RIP sourdough starter

I let my sourdough starter die.

This morning, I finally dug the bowl out from the back of the fridge and spooned the remains into the garbage. I didn't really want it to die, but every time I thought about feeding it, somehow I just couldn't face it. I guess I'm grieving. Not the starter but the pancakes I made one or twice a week with it, pancakes that have become a much more complicated endeavour than they used to be, so I've stopped getting around to it and that just makes me so sad. I loved those pancakes.

In the fall, I went to see the dietician about Youngest's behaviour. He ran away more than once from me in the fall (though none as bad as the first time, because I generally kept a grip on him at all times after that), and each time he would get into this weird state afterwards, like all spaced out. So we ran his bloodwork again, and it wasn't too bad considering how many iron and B12 supplements we've missed giving him. The dietician suggested he might be very sensitive to blood sugar changes, so we should only give him fruit with meals, no juice ever, and small treats should be followed within 10 minutes by protein.

So this kind of changes everything, again. We're still discovering what works and what doesn't, but we've definitely seen an improvement in his behaviour, and we've watched him spiral after even so much as a dried apricot. As well, I had run my own bloodwork and in December I finally met with the dietician to go over the results. Everything is perfect, except my blood sugar. So I need to follow the same advice. No sugar in my tea (sob!). Any sweetness must be accompanied or immediately followed by protein. Fruit only with meals. Given that I have a pretty sweet tooth and that I've already almost entirely cut out refined sugar (except for tea and homemade muffins), this has been a bit hard to swallow. I mean, I'd much rather be uncomfortable now and prevent myself from getting into pre-diabetic territory, but still…

Anyways, back to the pancakes. We can still have pancakes, but they have to be accompanied by either eggs or sausage now (not to mention being dressed with considerably less maple syrup), and that is just too much to organize in the morning. And so… since I haven't had the time to discover a gluten-free sourdough bread recipe that I like enough to take the time, the starter had to go.

I'll miss it.

good news

Youngest has been going to the paediatric dentist every three months for the last year. We haven't been very successful in implementing our plans to help his tooth decay, but we have been steadfast in giving him the zinc and halibut liver oil our dietician prescribed to heal his gut. It so happens that the vitamins and minerals that heal the gut also heal tooth decay.

In February the dentist said she felt she needed to try drilling and filling, and we were going to try it without putting him under but we chickened out at the last minute. I was worried about him freaking out, and once you start you have to finish. Anyways, the dentist was fine with waiting and continuing to monitor. She said as long as he wasn't experiencing pain, it was ok to leave it, but if it abscessed we'd have to act.

Today he had another check-up. He was so confident he just ran into the exam room and sat himself down on the seat. (Normally he wants to sit on my lap.) He smiled wide and opened his mouth up and did everything he needed to with a smile. The dentist said she was surprised his teeth were still holding up and she wanted to extend the visit dates out to five months apart rather than the three months we'd been working on up to now. I'm considering this a win!

dinner

I added a new page to this space to act as a resource for others nearby who are looking for local food. There you will find our favourite farmers and shopkeepers.

And while I'm on the subject, we bought the most amazing chickens this fall (I mean dead ones -- you already know about the live ones, who are still living. Although every time I tell Eldest we're having chicken for dinner, his first response is often, "Not one of ours!"). They're huge -- some of them are nine pounds -- and the most delicious ever. I roast them whole and then we use the meat for lots of soup. I remain firmly convinced that homemade chicken soup really does fight colds.

Unfortunately, I'm not particularly good at roasting chickens just yet, and I often discover that despite the thermometer reading, they're underdone in the middle. If they were grocery store chickens I'd be very concerned, but because I know how they lived, I'm much less so. Of course we don't eat it undercooked, but it cooks up just fine simmering in broth for soup and I'm not afraid to get intimate with the carcass to strip it clean.

Anyways… the last one I roasted was so big, we ate the well-cooked outside bits for dinner Sunday, made broth overnight and made an enormous pot of soup on Monday -- enough to give me lunch the next day and to freeze half for another night's dinner, made another smaller bit of broth the next night, which is now frozen for something like pumpkin soup, and then my husband made the most amazing chicken curry on Tuesday, which went on to feed three of us for lunch the next day. Pastured chicken is not cheap but when it feeds you for four such nourishing dinners for four people, a few lunches and the basis for another cheap soup, it seems awfully economical. And delicious!

So have a look at my new local food page, which I hope to add to over the coming months and years.

Thanksgiving goings-on

Canadian Thanksgiving is coming to a close. We spent a couple of days at my parents' farm, where we had a most delicious turkey dinner, mostly made by me.

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision that I bring a local, pastured turkey instead of my mom buying the usual Butterball. And then, of course, I had to learn how to cook it, because pastured birds are a breed apart for cooking, apparently. And then I had to manage the timing of everything. My mom made a few things and my husband made one, but the rest was mostly me.

I brined the turkey at sunrise. My parents' covered porch is a beautiful thing.
Mostly I was worried that it wasn't anywhere near thawed, and I figured the brining would help a lot with that. I added sage and garlic and peppercorns to the brine and it smelled delicious right away.

Then it only took a little over two hours to cook the 15-pound monster. Apparently pastured turkey cooks much faster than stuffed, all grain-fed birds. My husband told me privately that he thinks it might have been the best turkey he's ever had. It was so moist! It wasn't perfect -- the legs weren't quite done when the breast was, so we carved off the breast and put the rest back in, where it got dried out. But it will be fine in soup.

Before we went to my parents' we went to the garden plot to pull a celeriac for coleslaw and to see how everything was doing. And we discovered the most wonderful wee surprise: that stalwart Delicata squash plant that somehow managed to grow three tiny squash after being nearly destroyed by squash bugs had actually managed to grow FOUR squash. One was hiding under the zucchini plant.

I've got it curing in the kitchen window now.

Before we left and after we came home, we put the finishing touches on the chicken coop and the birds arrived tonight. I plan to write a whole post about the coop and the decisions we made, but in the meantime, here is the view from my living room window:

tooth decay

Poor Youngest did NOT enjoy his trip to the dentist this morning. I'd been thinking about taking him for a while, but since my husband lost his job a week and a half ago and we have only a few days' more coverage for health benefits, it was time. I very much want to try curing his tooth decay with diet before trying conventional dental treatment. But I wanted to know from the dentist just how bad the decay was. I didn't get a solid answer this morning, but we've been referred to a pediatric specialist. With the appointment not until July, I figure we've got two months to do our best to improve his teeth.

I mentioned Cure Tooth Decay earlier. It's pretty compelling, and I figure it's worth a try before putting my not-even-two-year-old under general anesthesia and drilling bigger holes in his teeth. The main thrust of the book is that the explanation for tooth decay dentists are currently working with is wrong. It is sugar that primarily causes tooth decay, but not because it feeds the bacteria in mouth, which produce acid that harms your teeth, as is currently believed. Rather, it's the spikes in blood sugar that mess with your ratio of calcium to phosphorus in your blood, which in turn weakens your teeth. Also, the lectins and phytates in grains prevents you from absorbing the minerals necessary to repair teeth. And get this: whole grains are worse for your teeth than refined grains, which have less phytic acid. White rice and white flour apparently cause fewer problems than whole grains. Which has me thinking. Pretty much all gluten-free grains are whole grains.

A number of dentists worked in the early part of the 20th century on exploring the nutritional causes of tooth decay and curing it through diet. One of them, Dr. Weston Price was able to cure children's tooth decay with just one super-nutritious meal per day. He also travelled the world looking for traditional cultures with the best dental, reproductive and general health and exploring their diets. Although the cultures he explored ate a wide variety of foods, what they had in common were generous quantities of fat-soluble vitamins A, D and K.

So, based on the recommendations in Cure Tooth Decay and our wariness of eliminating any more foods from our diet, here is what we're going to try to do:

• eat eggs in the morning instead of oatmeal
• eat soups and stews with homemade bone broth, meat and vegetables for lunch instead of eggs
• eat stuff we normally eat for dinner (mostly meat and vegetables, sometimes rice and vegetables)
• supplement with fermented cod liver oil and royal butter blend (once we can find a Green Pastures distributor in Canada) instead of Halibut Liver Oil with synthetic Vitamin A and D-Drops, which we're currently giving him; this will provide vitamins A, D and K
• as much as possible, eat only soaked and/or soured grains
• eat more mineral and vitamin C-rich vegetables like leafy greens and cruciferous veggies
• eat more fermented foods (my sauerkraut is coming along nicely but isn't quite ready yet)
• as much as possible, only serve fruits or other sweets with fat and protein to slow the blood sugar spike
• use more honey and maple syrup than refined sugar for sweetening

So that's the plan. I hope we're able to implement it without too much difficulty, especially given that there will likely be big changes for us coming up soon.

not all dairy is created equal, or things I wish I had known

I first went off dairy in December 2011 at the advice of our (long-gone) paediatrician. She said Youngest's problems were likely a sudden, mild dairy intolerance. She didn't actually recommend I eliminate dairy because it was such a mild intolerance but I could see my baby wasn't doing well, so I gave it a try. It didn't make a whole lot of difference to Youngest, although his skin got a little better, but I noticed, after the first week of feeling like hell, that *I* felt MUCH better.

The following February, I connected with a naturopath, because it was clear that Youngest still wasn't doing well, and I wasn't sure what else to try eliminating. She guided me in eliminating pretty much everything. His symptoms all cleared up, and so we carefully tested a bunch of foods that had been eliminated. I was really looking forward to the dairy challenge and I planned a big dairy-stravaganza. I had oatmeal cooked with milk for breakfast and a yogurt-blueberry smoothie for a snack. Then homemade (gluten-free) macaroni and cheese for lunch and the plan was to have it for dinner too. But by the time dinner came around, I was feeling so horribly ill, I couldn't face any more dairy. Youngest also reacted to the dairy.

In the summer, when Youngest still wasn't thriving despite having eliminated all the seeming culprits, the naturopath suggested we try him on cheese and yogurt separately to try to get some more calorie-rich foods into him. We found he could tolerate yogurt but not cheese. Strangely, she didn't suggest giving him butter.

Since then, I have learned a few things about the potential allergens in dairy products, and they are not all created equal. People seem very quick to jump on the elimination bandwagon, but I'm not convinced it's the safest course of action. I know for myself, I tried eliminating everything before I'd given even a moment's thought to how I might replace those nutrients in my diet. I suspect, in as gentle and non-blaming a way as I can, that eliminating all those foods so suddenly contributed to Youngest's malnourishment. It certainly wreaked havoc with my milk supply. So I guess I'm saying I think it's worth considering adding in as much non-allergenic, protein-rich foods into your diet before you start taking away gluten and dairy.

Anyways... here is what I wish I had known when I first started eliminating dairy. I suspect I have a lactose intolerance. Lactose is the sugar in milk. Our family doctor keeps talking about it being a fat, but it is not. I've also heard people talk about how their babies were lactose-intolerant and so they too had to cut out dairy, but that is highly unlikely, as breastmilk is full of lactose. Most babies react to the protein in cow's milk, of which there are two: casein and whey. Most babies who can't tolerate cow's milk, also can't tolerate sheep or goat's milk, but that is not something I have actually tested myself (yet).

Butter is the least allergenic dairy product. It has very little lactose in it and almost no protein. It does have some milk solids in it, which may contain traces of lactose and protein in it that can cause reactions in some people but not usually many. If you can't tolerate butter, unless you have an anaphylactic allergy, you will definitely be able to tolerate ghee or clarified butter (so says my dietician who has a PhD so I trust her on these matters). As I learned recently in Jennifer McLagan's book Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes, (a wonderful book that I highly recommend) clarified butter is not the same thing as ghee. I haven't actually made either (yet) as butter has been fine on its own for both me and Youngest.

And while I'm on the subject of butter, in case you didn't know, it is an amazing health food. Vegetable oils are devoid of vitamin and the oxidize easily, making dangerous free radicals that can hurt your cells. But butter is rich in fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, especially if it's made from the milk of grass-fed cows. I have found a local source of butter and I believe the cows are grazed during the months of green grass. I buy Nutri-Springs butter from the Stone Store here in town, but one day I plan to go out to the farm to pick up more of their offerings. Here is an article from the Weston Price Foundation with more of butter's health benefits. The 'science' that generated the Lipid Hypothesis (the idea that animal fats are the cause of heart disease) was completely wrong. You can google it if you want and read until the cows come home.

Yogurt is probably the next least allergenic dairy product, but not all yogurts are created equal. Because it's fermented, both the lactose and the casein are much more digestible. Watch the ingredients though. Many times, especially in low-fat yogurts, milk solids are added back in after fermentation, which means you're getting a whack of lactose and casein without the benefit of fermentation. Low-fat yogurts also have a host of other ingredients, so I always go full-fat. My favourite yogurt, which is also relatively local and available at the Stone Store, is Saugeen Country yogurt. They use whole milk, unhomogenized but pasteurized, so you get little bits of cream that float to the top. Their website is really well-written and informative to boot, so they get bonus points from me.

All cheese has casein in it, I'm pretty sure. I admit I haven't done a ton of research in this area, but harder cheeses have very lactose in them, thanks to the fermentation. Unfortunately, my dear chevre has lots of lactose in it. I spoke to a goat farmer at our market recently, who himself is lactose-intolerant, and he can't tolerate his own chevre either. How sad! I also discovered this from personal experience. But he assured me his older, harder cheeses are tolerable. Which makes me think that all those jokes on Big Bang Theory about poor Leonard's lactose-intolerance are inaccurate. But what do I know? Everyone's different. I'm pretty sure cottage cheese is terrible for lactose but I haven't actually tested it myself or done much research, since I don't particularly miss it.

If I had to do it over again, I would have just eliminated milk and cheese to start, and left yogurt and butter in, since they are good sources of probiotics and vitamins, respectively. I think eliminating whole food groups from your diet should be done with great care and foresight. The dietician suspects that Youngest's intolerances are really secondary; his damaged gut is the primary problem, and gluten, soy and dairy proteins are the hardest for any gut to break down, especially once it's damaged. I think that gut problems are widespread, and perhaps that is the first thing to address, before eliminating foods wholesale. But that's just me.

I've heard a number of people say things like, "It's not rocket science," when talking about nutrition. Having a severely malnourished child, possibly due, at least in part, to my own lack of nourishment before and during pregnancy, gives me a different perspective. I think nutrition IS kind of rocket science. Especially since so much bad science, coupled with heavy lobbying from industry interests and strong marketing and advertising tactics, has pretty much destroyed any food culture we had. In my own family, I would have to go back to my great-grandmother's recipes, at least, to find real food.

So... I hope if you're considering eliminating dairy, or if you already have, this gives you some extra things to think about and some new ideas to try. I definitely think it's a good thing to try to figure out exactly what element of dairy causes you problems, so perhaps you can invite some other dairy products back into your life. I myself am in much happier with yogurt and butter back in my life.