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“If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.” Thomas Jefferson

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Pecan Pineapple Snacks

This is an easy recipe that I got out of The 30 minute Wheat Belly Cookbook. This is one of the best snack recipes ever. It is so easy and so quick and makes a good amount that lasts in the fridge for a couple of days provided the kids don't inhale them. Anyway here is the recipe:

Ingredients:
2 cups ground pecans
8 oz. cream cheese
8 oz. drained crushed pineapple
1 tbls. xylitol
6 tbls. butter

Melt the butter and mix with the pecans. Mix in the xylitol. Then in a separate bowl mix the cream cheese and the pineapple. Use a large spoon, dip in the pecans and then mush the spoonful together while it is still on the spoon. This will pack it together solidly. Place on a cookie sheet that has been greased or lined with wax paper. Then place a spoonful of pineapple mix on top. Top with a whole pecan. When you have them all done, place in the refrigerator to chill. We had some for dessert after supper and then the rest were stored in a Tupperware container in the refrigerator for the next day. Like I said the kids loved them and they didn't last long after that. I adjusted this recipe just a bit from the cookbook to suit our tastes and to make the amounts come out a little more evenly. The first time I made these according to the cookbook I had a lot more pineapple mix than pecan bottoms. The first batch was also too sweet for us. If you want it to taste sweeter just add more xylitol. Blessings, Kat

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Keeping Wheat Free Affordable

One of the many things I hear or read about the Wheat free lifestyle is that it is expensive. It may seem that way at first, but I have found that I spend about the same amount of money. I just spend it differently. Right now I have no goats in milk and we have used all of our homegrown meat in the freezer. So everything we eat is being purchased, except for vegetables and some fruit that we put up over the summer. So, how is it that our grocery bill is not skyrocketing? Here's how I keep everything within budget.

1. Baking is a treat, not a staple. Almond meal, coconut meal and the like are expensive. I highly recommend buying them in bulk from Amazon because they are much cheaper than being purchased locally. However, they are still expensive. So, now any kind of baked good is a treat. Not a staple. The exception to that rule is the muffins that I make a couple days a week for breakfast because the recipe uses so little.

2. Buy produce in season. This goes for any budget. Right now I can buy fresh broccoli and cauliflower cheap, usually 2 heads for the price of one.

3. Organic meat is best, but if you can't afford it you can't afford it. It really won't kill you to eat non organic for a small portion of your life. It is the consistent exposure, year after year for years and years that will do the damage. So, if you can't get organic, great. If not, don't sweat it.

4. Typically, you can find manager specials early in the morning. These are meats that must be sold or thrown out that day because they have reached their sell by date. There is nothing wrong with this meat, the store just has to move it out. So they mark it down...oftentimes way down. I bought several skirt steaks a couple of weeks ago for 1.50 each. I bought every one that was marked down. It doesn't matter if there is a cut I have never used before, because I can either learn via the internet how to use it or I can grind it up and use it in a ground meat recipe. I also lucked out last week and got grass fed, organic lamb chops marked down. Not nearly as cheap as the skirt steak, but within my budget range and they were huge gorgeous lamb chops. I bought every package of those too. Purchasing the extra gives me some to put in the freezer so that when nothing is on sale at a good price I still have something to eat and I can stay within my budget.

5. I used to go through a lot of flour, which translated to a good portion of our budget. I have eliminated flour and greatly reduced sugar, tea, coffee.

6. We actually consume less food. This means that I cook less food. So those meals that used to be one meal are now two meals. The children don't feel the need to snack as much and aren't always hungry, so that translates into less food going farther for the week. So even though nuts are expensive, a small handful is a serving and satisfies a craving while keeping them feeling satisfied longer than a handful of crackers. Sunflower seeds are really big in our house, we love them. I buy them in buckets containing small packs and they last us a long time. One small serving packet will be a snack all day for us. Whereas before the kids could eat an entire box of cheezits and still be looking for something else to snack on. A 50 cent pack of sunflower seeds or a 3.50 box of cheezits. Hmmmmm....I think the sunflower seeds win in the cost department even though they seem more expensive to begin with.

7. Of course this goes with any budget, wheat free or not, but this summer hit those farmer's markets and u-pick farms and put upall the vegetables and fruit that you can put up cheap. Invest in a big freezer or canner or whatever and put up everything you can. It will save you money in the long run.

I have to admit that when I embarked on this, I was worried. Our food budget is tight, especially when we are still feeding livestock at the moment and getting nothing from them. I couldn't afford a huge increase in groceries. I have found though that with a little planning and maybe a different time schedule (those early morning grocery trips to get those specials)we haven't had that much of an increase, just a little bit. And if needed then I can cut back on the cheese recipes or absolutely no baked treats. It can be adjusted to fit into the budget. Blessings, Kat

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Update on being Wheat Free

We have been wheat free for 2 months now and I must say that it is great. We all feel so much better and I love the fact that finally after all these years I am losing weight. It is slow, because I still have thyroid issues a bit, but I am losing. I have noticed several big changes. I am not thirsty all the time anymore. I think possibly I might have been prediabetic or at least hypoglycemic because I simply could not get enough to drink. Now, I am not thirsty all the time. That really is a big change for me because I never went anywhere or did anything that I didn't have something to drink with me. I would even take a bottle of water to bed because I would wake up in the middle of the night dying of thirst. The second big change is that I sleep better. When I was a child, I could sleep through anything. That changed to the point where I couldn't sleep more than a couple of hours at a time and then I would be up and go back to bed and then get up again...all through the night. Now, I am back to sleeping like a rock. Nothing wakes me up at night anymore and I feel so rested when I wake up in the morning. It used to take me several hours to get motivated to get up and get started on the day. Now, I drink a couple of cups of coffee and within and hour or so I am itching to get busy. I am able to stay focused throughout the day and get my tasks done. So, because of that the house, schoolwork, farmwork are all staying relatively organized. Giving up wheat has made huge changes in my life, changes I never expected. I am reading the Wheat Belly Book now and am even more firm in my stand against not eating wheat anymore. Everybody else in the house is getting there, but they are taking their own time and making their own decisions ( well the little one has no choice). Hubby decided to have some wheat, a lot of wheat, last week and woke up with a "hangover". Said he felt like he had been out drinking all night even though he hadn't had a drop of alcohol...just wheat. Oldest daughter keeps testing, but she says after this last incident at church that she might be done testing. We had a covered dish lunch at church with the usual fare, loads of pasta dishes and rolls and everything else wheat. I fixed a broccoli and cheese cassWerole so that I knew we would have something to eat. Petunia ate a couple of rolls and had a migraine and allergy issues Monday and Tuesday. It amazes me the immediate health effects just from eating wheat. The thing is I know it is the wheat because it happens everytime they have it. If the little one eats wheat she is through the roof hyper and can't sit still or focus on schoolwork or anything else for that matter. She also becomes very irritable and verbally combative with everyone after eating wheat. She is so much more pleasant to be around when she doesn't eat anything with wheat in it. Wheat belly truly has changed our lives for the better. No going back for us. Now how to do this without breaking the food budget. That will be my next post, as our grocery budget hasn't changed much at all. Have a blessed day. Kat

Monday, February 3, 2014

The Ban on Wheat

Yep, you heard it...there is a ban on wheat...at least here in our house. I had read a lot from people who had given up wheat and there stories were amazing. I read stories of better health, feeling better, lost weight, no more tiredness, allergy relief, and better attentiveness. Well, as everyone knows I have struggled with my weight, tiredness, brain fog, muscle pain, joint pain and you name it for a long time. I mostly attributed it all to my thyroid problems. And when I got my thyroid back under control it did help with these things, but they didn't go away completely. So I started looking into this wheat thing and I discovered amazing things. Just reading the Wheat Belly Blog is an eye opener. I haven't read the book yet, but fully intend to. So, the day after Christmas we gave up wheat. Within a week I had lost a couple of pounds and didn't feel so lethargic. Now, over a month later I feel amazing. I only have muscle pain when I overdo something. Like the other day the weather was nice outside and I had a marathon shoveling compost and raking leaves and other outside things that I did. I was sore that night and a little bit yesterday. I used muscles in excess of what they had been used for all winter. However, I am not sore today and that is huge. Usually a marathon outside chore day would knock me out for a week. I no longer have the stiffness and pain that I had before. I wake up in the morning ready to go and do something. I accomplish more during the day than I ever have and our home is running smoothly again. I am doing yoga again because I feel well enough to do so and I think it has helped also. And the best thing is that I have lost weight. 12 pounds so far. All of this by giving up wheat. I am not the only one who has noticed a difference. Petunia's allergies were getting pretty bad and I must admit we had been eating a lot of bread and wheat items. Now, she is allergy free as long as she stays away from wheat. She went to a couple of parties the other week and ate a good amount of wheat..sandwiches, pizza, cake and for the next week she suffered miserably. We have noticed a huge change in Little Britches also. Her personality is much sweeter, she focuses better on schoolwork, she can now sit and enjoy coloring a picture, work on a craft project, or build her "creations". Prior to the ban on wheat, asking her to sit down and color a picture or any of these things was like torture to her and she could get downright mean and nasty. My hubby has lost that middle aged belly that he was getting and he feels better too. The boon is that we eat more vegetables than we ever have because we are replacing the wheat portion of our meals with another vegetable or two. Cravings have gone away as well. Prior to the ban on wheat I craved sweet all the time. Candy didn't last long around here as I could eat it all day long and wanted more. I drank sweet tea all day long. Now, I drink water all day with the exception of my morning coffee which I need less of. I don't crave candy and still have my Christmas chocolates, which had to go into the freezer because I wasn't eating them. The kids don't crave junk and ask for it all the time either. I have stopped eating all grains for right now because I really want to lose weight, but the kids still eat oatmeal and grits although not that often...once or twice a week. I can't believe all the pain that wheat has caused us and I can't believe the relief that we have all had. Banning wheat is probably one of the best things that I have ever done for our family. I won't get into the ins and outs of the evils of wheat here as there is simply too much so please if you are interested go to the wheat belly blog or read the book. It is truly eye opening. Blessings, Kat