Traditional Foods/Nourishing Foods

[Joyous_5]

Hi everyone,

I'm doing more and more research on traditional/nourishing foods. I first heard about this way of eating years ago, but as a vegetarian for almost my entire life, dimissed most of what I heard/read as there is a lot of animal products/meat involved.

However, I'm interested in learning more now. Anyone have experience with this type of eating and/or blogs/books/resources that they found most helpful?

I'm very much enjoying Nourishing Days (http://www.nourishingdays.com) (and not just for the food--this young family lives almost entirely off the grid and make EVERYTHING from scratch) as well as The Nourishing Gourmet (http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/).

How about you?

[Zoebird]

Yes. We started with the Weston A Price Foundation back in 2000 or so. I was also vegetarian at the time, and went soy free at this point. I moves away from veganism with pastured eggs and raw butter (couldn't do much else), and then focused on fresh veggies and fruits because I didn't want to go through the grain gyrations. LOL DH was WAPF at the time.

We then transitioned to paleo just over 2.5 years ago, and it's been *even better!*. Being grain/legume free has been awesome. We mostly eat vegetables.

Today, I've had:

1 green juice that is 5 leaves silverbeet, 5 celery, 1 lemon, 1 apple, 1/2 inch ginger, 1 broccoli stem. I split this with my husband. It was about 2 cups of juice each;

3 eggs in butter;

And then for dinner I'm going to have roasted chicken with a big salad (lettuce, tomato, cucumber, bell pepper, avocado, pumpkin seeds).

I'll probably finish up with an orange, if I'm still hungry.

It's really not "a lot!" of meat. I mean, for a vegetarian, it obviously is, but it's not as if we eat mostly meat and then a little veg. We eat A LOT of veg, a 'normal' serving of meat, and go from there. :)

It's nice. I wanted to get down to 125 lbs (from 128) and I have with very little effort over the last few weeks. Still full and satisfied, very healthy (teeth checked out too!), and i do sometimes still eat sweets (yesterday, I had a piece of gluten-free chocolate cake and some candies!)!

I don't really have a lot of resources other than Nom Nom Paleo, even though I don't do any of her recipes. :D

[ApatheticNoMore]

I don't think a Weston-Price type of diet absolutely requires a lot of flesh, I do think a paleo diet pretty much requires flesh everyday (maybe less if you get along better with eggs than well I do). And I find a hunk of flesh for dinner everyday kinda gross and unappealing, not that I don't eat it several times a week mind you. WP allows legumes though (soaked and all that), so with legumes, diary, eggs or whatever of these you tolerate it might not be flesh everyday (I find legumes a way to stretch out flesh - lentil soup with a little ground beef or lamb etc.). WP does preach heavy animal fats, places where I ran into trouble in the past, not because I have an immediate bad reaction to animal fat per se, but I have to be careful with dairy (only the fattiest like cream is tolerable and even then there are limits) and found huge hunks of beef indigestable. Some of what would make it a difficult emotional transition from vegetarianism is the emphasis on using all parts of the animal, not just a piece of fish or chicken but bone broths, and organ meats and so on (the former I can tolerate though have not learned to love, the later ugh sorry :)). A lot of the WP is as much about how you prepare the food though as what you eat.

[Zoebird]

Paleo doesn't require flesh everyday, since I know paleo vegetarians. They eat eggs daily, and some include dairy as well, but otherwise do not eat flesh. Others are pescitarians, having fish/seafood 2-3x a week.

Even I don't necessarily eat meat every day. Sometimes I don't even have eggs -- just fruit and veg (and nuts and seeds). And there are days when I opt not to eat anything at all, or even have juice or broth. Just, yuo know, days that I don't want to eat.

It's a huge fallacy because so many who go paleo pound on about it -- but it's not absolutely necessary.

[catherine]

Another good book of the Weston A. Price mindset is one which I happen to be reading right now--my DSs girlfriend gave it to me. It's called Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck (http://www.amazon.com/Real-Food-What-Eat-Why/dp/1596913428)--a pretty compelling read, and it's all about traditional diets. She speaks from the filter of having been raised by parents who, when she was young, left their lives in upstate New York and bought a small farm in VA where they grew everything themselves. The book is pretty well thought-out and researched, but is not a dense read by any means.

[JaneV2.0]

Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon is a classic. I keep meaning to make kim chee or sauerkraut or something fermented just to see if I can. Maybe this week.

[Zoebird]

fermentation is surprisingly easy. we were really, really shocked. we do a simple one:

cabbage, carrot, ginger, sea salt. the ginger has the lactobacillus in it, so that does the trick. It takes "forever!" in winter, though -- a whole 10 days! In summer, it can take as little as 4! It's pretty sweet tasting, this. But for us, just adding ginger to whatever it is that we want to ferment is the trick. So, our salsas have ginger in them. Not traditional, but, hey! easy and tasty!

[puglogic]

Nourishing Traditions is one of my favorite books. So is Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz (who I met last year, so delightful). I have been trying to eat more and more veggies and less and less starches, in the hopes that making the transition will be easier some day. Haven't found a way to get the pasta, bread, and rice completely out of my diet yet.....though I do eat much less than I used to.

[JaneV2.0]

I have Wild Fermentation, too.

Thanks Zoebird, for the tip about ginger. That would work well in kim chee anyway. I bet galanga would work, since it's in the same family.

[Zoebird]

yes, galanga/galangal (thai ginger) will work as well. :D

[awakenedsoul]

I also really enjoyed Nourishing Traditions. I eat that way. Now that I can afford raw milk and cheese, I buy those. I make my own bread and desserts. I don't have any rules about food, except to make and grow it if possible.

[Joyous_5]

Another good book of the Weston A. Price mindset is one which I happen to be reading right now--my DSs girlfriend gave it to me. It's called Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck (http://www.amazon.com/Real-Food-What-Eat-Why/dp/1596913428)--a pretty compelling read, and it's all about traditional diets. She speaks from the filter of having been raised by parents who, when she was young, left their lives in upstate New York and bought a small farm in VA where they grew everything themselves. The book is pretty well thought-out and researched, but is not a dense read by any means.

Thanks, Catherine, I just saw this at the library I think last week. Will definitely check it out!

[Joyous_5]

These are good ideas, everyone. Glad to hear that I don't have to start eating meat three times a day to follow traditional eating/WP-style food prep! One of the most challenging parts of all this seems to be timing and time involved in the kitchen. All this soaking and sprouting making things from scratch. . . I DO make all our food each day (only work part-time; for money that is!) so I have time to do that. But I guess I didn't realize how much I relied on "processed" foods such as bread and yogurt and things that the WP method recommends making from the ground up, sort of speak. I'm going to start slowly with the things that I can easily do (make bone broth) and that will be most beneficial (fermented foods) and go from there. Chime in if you have additional ideas or thoughts~I'd love to hear them!