Welcome to Monday. This week is St. Patrick's Day, and as I have some Irish roots, I did indeed aim to think green for this week's #mondayhealthbasics blog post. My week got off to a roaring start with a thoughtful gift from one of my sisters, a book from boreal herbalist wunderkind Beverley Gray called The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North – a Guide to Harvesting, Preserving and Preparing. Oh the joy. Oh the possibilities!
Leafing through the book last night, I zoned in on the Stinging Nettle, or Urtica dioica. Yes yes yes, the same plant that gives you the very intense zing-like needling you would experience were you to chance upon a patch without knowing it. This perennial plant runs wild in almost every nook and cranny of this planet where there are wetter areas or where the soil has been disturbed. It loves rich damp soil. And seeing as spring seems to be just around the corner, it will be one of the first wild plants that will pop up for early harvesting.
Read moreThis week's Monday Health Basics idea is one that I have implemented in my weekly approach to making meals an easier and more attainable task, and has evolved over time. In the last six or seven years, I have slowly winnowed out packaged and prepared foods from our family's regimen and have been aiming for more and more whole foods from scratch. It all started with my few years of working in the kitchen at my daughter's school, helping to prepare the school's hot lunches. Batch cooking is really at the heart of making meals for large groups, and some of these tenets can be taken into your own kitchen, albeit on a much smaller scale. Let me save you that five years' of ruminating I did, and skip to the good part. BATCH COOKING ON THE WEEKEND. In do-able chunks.
Read moreI am going over one of the first and most basic changes I recommend to my newest clients: SWITCH TO FILTERED.
We're talking water, of course. We're talking nix the straight up tap water, instead filtering it so it's of gentler support to your body. There are lots of reasons, first and foremost because of chlorine. This chemical is found in our tap water and thank goodness it is – to be clear, this prevents our water supply from contamination which means it saves us from disease and infection from bacteria that could be found in our water supply. Adding chlorine to our drinking water means we can prevent getting sick from water-borne diseases like cholera, E.coli and Giardia. Really quite brilliant, yes. But all of this disinfecting comes with a price.
Read moreFor this last Monday Health Basics post of January, I am talking all things fermented. Partly because I have seen such big health improvements for myself since introducing these yummy things over three years ago, but also from anecdotal tales from clients and class participants about how much fermented foods have benefited them on their trails. Not to mention, ferments are seeing a kind of renaissance these days, it would seem! And with good reason. Read on for more.
Read moreI recently had the pleasure of hanging out in Malcolm-from-The-Light-Cellar's kitchen as we cracked jokes about the bloodiness of beets with All Hallows Eve lurking in the near future, and talked of the purported legendary status of beet kvass in the world of aphrodisiacs. What is beet kvass, you ask? If you ask me, I will tell you its nutritional content and point out all of the benefits of consuming a fermented beverage for improved overall health. But if you put those sciency things aside, I will tell you that it is one of my favourite beverages, tasting of the salty earth, a drink I can have every day and never tire.
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