Goals and Directions

So besides stripping our chassis of about 20 plus years worth of industrialized national gunk, what is this whole really inconvenient and slightly painful food restriction business about?  I say this as the sugar free headache is descending on me.  Like a hangover, but so much worse. Must. Find. Chocolate.
Anyway, we live on a farm and are trying to be self sustaining, we are becoming fairly aware of what we will be able to provide ourselves with should we continue to farm in this approximate climate.  It makes sense to adjust our bodies, recipes and minds to live within our means, not just in a way that is local, organic and seasonal, but full down to the last pancreatic enzyme.

Lately the Blood Type Diet, and many others have focused on what the Weston Price Foundation has been saying for years.  If you eat a diet indigenous to you, your body has a full understanding of it and will utilize the food efficiently and not create waste and toxin issues.  The Weston Price Foundation would say this diet is that of your tribe, island or immediate area.  But we are mutts, so I believe using their principles and not the Blood Type diet of what I ate when I was incarnated 14,000 years ago.  Which would be totally muddy anyway due to the genetics of blood typing.  You have a finite ability to digest foods.  Specifically, the stomach may be able to break down a food but the endocrine system is the one that has to classify, enhance, process, deal with imbalances and ultimately make custom blend body juices to assimilate that food.  If you cannot assimilate the food, we get anything from leaky gut syndrome, gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, and the real kicker is inflammation.  The last can appear as arthritis, arterial sclerosis, headache, back pain, and many many others.  In this environment of restaurants, super mega markets with every spice, food and drink you can think of, plus a host of additives no body was ever meant to digest, we have taxed our endocrine systems past all reasonable limits.  Variety is everything, second only to convenience, what is digestible in a Hot Pocket?  Anything?  How about Chinese Food?  How about Sushi tonight, Pakistani tomorrow and Bistro for lunch, with a bunch of pastries and really sweet coffee thrown in there too?  Can you say diabetes?  That is what happens when the endocrine system starts to fail, stress too, hypertension as well, ulcers, dyspepsia, oh and fatness, obesity.  Look around, have you seen anyone fitting this description lately?  I am not even ragging on the people eating fast food, too easy.  They are dead already.  I am speaking of the ones that don't even know they are at risk.  Remember?  They ate sushi?  Healthy sushi? Maybe made from fish that came all the way from Japan? 

   Eating close to home is what we are aiming for, wiping the colon and pancreas clean, the internal tabula rasa.  Starting anew and only asking of the endocrine system what is fair.  We will re-introduce foods slowly to our systems, lots of veggies first, leave the grains and sugars for last.  As you would begin to feed an infant foods, watching for ill reactions, even excess saliva can be a sign of intolerance.  The veggies introduced will be ones I can produce in my garden.  I use alot of Agave nectar as a sweetener.  Why?  It is organic, inexpensive and yummy.  Drawbacks, comes from the desert and is packaged in plastic.  Why not use honey? We have bees and if our demand exceeds supply, I can buy local honey from the Mennonite farms and reuse a glass container doing it.  I can also tap my maple trees and use maple syrup to sweeten almost anything, the only reason I haven't is the dreaded American plague, convenience.  When cornbread and banana cake appear back on the menu, you now know how they will be sweetened.  I will keep cinnamon and cocoa on hand in my root cellar, these I cannot grow, but will use sparingly as a treat.  The big elimination that will hurt is rice.  We love rice, Basmati in particular and do not grow it.  I have high hopes that my friend Jamie will procure seeds and technique to grow rice that purportedly loves living in Vermont. But until that time, I will trim it's presence on the menu.

The final word from Frank, wrapped in crocheted floral lap blanket is "I don't like fasting".