Living Unprocessed
Taking back our American Dream!
Step 1 – Detox???
Since I am not familiar with what a 12 step program for addiction is really about, I thought what could it be? I thought probably one must detox first to give the system a big reboot and a big push towards full rehabilitation. So how do you detox from consumerism? What do I do? I am overwhelmed. Declutter, but how? Where to start? My head is spinning. I have a daughter who is bombarded with consumerism and all she wants is to buy, buy, buy. What do I do about her? Ugghhhh! maybe this is impossible! Will we give up this easily and continue to just exist in the same ground hog day scenario day in and day out for the rest of our lives? Wow, that is depressing, but it is familiar and oddly safe. Is that the crux of the problem? Our existing life is familiar and even in its struggles with this addiction to consumerism is safe? Is that the issue? Am I afraid of change? Am I afraid of the unknown? When did this happen? When did I become afraid?
I spent the first 10 years of my life on 4 different continents and when we finally settled in the US, we moved houses and states. The longest I spent in a school was the University where I got my 4 year degree in one place and didn’t move. After I finished college I followed in my parent’s footsteps of travel and went and explored two other countries by living abroad for a period of four years. So in totality I lived a very transient life for the first 28 years of my life. The twenty years that followed were completely the opposite. I just realized that I lived my life at the two extremes. Both are familiar, but the one where I feel safe is the one that I created with my husband and my daughter which is the complete opposite of how I grew up. Is that why I am afraid of rocking that boat? But I thought we are now woke and understand the trap that is the “American Dream”. Why am I hesitant or is it just the sheer depth of how far I have dug into that consumerism driven notion of the American Dream that it is very hard to dig myself out?
As the days passed and I continued to ponder these questions, I was drawn to some documentaries about food and health. Nothing really new, but it dawned on me that American consumerism goes beyond just accumulating things. We are consuming in excess with everything! Too much sugar, too much processed food, too many clothes, too many shoes, too much of everything. Our society was addicted to stuff period. The side effect of this addiction to consuming has become debt, depression, fatigue, unhappiness, stress, diabetes, obesity, bad skin, learning disabilities, gout, depression, extreme mood swings, etc… The list is too long! So it is not just I want my life back where it comes to finances and things I buy, I want my life back where it affects what I buy and put in my body. This is by far much bigger than I thought. This is a complete mind shift in how our family “consumes”. So are we in too deep to dig out? Am I afraid of change? Is this the rationalization of an addict? Is it all of the above? As I sit and think about this, I thought to myself, WTF! I am sitting here talking about addiction and a 12 step program and I have no clue what I am talking about. Why don’t I go and research what are the actual 12 steps in a 12 step program to beating addiction? Duh!!!
Step one – Admit that we are powerless over our addiction and that our lives has become unmanageable. Wow!!!! OMG!!! I just realized that we suffer from an addiction to excess! Abundance in everything surrounds us and we are addicted! I fully acknowledge that we have become powerless over our addiction to excess and that our life has become unmanageable. I am fully ware and concur that the above statement is absolutely and undeniably is true. I need to let that soak in for a while!
12 Step Program
So we have these grand plans of getting out and taking our lives back and creating our own American dream, but how? so first we declutter. Easy enough. Really! As we start this daunting task, we are overwhelmed. What have we done!? Could a family of three really accumulate this much stuff? Really!!!! How did we live like this? We were consumed by consumerism. We bought into it wholeheartedly and we just bought because we could, We are a successful couple and we made a lot of money and we are still fairly youngish and we just bought and accumulated things over the last 19 years. Clothes, gadgets, clothes, more gadgets, shoes, purses, more clothes and more purses. Now don’t get it twisted, this in no way means that I am giving up my Louis, Prada, Valentino, and my other favorite brands. That would be blasphemous! I am not a radical tree hugging hippie! I just want a smarter, simpler and more wholesome life for me and my family. I still want my luxuries and my tech right next to my farm to table, unprocessed and wholesome food and simpler much smaller footprint. I want to go to the farm to pick up my fresh milk and eggs at the local farm wearing my Valentino sneakers and my LV purse. What we need to do is be smart consumers. We don’t need all these clothes, we don’t need a big house, We don’t need 3 cars, and we certainly don’t need all this furniture. Of course I do need my shoes and my purses. You can never have enough shoes and purses and yes, I NEED my shoe and purse collections. I even have a display case for them in our bedroom. It is my sanctuary and I refuse to give it up. Is this something I can compromise on? Never!
So back to this decluttering thing. It is an incredibly daunting task when you were really good at consumerism. If you think about it, we have become a society of hoarders. Why do you think we have a self storage on every corner? Consumption has become an addiction like Alcohol and now that we are ready to fight this addiction, we are confronted by the sheer volume of our past accumulations. Our woes have just begun and our 12 step program to free us from this consumption nightmare is off to a rocky and daunting start. We are drowning and it is going to be a long and arduous journey to just declutter our lives. We need a sponsor!
I want OUT!
So it has been ages since I have been present in any way. The last two years were emotionally and mentally exhausting. It is really weird, but I regressed on the living clean front, but made a great deal of progress on the fitness front. Is that even possible? My family and I are way more active. I work out and eat better, but I have slacked on the true living unprocessed part. I guess I do still source my food for the most part, but I have come to rely heavily on our small coop store and Wholefoods. So is that really regressing? But that is a discussion for another time.
Considering all the family turmoil that we have had in the past couple of years, I think our family came out of it stronger and even more determined to create real change in our lives. Not just food, but EVERY THING! We want OUT!!!!! We want out of this mass produced world that we live in. We want out of the hamster wheel that this world has become. We want to take back our lives. I laugh when I hear some people blabber about how they want their America back. We want our life back! I want to take back my life from the American dream! I want to create my own American dream. My own American dream devoid of processed foods, loans, mortgages, interest rates, debt, consumerism, …… The list is very long. I want to make my own wholesome and simple American dream. Is that terrible to want? Is it unpatriotic to not want this illusion that they package as the American Dream?
I think not! So as my family and I embark on our journey to achieve OUR own American Dream, we must first get rid of clutter. Oh! Were you waiting for something more profound? I know, but after much thought, we realized that to start on this road of freeing ourselves and taking back our lives we must first get rid of the clutter! So let the decluttering begin!
Even Flour is highly processed!
Now that I have gotten into the groove of making my own butter, broth, tomatoes sauce and have successfully sourced my poultry, dairy, eggs, beef, fruits and veggies, so what is next? I mean come on, that’s quite an impressive feat! After all, I showed my husband it can be done. Of course with these already great ingredients, I was making the best food that we have ever had. But I was still buying bread. Have you looked at the ingredients of regular toast bread? And if you want a good quality loaf free of preservatives, artificial flavors, natural flavors, etc, you have to pay an arm and a leg. My husband always teased me that I have a bread machine and never used it. So I decided it is time to start using it. We consume one loaf a week, so I will make one loaf a week. It was a no brainer on what type of flour we would use, whole wheat of course. I don’t want my flour to have anything removed. So I searched for the best, or at least the best I can afford and got the stone ground, non bromated, whole wheat flour. I made my first loaf in the bread machine following the instructions, but the bread was dry and crumbly. Let me just say, bread became my nemesis. But by God, I was determined to beat it if it was the last thing I did.
Let us just say I was really good at making bricks. I actually perfected it. It was only recently that I finally consistently perfected making bread. And of course the key here is “consistently”. So in my quest to making the perfect loaf, I did a lot of research on everything flour. I was shocked at what I found.
I found out that whole wheat flour is nothing but white flour with bran mixed in. It has the germ removed to increase its shelf life. The wheat germ goes rancid fast and if you keep the grain intact then your flour can’t stay on the shelf but a few days. So what is so wrong with White flour? White flour is bleached with chemicals and enriched with synthetic vitamins to replace the vitamins lost in removing the bran and germ during its refining process and in addition to that flour starts to oxidize the minute it is milled losing even more nutrition. So we are basically eating refined starch with a little bran sprinkled in there for roughage. Wow!!!! So you are telling me that I am paying for you to strip the grain of its goodness only to put back synthetic vitamins to replace what you stripped out? Huh! Does that even make any sense? What about the enzymes the good oils found in the germ, what happens to that? And why would you bleach it, what is wrong with it in its original state? There were so many questions, but one thing I was convinced of, I can’t feed my family that even if I make bread myself. I learned in my research that an un-altered food has all the enzymes and live bacteria to break itself down in your body after consumption. So It was clear what I had to do. I need to mill my own flour to make bread and pasta. There was no turning back. I went and bought a mill. I did more research and found that the best mill is a stone ground mill, but good luck finding one for home use. I looked at the impact grain mills and found that pulverizing the grain at high speeds creates heat which is the enemy of flour. I also looked at burr mills. They were good and keep the temperature down and don’t pulverize the grain at high speeds. So I went and bought a middle of the road with a steel burr mill.
It was a disaster. The flour was never fine enough and I continued again struggle with the brick. What I made was not bread, it was brick after brick. I was devastated. I searched again and found out that fresh ground flour absorbs more water, the bran cuts down the gluten so after it rises it falls, the dough is not conditioned or enhanced ….. It went on and on. I realized then, how much the flour we buy at the store is altered to always provide the perfect loaf. But what I didn’t realize was my mill was also a problem. The flour was not fine enough for bread. I was still determined not to succumb to the impact mills. I did more research and I finally found a German grain mill that uses ceramic-corundum grinding burrs. So it really gives you the best of both worlds, an economical home mill with the capabilities of a stone mill. So it is not steel burrs that will wear with time, but it is ceramic and from what I understood is self sharpening is it is used and most of all it provides you with the finest flour.
Of course using fresh ground flour needed special consideration when making bread because it is no longer has the enhancers, conditioners or stabilizers in store bought flour so I searched for a resource with credibility that I can use as reference. I found a book that had great reviews called “No More Bricks” by Lori Viets. It was a breakthrough! I made my first loaf and it was really good. I have finally won! And I was making about 4 loaves at once and storing in the freezer so that I am only making bread once a month. I was finally content.
But wait! There is more! I am big fan of the cooking channel and one day I was watching and Elton Brown’s good eats was on. He was talking about the science of making the perfect bread. So naturally, I paid attention and watched. He started talking about letting the dough rise in the fridge over a longer period of time. I thought that was crazy, but he backed it up as usual by science and I am a big science girl. So I decided to give it a try, after all I would be able to store dough in the freezer instead of already baked loaves and that would serve two purposes. It would take less storage space and I would be able to bake fresh bread whenever I needed to.
The only deviation from Elton’s way was I did my first rise the old fashioned way for about an hour until the dough doubled in size. I then portioned the loaves and put the dough that I was not going to use in Ziploc bags and flattened it so that it filled the entire bag and it was easy to stack in the freezer. I immediately placed them in the freezer because you don’t want to give them a chance to start rising. The dough I was going to use, I shaped and placed in loaf pans, oiled and covered with plastic wrap loosely and put in the fridge to rise. Holy Cow!!!! I have never achieved such a rise, ever, ever ….. I almost teared up when I saw my loaves. The heavens opened and I felt like I was surrounded by angels. I mean I sat there just staring at my loaves for a good twenty minutes. I took them out of the fridge and put them in the oven and baked them. I had just achieved greatness. It was the best bread I have ever tasted. It was the perfect texture, it was everything I dreamed it could be and more. The family loved it. We couldn’t stop eating it. We went from consuming 4 loaves a month to double that. We found reasons to eat bread. Now the real test, would thawed dough do the same thing? And it did. It was glorious.
Was I able to do it again? Yes, and again? Yes! I have finally triumphed! And it feels damn good. It may take you a bit longer than you expected, but at the end of the day, you will feel great that you are living unprocessed!
Fresh Cow/Goat/Sheep Milk EVIL! Ultra-pasteurized and Homogenized shelf stable milk GOOD! REALLY?!?!?!
Did you know how many products you can make from milk? Well, there are approximately 11 products you can make from milk. You can make:
Butter
Buttermilk
Cheese (and when you make cheese you get whey as a byproduct)
Yogurt
Whipped cream
Heavy cream
Sour Cream
Kefir
creme fraiche
Clotted cream
curd
And there are more that I probably didn’t list here. So how many of those products we can make from the milk that is being sold in the grocery stores? Well with pasteurized and homogenized milk, you can probably make most of these with questionable results, but with many of the milk out there now being ultra pasteurized, you will probably not have any luck making any of these products. Trust me, I tried to make butter and it was something so tasteless and colorless that I thought I did something wrong. But how can I screw up butter, it is over whipped whipped cream! So I checked the package of the butter from the store in case I am missing something and there it was, cream and natural flavoring. “Natural Flavoring”! What is that? Well that is for another discussion, but to my surprise butter that we consume was not just heavy cream, it had something else that I need to go and research because natural flavoring doesn’t occur in the nature I know.
In my research into milk, yes! I researched milk, I found how much processing goes into milk. It is so much that most milk is now fortified with added viatamins. So processing strips out nutrition and to compensate for that, we add it back in synthetically after we process it! Isn’t that a waste of money….. Well, think about it. If I need to increase the shelf life of this product and then so fondly call it “Shelf Stable Milk”, this will allow me to keep it on the shelves longer and increase the likelihood that I will sell most of my stock before the expiration date. And since this processing renders the milk completely inactive so that the consumer can’t make any of the above products, I can sell those products and reap all those profits and nutrition be damned.
What is lost on most people is that milk is alive with bacteria, enzymes and is a complete source of nutrition. It is those properties that make milk very good for us. The bacteria and enzymes will allow us to digest milk and breakdown its fat. During processing, you will lose all that goodness and you are left with a high-fat and nutrition difficient product. But hey, if you don’t want the fat, I will process it some more and I will create even more products by providing 2%, 1% and skim milks for people to buy.
And don’t get me started on homoginization! So why can’t we have milk that has been moderately pasturized to kill the so called “bad bacteria” and still leave us with the enzymes and live good bacteria that we need for our health? Apparently fresh milk from <fill in animal name> is evil and is a detriment to our health. Mind you, people have been drinking fresh milk from the various domesticated animals for centuries. So the government will raid a small farmer trying to make a living by selling milk from his cows at gunpoint, yet drug trade is rampant in our society. Don’t underestimate the milk lobby as funny as this may sound!
So what do you do? There are many options out there for you. Check you state laws; do they allow you to participate in cow sharing programs? Do they allow the sale of raw milk with strict regulation? Now I live in Maryland and apparently you need to go underground and deal behind the scenes to get the ever elusive contraband milk. But be careful you have to ensure the source. Is the farmer testing his cows for diseases? Is he clean, are the cows pasture raised? When I embarked on my journey for better milk, I tried to go to a farm in Virginia that provided a cow sharing program and your share will entitle you to a gallon of milk. Unfortunately I live in Maryland and the farmer was very leery and was uncomfortable because he couldn’t cross the state line with his milk. Can you believe we are talking about milk here! So I found a group that has a coop that gets their milk from a farmer in Pennsylvania, but he doesn’t test his cows and you are not sure if he is clean and there were legal agreements that you had to sign stating that you will not snitch on anyone in the coop if you are caught by the authorities. Yes, we are still talking about milk here! I continued to do more research while frantically trying to find a way to change the milk that I am using.
I said while I am searching, I will buy only pasteurized homogenized milk, none of that ultra pasteurized stuff and to my surprise, it was very hard to come by and that includes organic. Then I found out about this milk that is moderately pasteurized and not homogenized! Yes, that would work! So where do they sell it? Whole foods sells it and Mom’s organic market sells it and they sell from local farms. I was in heaven. I bought my first bottle and my daughter finished a 1/2 gallon in 2 days. Not only is it moderately pasteurized (161 degrees), but it is not homogenized and is milk from pastured cows with no use of hormones and antibiotics. Well, it is not the unprocessed that I was hoping for, but it is the next best thing. Until the laws of the state of MD are eased so that at least farmers can use cow sharing programs, this will be the milk for me. I can use this milk to make all the products that I need to produce. I now make my own butter and buttermilk and I am looking forward to making even more products with my glorious milk. On that note, here is a good recipe to make your own butter.
1 Gallon of moderately pasteurized or raw heavy cream
1/3 cup of cultured buttermilk (make sure that it doesn’t have any gums or stabilizers)
A hand or stand mixer
• Stir the cultured buttermilk into the cream and ensure that all of the buttermilk is incorporated evenly in the cream
• Leave covered at room temperature for 18 hours
• Place back in the fridge for another 12 hours
• Using a mixer (stand or hand mixer) whip the cream past the whipped cream stage. In about 10-15 minutes the cream will turn yellow and then it will start to pebble and then the buttermilk and the butter will separate.
• Drain the buttermilk (make sure you keep this for a recipe that calls for buttermilk)
• Place the butter in a cheese cloth and wrap and run under cold water until the water draining is clear.
• With a wooden spoon work the butter for a few minutes and then shape and place in the fridge or the freezer.
Trust me; you won’t ever buy butter at the store ever again.
Until next time, it is not too late to live better and unprocessed
They put what in animal feed?!?!?!
Like many working moms, I was constantly bombarded by the commercials that state that I am way too busy to make anything myself. And to be honest, I bought into that and I was spending hundreds of dollars a month and thousands a year buying nutritionally deficient ready made food because I was indoctrinated into thinking that yes, I am way to busy. I remember I had my freezer stocked with ready made eggplant Parmesan, lasagna, mozzarella sicks, chicken nuggets and a pantry full of a dozen condiments, boxes of broth, canned tomatoes and canned tomato sauce. And since I am way to busy, my fridge was well stocked with bags of salads. I mean come on, I am way too busy to cut my own vegetables. What do you mean buy a full chicken and cut it up? Are you kidding, that would take a full 10 minutes out of my very busy day. And when I got so busy that I couldn’t even open a bag of salad and put eggplant Parmesan in the oven for my family to eat, we had the wonderful world of takeout. We had takeout more often than not. I remember when we moved out to the country, my husband and I lamented on the fact that no takeout place was close enough to us to offer delivery. Our woes knew no bounds. I am just glad that we woke up before the ready made frozen sandwiches became all the rage!
When we woke up to the fact that we were both now obese and my husband developed type II diabetes and has high cholesterol and sleep apnea. It was time to do something. So in addition to changing our buying habits and moving away from the conglomerate grocery stores, I started thinking about what is it that we are putting in our bodies. So I started searching meats. My husband doesn’t consider that he ate dinner unless there was some type of meat on the table. I was horrified at what I found. I am appalled that no one in government considers what happens to these animals on the factory farms as “Animal Cruelty”.
Did you know that the beaks of chickens, turkeys and ducks are often removed in factory farms to reduce the excessive feather pecking and cannibalism seen among stressed, overcrowded birds? Did you know that animals headed for slaughter that become too sick or injured to walk unassisted are forced onto slaughter trucks, often with a bulldozer? Did you know that egg-laying hens are sometimes starved for up to 14 days, exposed to changing light patterns and given no water in order to shock their bodies into molting, a usually natural process by which worn feathers are replaced? It’s common for 5-10% of hens to die during the forced molting process. Did you know that from birth to slaughter at five months, calves used to produce “formula-fed” or “white” veal are confined to two-foot-wide crates and chained to inhibit movement? The lack of exercise retards muscle development, resulting in pale, tender meat.
And if this is not bad enough, many ingredients that are used to feed these poor animals are not the kind of food the animals are designed to eat. So what is in their feed? Same species meat and other diseased animals! Do you remember mad cow disease? How did you think it came about? Under the current laws, animal feed legally can contain rendered road kill, dead horses, euthanized cats and dogs. Rendered feathers, hair, skin, hooves, blood and intestines can also be found in feed under the category so fondly known as “animal protein products”. This is not to mention manure, swine waste and poultry litter. And if you think this is still not bad enough, how about plastics? Yes, plastics. Many animals need roughage to move food through their digestive system. But instead of using plant-based roughage, animal factories often turn to pellets made from plastics to compensate for the lack of natural fiber in factory feed.
So when it was all said and done, I thought to myself, I would rather be vegetarian than put this garbage in my body. If an animal is fed these things, then all this filth is in every tissue, fiber, and cell of that animal. So what I am eating and what I am feeding my family is literally nothing but filth. So what to do? You would be surprised how many small farms you have around you. Eve if you live in an urban setting. All you need to do is do a little searching. During my research period, I decided that probably going to a kosher or halal butcher was sufficient. And Again I was wrong. The animal may be butchered correctly, but where do you think these butchers get their animals? So here I go again with the urgency to find a better economical alternative. I mean I am not made of money and I need to be very frugal. I searched and searched and couldn’t believe that there was a farm 2 miles from my house that sells pastured organic chickens. Now the catch is the farmer only has chickens every 4 months and he only grows about 150 of them and they go fast. He is a little pricey at $3 per pound, but then again organic chicken is around the same price and even if they are fed vegetarian feed, they are still confined and treated badly. Now the next obstacle, what happens when I need more chicken? I mean as an American, I am used to going to the store and get anything and everything even if it is not in season. So the concept that I may not be able to get chickens from him whenever I need them was foreign to me. But the knowledge of the alternative made me re-adjust my thinking. So if I buy in bulk from him so that I can ensure my supply for the 4 months until his next batch, then I can have farm fresh chickens always. After all, the concept of bulk buying is not an unfamiliar one. So I bought a new freezer and I made a deal with the farmer that I would take 20% of his stock every 4 months. Of course 20% of his stock is a lot, but my sister-in-law was on the same quest and we were in on this together. So between the both of us, we took close to 30-35 chickens every quarter. When we first tasted this chicken, we were sold. I ran out of chicken earlier than anticipated once and I forced my self to get a couple of chickens at the store and I vowed that I would never do that. I literally said to my family that if for whatever reason we can’t get pastured farm fresh chickens then we are not eating chickens anymore.
I was so happy that I was able to source my poultry. My next battle was to find the perfect source for beef. I searched high and low, and did more research and found that the best and healthiest beef was grass fed beef. So I searched and searched and found a farm about 300 miles away that sells the best grass fed beef. The kicker was if I buy little by little then the price with the shipping became very prohibitive. But the more I buy and if I guarantee large quarterly buys, then it is a huge discount. So again, I went to my sister-in-law and we were able to get our needs for the quarter and double the order and guarantee quarterly order which afforded us free shipping. The first time I opened a package of the ground beef I knew this was different than any meat I have ever bought. And the taste was out of this world. There was no going back to the crap they have in the store and have the nerve to call beef.
You will probably say, I am paying more for meat, so where are the savings? You are right, I do, but let’s look at it from a different perspective. I buy my meat from two sources and I pay a sum of money four times a year. This means I have cut my grocery store visits to only buying vegetables and grains. And remember if you are making the switch into living unprocessed there will be very little to buy at the store except for veggies, fruits and grains. How many times did you go to the store to buy a chicken and end up with a couple of bags of groceries? You won’t have to do that anymore. Another tip, is that you must have a list before you leave the house. I buy only what is on the list and according to my set budget for the trip. This allowed me to save so much money, that I can now afford to spend a little bit more for good quality meats that would have been otherwise out of my reach. And if that’s not incentive enough, how about me supporting my local economy, which is good for everyone in my community. It might take a little research, but it is not hard to source your food and live unprocessed.
So what does the government really regulate?
Can you really trust the USDA? I thought for the longest time if food is being sold in American stores and have the USDA stamp it has to be good for me. As I delved deeper into this, I realized that special interest and other forces are at work to make sure that their bottom line is the driving force behind any regulation the USDA may place on them, and not consumer protection. These groups have the influence and the money to put their bottom line before your health. I have been disappointed so many times and I am so thankful that I now source most of my food and make pretty much most everything from scratch; that when I hear about recalls for eggs, beef, chicken, spinach, etc.. I can’t help but have a huge grin on my face knowing that I don’t have to rush to my fridge to look at a label to make sure that what I am eating is not tainted. So a few weeks ago there is a listeria outbreak due to tainted caramel apples where some people died and the message from the government is, don’t worry, there is no reason that would stop you from buying caramel apples. What!?!? and oh, there is no recall and mums the word. So what a few people died!!! Are you kidding me??? Of course, my source could also have troubles and there is always a chance, but have you looked at why these big corporate farms are having issues?
The food lobby has done everything in their power to render any regulation of their practices ineffective or very difficult to enforce. They have farm hands that work for these large corporations; These farm hands don’t have a stake in these farms. People have to get very ill or even die, before there is a public outrage. And even then, the outrage is for a brief period of time before we go on to the next scintillating news item. These farms are not like my local farm, where the farmer works the field himself and feeds his family from the same source he sells to me. When I go up the street to get my eggs, pick up my veggies or pick up my chicken, I see the animals roaming freely on the farm. They are not confined in cages with thousands of other animals in deplorable conditions. When I recently asked my local farmer if he is going to have anymore chickens to spare, his response was I will have to wait because he has to set aside his share for the winter before he is able to sell anymore. My local farmer feeds his children the same food he sells me. I will take my chances with him than a factory farm any day.
Do you remember the huge egg recall where half a billion eggs were recalled because of a salmonella outbreak? The sources of the outbreak were two factory farms where disgusting unsafe conditions were the cause of this contamination. Now an investigation was launched and it prompted government to say all farms must be inspected. What is amazing to me is that if you have safety regulation, why aren’t farms inspected in the first place to ensure compliance? What is the point of a regulation if there are no inspections to ensure compliance? Why do we have to wait for a national catastrophe to start doing something? Read this USA Today article about the conditions they found on the farms, and like I said before, I will take my chances with my local farmer any day.
If you are saying, that’s ok, I buy cage free and range free eggs and poultry. Have you ever researched what constitutes free range according to the USDA? The USDA says a farmer can label poultry as “free range” if the poultry is allowed access to the outside. This means that as long as the birds have access to the outdoors (there is no standard for what that outdoor access is), it can still live in a warehouse style shed with 20,000 other birds and still be labeled “free range.”. This means also that most of these animals never see the light of day throughout their lives and it does not prevent the factory farm from de-beaking and living in unsanitary and deplorable condition. What is amusing is that you will pay considerably more for that label. As a factory farmer, all I need to do is open the door to my shed where I house tens of thousands of birds and the outdoors area can be 1 foot by 1 foot fenced asphalt and I meet the criteria of “free range”. And not only that, I can charge a whole lot more for them. So the image of chickens running free on the range has no basis in reality when something is labeled as “free range” or “cage free”. That whole thing is a big huge farce!
So when I read such stories like congress passed a bill that would make it possible to say that 2 table spoons of tomato paste on a pizza is considered a serving of vegetable, it is easy to lose faith that our regulatory agencies are there to actually look out for us. They are there to draft unenforceable regulations as our elected officials are influenced by the frozen pizza and fries conglomerates who don’t want to stop selling their products to our already obese children as part of the “healthy school lunch” programs at school. The more I hear about the state of our food industry and the deteriorating quality of our food, the more I am motivated to continue to live unprocessed.
Oh! The Trials and Tribulations of living unprocessed.
The roller coaster of living unprocessed!!!! I have written about not going into this guns blazing and there is a reason, you can get worn down. I mean for a middle class family and a working mom, life happens and you slip. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much to bring you back on track. Your body misses it when you slack. Your body will rebel and will get mad and will tell you very loudly that I am not happy with this crap you are feeding me. When you have 75% of your food and products that you use are unprocessed, and you start slacking your body will notice and you won’t feel good. It is like withdrawal! But I am back with a vengeance. I have bought my poultry and beef for the year. My freezer is stocked with what I need. I have my yearly supply of grain and nothing can hold me back. I can’t tell you how much money we have saved this past year. It is unreal. Just changing our consumption habits, we have saved on average 500$ a year. Now that I have my system down on a lot of things, I have set my sites on bigger and better things. You might fall off the wagon of living unprocessed, but you quickly come back!
Is there anything out there that is not on the net?
I have learned through this journey that the internet is not just a great place for information, but it is a great place to shop and source your food. With today’s technology, you can pretty much ship anything. I have been able to expand my market place to the entire country. So far, I have been able to source wheat, herbs and spices and many of my kitchen gadgets for a fraction of the price of what I would have normally spend if I went to a retail store.
For grain, I use an emergency preparedness site to buy my grain. It is still 20 cents cheaper per pound than a wholefoods. I buy my 6 month supply and I pretty much guaranteed low or free shipping. The same is true for spices and herbs which can be quite pricey at the spice isle in the grocery store. I know! why would you need that much? well, if you go for the organic high-end herbs, those little bottles add up. If you buy several herbs in a quarter pound weights, then your cost is pennies on the dollar and you can essentially create any spice or herb blend you need. I keep all my spices and herbs in the freezer. I also buy my spices whole and grind what I need. This will allow you to use less more potent spices and they will last for a year or more while keeping their freshness.
So don’t be afraid of the internet. It is a great resource for finding great deals and for products that may not be available in your regular stores. It makes living unprocessed a little bit easier.
Do you really save money?
As I look back on the past two years and think about the changes that we made and has it really saved us that much money? As I look at the food we eat and the money we spend on food, I see a monthly savings of about 15% on average. Now over a year, that can be substantial. What is even more amazing is that I am buying top quality ingredients that cost more but I am saving 15% a month doing so. So how is that possible? You have to change the way you shop. Set a budget for each weekly visit and stick to it. And really, if you source your own food and know exactly where you are getting your poultry, beef, dairy, and produce, you will find that you are more disciplined and you will not be buying all those extras that catch your eye when you go to a one stop shop like a grocery store. Trust me, it works.
But if you are looking for specific comparisons, I can give you the comparison of making your own butter. Now when you make your own butter you end up with butter and buttermilk. So essentially you start with cream and you end up with two products. When you compare what you pay for really good milk or cream, it is going to be pricey, but trust me; it is not more than buying organic milk from the store. Wholefoods for example carries creamline lightly pasteurized milk from local farms that pasture their cows and it also carries lightly pasteurized cream from local farms. The price is equivalent to the price of regular Ultra Pasteurized Homogenized organic milk. I paid about $4.50 per ½ gallon of milk and about the same for a pint of cream. A quart of cream makes a pound of butter. You are probably saying good grief that is expensive butter compared to what I buy at the store, but let’s do the math and let us make the right comparisons. You can’t compare your homemade butter you make with good quality cream to a land-o-lakes tub of butter. You have to remember why they are so cheap. They do not use the quality of ingredients you are going to source. Remember this is corporate processing and the bottom line is more important than your health.
So how do I compare? When I started this journey, my goal was to break even or even spend a bit more for better and healthier food and I was more than ok with that. I remember my husband and I sat down one day and did the math as a gauge to see if we were really saving any money. We compared my butter and buttermilk and crème fraiche to the products you buy at the high-end gourmet food stores. And were both very pleased with the outcome.
| Regular Butter | Organic Butter | Cultured Butter | Homemade Cultured or Sweet Butter |
| $3.70 / Pound | $6 / Pound | $10 / Pound | $10 / Pound of either cultured or sweet + a free Quart of cultured buttermilk (average price at the store is $2.30) |
So in reality you are getting homemade cultured butter and cultured buttermilk for the price of regular organic butter. That is great savings in my book. Now the enormous savings comes if you make Crème Fraiche which is what you use to make cultured butter. Crème fraiche is very pricey and was not something I bought on a regular basis and I only used for special occasion. Let us just say that I now use it for all my cream based recipes. Yes the savings are that huge. Let’s do the comparison.
| Regular Crème Fraiche | Homemade Crème Fraiche |
| $30 / Quart | $10 / Quart |
And culturing cream is nothing but adding a couple of table spoons of cultured buttermilk to a quart of sweet cream. As you get adept at this, you will find it is just easier and much cheaper to just buy the freeze dried culture from a cheese making supply online store and it will literally last you several years if stored in the freezer.
Now you can bring the cost down even further if you are able to use fresh raw milk which is normally much cheaper. If you are weary of consuming raw milk, you can pasteurize it your self easily and it will still be far superior to anything you buy at the store whether cream-line or not.
The savings also come from the fact that you don’t go to the store as often and therefore you have less opportunity to spend on other items that you didn’t intend to buy. Trust me, you will save at least 15% per month. And even if you don’t save any money just the fact I know what is exactly in my food and what I put in my and family’s body is priceless to me considering the fact that all of my husband’s ailments such as acid re-flux, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and the beginnings of type II diabetes are now a thing of the distant past.
Living Unprocessed 