Carrot Slaw for Breakfast? A Year of Dietary Fluctuations and How Light Can One Go?

The rapid turnover from Christmas/Solstice to New Year always catches me by surprise, especially living in such a 'far back' timezone. Some places, it's already New Year's Eve!

I don't set great store by New Year's, because I have always believed that any moment can be a beginning. I remember as a kid saying incredulously "but every minute, a new year starts." Perhaps it was easier for me to recognize this, with Jewish New Year--and school year, for that matter--both falling in September, and then everyone's birthday is their own new year's beginning.

All that said, it's a useful time to take stock and reflect, to align with the collective energy, to join the chorus. I'll be back tomorrow with some more general reflections about the year as a whole, but today, perhaps prompted by a bizarre comment I left on Gena's blog, saying that I was going to have carrot 'slaw for breakfast the next day, I'll start with that oddity, and go back over a year of odd breakfasts. I really like to have the same thing for breakfast every day, mostly for convenience, but over the course of the year, that "same thing" has shifted often. It may be that I'd be better off varying my breakfasts throughout a given week: it seems I'm prone to feeling nauseous after breakfast, and something can work for a while and then suddenly "not work."

I did, in fact, have carrot 'slaw for breakfast the morning after that comment. It may not be surprising, given my obsession with carrots, that I thought of them when feeling out of sorts with my regular breakfast and generally a little under the weather.

Carrot Breakfast 'Slaw for 1

1 large grated carrot

1 tablespoon melted coconut butter

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

squeeze of lemon juice

Mix all these together and let sit overnight.

Top with a teaspoon of ground flax meal, a teaspoon of lecithin, and a tablespoon or two of goji berries and raisins. Can also add some spirulina for protein.

I also had a kiwi and half an orange to round this breakfast out. It may not sound like a lot, but it sure was delicious.

In the early part of the year, I was having a smoothie with a bazillion different superfoods and vegetables and no fruit or sugar.

Then, that stopped working, or I stopped being willing to have it "not work," and I was eating leftover salads and carrots for breakfast. For a while, I was eating only yams, carrots, nettles and some coconut kefir, so the first three of those were my breakfasts.

Then, I went back to all-fruit, and a big hunk of watermelon...

...or other fruit medley was my breakfast.

Then, I got back into smoothies, but felt like I didn't have time to make them at breakfast, and needed something quicker. Sometimes, I had berries, fruit and coconut kefir with spirulina.

Then, for months, my breakfast was quinoa/amaranth/millet very-watery-porridge with berries, banana, turmeric and occasionally flax meal and protein powder.

At some point in there, I stopped eating bananas again because they're not digesting well for me. And for some of that time, I substituted adzuki beans for the millet and quinoa.

Lately, my breakfast has been chia pudding made from one tablespoon of chia seeds soaked overnight in water or herbal tea, sometimes adding some thawed acai juice, with some protein powder, lecithin and tocotrienols added in the morning and some fruit on the side.
It's amazing to me how filling that breakfast is for so few calories! You'd also think (I also thought) that with so few calories, there'd be no way I'd get nauseous.
Wrong! Just the past couple weeks, after a month or so of chia pudding for breakfast every morning, I've been nauseous until lunchtime after eating it.

Hence the carrot 'slaw, and very occasionally, if something like this is marked down at the store...

 ...I'll have it for breakfast with a little flax meal and lecithin, and a few berries.

Maybe I'll go back to chia pudding tomorrow, or perhaps I'll just have to have carrot 'slaw again!

It seems like I've come in a full circle from minimal sugar and low calories but lots of 'superfood' type stuff, through just fruit with no protein at all, through starchy porridge, porridge with added protein powder, and back to minimal sugar and low calories with 'superfood'-type stuff, albeit in a simpler version. Perhaps it's natural to go more fruity in the summer, even up here. But if anything, I'm eating a higher percentage of raw foods now than I was in the summer, when I was eating quite a bit of cooked starch.

My inner minimalist is definitely in the ascendant right now, both for frugality and for the simple, academic interest of seeing how little food I actually "need." That's an area in which I can claim to some expertise, actually, and in the new year I'm going to start sharing some tips for "going lightly." When I have time, I'll write a whole book about it!

Would you be interested in a book on "going lightly," or are you more interested in the "rev your metabolism and eat all you want" approach (which I don't have the expertise to offer!)?

Is there any breakfast I haven't tried and should try?

Kefir Update; What (Inhibition) Are You Giving Up For the Holidays?

I hope everyone's having a relaxing weekend and not spending too much time waiting in line... We're still in the bright, crisp sunny days here.

An update on my kefir situation: I mentioned recently that I'd tried to move away from the super-labor-intensive kefir-making with coconut milk powder that I'd been doing and that the grains weren't taking kindly to the sugar-water fare. Well, after a little more discussion with Marilyn Kefirlady, I tried to revive them with the diet they were accustomed to - the coconut milk powder from Wilderness Family Naturals again. And they're happy again!

So I'm back to coconutty bacterial goodness, which my ND had said was good for me anyway. I'm trying some ways to streamline the process and make it less labor-intensive. Maybe I'll make little lime cheesecakes (no sugar or dairy or grains) with it again, like I did a few month ago. And I'm enjoying it mixed with sauerkraut and sprouts - very winter-appropriate!

But even better, my wonderful friend Bitt has shared some water kefir grains with me, so now I can enjoy both the coconut creamy and the fizzy drinky varieties of probiotic yumminess! Thank you so much!
(This isn't the piece of good news I mentioned yesterday, btw. How cool to have so much good news to share.)

Giving Up (Inhibitions) for the Holidays


I'm not the kind of person who slacks off on a diet over the holidays. I tend to be very doctrinaire and dedicated if I'm following some kind of diet plan, especially if it's to kill yeast or similar. However, I am aware that many people do use the holidays as time for indulgence, and additionally, my ND has charged me with the challenge of breaking some of my food rules.

It suddenly struck me today that breaking food rules is actually 'giving something up,' which isn't a usual association with holidays. Maybe my 'renunciate' side can feel better about it framed that way?!

I pondered the question as I started my first onslaught on Holiday goodies prep...

Why, oh why am I incapable of doing one thing at a time? And why wouldn't that cacao butter melt faster? (Moments after I took that photo, the cuisinart bowl ended up on the floor, which I can giggle about now but was annoying at the time.)

And just inches to the left of the above picture...

Poetry writing books and recipe books from the library and research into ancient ecology and diet and a spatula, all mixed up together, just inches from the food spray zone! Thank goodness there were no casualties. And isn't the ocean beautiful in the background?

Well, it should come as no surprise that as I got ready to make goodies and imagined which ones I might be able to partake in myself, I was thinking that I would allow myself some chocolate over the holidays...

I don't know why that's such a no-brainer for me, why chocolate continues to be so alluring, despite the fact that it really doesn't make me feel good, in a lot of ways. Recipe-tasting at lunchtime, I felt again the immediate jitteriness and anxiety increase.

What else do I 'give up?' Well, I was looking through all these recipes, and instead of always trying to convert all sweeteners to stevia, I am willing to have more xylitol over the holidays. And although I still don't feel like I want to use agave, I decided that now is an appropriate time to admit a little sugar-experimenting in the form of coconut nectar, which, amazingly, one store in town here carries,


...and which is supposed to be very low-glycemic anyway. Yes, it's expensive, but it's the holidays!
I'll tell a bit more about what I'm making with it soon. I'm also going to be lax about my ban on nuts and seeds besides coconut (which I'll talk more about soon, as I just keep promising), since so many raw goodies rely on them so heavily. I accidentally figured out a way to make myself feel better about using them too, which I'll share in due course.

What are you giving up for the holidays?

Oh, speaking of holiday bounty, Averie is giving away an amazing $50 giveaway with iHerb. That's really one that would be worth winning...

Ok, off to play some more in our multipurpose kitchen surface...
much love

Winter Pictures, Kefir Woes, Giveaway Tomorrow

Happy day to everyone! I wanted to share some of the scenery with which we're being blessed around here.

Last Saturday, we went birdwatching on a beach about 15 miles north of here. We saw some unusual birds, including redwing blackbirds who have no business this far north at any time of the year!... And we got very close to this juvenile bald eagle, who was conserving energy and looking haughty. (Out of respect for the bird, we didn't try to get real close, but this is closer than I'd normally expect to be.)

Yesterday and today, we were hiking on beaches near here as the sun came up around 9.45:

Isn't that glorious? The temperatures have actually been dropping after sunrise these past few days: it seems that at night there is some cloud-cover, which warms things up, but when the sun rises and the sky clears, even though the sun is bright and beautiful, it doesn't warm things up.

Speaking of warming things up, Homer has a lot of coal: in fact, it was originally a mining town as much as a fishing town. Unfortunately, the mining out of coal seams is a big factor in the terrible erosion problems along the seashores around here now. But as you hike along the beaches, you'll often find deposits of coal, and sometimes great patches spattered with smaller coal chunks. You'll often also see 'petrified wood,' which is semi-fossilized wood that hasn't quite turned into rock or coal yet. I adore it: it's just so beautiful. Here's a huge chunk we saw this morning:

We also found a stranded jellyfish. This was about as big across as my foot. Doesn't it look just like a giant hard candy? (despite being so soft itself)

Just for fun, because I thought it looked so funny: here's a shot of our cabin after we did laundry two days ago. It's a ventilation issue, because those wet clothes represent a lot of water that needs to go somewhere...

So we opened and flapped the door periodically through the day, which cooled things down faster than you'd believe.

Now for my kefir update. Remember my very time-consuming coconut kefir-making process using Wilderness Family's coconut milk powder?

Well, between my concern over the trace of dairy in the coconut milk powder and the time-consuming factor, when we finally got home from our travels, I decided to try making water kefir for a while instead. In fact, I tried out Amanda Rose's suggestion of making water kefir, adding nettle tea and fermenting for one more day as an extra mineral boost together with the probiotics.

Well, it made wonderful tonic kefir for a few days, but then, the grains simply ceased to convert the sugar! (I was using pure evaporated cane juice.) I'm at a loss, and unfortunately, Marilyn Kefirlady, from whom I obtained the grains, hasn't been forthcoming with any suggestions as to whether I could revive them. She suggested that keeping them warm enough is very important, but every time I've gone traveling,  I've left them in the fridge while I was gone and they've bounced right back afterwards.

Meantime, I'm missing my kefir. Both the effervescent, bacteria-sour-yumminess, and the wonderfully creamy sour coconut that I used to have in the fridge. I'm missing the coconut version even more so since, for reasons I'll be talking about soon, I'm experimenting with cutting all nuts and seeds, including the chia and flax that I mostly eat (with the exception of coconut and mac nuts), down to a minimum or nothing for a little while, and when I get hungry for a snack and am not going to eat a chia cracker, coconut kefir was often a go-to item, at least when at home. So, I'm putting my hopes to the universe and my feelers out to get kefir back into my life soon!

Have you ever quit something and then really missed it?

Stay tuned for a giveaway tomorrow!
much love.

As Promised - Coconut Kefir a Different Way - Thoughts, Please!

I've obliquely mentioned my 'different coconut kefir' a number of times and promised to blog about it: I very much want to know what folks think about it. I also mentioned that there's one product with a tiny 1% of sodium casinate (a milk derivative) that I use - they're both the same deal: it's what I use for making coconut kefir! I'm highly ambivalent both because of that ingredient and because it is such a labor-intensive process, as you will see. It took me so long to do this because of the difficulty of photographing the process. And now that I have all the photos, Blogger refused to let me upload two of the best ones! What's up with that? (It said 'server rejected' and slapped my wrist about not having the right to upload those photos. Excuse me? I took them myself with my own camera!) So, apologies for the photography!

I use my kefir grains to culture a coconut cream made up from Wilderness Family Naturals' Coconut Milk Powder -

It is mostly low-temperature spray-dried coconut milk with 8% maltodextrin and 1% sodium casinate to help prevent clumping.

But even with those additives, it's pretty clumpy, as you can see! I use about three of these spatula-loads...

...blended up with a small amount of water, that I then top off to just over a pint.

Add in the kefir grains, cover, let sit for 24 hours or more...

...and the kefir cream rises to the top and the whey is at the bottom. The cream at the top has such an incredible texture that I didn't want to stir it back together, so I got myself a turkey-baster at a thrift store(!), cleaned it well, and use it to suck the whey up from the bottom -

Here is the whey - about a cup each time. It's not totally precise - I always end up sucking up some cream too.

And here is the cream with the kefir grains mixed in, sitting at the bottom of the jar.

The labor-intensive part is getting the cream out of the jar and separating the grains from it...

Blogger wouldn't let me upload the picture with the whey, cream and grains all separated, but the one above is on the way to that. I end up with half- to three-quarters of a cup of cream, that looks like this:

The tricky thing is that I almost always miss a couple of grains and have to pick them out later when I'm eating the cream. It really only works because I'm the only person eating this - I don't know how well it would work for a crowd. I guess I could just stir everything together, strain out the kefir grains and then strain out the whey - but the floated-to-the-top texture of the kefir is just so great...

I love getting both 'whey,' fizzy and delectable, and cream, out of the kefiring process. I use the whey in my green smoothies, to start sauerkraut, just drink it straight. The kefir cream I mostly eat straight, but here it is as a delectable no-sugar treat -

- mixed with a little stevia and lime zest, on a crust of pecan/flax/coconut/xylitol/lime zest. So yes, it has great potential as a dessert ingredient, if I save up several days' worth, or make bigger batches, or strain the grains out and then strain again. It really is delectable - it is sour, rich, creamy, with just a hint of coconut flavor remaining. Wonderfully satisfying texture and flavor. And all those beneficial bacteria too!

Kefir experts: is this ok for the kefir grains? I notice that they're always clogged with the cream (and when we were in Oregon and I was buying coconut water and kefiring it, the grains ended up looking very different, expanded). They've also scarcely grown since I bought them several months ago: I understand that naturally they reproduce. This is probably a pretty low-sugar product for them to work on. Occasionally I've added some sugar to the mix and they seem to have been invigorated by it.

So, I have ambivalence about the process, because it's so time-consuming, but I also have mixed feelings about the coconut milk powder itself, or more specifically, about that little 1% sodium casinate. I'm not a strict ethical vegan, but I generally feel better (in all respects) when avoiding animal products. And I have a really horrendous reaction to cow dairy, especially when processed. It has frightening effects on my mood and mental state (as I believe I mentioned wrt ghee in Oregon).  When I eat any quantity of this kefir cream, I notice a slight mucus-y feeling in the throat and sometimes nose. I wonder if it's my imagination, or if it's an allergic response to that trace of dairy. At least it doesn't make me psycho...

I'd love to hear everybody's thoughts on this, please!