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Saturday, 23 June 2018

Simple Salsa



Simple Salsa

Recipe from my Uncle Marlin.  Love visiting with my Aunt Pat and Uncle Marlin.  They eat whole Food Plant Based, so I am always treated to great food!  My Uncle is a Good cook, but he couldn't do it without my Aunt Pat as assistant....lol.

2 cans whole tomatoes (no salt)- drained. (Save liquid to add later for desired consistency)
1 onion - chopped
6-8 sprigs cilantro (careful to not overdo unless you really like)
1-2 jalapeños or serranos (depending on desired hotness)
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder 
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp garlic powder
(Spices can be adjusted according to taste, start with 1/2 tsp increments)
Salt, pepper to taste

Place all in blender and pulse to desired chunkiness or add drained leftover whole tomato juice from can to create desired consistency.

I did not add juice because I like mine a little chunky and thick.

**If you have a gas stove, you can hold the peppers over fire with tongs for a roasted pepper flavor.


Chickpea Avocado Sandwich




I love, love Chickpea Avocado sandwiches.  I hope you enjoy them too.  Just not too often, contains a lot of fat from avocados. I used my brown bread that I baked before.  You can use whole wheat bread, just read label for salt, sugar and oils.  That is why I like making my own because I can control the ingredients and the amounts.

Chickpea Avocado Sandwich Spread

1 can Chickpeas - drained & rinsed (save brine from can)
1 Avocado medium - diced
1/2 Onion - diced (red, yellow or white)
2 Celery Ribs - diced

Pulse chickpeas until coarse.  Place in large mixing bowl, add rest of ingredients and mix.  


Dressing

1 Avocado medium
1/2 - 1/4 Lemon  (squeeze to about 2 Tbsp)
1/4 - 1/3 cup Chickpea brine

With hand blender, blend Avocado and lemon juice.  Slowly add brine to desired consistency.  A little thinner than mayo.

Add completed dressing to Chickpea Avocado mixture and mix thoroughly adding salt & pepper to taste.  


Spread on bread and add lettuce, tomatoes,..etc.  You may garnish with any of your favorites - cucumber slices, sprouts, shredded carrots, cabbage......etc.

Friday, 22 June 2018

Brown Bread Recipe

I used Date Sugar instead of Maple Syrup, forgot to change out and retake picture.  Also, forgot vinegar in picture.


Brown Bread

Ok, I made this bread three times trying to get it just right.  See, I have saved you a lot of time.  First, with the baking soda only.  Second, with baking powder instead of soda.  Last, I used baking soda and vinegar in the milk which gives it fuller flavor like using buttermilk and it is by far my favorite.  Follow the recipe exactly and in order for best results.

Makes 1 round loaf

2 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
1 cup rolled oats (pulsed to coarse ground, about 1/4 size)
2 Tbsp date sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt (I used Himilayan Pink Salt)

2 1/4 cup almond or coconut milk
2 Tbsp + 1/2 tsp of white vinegar 

Preheat the oven to 400° F first.  (My oven cooks slow, I used 425° F)

Then, Line a 4-quart (or close enough) Dutch oven (I used a cast iron Dutch oven) with parchment paper.  It doesn’t need to fit perfectly. 

Combine vinegar with milk and let set few minutes.

Combine the flour, oats, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Break up the date sugar with your fingers to get rid of any lumps. Whisk everything together until smooth. Switch to a rubber spatula or wooden spoon and slowly add the milk-vinegar mixture, stirring as you do, just until a cohesive dough forms. It will be sticky.   Do not let sit, otherwise you will lose the bubbling action of the soda and vinegar combination which makes bread rise.

Scrape the dough into the Dutch oven immediately and spread to even out. Use a small serrated knife to cut an X, about 1/2 inch deep, in the center. 

Cover the pot and get it in the oven. Bake for 40 - 45 minutes. Use knife to insert into center of bread to test for doneness, knife should be clean, no sticky residue.  Remove the lid and bake for another 5.   Should be golden brown.  

The bread should be springy to the touch. Cool in the pot until you can grab the bread without burning yourself. Remove paper & Transfer to a rack to cool.

When cooled, store in ziploc bag to maintain freshness.  


**Actual pics of the cooked bread.

Get your parchment paper from Amazon. 
 

Thursday, 21 June 2018

Check Off Program


Check Off Program

In internal documents uncovered by Dr. Greger, the USDA admitted that eggs cannot legally be called nutritious, low fat, part of a balanced diet, low calorie, healthful, healthy, can't say it's good for you or, even safe. Yet they still promote these products to the American people through federal checkoff programs. If you ask somebody if they have heard of a checkoff program, the odds are they haven't, although daily, they are seeing the messaging that these programs produce.  So, checkoff programs are responsible for the messages that we see on TV, on the Internet, on buzz billboards and magazines that say things like, "Milk, it does a body good," or "milk life.  Beef, it's what's for dinner.  Pork, be inspired.  The incredible edible egg."

Wikipedia definition:   
In the United States, a commodity checkoff program collects funds through a checkoff mechanism, sometimes called checkoff dollars, from producers of a particular agricultural commodity and uses these funds to promote and do research on that particular commodity. The organizations must promote their commodity in a generic way, without reference to a particular producer. Checkoff programs attempt to improve the market position of the covered commodity by expanding markets, increasing demand, and developing new uses and markets. Checkoff programs amount to $750 million per year.

The United States Department of Agriculture is responsible for overseeing the formation of checkoff organizations under the authority of the Commodity, Promotion, Research and Information Act of 1996.

The dairy checkoff program gave $12 million to Domino's to just market cheese-heavy product.  And this is the USDA, this is the government.  If you've seen those ads for the Pizza Hut pizza, the stuffed crust or a pound of cheese.  Those are all government advertising schemes for the industry.  How can we put more cheese on beef?  How can we put more milk in a coffee?  Things like that to just drive consumption of these just  unbelievably unhealthful products.  So, McDonald's, for instance, has six people staffed full-time, according to records we found, whose salaries are paid for by this government program but, funded by the producers who are regulated by it.  And these six people sit there at McDonald's headquarters and just come up with ideas.  You don't think of it on a day-to-day basis that these are government programs.  The Wendy's Bacon Double Cheeseburger.  Government program.  The steak fajita at Dunkin' Donuts.  Government program.  You would just never think that this just pure garbage from a food standpoint,  is coming from a federally-funded program.  That's one of the things that makes checkoffs so incredibly creepy, is that it is our government telling us eat more beef, drink more milk, eat more cheese, eat more pork.  I am sure the Healthcare Industry is very grateful....  

One of the very effective ways that the dairy industry promotes its products is to reach children because kids are impressionable, they're gonna be consumers for their entire lives, and you might as well get ‘em while they're young.  So, dairy spends at least $50 million promoting its products in public schools throughout the country with posters, with people with milk mustaches and messages like "Milk, it does the body good," or "milk life."  Pretty catchy, huh? Targeting young people, like the tobacco industry had to keep replacing their customers who were dying with new customers. Meat industry knows they have to target young people.  That's why we have these foods in schools and marketing messages at a younger and younger age for kids to get hooked on all the wrong kinds of foods.  This just seems to be some kind of child abuse to me. 

So, there's all kinds of parallels.  School districts where processed meats are all over the place, maybe it's gonna be bacon on the menu, sausage, hotdogs or pepperoni pizza.  Any of those things are processed meats, and those are pretty much the worst of the worst with a direct link to colon cancer.  And yet you have every day in the schools meal items with processed meats.  If the surgeon general puts warning labels on tobacco because of their cancer risk, why aren't the same warning labels on meat?  Based on the publicly available data, we know they spend at least $557 million promoting their goods through checkoff programs.  We know that they spend at least $138 million lobbying Congress.  We expect that they spend a good deal more than that in figures that simply aren't publicly disclosed.  God Save The Children!

The industry's lobbying power is so strong that they can create laws and push through legislation that doesn't benefit Americans in any way, such as ag -gag laws that criminalize whistle-blowing or photographing abuses by this industry.   Now, think about that, why would they not want you to see? Activists in the US can be charged as terrorists for disrupting the profits of any business that uses animals, under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, to the even more ridiculous ones like cheeseburger laws.  Yes, a cheeseburger law!  A cheeseburger law is a law that says a plaintiff cannot recover against a manufacturer, distributor or, retailer, on the theory that the food made the plaintiff obese or caused an obesity related disease.  Cheeseburger laws are a direct response to a problem that the tobacco industry has had.  Big Tobacco has paid $400 billion to state Medicaid programs.  Cheeseburger laws proponents say, “We don't want to see the same kind of thing happen “to the meat and dairy industries." They sell you this crap, then they want to make sure you can't sue them.  Ok, I get it, we are suppose to be educated and responsible for what we eat.  But most people are just manipulated, confused and just simply don't have the time to research. 

The fact that these laws are based on a model template called a Commonsense Consumption Act is actually ironic because what they're saying is you, the consumer, should have the common sense to know that our food is bad for you.  I've often typified the meat industry to people who maybe don't understand its power and reach, as it's got all the money of Big Tobacco and Big Pharma, and it has the personality of the National Rifle Association.  So, any little thing that comes up, man, they beat it to death.

These people don't care about your health, it's all about selling the product, MONEY.  It's our responsibility to weed through are the garbage information, the propaganda, the manipulation and decide what is right to eat for our health.  Nobody else is looking out for you.  It's a choice, live long with a good quality of health or live shorter lives and miserable in the process with many chronic illnesses/diseases.  Get off the merry-go-round!

Disclaimer:  Most if not all of this is copied from "What The Health" video.  You guys really need to watch these videos if you haven't already.  

Wednesday, 20 June 2018

Fish better?



You think Fish is the better?

Fish and shellfish is a little different.  With wild caught, you've got the four worries, first is PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls). They are highly toxic and pose serious health risks to fetuses, babies and children who may suffer development and neurological problems from prolonged or repeated exposure to even small amounts.  Again, it's worse for children.  It may be less toxic for Adults, but still toxic.  These wonderful little gems are provided by industrial product wastes or chemicals.  Thank you, Industry for contaminating my food!  Then you have mercury, saturated fat and cholesterol.  And the cholesterol is all over the place.   You can have tuna in water that'll be almost less than a glass of milk, to salmon or, tilapia which is higher than a pork chop.

If you look objectively at fish, what you find is they've become, essentially, mercury sponges.  And that's why in many parts of the country they warn you, don't have more than so many of these fish a week because getting too much mercury can kill you.  Fish are eaten by bigger fish who are eaten by bigger fish, and these pesticides or, herbicides bioaccumulate in the fish flesh and these big fish, including the salmon,which people think is the healthiest fish.

Truth is, the amount of pesticides and herbicides in the flesh of these fish are shocking, and they have estrogenic and cancer-promoting properties in them.  They'll say, "Well, but, don't sardines have less concentration of toxic waste products than other ones?"  Something being less toxic doesn't make it healthy,
it just makes it less toxic.  

Farmed fish is by no means healthier.  All the antibiotics that these animals have to be fed.  When kept in confinement, these fish get infections.  They get fungal infections, they get bacterial infections, you've got to feed them anti-fungals, antibiotics, and these substances accumulate in the fish flesh as well.

Information obtained from “What The Health” video.  Some if not all is word for word to insure accuracy.  

Thursday, 14 June 2018

Hungry for Oriental/Asian Food?



Oriental/Chinese/Japanese/Thai/Korean



Enjoy!

Wednesday, 13 June 2018

Processed Meats Cause Cancer & Diabetes

How Many Items do you buy from this section?

Here is another post which most of the information was obtained from the documentary “What The Health”.  Again, if you have not seen it yet, please take the time.  Even if you did it in short 15 minute show times.  You will greatly benefit from the information and have a preview of the next several posts.

Processed meat causes cancer.  That’s lunch meats, sausages, bacon and prepared meats such as Chicken Nuggets, Rotisserie Chicken, Fast Food Hamburgers, Frozen Hamburgers, Frozen Pizzas (the meat toppings), Pizza Rolls, SPAM, Bacon (precooked), Frozen Dinners, Chicken Wings, Frozen Chicken Products, Corn Dogs, Breakfast Burritos, Fish Sticks, Hamburger Helper, Frozen Shrimp, Deep Fried Shrimp, Egg Rolls, Dumplings, Jerky, Canadian Style Bacon, Chicken Salad, Ham Salad, Prepared Beef Shorts, Seared Pork Shank, Canned Chicken Breast, Frozen Chicken Cordon Bleu, Frozen Chicken Stuffed Broccoli, Fish Patties, Baked Chicken, Meat Lasagna and other frozen meats containing preservatives.

Processed meats cause Diabetes.  Harvard researchers looked at nine prospective studies finding that just one serving of processed meat per day increased risk of developing diabetes by 51 percent.  The link between eating meat and developing diabetes became undeniable.

The World Health Organization has classified processed meat such as bacon and sausage as carcinogenic, directly involved in causing cancer in humans.  Processed meat is clearly linked to an increase in cancer. Hotdogs or, bacon could be just as dangerous as smoking cigarettes.  The World Health Organization had looked at over 800 studies from ten different countries, finding a direct link to consuming processed meat and cancer.  Just one serving of deli meats daily increases your risks of colorectal cancer by 18%.  I had no idea that what we ate affected cancer rates.  But I never felt like I had eaten a lot of processed meats until I realized that processed meat includes hotdogs, bacon, sausage, salami, ham, pepperoni, cold cuts and deli slices, basically everything I grew up eating.  The World Health Organization classifies processed meat as a Group One carcinogen, the same group as cigarettes, asbestos and plutonium, and classifies red meat as a Group Two carcinogen.  Was this like I had essentially been smoking my entire childhood?  If processed meats are labeled the same as cigarettes, how is it even legal for kids to be eating this way?

I thought this was new information, but, many of these studies have been around for 50 years.  I couldn't believe I'd been eating processed meats virtually my entire life and feeding them to my kids.  Why was I just now finding out how dangerous they are?  Why hadn't I been hearing about it from the American Cancer Society, the largest cancer group in the nation?

The information is out there.  It has been on many talk shows, news shows and medical shows.  It was just not breaking news enough to where every network picked it up and talked it to death like it does on so many other useless topics...lol.  “An analysis of data from 10 studies estimated that every 50 gram portion of processed meat eaten daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by about 18%”. Quote from World Health Organization (http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/). 

Americans Will Eat a Record Amount of Meat in 2018 according to Bloomberg (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-02/have-a-meaty-new-year-americans-will-eat-record-amount-in-2018). Stop and think about this for a minute.  The average person consumes 222.2 pound of meat per year, that is 100788.225 grams divided by 365 days = 276.132123 grams.  So, that is the average person consumes 276 grams a day, so I am persuaded to believe that at least 50 grams or more is processed meat.  Probably most of the 276 grams is processed.  Look in your cart the next time you go shopping and pay attention to how much is processed.  We are greatly over eating!  US and Australia have the highest meat consumption with India and Bangladesh being the lowest.


Do a google search and you will see many news stations and publications.  Some downplay this by saying you would have to eat one hot dog a day to be at risk.  What a play on words..lol.  No, you would have to be guilty of eating any processed meat on a daily basis which most of us do.  When you look at the list above, it is safe to say, you probably consume at least one of those every day.  Especially since we add bacon to just about everything we eat!




**Now, remember, some if not all is copied from the documentary in order to keep the information factual.

Hungry for Mexican Food?



Hungry for Mexican Food?  Now, remember to make the substitutions as suggested in the prior post to make recipes Whole Food Plant Based.

Challenge:  Pick just two recipes to try within a week and give us a review in the comments.  

Mexican


Looking forward to your feedback!

WFPB Recipes



Ok, I am going to start sharing recipes in between the educational posts.  But, remember not all these recipes will be spot on Whole Food Plant Based because I obtain these from so many resources in order to provide a greater variety.  If you have favorite recipes, many recipes can be ingredient adjusted to be acceptable for the WFPB eating plan.  Keep this in mind and make the following substitutions as needed.  When you do utilize the recipes, please comment if you enjoyed the final product and let us know if you made any substitutions or if you have any suggestions.  Fresh or frozen vegetables are best.  When using canned look for no salt/sugar version.  Read labels for extra ingredients. Whole Foods should have the vegetable and water only in ingredients.

Read Labels -No Sugar or Salt
No Salt Versions








****Recipes - (On all recipes, make reasonable substitutes). Especially for Videos
*Don't fry, but rather bake usually at 350 degrees. (Use parchment paper)
*Sauté in water or vegetable broth, No oils or Sprays. Video shows how to sauté without oil.  http://youtu.be/xH7nzsAFUE4
*No Salt, use salt substitutes, white miso paste or sparingly Himalayan Pink
*No Honey, use Maple Syrup
*No Sugar, use date sugar or maple Syrup
*No milk, cheese, eggs...etc. - substitute nut milks or other vegan subs (daiya makes a fairly good brand or make your own). Use very sparingly.  Try to choose recipes without these ingredients.  These are not really WFPB.
*Breads/Pastas/Rice/Flatbreads, use whole Wheat
*Tortilla, use whole wheat or corn

Looking for recipes
WFPB/Vegan Recipes
  1. You can take the ingredients from your own pantry and refrigerator (that is once you have cleared out all the no no’s and replaced with WFPB approved foods) and put them in a recipe finder like supercook.com and get really good recipes.  There are several of these sites on internet, this just happens to be my favorite.
  2. Also for good recipes, search "Daily Dozen Recipes" on Facebook
  3. Check out Dr. Greger's website for recipes at nutritionfacts.org
  4. And of course blogs, groups, books and Pinterest.
  5. Google "Vegan Recipes", "WFPB Recipes" or "Whole Food Plant Based Recipes"


Three Bean Chili (Very Easy & Simple)

Ingredients

1 Tbs Vegetable broth/water to sautee
1 small Onion diced
28 oz can Crushed Tomatoes (no salt, sugar)
1 can Red Kidney Beans (no salt, sugar)
1 can White Chili Beans (no salt, sugar)
1 can Black Beans (no salt, sugar)
1/2 c Corn frozen or canned (no salt, sugar)
1/2 c Chunky salsa (no salt, no sugar or make your own)
1 tsp Chili Powder or to taste
1/4 tsp Cumin or to taste
Salt to taste (Himalayan sparingly or white miso paste)
Pepper to taste

Instructions

Over medium high heat and saute the onions until tender and translucent in vegetable broth or water (see above video)
Add the corn and remaining ingredients and reduce heat to a simmer.  Cook until the liquid thickens slightly.

Season with pepper, if needed.



Tuesday, 12 June 2018

Truth About Dairy



By now, you should have watched the documentary video “What The Health”.  Again, if you haven’t, stop now and go watch the video.  YouTube.  https://youtu.be/LTdYYjo4hko  When you do, I expect you will be shocked, angry and ready to do something to vent your frustrations.  Then, you will be ready to throw out all the propaganda bull crap you have been fed and learn some truths.  Now this is going to take more than one post, so we will have part one, two, three, etc.  There is no way you are going to be able to read all of this at once and digest it into your brain.  Much of the following information was taken from the second documentary “What The Health”.  

Milk, it does a body good!
Researchers have studied bone development in kids and whether they get stress fractures and that kind of thing.  And the kids who drink the most milk have zero protection.  Milk does not build strong bones.  Harvard researchers have looked at a large group of older women, over an 18-year period, the milk drinkers had zero protection from fractures.  So, this old notion that somehow milk is gonna build strong bones or protect your bones later in life, it's a myth.  People that drink milk have higher rates of hip fractures, have more cancer and live shorter lives.  Turns out that countries with the highest dairy consumption also have the highest rates of osteoporosis, so clearly, drinking more milk doesn't protect your bones. Doing more research, I found that dairy was linked to many different types of cancer as well.

There was a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that found out women consuming dairy who has had breast cancer increases their risk of dying of breast cancer 49%.  49%!, can you believe that?  Susan G. Komen's pink ribbon 🎀 campaign had done a lot to raise awareness for breast cancer. So, it was rather confusing to see pink ribbons on dairy yogurt containers. Breast cancer can be prevented with a healthy diet and lifestyle, but, yet we're not teaching this to breast cancer survivors.  Instead we are putting pink ribbons on dairy products.  I don’t get it. 

Cow's milk is baby calf growth fluid.  That's what the stuff is.  There's absolutely no child or human on Earth who actually needs the milk of a cow any more than they need the milk of a giraffe or, a mouse.  Most people in the world are lactose intolerant.  That's the normal state of affairs.  Why would your body create this enzyme, just lactose after weaning, after infancy, it doesn't make any sense.  73% of African Americans are lactose intolerant, 95% of Asians, roughly 70% of Native Americans, and about 53% of Hispanic Americans are lactose intolerant. Cow's milk protein is the most allergenic food.

Cow’s milk is a food made for baby cows.  The protein in Cow milk gets into the bloodstream, and the body says, "Hey, this isn't supposed to be in the bloodstream.  “It makes antibodies to the cow milk protein which then attack the pancreas thus the increase in the incidence of diabetes.  1 in 3 will get diabetes.  That is an alarming statistic.

It turns out that the casein protein, that's the main protein in dairy products, and particularly in cheese, it breaks apart in the human digestion to create what are called casopmorphins.  Casein-derived, morphine-like compounds that go to the brain and they attach to the very same receptor that heroin attaches to.  Don't get me wrong, they're not as strong as that, but, they are strong enough to make you come back again and again and again despite the fact that you're gaining weight, you're more unhealthy than you've ever been, but, that cheese just calls out to people.  Casomorphin may play a role in SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), may play a role in autism. This is one of the reasons why we don't want infants drinking milk from cows. Human breast milk has 2.7 grams of casein per liter, compared to 26 grams per liter for cow's milk.  That's practically 10 times more.  No wonder it's so addictive.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell co-author Of well-researched, The China Study, says “Casein, which makes up 87% of cow’s milk protein, promoted all stages of the cancer process”

People think, "Well, no, I want hormone-free, not injected with bovine growth hormone."  But milk is hormonal fluid, so it's just packed with sex hormones and natural sex steroid hormones like estrogen, progesterone, in fact, doesn't matter if it's conventional milk, doesn't matter if it's organic milk.  Milk without hormones, that's an oxymoron.  Organic dairy has just as much saturated fat, cholesterol and galactose.  All the things that you don't want, as conventional dairy. Dairy products, in general, have a lot of other products associated with it, not the least of which is pus. OMG, I could barely type that.  They actually have laws limiting how much pus you can actually have in the milk and still sell it, it's like 750,000 pus cells per CC.  Because you wouldn't want too much pus and then it'd be like pure pus, people might object. In fact, you could think of cheese as kind of coagulated cow pus due to its concentration and processing, if you would.  YUK, YUK! 

Cheese is an amazing product when you think about it. It's probably one of the single best foods in compromising health that you're gonna actually feed to people.  Think about it, you've got an animal product, so, you've got all the issues of biological concentration.  You have a highly processed food product, and not only does it have naturally a lot saturated fat, but, you put a lot of salt into it. There's a strong link between dairy foods and autoimmune diseases.  And so that can itself, show up as excessive production of mucus and exacerbation of asthma in kids who are prone to that and even adults, and also, there's an association between dairy foods and multiple sclerosis and type one diabetes, which is an autoimmune disease.  Is there any illness or disease left that it does not contribute to?
Now, remember, some if not all is copied from the documentary in order to keep the information factual.