Soy Free Party Food

Tis the season for parties. And my husband and I have actually been invited to a small gathering at the home of one of my co-workers. It's a bit of a potluck with each guest bringing an hors d'oeuvre, dip or some other nibble. He has warned me that when they were purchasing their party foods, they forgot about The Soy Thing."You might want to bring something that you know is safe for you," he said, "I don't know what others are bringing."

Now, I'm not a completely unreasonable person most of the time. At least, I hope not. With family and very close friends, I do expect a modicum of respect and caring and thus my rant over the Thanksgiving meal; but I do understand that The Soy Thing can be overwhelming and downright annoying for regular people. Our office luncheon this year is being catered at $12 a plate. I did inquire as to what was being served and just told my boss and the co-worker coordinating it that while my husband (who is a volunteer at my office) will have no problem with this meal, I'll pack my own. I even offered to pay for my plate to make the budget come out right. I think they were surprised, but did not argue with me over much about it. And they did not accept my offer to pay for something I can't eat.

But here is a co-worker I actually like and who actually likes me, inviting my husband and I over for a cup of cheer and a few nibbles. He was concerned enough to warn me and that is good enough for me.

So, what shall I bring?

I'm inclined to keep it simple and go for a tray of peeled shrimp with a cocktail sauce made from fermented catsup (see page 104 in Nurturing Traditions). Note: I think she spells catsup incorrectly, but I could be the one incorrect on this.

I have some thinly sliced Wild Alaskan Salmon in my freezer. I hope to try this recipe in the future to make my own lox. I'm going to pull out a package of that and let it thaw. Then I'll take some of my yogurt cream cheese (ironically, the stuff left over from making whey) (page 87 in Nurturing Traditions), mix it with some capers, minced organic green onion and a little garlic and cumin, salt and paper. This mix will be smeared over the salmon. The salmon gets rolled up and then sliced into "wafers" or "pin wheels" and served with a little chopped parsley from my garden sprinkled over it. Red, green and white: I can't get more into the holiday spirit than that!

If I can get a good deal when I go to the fish market for the shrimp, I may also pick up a pint of fresh, local oysters and then swing by the store and get some Smithfield Bacon. Now, I do know that Smithfield is generally associated with the very evil people of big ag, and bacon with nitrates is not something I normally consume. But bacon wrapped oysters baked and sprinkled with a tiny bit of Old Bay, is just a stunningly decadent treat once a year.

It's kind of like Christmas cookies. I'm still trying to get my brain wrapped about how I will handle that dietary disaster. The Chocolate Cherry Truffles I shared here, are one idea. And I like the Sugar Plum recipe I snagged from Nourished Kitchen. I'm pretty sure I can adapt Snickerdoodles to a sprouted wheat and real butter and use organic sugars. But what is the NT answer to the white flour, white sugar, rolled and cookie cutter with colored icing? I mean, these things are memory makers for our family and my boys still talk about decorating cookies with me every year. I want a couple of cookies that I will be able to make with my future grand children that will hold the same magic for them.

Any ideas?

Feasting with Non-Believers

I'm not talking about the religious issues that sometimes happen in large, extended families like mine, but the food issues. We are a family of five kids with six grandkids. Four of us were in town for the holiday. Mom and Dad were not up to traveling and opted not to join us this year.

Let me give you a rundown of the various challenges we face as a small clan eating together.:

I'm allergic to soy. I'm also very overweight unlike the rest of my family, most of whom are rather thin. I also battle depression from time to time. One son is allergic to lemons. Another son of mine is allergic to nuts (all nuts both peanut and tree nut). For a while I blamed myself for their problems, but I've come to realize that when they were little, all I knew was the craziness spouted by the government. We ate low fat everything and super processed everything. I got fat, and we all developed allergies and gut problems. The boys have moved away from home and as young men who work at Pizza Hut for a living, their diets, quite frankly, are a little frightening. I send them real food from time to time. I'm giving them both a two pound block of butter for Christmas along with pastured pork, beef, and eggs and maybe a couple of pastured chickens. My husband developed several blockages in his heart veins years before we met. Just after we were married, a stent was installed and he was put on statins. I will talk about his medical adventures following his start on WAP in future entries.

My baby sister's daughter is on the GAPS diet to help address her autism (she was adopted at 6 months old from the former Soviet Union and arrived with digestive problems) and to help her daughter along, she has put her whole family on a modified Gaps diet. This is sister is very thin, as is her son. Her husband and daughter were struggling with weight until they went on GAPS and they each lost a lot of weight and her daughter grew several inches.Her husband has also struggled with depression.

My sister-in-law, the Food Nazi, has a lifelong allergy to corn and is a longtime follower of Weight Watchers so most of her food is soy based. She also works in the food industry and will not eat anything that is preserved in cans at home or fermented unless it was done in commercial building. She is thin. Her daughters are all thin. My brother battles his weight constantly but she claims it is because he "cheats" and eats junk when he is working. He was very thin when he was younger. We call her the Food Nazi, because she cleans everything, including her hands and some foods with bleach water. She's freaky about it.

My other brother is married to a native of China. He suffered from terrible gut problems his whole life and was painfully thin. He married late in life but I believe she saved his life. She began feeding him fermented foods, took him off of all dairy products and they eat made-from-scratch soup every single day (sometimes a couple of times a day). She feeds him no bread at all. I'm thinking she has got him on something as close to GAPS as possible without a handbook. He reports he has no more problems with his guts except when he eats an occasional pizza, so they are avoiding that as much as possible (I'm thinking he has Celiac's Disease). She is an excellent cook and it's fun to look into her cupboards as everything is labeled in Chinese and she has lots of mysterious and wonderful mushrooms, dried vegetables and other goodies in there. Her refrigerator is filled with fresh vegetables and her table is decorated with a variety of fresh fruits like clementines, pineapples and bartlett pears. I was deeply impressed to find that she has a couple of little Buddha statues each of whom had a perfect, fresh apple and a pretty stone bead bracelet nearby.

Middle sister lives in Colorado and did not make it out this year.

This year, despite everyone knowing everyone's allergies, there was a lot of food that was not consumed. The Food Nazi put margarine in everything she cooked and even put lemon in the sweet potatoes. She prepared the gravy, sweet potatoes and the stuffing. She will not let us stuff the turkey itself because she is an FDA food freak and believes we will all die of salmonella poisoning if we eat a turkey with stuffing in it. He daughter prepared the pies and while they got rave reviews, I could not eat them due to the crust being prepared iwth margarine.

I fixed the green bean casserole using scratch mushroom gravy which started with a beef bone broth, organic green beans and onion rings fried in pastured pig leaf lard. It was completely gluten free as well because I used tapioca flour for the thickeners and the onion breading. I also made deviled eggs using mayonaise I made using a good quality olive oil and pastured eggs. I did use store bought capers as part of the stuffing. I also made a pickle tray with gluten free crackers, homemade yogurt cheese from raw milk, a variety of ferments and homemade pickles both sour and bread and butter pickles. I also made a liver pate.

My sister with the Gaps family, brought a lovely salad, a fruit salad with coconut and put the chopped pecan crispy nuts on the side (thank you!). She also brought gluten free rolls she made. They were good but contained nuts, so one son could not eat them.

The turkey was prepared by my brother and his wife. She is from China and so this whole Thanksgiving thing is quite amazing to her. They did a great job with this large bird and everyone enjoyed it. Food Nazi managed to make the carcass disappear into the trash before Gaps mom or I could get to it and so all that wonderful boney goodness was lost.

I suggested to Gaps mom that next year I will host and she and I will prepared everything. Food Nazi can bring her own food if she wants, but the rest of us need something to eat that is safe.

Big changes, small changes

So, what did I learn at the Weston A. Price Conference? I learned that everything I had been eating to maintain my health and battle my weight problems was completely wrong. I found out that the main reason that I had skin problems, depression, aching joints, muscle spasms, massive fatty tumors in my gut, obesity and bowel problems was directly related to what I was and was not eating.

My whole life I had been told to eat less food. Eat no fat. Avoid meat. Eat whole grains. Eat soy.  Follow various diets including Weight Watchers and despite chronic pain, I had been told to exercise regularly and hard.

So, I've come to recognize that while I probably should eat less, I"m still probably in a transitional period that my body does not recognize as anything but a ploy. I eat even though I am no longer hungry because I've I have tortured myself for so many years with feast and famine, my body is anticipating a famine any day now. But I'm reaching awareness and I think this coming year I will begin to see myself get a better handle on this issue. Interestingly enough, I have not gained any weight. My cholesterol which was good before, has actually gotten even better. My blood pressure, always good,  remains the same and some of my other issues, like skin blemishes and aching joints, are starting to resolve themselves. 

What has changed?

I am eating whole foods now. I eat free range eggs at least three days a week, sometimes more. I eat real butter. I drink real milk that came out of a cow into a stainless steel pan, then was poured into jars. There are no middle men other than the gal who milks that cow. I eat meat and I eat the fat that came on the meat!  I eat whole fat yogurt, raw cheese and drink kefir and whole fat cultured buttermilk. I also drink something called Kombucha, Beet Kvass and sometimes the juice from homemade sauerkraut. I eat a lot more salt than I used to eat.

I have eliminated soy. Completely. I don't even eat commercially prepared bread anymore because it contains soy lecithin. Don't believe me? Go read the label on that loaf in your kitchen. It's in your breakfast cereal, and any baked goodies you may have purchased at the store. Soy oil is in your ketchup, the soup you bought and most definitely in your margarine. What's so bad about soy? We will cover that in future posts.