4 REASONS TO AVOID CORN SYRUP

4 REASONS TO AVOID CORN SYRUP

My last post pictured a basket of commercial snacks.  If we had looked at the labels, chances are – they ALL had high fructose corn syrup ingredients.   Here’s the story on that…

By now, you’ve more than likely seen one of the ads put out by the Corn Refiners Association. The ads tell the story of a “natural” sweetener made from corn. They go on to insinuate that high fructose corn syrup has been unfairly portrayed and that this truly American ingredient is fine in moderation.  But what are the facts about high fructose corn syrup? How is it made? Is it healthy in moderation to the body and the planet? Here are the facts…

1. The Process of Making High Fructose Corn Syrup is Pretty Weird

First of all, there’s nothing natural about high fructose corn syrup and it most certainly does not exist in nature. The process starts off with corn kernels, yes, but then that corn is spun at a high velocity and combined with enzymes: alpha-amylase, glucoamylase, and xylose isomerase, so that it forms a thick syrup that’s sweeter than sugar and VERY cheap to produce. That’s why it’s poured into a huge majority of mass produced processed foods.

2. High Fructose Corn Syrup – “CAN’T STOP EATING IT”…

High fructose corn syrup interferes with the body’s metabolism so that a person can’t stop eating. It’s truly hard to control food cravings because high fructose corn syrup slows down the secretion of leptin in the body. Leptin is a crucial hormone in the body that tells you that you’re full and to stop eating. That’s why it’s so closely associated with obesity in this country. It’s like an addictive drug.

3. There Might be Mercury in Your Corn Syrup

… according to MSNBC in one study, published in the Journal of Environmental Health, former FDA scientist Renee Dufault tested 20 samples of high fructose corn syrup and found detectable mercury in 9 of the 20 samples.

4. The Environmental Impact of Corn products & High Fructose Corn Syrup!

Corn is grown as a monoculture, meaning that the land is used solely for corn, not rotated among crops. Most corn is GMO,(genetically modified) so that toxic cocktail of pesticides is used to reduce the pests which love large monoculture crops. Monocultures can deplete the nutrients in soil and lead to erosion. In addition, the pesticides pollute our soil and ground water.

Skip the High Fructose Corn Syrup

Make Your Own Snack Foods…instead of buying the prepackaged variety. This way you can control your ingredients and use safer sweeteners. You can also save some major dough and reduce the amount of packaging that your family throws away.  You won’t be eating as many snacks because they take time to create. Make some homemade cookies together – it is fun!

Reference: http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/avoid-fructose-corn-syrup.html

FOOD ‘CHOICES’ – ARE THEY CHOICES AT ALL???

FOOD (or Food Substances) ‘CHOICES’ – ARE THEY CHOICES AT ALL???

So easy to use our rational brain cells & think…  “we can make new food choices if we just know what to eat”.  From my experience it is not that simple at all.  Food choices are the result of a lifetime of taste preferences, habit, habit, habit, and availability and more…

Food selections during transition to a healthy diet requires at least ALL of the following:

WILL

DESIRE                                                                    

EDUCATION

BELIEF

ATTENTION

TASTE RE-EDUCATION

IMPRINTING

RE-IMPRINTING*

AVAILABILITY (of real food)

NON-AVAILABILITY (of ‘food like substances’)

ADAPTABILITY

INCOME PRIORITY FOR FOOD

MAKING DO WITH WHAT IS HERE

*(as much as 6 weeks of re-imprinting)

And – most of all – ENJOYING  the foods you eat!!!

Tackling the reduction of food addictions – which many of us modern eaters are dealing with – is a book in itself.  Each topic on this Transition List is a potential chapter in this “psychology of eating” book!!  I do not pretend to understand how to make this process work out.  It depends on the depth of commitment & deep-seated comfort that food & eating offers.  In my own pervasive “foodie” history – when offered a new way of eating in early adulthood, I changed my habits & choices instantly.  I had the desire, I used will power, I was getting an education in new foods & nutrition as a health foundation, I made availability a prime focus, I wanted to partly because of being surrounded by new friends whom I wanted to please & eat with!  It was 1970, and I became a Macrobiotic overnight.  I think it was a stroke of luck and changed the course of my entire life.

This option does not usually occur.   Especially nowadays – when highly processed, highly addictive foods are on every street corner in affordable and colorful bags… How can we resist if we are deeply unsatisfied & hungry after a day of ill-conceived nutrition?  These corporate ‘food like substances’ are always permeated with “Cravenol” – that indefinable something that keeps you munching until the bag is empty or your tongue swells up – which ever comes first…or – maybe you even keep eating although your tongue hurts!  Does the roof of your mouth ever feel like it is peeling off?  Oh, my – what has become of our food “choices”?

I admit to having gone over the limit so many times, and to think – I even have a degree in Health & Nutrition, I had a ‘real food’ childhood, I had an early start in good adult food habits – eating real food, enjoying simple tastes in the company of friends.  I of all people should be able to overcome temptation of corporate food like substances.  Why – I even have diabetes in my immediate family!  Note that “knowing” does not equate with “doing”.  Well, in fact – I do eat rather well almost all the time, with the exception of a desire for mid-afternoon sugar rush snacks …more true confessions later…

So – what can we do?  Certainly early education & availability of real food is the best starting point – school gardens & lunch programs could change the entire food landscape in a generation. 33% to 50% of these kids are at risk of diabetes, and that will change our Nation & Health care system in a way we cannot begin to imagine.  Watch the movie for inspiration:  FOOD, INC

Read Michael Pollan – any one of his books will do, the easiest is the newest – “Food Rules“.

So, let’s put our attention immediately somewhere – start by having good food at home.  Using crock pots & simple salads, a kitchen garden in every household, even the busiest of us can begin to transition.  Availability will go a ways toward helping the change.  The rest of that “Food Transition” List is going to be a lifetime work for each of us.  What a fix we have gotten ourselves into!  Nothing else to do but to go and have a nice meal & give thanks that we have waked from the nightmare & can see the road ahead.  See some HEALTHY Food movies with your family -  suggestions include -

“ALL JACKED UP” – Teens discover they are uncontrollably addicted to corporate foods

King Corn
Super Size Me
Fast Food Nation
The Future of Food
Our Daily Bread [meat industry - DO Not watch unless ready to become veggie]
Two Angry Moms [school lunches]

and – the exceptional – Jamie’s School Dinners – about lunches & gardens…

RIDING THE TRAIN ~ SAVING THE TREES

IT’S ABOUT THE JOURNEY…

I RODE THE TRAIN TODAY – NOT JUST ANY TRAIN, IT IS THE WORLD FAMOUS “SKUNK TRAIN” THROUGH ANCIENT REDWOOD FORESTS, AND AN ALMOST UNTOUCHED WATERSHED THAT BIRTHS the WILD SALMON for california’s MENDOCINO PACIFIC COAST.

IMAGINE this journey with me….

Close your eyes & take a window seat on a Vintage Rail Cruiser as we journey on one of the most scenic railroads in North America – the Skunk Train. Let’s journey back in time into one of the last temperate rain forests. We ride deep into the headwaters of the Noyo River Canyon & watershed. We stop to pray and ask for forgiveness from the Old Growth Redwoods that have been saved from the logger’s ax over & over in the last 100 years. The story of these trees is phenomenal, and transcends time. Some of them are 1500 years old. Some of them may be felled this next season.

Now open your eyes and look around you – your own beloved trees, your own beloved watershed and hometown with its potential developments & progress. What do you want for your own local community? What will you pray for? Work for?

~everywhere – The TREES ARE IN DANGER OF BEING CUT FOR LUMBER. THE SALMON ARE IN DANGER OF EXTINCTION. IT SEEMS THAT so many lives HANG ON The THREAD OF BELIEF, ON THE THREAD OF LOVE, ON THE THREADS OF RELATIONSHIP THAT WE create TOGETHER ON THIS FRAGILE PLANET WE CALL HOME.

I invite us all to dream together as the deepening dark draws us inward, as the bear begins her hibernation. let us dream of a nation united – a nation united by bands of steel & friendship, a nation we create in our hearts, a nation of one people. May we imagine our lives & the world as we want it to be – fir me – that is a future filled with beauty and peace, voices speaking & singing truth. May we blend our voices and speak for the biggest dream that we imagine – let’s sing the chorus of life – creating the future we dream by our speaking, our telling, our stories, our every action.

blessed bee,

annie Brigit waters

Garden Bed Composting

Annie’s Garden Bed Composting Method

When I compost directly in a garden bed,

I follow this procedure:

1- Make a small hole or depression in the soil & cover the waste with a bit of soil
2- Use a shovel to cut through both the soil and garbage several times…this cuts up whole cabbages, bad lemons, moldy squash, wrinkled apples, etc into smaller pieces ( naughty me for wasting such good food!)
-& mixes the soil into the old food mass, which lays a pattern of bioactive microbes into the center of the garbage. They do the work for you, even in the cold of Northern California Mountain winter ( it gets down to about 20 degrees here)
3- I also pile loose straw on top of the whole thing…then walk away from that area once it is pretty full, and use another part of the bed or even another bed…this takes a month or 2…
4- By spring the straw is still whole and dry on top, but has started to compost where it touches the soil, that gets mixed into the bed when I turn it and dig it…

Now, if you want to be a “no-dig” gardener, (Ruth Stout was my hero!)…this method does not work more than once for each garden bed…so, I am doing it only to start new beds, as I am a lazy gardener and want to double dig (John Jeavons style) only once, and then never re-dig the bed again!!!

There are 2 schools of compost style -
I am a compost “mixer, not a piler/stacker”…as mixing seems to speed it all up, reduce smell, etc…although I am now trying a stack method inside of a “box” made of old pallets this spring…using layers of yard waste, cardboard, newspaper layered with my kitchen scraps, I‘ll report on that in a few months!

PLANTING edible LANDSCAPES & GARDENS

The RED WAGON REVIEW

~~~

PLANTING edible LANDSCAPES & GARDENS

It was a beautiful Saturday morning on April Fourth!

Four teams of Little Red Wagons left the Willits Little Lake Grange ready to plant veggies in neighborhood garden plots. We were loaded with cuttings from an easy to grow staple vegetable – the “Tree Collard” & lettuce donated by Brookside Farm, also broccoli & chard starts donated by Emandal Farm. Potatoes from Michael Stewart’s garden were also offered as a planting option. Thanks to all of our wonderful sponsors, donors and hardy volunteers!

Why were we walking the streets with vegetables? The future of healthy food begins at home – local, fresh – best when harvested daily. We can segue into larger kitchen gardens by creating an Edible Landscape – beginning with the introduction of 1 or more food plants into an existing flower bed, or large container of perennials or any landscaped, watered & tended area.

On Saturday, We planted over 15 different locations with an assortment of veggies, with grateful household recipients standing by, or helping to shovel the holes out! Who didn’t want a free plant? Some renters or older residents declined, they couldn’t care for it or didn’t like to eat those foods, but – mostly – anyone who was home, wanted us to help them get started! I found that meeting a number of my neighbors was a very great thing, not to be underrated. I encourage anyone to take on this simple and fun opportunity – share a garden with your neighbors, especially the ones you haven’t met yet! It could change you, the community, the world.

-Submitted by Anne Waters Weller

Edible Landscapes

Edible Landscape…

With the prices of food, the uncertainties of the economics – it is certainly time

to plant some food no matter what way we live.

Edible Landscape…

I love this term!  Exactly what we need in this year of focus on

“Local Food and Gardens”…

fresh, juicy and delicious surroundings – the most local  of  all

foods – on our own lawns!

As spring arrives – I am looking at my yard with its different problems and opportunities.

I believe there is an edible or herbal plant for every situation – climbing, low, shade or sun,

dry or moist – in my garden patch… with some research, you can find plants for every situation in your location too! So – why plant just any old plant in your landscaping when you can plant something edible and make food and fun for your family & the future?

Read more: “Edible Landscaping for Beginners | beingfrugal.net”

I was also recently very inspired by the film “The Power of Community” – about how Cuba survived their

“power down” and loss of  imported food in  the ‘90’s…they planted food everywhere – on the balconies of

tall buildings, in old tubs on benches outside of Office buildings; it seemed that everyone helped to get more

calories and nutrition by planting small or large Organic “Victory Gardens” all over the place.

On that note – Let’s help promote a National Victory Garden Movement to support the transition of backyard,

front yard, window boxes, rooftops, and unused land into organic food production areas.

Starting with a White House Food Patch, we can all get started by taking action in our own communities.

Edible Landscape…

Back to your own food production – What do you like to eat?  Plant some! If you already have an established

flower garden or border, it is easy to interplant some delicious looking veggies like peppers or basil and maybe

strawberries as edible ground cover in areas you are already planting and watering.  Instead of putting in that neat

edging row of annual pansies, make it a row of low growing herbs such as Thyme. They will offer you cooking

condiments, tea, small flowers and as an added bonus – you won’t have to replant them every year!

While you are at it – offer your soil some compost or mulch, some soil enhancers like manure or bone meal to give

your veggies more oomph!

There are all kinds of great resources on planting properly with soil additives, and must at least add in nutrients that

the plants use up.  The benefits of permaculture and no-dig methods take you even a bit further into the realm of super great gardens and less work!

I’m all for that – so my winter reading included a number of books –

The #1 A+  book to get is this one -

Gaia’s Garden, A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway

– as well as recommending the following:

* The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping by Rosalind Creasy;
* Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally by Robert Kourik;
* Perennial Vegetables: From Artichoke to Zuiki Taro – A Gardener’s Guide to Over 100 Delicious Easy-to-Grow Edibles by Eric Toensmeier;
* Self-Sufficiency Gardening; Financial, Physical, and Emotional Security from Your Own Backyard by Martin P. Waterman;
* The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It by John Seymour
* How to Grow More Vegetables… – by John Jeavons
* The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book, Gardening Without Work for the Aging, the Busy and the Indolent, & How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back – all by Ruth Stout ( and out of print, I think)

Edible Landscape…

This spring I am replanting the borders of my yard with goji berries,olive trees, rugosa roses, elderberries, a fig,

medicinal herbs and even rhubarb – so pretty with its red and green colors…

I love rhubarb pie.

I am also excited about Polyculture planting…intermixing selected plants together by

broadcast seeding – such that

you end  up with a very diverse mix in your garden, a blend of varieties that defies pests

and ripens over time to

offer months of food – perhaps even self-mulches the area over the season.

If all you have is a balcony and an old plastic 1 gal pot filled with dried soil and a dead houseplant you are in luck!

Coffee grounds, tea bags, crushed egg shells can be added to that soil using an old spoon, and then planted with a

few things. Just shred up that dead plant and place in the bottom to help drainage and  over time it will nourish the

soil as well. Occasionally use the rinse water from your spaghetti or even leftover beer to water your garden and

you will be saving water and nourishing the plants too! Frugal measures are

fun and adventurous…

Here are some Container combinations – pretty and practical ideas:

* Curly parsley and yellow pansies (Violas)
* Red leaf lettuce with yellow and orange calendulas
* Red chard and New Zealand spinach
* Dwarf curly kale with dusty miller, pink nemesia, and dianthus
* Curly parsley with trailing blue lobelia
* Oregano with red chard and trailing white lobelia
* Curly parsley and strawberries

Edible Landscape…

Whatever you have time and room for – it  will be a bonus in  your life –

super nutrition & better quality food at a

lower price, a feeling of genuine happiness each day that your hands are in the soil,

and a sense of security that you

can provide for yourself, no matter what comes to pass in this uncertain time.

Try organizing  some community gardens -

I think there are grants out there just for this!

Edible Landscape…sounds a bit like the Garden of Eden, now doesn’t it?

Excuse me while I go munch some groundcover mint…

A Solstice Celebration in Willits – The Importance of Community Traditions

14th Annual** 2008 Winter Solstice Celebration & Spiral Dance

“WEAVING OUR FUTURE”

December 21st, 2008 – 7pm

at Little Lake Grange

291 School St, Willits

*******
A celebration of midwinter with an evening of songs, dance,
theater, candle lighting, and a drum jam!
***
Bring the family, drums, rattles, and an offering for the Food Bank
~~~

This year we bring our community focus onto children and our future.  Our celebration  performances will include “SPACE’s Feat of Freedom Dance/Theatre”, Children’s Mexican Folklorico, The Muse Children’s Theater, Hope, Harmony & Legal Advice, “Anda Jaleo Flamenco”, Rhythm Tonic Dancers, and the West Side Woolleycats and more!

Suggested donation of $5-10 for adults, families $10.

email abweller@pacific.net or  call 459-4499 for more information

**I am not even sure if the year as mentioned (14th?) is correct, as this tradition has been going on for so long – it might even be 15 years!

The point of this post is to remind us all of the importance of the yearly cycles of the seasons – even as our ancient ancestors marked the sun’s path and length of days for reasons of weather and agriculture, or for their own nomadic changes, we might do well to begin to note the natural cycles as a part of our return to nature- our own bio-logic consciousness…our shift into a new way of being…solar values, community celebrtions bringing deeper relationships, and so much more!  Create your own local celebration – or model it on ours….join us energetically as we honor the Sun’s return on December 21st!

Worldwide, interpretation of the event has varied from culture to culture, but most cultures have held a recognition of rebirth, involving holidays, festivals, gatherings, rituals or other celebrations around that time.

Honey – divine nectar , edible bee love and sacred food

I fell in love with the taste of honey as a young girl, and especially loved creamed honey on toast – or comb honey eaten right off of the spoon. Chewing the beeswax for an hour longer was a bonus from this special treat. Taking a moment to savor the vision of golden syrup as it dripped from the hexagonal cells was another aspect of my wonderful memories of comb honey.

And…

I still go off of my “let’s eat carefully of this precious nectar diet” when there is a chance to eat biscuits dripping with golden nectar!

The wonderful & best-selling novel by Sue Monk Kidd, “The Secret Life of Bees” unfolds in a sentimental, honey-glazed land that vaguely resembles South Carolina in 1964. The movie is almost as good as the book – for describing the inner life of its complex characters…I cried all the way through!

There is a scene in the movie – “The Secret Life of Bees” – when Lily smashes several jars of honey in her anger at her lack of mother-love. This abundance of wasted honey really brings home how powerful that loss must have been – for her to destroy the life work of her beloved bees. (One worker bee actually makes

only 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.)

But – that is not the point of this brief post…I merely wanted to remind my readers that honey is precious – so precious that it takes a honey bee (Apis mellifera) 154 trips, carrying tiny amounts of nectar from the flower to the hive, just to make one teaspoon of honey. The days of cooking with an entire cup of honey are long gone in my life…as a natural food devotee in the 1970’s I ate more than my share of this divine nectar. So I hope that we all begin to offer greater respect for the trials of the honey bee in these times of CCD – let’s eat honey wisely, offer our blessings to the bee, and begin to keep hives locally! That will develop better genetic strains of bee that may weather this time of collapse, which I believe mirrors the overall environmental stress of our current Planet -wide crisis.

Honey has been used as a medicine and a sacred food since before the ancient Egyptians began to keep hives.

So – hey – Let’s get back to a sense of the sacred with all of our foods, and especially those which are truly precious and rare, hard to get and involve the sacrifices of our fellow species.

Blessed Bee.

GOT SMALL POTATOES?

I moved into the great “new” house ( what do you call a new home that is very old –70 years old – but is “new to you”?) last August.

We had found a bag of uneaten potatoes from last fall before the move…they were a wonderful mix of colorful heirloom varieties – mislaid from Brookside Farm 2008 Organic CSA basket in a dark corner of the garage… Now – almost a year later – .they had huge 8” long sprouts on almost all of them.

The idea came to put them in our garden beds…a bit of a challenge as these beds had not been worked for a few years and had compacted soil (and not much of it) …but, what to lose? We stuck them in the soil, covered them with straw and watered a few times a week. Ten weeks later, the tops had been blasted by frost and so we dug them up…what a nice surprise! A bucket of smallest potatoes I had ever seen were our first harvest in this potentially wonderful garden. Some of them were the size of my small fingernail…no matter, I tenderly washed them all and made this simple dish ( see photo) from them…

Recipe: Wash potaoes & steam to almost done, cool. Toss with olive oil, herbs, garlic and salt. Bake or broil until slightly crispy on top. Eat. Yum!

Anyone can grow these hardy crop, a famine food for many peoples, and certainly a calorie booster to any one’s veggie garden mix. I suggest we all learn to grow potatoes – very soon!!!

Localize your food supply, you can’t start soon enough.

Permaculture – hooray!!!

Permaculture – hooray!

Max & Maria the Permaculturists – visited the garden yesterday…and what a great inspiring download! He loves my metal roof, thinks I can get all the water I need for a whole dry season from it with t he right storage…and the west side of the house is perfect for one of those “water walls” made of 1500 gallon vertical rectangle storage tanks…this instead of creating a grey water system…so much cleaner and useable…although will require many expensive storage tanks…maybe we can do a combination of rainwater collection and greywater syatem…

Lots more opportunities for making this place into paradise…use pond liner instead of cardboard to lay down on top of the weeds in my walkways and open space areas…it will heat up to as much as 140 degrees and kill even the deeply rooted weeds in a few months, then we can go in and make a new garden area, waterways, whatever we want…

What else? Well – money was not object – we could create paradise right away…more realistically, we are going to take out some more trees that are keeping the sun out, make better shade areas in the right places…put the main garden areas into maximum cultivation by tending and soil cultivation, and more…

I have great confidence in Max and am excited that he wants to design this permaculture plan for me! I advise anyone who wants to get the maximum from their space to hire a specialist for advice and a consultation, even if you are intending to do the work yourselves.

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