Minute Muffin in a Mug

This is the food blog I said I'd never write.
  
I am NOT a food guru.  I am not a doctor or a nutritionist; I am not particularly organic or vegan or anti-gluten or calorie-conscious; I am not allergic or picky.
I just like good food.
I did once gain the freshman fifteen (ok, it was more like the freshman 20).  I've gained over 130-odd pounds - if you count this year, it'll probably top 150 - over the course of seven years and five pregnancies.  And I've already grown out of several sets of jeans just this month.    
I don't exercise regularly. Lugging a two year old up and down stairs is great weight training, and pushing a wheelchair through snow or gravel borders on a fair cardio workout.
Here's the incidental trade secret: I nurse each baby for a year or more; that seems to be the best weight loss program I've tried; I eat a ton and it melts off.
So I'm not the one to ask about diet secrets.  I'd just tell you to have more kids.  :)

But I want to eat food that tastes good.  I want to be satisfied when I'm done.  I want to have energy after I eat.  I don't believe that the FDA (ha!) or even the health food stores have the answers.  The last couple general practice docs that I've had looked sicker than I ever did.  Scientists and health books seem to contradict each other.  And I've read enough blogs to suspect I'm not alone in this quest for a sustainable, tasty, healthy food lifestyle.
I'm growing more inquisitive from having a baby with congenital abnormalities for which there is no explanation, wondering about exactly what I'm feeding all my kids, and realizing I won't be invincible forever myself.  Is diet as pivotal as all that?

So I'm going to plug a book today that may help.  It's been my guideline for health and food.  It sites age-old wisdom.  And yes, it does say to eat your veggies.
It's called the Bible.  

Don't roll your eyes. I'm serious.  My kids may tell you the answer to every question I ask them is "God."  Well, it's pretty much true.  But I realize it's practically heretical compared to current diet advice.  God's Word says eat red meat, milk, and grain.  Eat salt.  Eat butter.  In fact, set aside days for feasting in celebration, and for eating in remembrance.
Deuteronomy 32 describes Israel as the "apple of His eye" - people He loved.  He wanted the best for them.  Verse 13 starts describing the food He would give them.  "Produce from the fields (veggies and grain?), honey from the rock (glucose?), oil from the flinty rock (fats?), curds from the cattle (butter), milk of the flock (dairy), the fat of lambs, rams, and goats (meat), the choicest grain (flour), the blood of grapes (fruit).
God made all these food groups; not one is a second rate choice.
A balance is obviously necessary, but eliminating a whole food group doesn't seem Biblical.
Certainly, if you misuse good foods, you will get fat and sick and messed up.  When my babies ate too many carrots, their skin turned orange.  If I eat too many beans, I'll feel bloated.  When I eat raw garlic, I try not to breathe much in public.  There are real food allergies and bodies that simply can't digest particular foods.  If you're allergic; don't eat it!  But as a general rule, God made lots of plants and animals as food for enjoyment and blessing.  Food was not meant to be a curse.

Here's some of what I've gleaned in the past year or so.
I need meat for complete protein (I'd need to eat two cups of beans or seven cups of brown rice to get the same amount of protein as a little slab of chicken breast). It's the best source of all essential amino acids, the only source of carnitine and taurine, and the only dietary source of vitamins A and D.  Skin and muscle tone depend on meat.  It also breaks down slowly, allowing you to feel more satisfied longer.  Good meat comes at a price; so there are plenty of days when we get protein from other sources.  But as often as we are able, we get meat on the table.
(My suspicion about life without meat is that you would certainly feel better if you suddenly turned vegan and eliminated all those white starchy carbs, processed food, and sugar from your diet, while also adding lots of fresh veggies.  But trying to connect the dots to say meat - especially from healthy, pasture-raised animals - is the culprit for poor health, I suspect, misses the main offenders completely.)
God said to eat meat.  I'm gonna go with Him on this one.  Plus, I'm raising five boys and a husband.  I can't imagine any of them being happy to give up steak or chicken nuggets.

I also need fat.  Yes, I  said it.  Need.  The outer layer of your body's cells requires fat.  Your brain needs fat.  Your skin needs fat.  A woman can't reproduce without enough fat.  And saturated fat is where it's at.  (I read a lot of The Cat in the Hat... Which is neither here nor there, but I can still quote it anywhere!)  In my house, we eat coconut oil, olive oil, and lots of butter.  And lard from some local pigs.  And fermented cod liver oil.  God made these.  He didn't make margarine; Napoleon did, as a cheap substitute for the soldiers who had no access to fresh dairy products to smear on their bread to make it more palatable.  It is made from an emulsion of plant oils and water, and naturally has no color.  There's a problem with vegetable oils.  They go rancid quickly, so they have to be hydrogenated to make them shelf stable.  Forcing hydrogen through them, and heating them through cooking, turns the oils into trans fats which your body thinks are actually saturated fats.  So it sticks them into your cell walls instead of natural fats.  That's really bad.  Also, those things called fat soluble vitamins - they are vital.  But they are unusable and nonexistent without good fats to provide and process them.  Yes, skim milk has calcium, but you need the fats from the creamy part to incorporate it into your body.  Plus, dipping an Oreo in a glass of skim is close to sacrilegious.

I eat grain.  Corn, wheat, oatmeal...  They are in the Bible.  Jesus called himself the bread of life, and that wasn't a negative thing.  Unfortunately, in our country, pretty much all the grain we have access to has been significantly meddled with.  It's been chemicalized, hybridized, grown for profit over provision, and way, way overused.  Wheat, and especially corn, are in everything.  Phytic acid, which is in the protein of grain, is very difficult to digest.  Long term over abundance of it in our systems wreaks havoc.  Our bodies turn grain into glucose.  That's good; we use glucose for energy.  But a single meal in our culture usually has far too much of it.  The excess is stored in fat cells.  The abundance of it exhausts our insulin capacities, daily.  If the germ has been removed, then there is very little nutrition in it; if it is still whole grain, then it breaks down into products that interfere with hormones and vitamin absorption.  
We eat less of it the more I learn about it all.  But I have so many boys growing and burning so much energy every day, we're not willing to give it up and go against the grain.  Instead, I'm learning how to soak or sprout grains before baking or cooking, which gets rid of a lot of the phytic acid that is so difficult to handle.  My husband likes sourdough which also does this.  It's easy to feed my kids pasta; they like it and it's cheap.  Yet it's cheap on so many levels...  I can understand where the anti-gluten folks are coming from.  But fresh bread on a rainy day is too high up my comfort scale to allow it to disappear.  God intended it to be satisfying and enjoyable.

For the sake of length, I won't get into fruits and veggies or sweets and desserts.  We could all stand to eat more vegetables, and be conscious of the sugar rush we can get from even good sweet stuff.  We simply try to stay as natural, seasonal, and local as possible.  Fresh just tastes good.  I'm looking forward to peas and tomatoes still warm from the garden, and trying my hand at our own batches of saurkraut, apple pie, ice cream, cider vinegar, and dehydrated fruits as we head into fall.  They spoil my taste for things pre-made, fake sugared, and over salted.  Hope my kids learn to think they're spoiled from all the goodness too!

There aren't a whole lot of books I've read on these subjects, and there are fewer I'd recommend.  But I'll plug two (in addition to the Original, as I mentioned above.)

Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, is just chock full of the basics of what is good food and how to prepare it.  I haven't read the whole thing from cover to cover, but it has been the standard food reference on my shelf for the past several years.  I know how to make broth from chicken bones because of them, and fermented stuff like kefir and sauerkraut, and even some about what foods go together well and why.  Plus there's lots of other good food stuff they don't teach in school.

Trim, Healthy Mama by Serene Allison and Pearl Barrett, is the best diet book I've ever read (also the only diet book I've ever read.)  It is practical, sensible advice from two mothers with large families.  It was just what I was looking for as I tried, with a very non-scientific mind, to grasp how different foods physiologically work in our bodies.  Their basic rule of eating is "never include large amounts of both fats and carbs in the same meal."  It works.  They also happen to look at the Bible as the basis for their food and health choices too.  Isn't that a coincidence?  They have a lot of practical advice dealing with hormones and marriage to what a kid needs nutritionally compared to an adult.  I was encouraged to get the "why" behind the much conflicting health advice we get bombarded with.

This is a recipe they present in the book.  It's become a favorite based on speed, taste, and health.

Muffin in a Mug
Crack one egg into a coffee mug.
Add 1 and 1/2 tablespoons EACH of flax meal and almond flour.
Add 1 heaping tablespoon cocoa powder.
Add a few shakes of Nunaturals (pure stevia powder), OR a scant tablespoon of sugar (if you're like my husband and won't do stevia.)
Add 1/2 teaspoon baking powder.
Add 1 tablespoon coconut oil (even fairly solid, it seems to work in fine.)
Stir vigorously.
Microwave for one minute.  (Or, you can bake it in a ramekin for about 8 minutes, but it just doesn't sound as cool as a microwaveable minute muffin...)

I usually throw a slab of butter on top, or yogurt, and it's pretty filling.  And it's chocolate.  And it's fast.  And my kids think I look funny eating out of a coffee mug.  And my two year old loves to steal bites.

Don't you feel smarter now?  I just feel hungry :)