Here's a book for those of you that have a little tot.
The Politics of Brestfeeding
Looks really interesting but my breasts are no longer working in the milk production business so no need to stock up with that book in my limited space on the book shelves.
I guess the main point of the book is that modern culture has gone way overboard on "breast sensitivity", alienating us from the real conception of what female breasts are all about: feeding babies, the most natural thing in this world.
Here the author in her own words:
So the first thing they flew into Haiti after the earthquake was babyformula. Hmmm. Interesting. Clean water and food to the mothers would have seemed more logical, don't you think?
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Monday, November 28, 2011
Dino-meal
My book-shopping geene was just triggered!
Wow! This seems like a book that both son AND mom would like!
Wow! This seems like a book that both son AND mom would like!
Too bad its only out in March 2012, would have made an excellent Christmas gift.
In the mean time, I will browse the authors' blog when I have the time. I found their "before-and-after" story by mistake and to me the story is nothing of a surprise by now but there are probably a lot of insights in other blog posts as well. Here is the link: Paleo Parents: Our Before and After Story
I'll also add it to my blogroll - when I have the time....
Off to work!
Monday, November 21, 2011
Autumn recipes
The past few days, I have been the chef de la chef in the kitchen and got around to a whole bunch of new recipes suitable for all those delicious ingredients available at the autumn market.
Beetroot burgers
Crushed raw beetroots
Cooked and mashed pumpkin
Carrots
Onion
Egg(s)
Buckwheat flour
Spices (salt, herbs, pepper)
Mix and fry in lots of coconut oil. My dough was quite loose, it worked out fine in the frying pan, just had to let them fry long enough on the first side.
Beetroot smoothie
Rice/oatmeal/soy milk
sesame seeds
banana
flaxseed oil
Raw beetroots
Frozen mango cubes
Cinnamon
Mix thouroughly in the mixer and enjoy!
Pumpkin spinach salty muffins
2 cups diced pumpkin (cooked)
2 tbsp oil
1 handful baby spinach (or 3 frozen cubes)
2 tbsp parsley
3 tbsp sunflower seeds
half a handful of semi-crushed walnuts
feta or goat cheese (leave out if you want non-dairy muffins)
2 tsp non-wheat mustard
2 eggs
1,5 cups buckwheat flour
3 tsp baking powder
salt and pepper
Cook the pumpkins. Mix all ingredients except sunflower seeds, walnuts and cheese, which you add at the end. Poor into muffin-molds and bake in oven for 15-20 minutes at 200 degrees celsius.
Carrot Pumpkin B'day Cake
2 dl almonds
1 dl buckwheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cardamom
1 tsp cinnamon
2 carrots
2 apples
2 eggs
1 dl pumpkins, previously cooked together with a cinnamon stick (yammy!!!)
coconut oil to the mold
Ground almonds, buckwheat in the mixer. Add all other ingredients. Oven, 200 degrees celcius for 40 minutes (check the situation at 30 minutes).
For decoration:
Frozen mangos and strawberries mixed in mixer into frozen powder. Add on top of the cake. On top of that you can go with whipped cream but I actually prefer oatmeal cream spiced with vanilla powder for this cake. Today I decorated with some frozen blueberries. Kids and hubby went wild on this cake!
Beetroot burgers
Crushed raw beetroots
Cooked and mashed pumpkin
Carrots
Onion
Egg(s)
Buckwheat flour
Spices (salt, herbs, pepper)
Mix and fry in lots of coconut oil. My dough was quite loose, it worked out fine in the frying pan, just had to let them fry long enough on the first side.
Beetroot smoothie
Rice/oatmeal/soy milk
sesame seeds
banana
flaxseed oil
Raw beetroots
Frozen mango cubes
Cinnamon
Mix thouroughly in the mixer and enjoy!
Pumpkin spinach salty muffins
2 cups diced pumpkin (cooked)
2 tbsp oil
1 handful baby spinach (or 3 frozen cubes)
2 tbsp parsley
3 tbsp sunflower seeds
half a handful of semi-crushed walnuts
feta or goat cheese (leave out if you want non-dairy muffins)
2 tsp non-wheat mustard
2 eggs
1,5 cups buckwheat flour
3 tsp baking powder
salt and pepper
Cook the pumpkins. Mix all ingredients except sunflower seeds, walnuts and cheese, which you add at the end. Poor into muffin-molds and bake in oven for 15-20 minutes at 200 degrees celsius.
Carrot Pumpkin B'day Cake
2 dl almonds
1 dl buckwheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cardamom
1 tsp cinnamon
2 carrots
2 apples
2 eggs
1 dl pumpkins, previously cooked together with a cinnamon stick (yammy!!!)
coconut oil to the mold
Ground almonds, buckwheat in the mixer. Add all other ingredients. Oven, 200 degrees celcius for 40 minutes (check the situation at 30 minutes).
For decoration:
Frozen mangos and strawberries mixed in mixer into frozen powder. Add on top of the cake. On top of that you can go with whipped cream but I actually prefer oatmeal cream spiced with vanilla powder for this cake. Today I decorated with some frozen blueberries. Kids and hubby went wild on this cake!
Sunday, November 20, 2011
LOL - Modern Time's Ice Age
The pig reminds me of the squirrel in the Ice Age movies.... and in real life, well the closest character I come to think of is my son, who is incredible witty when it comes to reaching up to the food in the kitchen. And he is definatelly more successful than the pig in getting what he wants. Luckily, there are no cookies around over here but he already knows how to open the cashew nut jar, or how to get his hands on the dates, and he likes playing around with raw eggs, knifes and hot food...go figure why I get nervous when he pulls out his chair and climbs up to the table...
Grains once again
This is exactly what I am suspecting: Grains, gluten and its affects on (children's) body. It's what the book Wheatbelly argues and now also what this other blogger, who has a serious track record within nutrition advice, puts forward.
But I cannot proove it, cannot get a certificate for it, cannot get myself to do something about, because simply completely eliminating gluten from a non-celiac-child feels too complicated. Especially as long as medical doctors in this country keep repeating that, since the tests are negative, there is no reason to worry...So we do not eat gluten or grains at home, but outside our home we have somewhat more relaxed rules, just because wheat is basically everywhere and without an excuse it is very hard to be hardcore.
But I do worry. I do. Was it really all about natural 2-3 year's tantrum those mega-outbursts we used to see in our today very well-balanced girl? Why do we see rebounds always after a long week of daycare food? And if it is only about being tired, why do we see similar reaction after having been at a party? What about the sudden length growth last summer? Pure coincidence?
Or is the sensitivity just connected to the low exposure to wheat and sugar these days, and that has taken away some level of body tolerance. Kind of like the effect of alcohol, I am not going to name quatities here, but let's just say that my head is not trained for parties like it used to be back in the days (grateful for that actually)... Would seem logical that sugar shocks (wheat is sugar, or glucose) in untrained bodies would have similar effects... This is the explanation I am using to keep calm and continue as usual... but what if what the blogpost above is true? Then really, I should be standing on barricades, screaming for my children's right to a grain-free childhood, both in daycare and later in school...Somehow I am still too mainstream to do just that.
So please scientists out there: do your job! Get this sorted out, fast. And make sure all medical doctors around the world know what they are supposed to give advice on. The way things are going it's not only fake doctors jeopardizing the credibility of the medical profession here in Finland. All those incredible stories of improved health being told on food blogs around the world - that is where Finnish medical society should place their efforts, not in disclaiming these stories (as they are doing now) but trying to find out the scientific truth to how we can improve health through what we eat.
Until then, the best advice I can follow is what Michael Pollan calls "Eat nothing that your great grandmother would not have recognized as food", remembering that food culture is what our mother's (or father's) taught us to eat before industrialization took over the cooking and transferred the responsibility of nutrition to state authority dietary advice.
But I cannot proove it, cannot get a certificate for it, cannot get myself to do something about, because simply completely eliminating gluten from a non-celiac-child feels too complicated. Especially as long as medical doctors in this country keep repeating that, since the tests are negative, there is no reason to worry...So we do not eat gluten or grains at home, but outside our home we have somewhat more relaxed rules, just because wheat is basically everywhere and without an excuse it is very hard to be hardcore.
But I do worry. I do. Was it really all about natural 2-3 year's tantrum those mega-outbursts we used to see in our today very well-balanced girl? Why do we see rebounds always after a long week of daycare food? And if it is only about being tired, why do we see similar reaction after having been at a party? What about the sudden length growth last summer? Pure coincidence?
Or is the sensitivity just connected to the low exposure to wheat and sugar these days, and that has taken away some level of body tolerance. Kind of like the effect of alcohol, I am not going to name quatities here, but let's just say that my head is not trained for parties like it used to be back in the days (grateful for that actually)... Would seem logical that sugar shocks (wheat is sugar, or glucose) in untrained bodies would have similar effects... This is the explanation I am using to keep calm and continue as usual... but what if what the blogpost above is true? Then really, I should be standing on barricades, screaming for my children's right to a grain-free childhood, both in daycare and later in school...Somehow I am still too mainstream to do just that.
So please scientists out there: do your job! Get this sorted out, fast. And make sure all medical doctors around the world know what they are supposed to give advice on. The way things are going it's not only fake doctors jeopardizing the credibility of the medical profession here in Finland. All those incredible stories of improved health being told on food blogs around the world - that is where Finnish medical society should place their efforts, not in disclaiming these stories (as they are doing now) but trying to find out the scientific truth to how we can improve health through what we eat.
Until then, the best advice I can follow is what Michael Pollan calls "Eat nothing that your great grandmother would not have recognized as food", remembering that food culture is what our mother's (or father's) taught us to eat before industrialization took over the cooking and transferred the responsibility of nutrition to state authority dietary advice.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
My point exactly
This editor in chief at the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet has an admiror in me:
The liberty to choose ends at the lunch table
What else can I say than: my point exactly! Get rid of the sugar, the wheat and the fake fat for our children's daily intake of food at daycare and school! Or at least give us, the parents, the opportunity to have a say in what our children are supposed to eat to become bright and healthy as adults!
Right now special diets in daycare or school are only allowed based on religious beliefs or medical evidences of allergies. Well, the latter is next to impossible, partly because the majority of all doctors are still convinced that animal fat kills (although studies are coming out everyday that this is a misconception) and partly because metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart deseases, celiaki, do not appear in small children - it appears much later in life.... But still, after all the evidence out there, I believe there is a direct link between both sugar, wheat and low fat to what later become all those illnesses referred to as endemic deseases in modern Western society today.
Therefore, since I believe maybe it isn't so far fetched to consider my thoughts on sugar, wheat and fake fat as something religious and therefore justify the need of a special diet for my children. And this although, I am not even a fundamentalist... I do not think a little bit of sugar (wheat debatable) is bad. Neither do I think small amounts of the wrong kind of fat once in a while will lead to serious complications. But eating it daily, repeatedly, from the age of one until the age of 18... well that is not what I define as "a little bit". Problem is, although I have a slight feeling (to say the least) of having experienced salvation with the impacts that both the low carb high fat and later the wise choice diet have had on both myself and my family, these food lifestyles are far from being religious movements...
If you want more thoughts on this issue, check out the Swedish post on the blog Naturlig mat i skolan Harder to get real butter (in Swedish) or the Finnish post from a lowcarb blogger: School Food (In Finnish).
Note: I have to confess, I have not been very active myself in improving my childrens daycare diet. There are several reasons for this - mostly very very complicated issues. And therefore, this post should not been seen as any kind of distrust in the people that take care of my children. They are doing a great job! And yes I am very happy that our kid's daycare is blessed with a super-chef-a-la-Jamie-Oliver that manages to spice up all these premade powder-based pots and boxes that he receives in the daycare kitchen each day. Things could be worse...
The liberty to choose ends at the lunch table
What else can I say than: my point exactly! Get rid of the sugar, the wheat and the fake fat for our children's daily intake of food at daycare and school! Or at least give us, the parents, the opportunity to have a say in what our children are supposed to eat to become bright and healthy as adults!
Right now special diets in daycare or school are only allowed based on religious beliefs or medical evidences of allergies. Well, the latter is next to impossible, partly because the majority of all doctors are still convinced that animal fat kills (although studies are coming out everyday that this is a misconception) and partly because metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart deseases, celiaki, do not appear in small children - it appears much later in life.... But still, after all the evidence out there, I believe there is a direct link between both sugar, wheat and low fat to what later become all those illnesses referred to as endemic deseases in modern Western society today.
Therefore, since I believe maybe it isn't so far fetched to consider my thoughts on sugar, wheat and fake fat as something religious and therefore justify the need of a special diet for my children. And this although, I am not even a fundamentalist... I do not think a little bit of sugar (wheat debatable) is bad. Neither do I think small amounts of the wrong kind of fat once in a while will lead to serious complications. But eating it daily, repeatedly, from the age of one until the age of 18... well that is not what I define as "a little bit". Problem is, although I have a slight feeling (to say the least) of having experienced salvation with the impacts that both the low carb high fat and later the wise choice diet have had on both myself and my family, these food lifestyles are far from being religious movements...
If you want more thoughts on this issue, check out the Swedish post on the blog Naturlig mat i skolan Harder to get real butter (in Swedish) or the Finnish post from a lowcarb blogger: School Food (In Finnish).
Note: I have to confess, I have not been very active myself in improving my childrens daycare diet. There are several reasons for this - mostly very very complicated issues. And therefore, this post should not been seen as any kind of distrust in the people that take care of my children. They are doing a great job! And yes I am very happy that our kid's daycare is blessed with a super-chef-a-la-Jamie-Oliver that manages to spice up all these premade powder-based pots and boxes that he receives in the daycare kitchen each day. Things could be worse...
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