Everybody’s doing it. Why shouldn’t I?
These are the top ten hottest posts of 2009 here at Food Renegade — the most viewed, most commented. Some of them are simply useful information; others are quite controversial. Hope you enjoy this look back!
I'll be honest. I want your email address. I promise not to do anything weird with it! I'll even send you a copy of my e-book
Saturated Fat *IS* Healthy!
challenging politically correct nutrition
Everybody’s doing it. Why shouldn’t I?
These are the top ten hottest posts of 2009 here at Food Renegade — the most viewed, most commented. Some of them are simply useful information; others are quite controversial. Hope you enjoy this look back!
We all have favorite cookbooks — those go-to sources ripe with beautiful recipes and loads of good information. These are mine. These are the five cookbooks that I would wholeheartedly give to anyone who asked me for recommendations, the five cookbooks that I turn to weekly to inspire me to culinary greatness. They are my rut-breakers. My guiding lights.
I’m sure you’ll love them, too.
My children and husband LOVE fruit juice. Sadly, there’s not much nourishment in most juices (even the 100% juice kind) besides a whole bunch of highly concentrated fructose and a few vitamins.
In an effort to provide them nourishing beverages that satisfy their cravings, we’ve relied heavily on kombucha (which you can brew yourself for as little as $.50/gallon) and raw milk. But sometimes we break out of that rut, and when we do, we aim for other naturally fermented, probiotic beverages.
Beverages like this fresh, natural, and healthy lemonade.
If you are not the lucky winner, I’ve got a consoling bit of news. Cultures For Health is offering 10% off all purchases for a limited time with the coupon code below. That’s good for anything in the store — whether it’s starter cultures for kefir, kombucha, sourdough, buttermilk, or yogurt OR any of the equipment you’ll need to start sprouting and culturing.
Ah mercury. Considered toxic in even the smallest of increments, mercury in our fish hardly qualifies as news. We’ve been warned about that for years now.
But what you may not know is that a recent federal study of mercury contamination found the poison in every single fish tested in nearly 300 streams across the U.S.! This is not good news. It’s the largest study of it’s kind ever undertaken. More than a thousand fish were tested in 291 streams from 1998 to 2005. And the results — and their implications — are staggering.
Cultures For Health, one of my sponsors, is hosting a fantastic giveaway this week! One of you lucky people will win your choice of three free starter cultures from the Cultures For Health store. Want to make sourdough? Kombucha? Yogurt? Kefir? Buttermilk?
Julie, the talented and sweet mastermind behind Cultures For Health, provides starter cultures for just about every kind of traditional food out there. And, she offers a HUGE variety, too. In addition to starters, Cultures For Health also provides all the supplies you could ever need to begin: dehydrators, sprouting trays, glass jars, books, you name it.
So, are you interested in winning your three starters?
I know it’s wild. Those of you who ferment your own dill pickles, relish, sauerkraut, kombucha, kimchi, chutneys, and other fruits and vegetables probably feel like you have a sign pasted to your forehead that reads: WEIRDO.
But, apparently, fermentation has become all the rage in San Francisco. Tara Duggan of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote a feature-length article on the trend which includes a handful of yummy sounding recipes.
Millions of people a year catch the flu in the U.S., and an average of 37,000 people die from it annually. Those are big numbers compared to what’s happened thus far with the swine flu. It kinda makes you wonder if this swine flu is being blown way out of proportion.
(And, yes, I am refusing to do the now politically-correct thing and call it “H1N1.”)
Political agendas and money trail aside, there seems to be another reason why this new virus is getting a lot of press: We’ve been warned about it’s potential to go pandemic for years.
Once again we were overwhelmed with our CSA (community supported agriculture share) bounty. Thankfully, we found a couple willing to split our share with us, so our abundance will not go to waste.
But even splitting the share, we still have host of vegetables to eat! Eating so many greens (many of which need to be cooked), made getting enough raw or fermented foods into our diet a challenge. I think that if we portion things well, just over half our calories should come from raw or fermented foods. Guess we’ll see!
This week we got an abundance of veggies in our CSA share, including the first tomatoes of the season. (Did I tell you we got strawberries last week?) Needless to say, the tomatoes are already gone. But the greens remain: kale, bok choy, swiss chard, spinach, dandelion.