should have a post of it's own

This book really ought to. But being lazy I am adding on a few extra bits at the end.



Way way back on this blog and for the last decade I have been sporadically on the hunt for this book my one of my childhood faves (along with Phoebe and the hot water bottles and Little Black Sambo). And yesterday it flopped onto my door mat. A superb gift from Anna, the winner of the 'Hello Baby' Book Giveaway. I have read it to the three little ones about three or four times already.

I swear, I turned each page and I could *remember* every single picture. It was so familiar it was like I have always had it. Surreal. And wonderful. A million thank you's.

A little piece of myself slotted back into place. It's very strange how special books can do that, but for me it happens. I have familiar comfort books I read and read in times of stress, books I read over and over for inspiration, books that seem to fit into Winter and other to Summer. Childhood books though, are a realm to themselves. Like eating rice pudding or a childish blended of Heinz type chicken soup with Jacob's crackers crumbled in. They hark back to the days of pure, true comfort. When you may have had worries but you didn't need to. When your mum bought you fleece lined mid calf boots for the winter and your mittens usually still had a string around your neck.







Ahem. Yeah. Anyway. Looking at this little thin paper book made me feel all of those things sentimentally together.



The Beauty and I make The Best Shortbread in The World for the boys.

250g butter, soft and cubed
125g unrefined caster sugar
250g spelt flour
125g semolina or cornflour



~ Cream butter and sugar for about ten minutes, until nice and white and fluffy. Sift in the flour and semolina/cornflour. Mix with a wooden spoon and then your hands until a nice dough forms. Spread and pat this down into a greased tray and prick all over with fork for that nice shortbread-y look. Bake in a medium over for about 50 minutes or until golden. This is the sort of shortbread that wins prizes at the summer fair..... so people have commented to us :)



Liking the newest bear.



The veg garden is dominated by a forest of Kale which I fear we may never get through.



Sunflowers still abound.



There is an exciting autumnal nip in the air isn't there? Looking forward so much to the autumn treats of bonfires and wearing jumpers, chocolate apples, blackberry jam making and apple picking.... and of course lot of delicious evening story reading :)

the china study, coconut sugar and withdrawl

If like me you have read The China Study and found it distressingly and vastly at odds with anything like Traditional Foodist ideas such as those perpetuated by Weston Price et al, then you might be interested to read this, whereby Dr. Campbell author of The China Study in lieu of an onslaught of criticism remarks that his study was only ever observational and correlational. That it was unfortunate that animal fats were villainised, that he has had evidence since to the contrary: that plant oils and fats contribute more to the growing of tumors than animal fats. His mistake was in lumping animal fats and all other animal products and proteins into the same category and in never actually carrying out proper trials to test his theories (if you have not read it, his book claims that meat and dairy cause cancer. He looked at those who ate very little of either and measured their health against those who ate a lot.) Here is another link that debates The China Study. It's really great actually, I just re-read it when I checked the link worked. Very thorough and points to the same thing; that The China Study is an observational study that uses correlation to equal causation which is profoundly untrue. I was surprised to find his work refuted so thoroughly, I now feel like selling my superflous copy just to be rid of it from my overburdened kitchen library (which could do with a sorting and culling in any case unless I am planning the purchase of yet more bookshelves). The unfortunately named Denise Minger (of the last link) also has a great little section on teeth and raw foods and phosphorus/calcium intake (plus the pretty weird and scary bit about after one year as a raw foodist she had 14 cavities, her entire life to that point had amounted to only 1), so her site is worth a browse if only to debunk the current trends (or myths) of the all raw vegan having a 'better' diet.

I found an interesting blog here with the title: Nutrition and Physical Regeneration, which yeah, made me smile. For a minute. If I were another jollier sort of person no doubt I would have laughed, ho ho ho, what fun! Alas though, I was just straight into reading as usual. His recent post talks about group of individuals (such as the Massi) who survive (and do so with extraordinary good health) on animal milks, blood and meat alone - that they have been a 'thorn in the side of the lipid hypothesis' for a long time. The lipid hypothesis is very interesting, mostly I think in the way that vegetable oil producers clamped down on it and have held it aloft as their trophy of good health ever since. It has mostly been refuted and is an outmoded way of viewing fats but still you have Benecol types of non foods stuff on the shelves and selling like (non fat I presume) hot-cakes. It's also weird, think ye not, that it is held as gospel by most dr's yet it is still only a hypothesis. Kinda remarkable in a freaky way. There is not actually much science out there to back up the notion that animal fat and cholesterol cause heart disease. Back in the day of being new to it I read an article called The Oiling of America (perhaps it was by Sally Fallon? I can't remember although I will try and reference it in a minute). Ok, here. It was fascinating. In short: Vegetable oils were once only used in paint. Humans in the US ate massive quantities of tallow, lard and butter as their main sources of fat. Some famous Dr. guy (I am sure he really did have a name)was once quoted as telling a junior not to bother getting interested in coronary heart disease, it was so rare he'd never make a living from studying it or practicing in that area. Then petroleum became much cheaper to source and replaced vegetable oils in paint. Veg oil farmers were left scratching their heads and wondering how to market their wares and to whom. They decided to use it in animal feed, mostly for cattle. After a few years though cattle farmers were distressed and unhappy at the tumors, illness and strange growths and sickness in their animals and pulled veg oils out of their feeds. Enter the Lipid Hypothesis and straight off the veg oil farmers rubbed their hands with glee and started marketing their oils towards human consumption. And that's it. Here is where we stand, noshing back the poisonous gloop in every premade food.



My main fat is coconut oil. Virgin and cold pressed and organic but still, it's coconut oil. From the other side of the planet, and despite it pure saturated fat form (MCT's), I realise it's still a tropical nut oil and defeats my living and eating local ideal. We get through a massive 1kg every two weeks. I think I need to still use this (gotta love the massive amounts of lauric acid) but favour more local and animal based fats. Keeping the ratio in the latter's favour. It feels kinda scary and a big leap, but I am going to try. I started this last week by adding some unpasteurised goat milk cheese each day. I am not sure if I feel more inflamed, I have achy ribs and the same level of general overall up and downness, maybe a bit more mucous? Not sure, I plan on giving it three weeks and then evaluating. These are the cheeses. Lucky for me they are produced about five minutes away but I see they sell them all over the country. They do, I admit taste so so good. I forgot how wonderful goat cheese is :) I made ghee last night. Ideally I think raw butter would be best but I couldn't get any so I used just plain organic. I used this method. Very lovely clear golden oil. Will I dare try it? It's so so hard to reintroduce things. It's like I have terrible (unfounded tho I suppose) fear that one teaspoon of a supposed offending item might make me terribly ill. On the bright side it might just curb my hunger and be a good source of fat for the day.



The other biggie for me. I have a craving every day for something sweet. I just can't get away from it. When I omit the little bits of sweetness from my diet I am a horrible horrible person, I wouldn't like to be around me. I have one little bitty bite of my homemade chocolate and I am sane and happy and even keeled again. I see just typing that that I prolly have a major big deal happening there. Which I tend to overlook. For months it's been at the back of my mind, that the high fructose in the agave and the xylitol might be contributing to the inflammation I experience. That fructose causes increased insulin and leptin receptor sensitivity; glycating sugar activates the immune system in a defensive manner.....I keep reading little bits here and there and it confirms it. But I just have not really wanted to *know*. I turn the cheek because I have already cut SO MUCH out from my diet, it would be the last straw it's always felt. But, what if I could cut this out of my diet and be well? What if it *is* the fructose causing or at least perpetuating levels of inflammation? My bloods look good, I have no raised ESR or CRP any longer. But still some days I don't feel well. My acupuncture helps I am sure of it. And the pulse diagnosis alongside confirms less 'heat' in my blood. The Chinese herbs I take also work to rid the body of heat. I am an addict as sure as the day is long. And when I wake up I straight off want a bite of something sweet) after all it's been a good ole stretch there of being asleep and all without food.



I get weekly emails from a few health websites, one of them is mercola.com. More and more and more the content of these is fructose and the impact of fructose on the body. Check out this and this and this. It will, like me I suppose, eventually blow you away. It's finally dawned on me, and rocketed me out of the 'puter chair. I went straight to the fridge and dumped (the waste, the waste!) my fructose laden 'healthy' chocolate into the bin. No longer will I be sprinkling fructose on my kid's popcorn, it'll be coconut sugar instead. Print out that fructose food content table! Someone with health issues needs to keep fructose to under 15g a day. For a reference point a regular sized apple would be about 9g. Forget your five a day if you are cutting fructose. Eat ten portions of veg instead.

But check out this! What a killer!

According to a new research study, refined sugar is far more addictive than cocaine -- one of the most addictive and harmful substances currently known.

An astonishing 94 percent of rats who were allowed to choose mutually-exclusively between sugar water and cocaine, chose sugar. Even rats who were addicted to cocaine quickly switched their preference to sugar, once it was offered as a choice. The rats were also more willing to work for sugar than for cocaine.

The researchers speculate that the sweet receptors (two protein receptors located on the tongue), which evolved in ancestral times when the diet was very low in sugar, have not adapted to modern times’ high-sugar consumption.

Therefore, the abnormally high stimulation of these receptors by our sugar-rich diets generates excessive reward signals in the brain, which have the potential to override normal self-control mechanisms, and thus lead to addiction.

Additionally, their research found that there’s also a cross-tolerance and a cross-dependence between sugars and addictive drugs. As an example, animals with a long history of sugar consumption actually became tolerant (desensitized) to the analgesic effects of morphine.

ref.

So, with that bit of heartwarming goodness cheer leading me on, today is the day for me: I am going cold turkey, like a cocaine addict I am now in withdrawal (starting to feel it too). I'll really keep posted here about how I feel and how I get on, it will make me accountable for it somehow I think. The idea (as you can see from the above links) is that after a 2-3 week interval of fructose/sugar free, the body will have re-set, or re balanced the insulin ups and downs and little bits of sweetness can be gradually reintroduced (of a low-non fructose sort).



Just because I am an addict I like the look of these bars. Less than 1g of fructose per bar! With fructose looking so bad the tiny bit of sugar in that looks a delightfully refreshing option. I see also that the ombar now have coconut sugar rather than agave as their sweetener. I'd like to know how they taste.



I think I might then try Coconut sugar (oh you know, I am looking ahead very positively and anticipating that I might one day want chocolate). I bought this years ago as Palm Sugar, in the supermarket, I think it was in a little green tub Thai Taste or some such brand. It's currently the new agave I think. All the rage on raw food sites, I think due to the increasing studies and voices shouting out about bad 'ole agave. Fructose unbound (like agave) is shunted straight to the liver and metabolised as fat. Glucose, on the other hand has been perpetuated as the big baddie, enters the bloodstream which is why we get that rush and then drop as blood sugars rise and fall. But I suppose at least glucose can be used to feed the body's cells. Fructose has a low GI because of this way that it's metabolised. Fructose causes very high levels of uric acid a potent ager of cells and tissue and is potently pro-inflammatory. Coconut sugar is a 1:1 ratio of sucrose to fructose. Sucrose is a disaccharide, such as pure table sugar and has a GI of 64, agave is 40 and coconut sugar/sap is 35. How can that be? The hypothesis put forward is that the coconut sugar is a bound form of two sugars and as such is broken down differently by the bloodstream and absorbed more slowly due to the unrefined nature (ie, lots of enzymes intact, amino acids and minerals). These appear to buffer the absorption process and thus lower the GI. Coconut sugar is from the flowering plants, not the actual nuts from the tree. It can be bought (state side only) as a rich sap or more commonly here in the UK as a thick golden brown sugar (evaporated sap). It is known in Indonesia as 'gula kelepa' and 'jaggery' in India (in India it is recommended to those with diabetes). I am not jumping on the band wagon yet, since most of the nutritional info seems to come straight from the Philippine companies marketing it. But it seems for sugar addicts like myself an option at least that is lesser fructose and perhaps not so harmful or inflammatory. There appear to be various quality types of coconut/palm sugar out there, some dubiously cheap (maybe mixed with regular sugar?). I think in a couple of weeks I will order this one. I like the look of it. They sell it at red23 too.

Oh wow. Here goes. My first evening sugar free. Maybe I can nibble my fingernails down instead.... my dh panicked when I told him and said I should wait until we go away in a couple of weeks. What? Ruin my time away being miserable and grouchy? Nah. He can have me now like that instead. Lucky lucky guy :)

we have been, rather ordinary

Doing perfectly ordinary summery things. The blessed ordinary. One doesn't need to be in a war zone or in mortal peril or the edge or an emotional precipice to feel that ordinary daily life is a blessing (although those things may help). If I bow my head and heart to anything it's the continuation and extraordinary wonderfulness of ordinary days. Long may they reign.





When we are too tired to go for a proper walk we wander here by our house. Last night it was just the girl and I, we looked at pine cones dangling from trees. Perfectly pretty, like a wind blowing through the body and sifting out the nonsense.
If I am scoured clean by being by the sea I am similarly soothed inland-green.

















We have many more chicks. And this is reason for celebration. Each of the four mothers have a chick or more each. They have swapped nests so often the original layers of each egg would be hard to match to hen. We have a white mother bringing up a golden chick and another white one with two of the most delicious black-yellow bumblebee of babies. It's all a big ethnic blend in our hen houses, sisters sharing babies. Very amusing. Each mother has her own 'ark' (er, my dh knocking up some pallets and crates into huts). I adore these homes. Each time a new one is erected (four so far) I want to (and have) crawled in just to *see*.





The combination of old wood, straw and damp earth, sheltered at one end with some old tarp is comforting and earthy and a deep draft of breathe brings in clouds of sweet summer rain.



Even though I have crumbed the grain the mothers still peck it into tiny bits and drop at their chick's feet, motioning to eat, clucking encouragingly, patiently repeating with hard boiled egg yolk over and over until the chick catches on. A clucking mother hen I have finally seen in action.

Mama and single babe one day



And the next, the brown egg became it's sister



See? Two chicks, then one ducks under a maternal wing



Now one again! (we watch this often and it still amuses)



The naming is out of hand and I have given in against the tide of swelling optimism that a) they are female and thus shall not end up in the pot which leads to b) that they shall bare the dignity (or burden I think considering the choices) of names. Polly Twinkle Eyes, Delia Yellow Butt, Daisy Baby and Rosie Flo are some.... Delia is the favourite, because she really does have a yellow butt.



I do hope the majority of these chicks end up not being cocks. I would like to keep them all, however have already enlisted the help of chicken killer friend to come over around Christmas time and show us the ropes of plucking and gutting. Another friend piped up upon overhearing that she too would very much like to come over and see how it's done. Perhaps we could extend invitations and turn it in to a chilly wintry feast day of sizzling outdoor chicken.

We have been swimming in the river. Me included. The current is deceptively fast flowing, when I strike out for the centre and upstream I cannot keep to a chosen point and despite my flailing I drift downriver. It's also much colder than it looks. But you can tell. I am sure. The Beauty skips along the water edge, throwing stones at unlucky passers by.

















I am liking this lovely voice. This is a drifting stream of a song, I had to play it thrice in a row when I first heard it.

We have been crafting and painting.







And making a fairy garden. It's Felix's. He loves it and really truly believes in fairies. And goblins and pixies and that a fat toad we saw nearby had lost it's 'Master', a fairy. We found a feather in there the following day and for sure a fairy swooped in aboard it's bird and left us feather-gift behind. I wanted to do the whole garden-centre-tiny-plants bit but choose the frugal garden scavenging option instead. Just as pleasing and cost nothing but time.









The wheat is in and weetabix-bales are out for us to play on. A lengthy game of hide and seek happened at 9pm last night. The cows were still out and so were we.