Last week I participated in a conference call organized with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who wants to get the word out about the upcoming reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act and to help promote the First Lady’s new Let’s Move Initiative to combat childhood obesity. The call was organized and moderated by Alix of Silicon…
Healthy Eating
Public conference call with Agriculture Secretary Vilsack
“This is a different USDA,” announced Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack last week on a conference call with members of the public to share information about the agency’s response to First Lady Michelle Obama’s new Let’s Move initiative to combat childhood obesity. The call was a great opportunity to hear about high-up efforts to address the…
Homemade Chicken Stock
Homemade chicken stock is an inexpensive way to make a mineral-rich, healing liquid that can soothe testy tummies and enhance the flavor and healthfulness of any soup or cooked veggie recipe. I just posted a recipe/protocol for making homemade chicken stock on my more food-focused outlets: on my blog “Inexact Science: Raising Healthy Families” and…
Homemade Chicken Stock
One of the easiest things to do to stay – or get – healthy in the winter is to make your own chicken stock, or bone broth. Some people like to claim that healthy eating costs a lot of money, but broth is something you can make from the bones of a chicken you already…
Why I’m Not a Vegetarian Anymore
In preparation for writing a piece for my column at the Washington Times Communities, “Reading Ingredients: Tales from a Health-Conscious Mom,” I realized that I could stand to write a background post on why I eat the way I do when it’s so different from how I used to eat. I’ve written some about my…
Applesauce Cake – Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Low-Sugar
At my son’s Waldorf school, birthdays are celebrated with applesauce cake. We always pack my son a wheat-free, gluten-free alternative for the baked goods. I also make them dairy-free so that I can eat them and because we try to keep my son’s dairy intake down. I was very pleased with the cake we made…
Scarborough fair on my deck – and in my turkey
I didn’t get a real garden going this summer, since we were in the middle of a move. That’s a bummer. But, I do still — in November — have fresh rosemary, sage and thyme growing in pots on my porch. I loved that I went from plant to pot in a few steps. They…
Gluten-free, dairy-free pumpkin pie!
I finally took a photo of a gluten-free, dairy-free pumpkin pie this year! Two different times! The crust was largely hazelnut and rice flour with all the spices of pumpkin pie. I used coconut oil and put a little vanilla in with the cold water, using this crust recipe (with mostly nut flour/meal). I baked…
GFCF rolls with hazelnut flour
I wanted to share a photo of the GFCF rolls I made for Thanksgiving this year and an update on the recipe. The bulk of the flour this time was Hazelnut flour from Bob’s Red Mill with some sorghum, rice, and tapioca. Also, I got away with using hardly any sugar and a little more…
Review of new PBS show on “healthy” living
Watch out parents: there’s a new show in town trying to convince your kids that it knows something about healthy eating. Before I share my concerns about PBS’s new show, “Fizzy’s Lunch Lab,” I’d like to describe the kind of show about healthy eating I would actually consider allowing my son to watch. There would…
Mom pens children’s book on food allergies
At a recent screening of Fresh, the movie, I met a lot of great folks who care a lot about food and health. One was author and local mom Mary Rand Hess, who just published a children’s book called The Day I Met the Nuts (illustrated by Candice Hartsough McDonald) with Earth Day Press. The…
Heavier than air
After attending a screening of the new film Fresh and seeing Joel Salatin and Sally Fallon speak as part of an amazing panel discussion to a standing-room only crowd at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax, I never want to eat anonymous meat again. Fresh gives just enough insight into factory farming to help the…
The kind of health coverage I want
“This is why health care costs are so high,” hissed my endocrinologist when she looked at the results of the labwork my holistic physician had ordered. To her, the additional blood tests were a waste of time and money. But the information – a full, more complete picture of my thyroid levels and antibody levels–…
Traditional, GFCF, and Low-Carb Eating 101
I just attended a local hospital’s women’s health expo and spoke to a diabetes nutrition educator who was horrified that I would pursue a low carb diet. “Why would you do that?” she asked. I dropped a lot of names, none of which she was familiar with. I just wrote her an email and decided…
Traditional, GFCF, and Low-Carb Eating 101
I just attended a local hospital’s women’s health expo and spoke to a diabetes nutrition educator who was horrified that I would pursue a low carb diet. “Why would you do that?” she asked. I dropped a lot of names, none of which she was familiar with. I just wrote her an email and decided…
More evidence about gluten’s potential harm
It took me three hours to get out of 20 miles worth of DC traffic and the rest of the 70 miles to Richmond, but I am so glad I made it to see the West End Gluten Intolerance Group’s evening presentation with two doctors and important researchers on the effect of gluten on the…
Fighting the flu naturally
I haven’t been pro-vaccine for a long time, since I got the flu vaccine in my 20s and felt terrible. Now that we’re facing a potentially bad flu year, there is a lot of talk about vaccines for flu and specifically for H1N1/Swine Flu. I’m hoping that the alternative folks are right that the best…
What did the boy inherit?
A few months back, I finally did a cheek swab test on my son to see if he did in fact inherit gluten sensitivity from me. I’d ordered the test from Enterolab almost a year earlier on the advice of Melissa Diane Smith, author of the fabulous book, Going Against the Grain. For some reason,…
Whole foods come from the ground
We didn’t plant a whole garden this year because of the move, but at least we’ve got a little bit of a harvest on our patio and in the yard. At least my kid knows what green beans, peas, blueberries and black raspberries look — and taste — like in their original home.Now if I…
What I eat
For a long time, I’ve been eating a lot of calories. A typical breakfast would be sausage, one or two eggs (mostly just the yolk), raw/cultured sauerkraut, sprouts (usually pea, lentil or azuki bean — not alfalfa), sauteed zucchini and some kind of green vegetable cooked in homemade chicken stock. Kombucha and supplements on the…