• Sleep Aid and Muscle Relaxer: most people are familiar in chamomile teas benefits as a sleep aid because of it’s relaxing and soothing properties. I find the pure chamomile flower is best for relaxation. It can help you sleep and help with cramps and muscle aches.
• Stomach Soother: Camomile tea was always prescribed in my household as a child. I think it came down from my great grandmother who practically raised all her children, grand children, and even a few great grand children. When I have an upset stomach, I like to combine the chamomile with mint for a wonderful anti-nausea tea.
• Digestion and Detoxification: Chamomile not only soothes an upset stomach, but helps with digestion in general. It can calm irritable or irregular bowls; has been shown to help regulate blood glucose levels; and can help detox the liver. After a heavy or large meal, I like to add a little crystillized ginger as a sweetener to my chamomile tea. Ginger is also known for it’s digestive and detox benefits. Or if you are feeling like you need to detox, adding a slice of lemon (purifier) to your tea always adds benefits to the stomach, kidneys, and liver. Honey can be added to both of these for a little extra digestive boost!
• Allergy, Asthma, and Congestion: I would guess that chamomiles anti-inflamatory properties help in soothing allergies, asthma, and congestion. Again, the combination of chamomile, ginger, and honey are the best tea for these symptoms. Combined they can act as an expectorant to remove congestion and sooth inflamed sinuses and bronchials.

It is very important to know the source of your chamomile, especially if you are going to drink it daily like I do. I highly recommend purchasing organic for anything you are using for tea as any sprays or toxins will concentrate as the herbs seep. I was lucky enough to get mine from a friend, Jardel, who got an extra order from More Than Alive.com. In their own words More Than Alive is the Internet’s trusted resource for comprehensive family health information. It is [their] goal to bring you the information that will keep you abreast of the trends affecting the health industry today. They sell and have a lot of good information on bulk herbs, bulk foods, and essential oils. I recommend that you check out their website.

References and Resources

Giveaway

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• “This study looked at organophosphates in particular, ones designed to attack the neurological systems of pests (unfortunately, they harm humans, too).”
• “Children with substantially higher levels of a breakdown product of neurotoxic organophosphate pesticides were twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD.”
•  ”It’s been shown that people who switch to an organic diet knock down the levels of pesticide by-products in their urine by 85 to 90 percent.”

I am so excited! Thanks to the wonderful people at Wildlands Inc. I have arranged for 10 lucky people to attend an elderberry harvesting field trip on one of their mitigation sites. “

What is an Elderberry?

Elderberry shrubs can get quite big and are often confused with trees. They have large clusters of white flowers in the spring that ripen into dark berries in the summer (when I say elderberry, I am referring to the Sambucus nigra elderberries, not the red). They are considered riparian and often associated with rivers, streams, and creeks and in grasslands adjacent to water. Here in the Central Valley, they are home to the Valley Elderberry Longhorn Beetle (it is currently listed as a threatened species). The beetle spends most of it’s life as a larva in the stems of the shrub, so we need to be careful when harvesting. Normally the elderberries are usually best to harvest in August, but it varies every year.

Why Elderberries?

If you read my blog regularly, you will know that I am a huge fan of elderberries. If you are sick, have a sore throat, sniffles, a cough… my first question will be have you been taking your elderberry syrup? Elderberry is an anti-inflammatory, anti-viral, and antioxidant. It helps build the immune system and is especially helpful for respiratory illness such as asthma or bronchitis.  We all take elderberry syrup twice a day at the first sign of a cold or virus and we usually recover quicker, coughs don’t linger, and rarely does anyone get a secondary infection. It can be taken regularly during an allergy season. I also give it to my children for a few days to a week before and after getting immunizations, traveling, or the first days of school or if a virus is going around. Here are a few links to some other sites with interesting information on elderberries:

• Medicine Hunter
• Herb Wisdom
• Wikipedia
• USDA

What do you do with elderberries?

We have been taking elderberry syrup for years, but buying it can be very expensive. So last year I started making my own. After harvesting the berries, I immediately juice them and then freeze the juice in 3 cup portions. Then I can make and can the syrup as I need it. This way it does not go bad before we can use it. I use local honey to make the syrup and by making it seasonally, I can use seasonal honey (this helps in fighting local  and seasonal allergens). CLICK HERE for my previous post on Making Elderberry Syrup and CLICK HERE for the Cough Syrup recipe. I am just on my last batch now from last year, just in time! As this syrup does contain honey, I do not recommend it for children under 2. You can make it totally with sugar or purchase Herbs for Kids Elderberry Syrup. There are many things you can make with elderberries. They are good as a jam, a compliment in a pie or other baked good, tea, wine, etc.  Many people also use the flowers for teas, liquors, jellies, etc. I still have a lot more experimenting to do.

But ONLY use the flowers or RIPE BERRIES and make sure you cook them! Elderberries should not be eaten raw. All parts of the plant contain the toxin hydrocyanic acid which is destroyed by cooking. Red elderberry (S. pubens) is considered poisonous and should not be used at all since cooking does not destroy enough of the toxin. Most of the berries in the Sacramento area are S.nigra elderberry. The stems and leaves have the highest concentration of hydrocyanic acid that is why I recommend removing them. I have seen some recipes that say not to worry about the smaller stems, especially if you are boiling it. I have also seen some recipes that do not boil the juice, I would strongly advise against eating the berries or drinking the juice raw. I have also seen people suggest using the leaves. I would NOT advise using the leaves as they have higher concentration of hydrocyanic acid.

So how can You come harvesting?

The field trip is set for July 27, 2010 (subject to change if berries aren’t ripe enough), some time in the AM to avoid the heat. As I said there are only 10 spots available, so I have decided to have it on a first come first serve basis. If you would like to attend the field trip, please leave a comment on this post, not on Facebook. The first 10 received will reserve their spot. I will also have two back up spots, in case some one can not attend. If there are too many people responding at the same time, I will draw names. I hope this sounds fair. I would love to take everyone, but C’est la vie.

Stone Fruit Crisp

Ingredients for the topping:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 4 Tbsp Turbano sugar
• 6 oz cold butter, cubed
• 1/4-1/2 cup crystalized ginger, chopped

Ingredients for the filling:

• 4.5 pound cherries, peaches, and apricots, pitted and chopped
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup Turbano sugar
• 1/4 cup flour

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. In a food processor, combine the 1 and 1/2 cup of flour and sugar. Add the cold butter until the mixture looks like wet sand. It should still crumble. You may need to scrape down the sides a few times. Add more flour if the mixture is too pasty.
3. Take the topping mixture out of the processor and mix in the chopped crystalized ginger with your hands. Try not to over kneed the mixture, keep it light. Set aside.
4. Combine all the fruit in a bowl and mix in the sugar and flour. Let stand until gets moist.
5. Put the mixture in to two sprayed 9×9 casserole dishes.
6. Sprinkle the topping mixture evenly over the top of both dishes.
7. Put in the oven for about 35-40 minutes or until the sides are bubbling with thick juice.
8. Let sit 5-10 minutes before serving, while still warm.

Note: Claire got a little over zealous with the topping and I think I did not have enough butter to flour ratio, so the top was not browning. After I thought they were cooked enough, I placed the oven on broil and set them on the bottom rack, just to brown the tops a little.

Hope you all had a wonderful 4th!

[amazon-product text="The Omnivores Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" type="text"]0143038583[/amazon-product], I (Mark) became very interested in meat.  I wanted to know how to get the highest-quality chicken, beef, and pork locally.  So I started out by creating a spreadsheet (yes, I’m an engineer) that listed all the locally available meat vendors and ranchers in the Sacramento area.  The “meat matrix” is divided into two categories – Grass Fed meats and Grain Finished meats that received no antibiotics, no animal proteins, and non-GMO corn.  I then sorted each meat vendor by how many miles from downtown Sacramento so I could see how things stacked up from a local perspective.  I really enjoyed investigating all the options available while creating and populating the meat matrix because it became a great learning tool.  I talked to a lot of butchers, ranchers, grocery-store workers, restaurant chefs, and farmer’s market vendors about a whole range of topics.  “What do you do if your cow get’s sick?”  “How do you kill your chickens?”  “Is your steer grain-finished or grass-finished?”

So it became obvious really quickly that the best sources of the most responsible grain-fed beef and pork came from our local farmer’s market and co-op.  But the biggest challenge was finding a local supplier of grass-fed beef.  I checked some websites such as www.eatwellguide.org, and www.livingharvest.org, and came across one rancher in El Dorado (about 45 minutes east of Sacramento, on your way to Tahoe) called Forni Ranch.  We emailed back and forth, and they seemed like the real deal right off the bat.

Here is their story (from their info sheet):

“Forni Ranch in El Dorado County reflects four generations of commitment to quality beef and sustainable land management.  Our beef is what is known as “grass fed”.  That means our animals are not confined in a feedlot; they range on foothill pasture.  Nor are they subjected to the use of steroids or hormones.  For you, the consumer, that means the flavor of the beef you purchase will be slightly different than what you’re used to.  It also means you will be buying fresh, locally produced food.”

And here is what they say about their cost:

“Three costs are involved in the purchase of Forni Meat.  The cost of half an animal runs approximately $425 – $450, depending on the size of the animal.  This is paid directly to Forni Ranch when the animal is taken to the butcher.  A flat fee, known as a kill charge, is paid directly to the butcher – approximately $65 for a half animal.  The butcher also receives approximately 80 cents per pound of hanging weight for cutting, wrapping and freezing your meat.”

I had to get some of this grass-fed stuff!  I can’t be sure I have ever eaten grass-fed beef, all I know is that it is very expensive when you go to Whole Foods (usually costs about $8/lb just for the ground beef!), but cutting out the middle man brought down the price for half a cow to around $5/lb.  Now when you purchase half a cow, you are looking at about 140 lbs of meat, and our family would take about a year to go through it all.  So we talked to some of our friends in Sacramento, and it didn’t take long to find three other families that wanted to share our half a cow.

In April I emailed Forni Ranch requesting our half a cow, mailed the $100 deposit, and waited.  And waited.   During all that waiting, I thought it might be fun to visit the ranch, and see the cows with our own eyes.  Hey, it can’t hurt to ask.  I guess I was a bit surprised when the Forni’s said yes, I wasn’t sure they would be up for it.  So during one weekend in May, Bill (my father-in-law) and I took the kids on a trip to the Ranch.

I have to say it was well worth it!  The kids had a blast – they took us on a hay ride through their 400 beautiful acres in El Dorado, California, and we got a chance to feed the cows, walk around some marshes, and even catch some frogs (the kids favorite activity).  Toni and George Forni were class-acts, very friendly and so awesome to spend so much time with us.

And then a week later, I received a call from the butcher.  He asked me about thickness of cuts (we went with 1”), size of packages (two steaks in each package, one pound of ground beef in each package), and went through a selection of cuts to see which cuts into ground beef.  Our group of families wanted about half steaks, and half ground beef, so we converted the all of the roasts (rump, chuck, cross rib) to ground beef.   Here is a breakdown of our 135 pounds of beef:

Steaks: top round, T-bone, Porterhouse, Filet, Tri-tip, Sirlion, Flank, and Prime Rib

Other: ground beef, stew meat, liver and bones (for soups).

About two weeks later, the butcher called to say that our beef was cut, wrapped, and ready for pickup.  So the next day Kate drove out to Castle Meats in Shingle Springs, picked up the meat, and then the four families met for a “meat-swap”. The butcher’s facility was actually beautiful, clean, and friendly. Now our family has about 33 pounds of various cuts of beef in our freezer, that should take us through the summer.

I really have enjoyed working with a local rancher that can be our new source of beef, and I hope that our friends want to keep sharing a half of a cow in the future.  If you live in Sacramento and are interested, contact Forni Ranch directly. They may still have some left this year.

Now for a local source of pastured poultry!

We really enjoyed the market I think because there was a real sense of comminity. Since they are just kicking off this farmer’s market, there were only a handful of vendor’s but they all looked great. I picked up snap peas (1 lb.), strawberries (3 baskets), spring onions, and baby bok choy, all for $13. We are having stir fry tomorrow and the “strawberry monster” (aka: Ross) is lurking around the house. The kids came away with all kinds of loot: balloons, reusable shopping bags, key chains, balloon squirrel and balloon machine gun. And I even got a treat! They were selling those beautiful large elephant grass baskets from Guyana and all proceeds go to supporting the Oak Park Famer’s Market. How could I resist? And it seems I was not the only one, everyone I saw had one. I hope this is just the beginning of a great Market for Oak Park.

After doing our shopping, we went across the street to Old Soul Co. I have been wanting to go there since they opened, but it’s a little off my beaten path for a coffee pit stop. The place was buzzing with people who had been to the Oak Park Farmer’s Market. Adults were visiting, kids were playing, and the baristas were hopping. On the way in we say Mayor Kevin Johnson, so Mark took the opportunity to introduce the kids. I tried their homemade Chai with soy milk and it was delicious! I think the Oak Park Farmer’s Market and Old Soul will definitely become part of our regular routine!

Currently, there is no requirement that manufacturers, producers, or growers label their products as genetically modified (GM) or not GM. In fact the USDA and FDA have recently adopted a position AGAINST labeling foods as GM not only in the US, but are trying to convince the UN (and those countries participating to adopt the same policy). They believe that “it will give the ‘false’ impression that the GM labeled foods are different than the other foods.”  My point exactly! They are different, just look at the DNA patents. And we (the consumers) should have a right to know what we are consuming. FRESH, a documentary on the food we are eating, has a website and petition you can sign to support GMO labeling. ( read Powerful Forces Seek to Prohibit Labeling Food GMO-free for more information). Please sign, it’s very important to many of us that we be able to identify the sources of the foods we feed our families. Many of you who read my blog regularly know that I do not support GMO from my previous posts Got GMO-free Milk. But for this blog and to provide an example, I would like to focus exclusively on corn and the problems resulting from subsidized GMO corn in the US.

Corn Still Natural?

First let’s go into a little background information on the corn industry in the U.S. According to Michael Pollan’s Omnivores Dilemma, Government price manipulation and subsidies started, not surprisingly, during the Great Depression.  During the winter of 1933, the price of corn had fallen to zero.  Countless farmers were losing their farms, and the government stepped in to rescue farmers from the disastrous effects of growing too much food.  One of the New Deal farm programs had the government establish a target price based on the cost of production, and whenever the market price dropped below that target, the farmer could either take out a loan (with the corn as collateral) to store the grain until the price recovered or keep the money and give the government the corn.  These New Deal farm programs more or less stayed in place until the early 70′s, when the inflation rate for groceries reached an all time high.  The Nixon government led the way to reengineer the American food system by exhorting farmers to vastly increase their output to drive down prices.  Plus, the government replaced the loan-based farm programs with direct-payments to farmers for the shortfall in the price of corn.  The new subsidies encouraged farmers to sell their corn at any prices, since the government would make up the difference.  And now that greater yields would mean more profits, this is where Monsanto enters the equation.  Monsanto’s genetically modified corn promised to reduce infestation loss, and this was music to the farmers ears.  And flash forward to the 21st century, where GMO has a 90% market share.

Corn Diet Anyone?

Because corn is so cheap to produce in the U.S. it has made it’s way into everything from hamburgers to fuel. Since the 1980s virtually all the sodas and most of the fruit drinks have been sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).  Read the ingredients on the label of any processed food and corn is what you will find.  Corn also goes by the following aliases:  modified starch, glucose syrup, maltodextrin, ascorbic acid, lecithin, dextrose, lactic acid, lysine, maltose, MSG, and xanthum gum.  Corn is in frozen yogurt, canned fruit, ketchup, candies, soup, cake mixes, frozen waffles, syrups, mayo, mustard, hot dogs, salad dressing, and margarine.   According to Michael Pollan, who took some McDonald’s food and ran it through a mass spectrometer to calculate it’s corn content, he came up with these sobering percentages:  Soda is made up of 100% corn, milk shake (78% corn), salad dressing (65%), chicken nuggets (56%),  cheeseburger (52%), and french fries (23%).  How’s that for minimizing your carbs!

I think HFCS gets the most publicity now a days as there are different studies out about the health concerns from obesity to mercury levels. “Since the fructose in corn syrup does neither stimulate insulin secretion nor reduce the hunger hormone ghrelin, you will continue to feel hungry while the body converts the fructose into fat.” Thus, we keep eating more and more sweeteners to satisfy our sweet tooth, but keep getting more and more HFCS. The research I have done seems to conclude that fructose (HFCS) is harder for your liver and body to digest. When we ingest large amount of foods that are hard to digest our GI tract loses efficiency and the consequences are often weight gain, fatigue, head aches, etc. Even the FDA has recognized that HFCS is different than sugar and no longer allows it to be marketed as “natural.”

In addition, allergies or intolerance to corn has become more and more common. One reason is because we consume so much corn. As you may already know, allergies are developed and often get more complicated with each exposure. You can never eat common corn products (fresh corn, tortillas, etc.) in the US and develop a serious food allergy from all the derived substances in our food supply. Because we consume so much corn, it’s important to understand where that corn is coming from, how it was produced, and processed. For the sake of this blog, I am not going to go into the debate on whether or not it’s safe to eat GMO produce from a genetics perspective (read GMO corn linked to organ failure for more information).

But for now I am going to concentrate on the other problems with GMO corn, manly being the increase use, and therefore ingestion, of herbacides in the corn industry. Monsanto’s Round Up Ready (GMO) corn is made to be resistant to Round Up (also made by Monsanto), so that growers can use more Round Up on the crops to kill the ever resistant weeds. As more Round Up is used, the remaining ” fittest” weeds become more resistant (natural selection 101). The more resistant the weeds, the more Round Up used, and the cycle continues. Some of you may have read my previous blog on The Mother Earth News article on the toxicity of Round Up, but I will summarize it again below:

• The low levels (currently legal in foods) of glyphosate-based herbicides (used in round-up) can cause cell damage and cell death, including human reproductive cells.
• The solvents and surfactants that are added to the glyphosate are considered “inert” and therefore do not require stringent EPA testing or regulation, but act as an excelerant and allow for increased penetration through skin. It increases the toxicity of the glyphosate and it’s ability to kill cells.
• There has been an increase in use of glyphosate, especially in corn and soy crops, as resistant weeds have begun to pop up. “In response to petitions from Monsanto, the EPA has approved up to 20-foldincreases in the legal residue limits for food crops.” Therefore we are being exposed to higher and higher levels of residue.

So basically for me, GMO corn (or non-organic corn) is “round up corn.” You are ingesting more and more Round Up (and other toxins) because the crops are designed to resist them. In addition, since corn pollinates via wind, it is nearly impossible to keep neighboring crops GMO-free. So farmers who do not want GMO plants may end up with GMO hybrid offspring.

I know this is a lot to digest, so I will summarize my basic point:

1. We should have the right to know if our food is derived from GM seeds.
2. Government-subsidized corn has created an unsustainably large corn industry. This has lead to corn being promoted and processed in all forms of processed foods.
3. Government-subsidized corn has led to an excessive amount of corn (and corn derivatives) being eaten not only by humans, but most of the animals in the food chain (most of which were not designed to digest corn).
4. Excess consumption of HFCS is thought to lead to health problems such as obesity and diabetes.
5. The effects of GMO corn on individual who digest it is still unknown.
6. It is very hard to control the spread of GMO corn because it is wind pollinated.

So what can you do?

• Buy Organic: In our family we try to avoid all corn products that are not “organic.” Organic products are required GMO-free ingredients.
• Avoid (but don’t obsess over) HFCS: We also try to avoid HFCS in general. This is actually not that hard except at birthdays and holidays. Even most of the organic or “natural” candies and gummies have HFCS. We compromise on these as long as it is organic HFCS because we limit the amount they are eating.
• Support GMO labeling and the right to label foods GMO-free: Again here is the link to the FRESH petition.
• Educate yourself: Here are some books we have enjoyed. Please let me know your favorites.