available at a lot of farmer’s markets and CSAs, these chips are a tasty way to try it! Kale is a highly nutritious green in the Cabbage family and most kids even enjoy these crispy chips.

According to Wikipedia:

Kale is very high in beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C, lutein, zeaxanthin and is reasonably rich in calcium. Kale, as with broccoli and other brassicas contain sulforaphane (particularly when chopped or minced), a chemical believed to have potent anti-cancer properties. Along with other brassica vegetables, kale is also a source of Indole-3-carbinol, a chemical which boosts DNA repair in cells and appears to block the growth of cancer cells.

Kale Chips are, in my opinion, the most kid-friendly way to serve Kale, especially if it is a new veggie at your house. My kids really don’t like Kale in stir frys or cooked dishes, but they really like Kale chips!

Kale Chip Ingredients and Supplies:

• One bunch of Kale
• 3 TBSP olive oil
• Sea Salt
• Baking Sheet
• Pastry Brush (or piece of cloth, or fingers)

How to Make Kale Chips:

1. Preheat to oven to 370 degrees.
2. Make sure Kale leaves are washed and dried well. Remove stems- this is optional, and we actually often leave them in and just eat the leaves off of the stems.
3. Brush or rub the leaves with olive oil until well coated and sprinkle with sea salt to taste.
4. Place in the preheated oven for 5-10 minutes or less depending on how hot your oven is. You will need to watch them closely and remove them as soon as they are crispy and barely browning.
5. Serve immediately or leave on the counter on a plate (do not cover) for up to 3 days.
6. Flavor variations: try adding spices like cumin and chili powder or ginger and garlic for a different taste.

Ever made Kale chips? What is your favorite way to prepare Kale?