New member

[Margot]

Just joined though have visited this site before. Lots of great info and inspiration.

I am far from self sufficient but follow a whole foods way of eating which means making most things myself. No processed foods for me.

I have a garden and put in an experimental vegie patch last year. My only successes so far have been tomatoes, leaks and beans and a whole bunch of herbs (though for this last I really need to work on my herb recognition because beyond basil and parsley, I have no idea what I have – why did I not keep the lables). This year I put in green asparagus and hope for a regular supply from next year.

I have failed miserably at spinach, carrot and celery growing. Brussels sprouts were a non event as well.

I have 2 apple, 2 pear and 6 plum trees, though I think one of the plum trees has just died.

I regularly make my own yoghurt from raw milk from the farm down the road. Once I accidentally made cheese – instead of yoghurt, there was a large lump of cheese floating in whey in the pot. Very surprising.

I make my own bread from spelt wheat grown and milled 15 km down the road.

I make soups from fresh ingredients, both meat broths and vegetable soups. No stock cubes in sight yet the best soup you will ever taste.

I have done lots of experimentation with making cakes and deserts using only natural sweeteners with varying degrees of success.

I just made my first batch of raspberry jam using very little dried cane juice sugar and some honey. Hope it works. It tasted pretty good.

I want to do more preserving of vegetables and fruits so will be doing more experiments in that direction in the future. I think this forum will be very helpful.

I cause consternation everywhere because of my contraversial attitude to fat (more not less)

Hope to meet new food friends here.

M

[ina]

Hiya Margot, and welcome!

Whereabouts are you? I somehow have the feeling it's not in the UK... (The 15 km is a dead give-away! And hardly anybody here knows what spelt is, either.)

[Annpan]

Welcome to the site.

We are all somewhere on the self sufficiency scale - most of us are quite near the bottom If you put pictures of your herbs up here, perhaps we could identify them for you?

[red]

welcome

[Margot]

Hiya Margot, and welcome!

Whereabouts are you? I somehow have the feeling it's not in the UK... (The 15 km is a dead give-away! And hardly anybody here knows what spelt is, either.)

Oh no, sprung!! I am in Denmark. Where are you, or are you from this general area?

Thanks for the welcomes.

M

[Rosendula]

Hi Margot,

I cause consternation everywhere because of my contraversial attitude to fat (more not less)

I'd love to know more about your views on this. When my little girl was just moving over to solids, a couple of years ago, I noticed that it was amazing difficult to find anything that was full fat. Everything seems to be 'virtually fat free'. Looking out of my window at the queue at the bus-stop, I don't think the whole 'virtually fat free' thing is working very well . Ever since then, I've had a funny feeling that the 'cut down on this fat and that fat' thing is all wrong. It seems to me like it was a fashion for a while, and that it was replaced by the probiotics thing, and then the omega-3 thing. I have never taken any notice of such things and view them as an advertising stunt: get people scared that they're missing something essential that they don't understand, and you can sell them anything by writing the name of it on a box. A real drive to encourage us to eat more healthily would surely be showing us how to cook good food from scratch, selling us ingredients cheaper (sometimes buying a ready made meal is cheaper than the main ingredients in it), and would be enabling people to work less hours to allow for preparing and cooking food (and, preferably growing it, too). Am I rambling?

Anyway, hello and welcome

[Margot]

Hi Rosey,

You are not rambling, you are right.

I think the main reason for this misinformation is that much has been invested in the heart diet theory and the bodies that diseminate health info are reluctant to do anything but support it. The omega 3 rage is the result of an understanding of the fact that in all this low to no fat gefuffle people were missing essential fats in their diets.

Not all fats are equal, certain vegetable oils become rancid when over processed and lets not even start on partially hydrogenated oils, these are all very bad for you.

Fats from naturally raised animals (cows that eat grass for example) and from cold pressed oils that are protected from becoming rancid before consumption are not only healthy but essential to avoid disease. Cells are primarily made of fat and cholestoral, so if you eat poor quality fat, the wrong balance of fats or very little, you are putting yourself at risk.

When well nourished your body works properly which means your metabolism and other hormonal control systems (which, incidentally, are highly dependant on fats) work well, so you are not hungry in an inappropriate manner.

Sally Fallon wrote a book called Nourishing traditions and manages the Weston Price Foundation web site which contains masses of information on these and other related topics.

I was forced to change my diet because of some nasty intestinal problems and got healthy for the first time in my life. I wondered why because I was eating more fat and more food in general than ever yet I lost weight and became healthy and fit. So I started reading to find out why. This way of eating also got me to care about the mollecular structure of my food and that it was important that carbs enter the body in their original context, not in some highly refined extracted form. Later I found out this is important for proteins too. Now I am reading about fats which is a fascinating topic.

My approach to food is - was it done that way 200 years ago? if not I do not do it. I also find that modern wheat is a problem for me so eat only spelt or emmer, the fore runners of modern wheat.

Anyway, I could go on for ages and ages.

M

[ina]

Hiya Margot, and welcome!

Whereabouts are you? I somehow have the feeling it's not in the UK... (The 15 km is a dead give-away! And hardly anybody here knows what spelt is, either.)

Oh no, sprung!! I am in Denmark. Where are you, or are you from this general area?

Thanks for the welcomes.

M

I'm German myself, but live in north east Scotland. From back in Germany I'm well used to spelt, but it was difficult to get here - a bit easier now. I make all my own bread, too; food in Britain is not as bad as it is said to be (well, not all of it is ), but it's still incredibly hard to find edible bread...

[yugogypsy]

Hello and Welcome from Canada,

We're working at self-sufficiency here too. We have an enormous garden, chickens and are planning to get goats.

We have 1 sm. horse and a sm. donkey, both retired, who provide most of the fertilizer for our gardening efforts.

We were given two young turkeys that will never be eaten, I love turkeys, so will have 2 pets and as one is female, some eggs from time to time.

This winter will see my partner Rick and I get back into bread making, we have a hand cranked mill to grind grain.

We're working at getting a juicer and other kitchen implements we feel necessary for better eating and yes, I am a carnivore, Rick is a vegan/vegetarian, he eats a little fish and chicken, but prefers green veg and rice.

We have 2 to keep the mice out of the grain and are looking for a small but not yappy watch dog for our deer problem.

Although we have fences, they still get in. The rabbits too.

What is your garden season like? We have a growing season of 221 days here. I'm on Vancouver Island, near the capital city of Victoria, in British Columbia.

You sound very much as though you're on the right track, We all have garden failures, so don't be disheartened by them. We use the crop rotation method here and our BIG failure this year were bush beans, we planted 3 times in 3 sites and only the last ones planted came up.

Lois

[JulieSherris]

hi Margot! Nice to hear that you're on the way to cracking the code of well-being

Further to the above points.....
Do you know.......

last year some time, I was reading a website which had graphs taken from the US statistics office.
The graph of the levels of obesity over a 10 yr period (1980 - 1990, I think) followed almost the exact same pattern and ALWAYS upwards, as the graph that showed the increase of 'tv dinners' take-away foods, etc.
Summary: Most modern processed foods make us f a t. (And I should know - I had a gastric bypass last march - 79lb gone so far, 28 to go!)

I haven't got a clue what site it was, but will try & find it tomorrow!
Julie.

[hedgewitch]

[Millymollymandy]

Hello and welcome, Margot!

[weatherwax]

Hi
I too am interested in your theories about fat etc....
Afew years ago I tried a higher fat diet, similar to The Atkins, eating no processed foods, I lost weight and felt better, but the scaremongering about heart attacks and the dangers of a high fat diet really did frighten me and I came off it and I might add put all of the weight (and then some) back on, I have been tempted to try it again.

[kiwirach]

Hi Margot, welcome!.

i am a great believer in your food beliefs as well.....altho, i dont know nearly as much as you!. i make alot of my own food....not everything yet, but getting there. i'm generally very wary of anything thats been made for my convinience......i just think all those 'things' that they put in the food to keep it safe for us to eat, isnt actually good for us health wise.

[Margot]

I can't see how to reply to individduals so will do it in 1 message.

To Ina, just drove through your home country, got hopelessly stuck jsut before Hamburg. Germany is a great place for grains and bread. What a pitty you cannot get spelt over there. I have a local farm shop close by that grows and mills their own. It is delicious.

To Weatherwax, I am sorry you were frightened away from you efforts to get healthy. I think the trick here is to just eat normally (though I think many people do not know what that is anymore) - whole fat milk and yoghurt, butter, eggs, meat, fish, chicken with skin, and lots of veg, nuts and fruit as well, with a lesser amount of whole grains. As long as it is minimally processed, naturally raised, and eaten in sane proportions it is fine. You are at greater risk of a heart attack being overweight while eating low fat food, than you are being a helathy weight, and eating normally fatty foods. There is a lot of great info out there and a good place to start is the Weston Price Foundation site. Just do a google search on the name.

If you are worried when eating like this, you could get your cholesterol levels and blood preasure checked by your doctor you need not tell him exactly why you want to know because you will get a lecture. Mine came back perfect during a health check at work.

To Kiwirach: excellent, it is great to not be alone in stuff like this. The diet i followed to heal my intestinal problems meant I had to avoid addetives that consisted of polysaccharides. This got very complicated so I just avoided them all together. When I started reading more, and reading lables, I realised that most of this stuff is quite toxic. It may come from a whole food, but outside of the context of this food, it does not always behave like the original food in the body. MSG is an excellent example of this, it naturally occurs in protein foods, but when extracted (hydrolisation), develops a life of its own in the body. Watch out for it because it lives in food under different names these days, hydrolised protein, hydrolised vegetable protein, protein extract, E621.

To Jullie: I have seen similar tables and it is amazing. Have you seen the film Super size me? It is excellent, but horrifying to see how quickly the health of this guy degenerates on fast food.

To Ann Pan: What I good idea, I will take some photos and post them soon.

To everyone: thanks for your wonderful words of welcome. I like this forum.

M