Bloody Goldfish on toast for supper again.

My dad was an Antarctic adventurer.  Unsure quite what to do in life, not yet ready to settle into teaching after his University studies in maths and a diploma in education, and following a career so far speckled with odd and interesting jobs he answered an ad in the paper seeking people to join an Antarctic Expedition crew for a year.  He did a crash course in meteorology, Antarctic survival stuff, and sailed for the icebound continent in 1956 or thereabouts as a 'weather guesser'.  They were primitive times back then, he was only the second crew to man their station at Davis, so they inherited a one-room hut and took with them the makings of the rest of the station on board the ship, which they had to build as soon as they got there.  Small crew, all men, with very limited contact via dodgy radio with the outside world for a year or more.

And of course they had to take all their own food with them.  Though there could also be trying moments when one gets (for example) stuck in a blizzard that lasts 14 days with only a week's supply of food (which is how much you take for a 2-day field trip in Antarctica, just in case).  Certain unpalatable truths about seal meat, dog flesh, and so on are learned too.

Huskies (the dogs they used to use for getting around back then) can live off a diet very high in seal meat, so long as you don't then eat the dogs, especially the dog's livers.  Certain vitamins get concentrated to toxic levels.  Fun But Obvious Fact - dead seal freezes, so the best way to cut it up is like a log; in rounds, with a chainsaw.  Glad you know that now? :-) This is the Antarctic Leopard seal. They are notoriously unfriendly.  Do not try to pat one.

Luckily, my father's expedition had a Frenchman in the crew who just happened to be an excellent cook.  He didn't just bake bread, he plaited loaves specially, and gave them some actual variety and joy when it was his turn to cook.  But of course, nearly everything that went down with them was tinned.  And you can imagine the boredom of the same tinned diet over and over and over for months and interminable months in a small building with 6 or 7 others.

Which brings me to the Bloody Goldfish.  That's the typically Aussie name they gave the detested Sardines in Tomato Sauce - detested not for any reason other than because there were so bloody many of the bloody little things, meaning they were a most frequent dietary item.

I've never eaten a tinned sardine in my life, and we certainly never had them in our house when I was growing up.  Dad would make shuddery comic-disgust faces whenever someone said the word 'sardine' and mutter "uuurrgh Bloody Goldfish" under his breath.

One erstwhile tubie momma (her boy has successfully weaned and eats like a champ now) had a standard super-food blend she'd make involving sardines, avocado and olive oil.  Yes, heavy on the fats but they're all good fats and when you have a look at the breakdown of nutrients it's an amazingly full and power-packed blend.  She'd add other stuff around this but this was a very regular blend backbone.

Recently, in the course of research for my book and through life in general I've been prompted to think about including some more animal-sourced foods in my diet.  I am typically a lacto-vegetarian blender you see, relying mainly on legumes, nuts, seeds and dairy for my proteins.  Very very rarely I'd blend egg if it had been baked in something or if we had egg leftover from a meal for guests.  Just easier when you have a vegetarian household - no meat-handling issues in the fridge or sink etc.  Still, Meeta's fine with my consuming whatever as long as I'm 'clean' about it and eventually I decided I would.  I'd start with these little oily fish that are so calorie-dense and so good for you.

I've spoken of it before, the advantage I have of being my own blender, and able to communicate; I can 'listen' to my own body, and in fact removing the distractions of taste and smell and all that joyous stuff around eating has made me even more keenly aware of how food feels and how my body responds to it.  And it was saying it wanted sardines.  Also, maybe some emu, kangaroo, and some bone broth-type stuff, probably from a cow.  Emu is my favourite meat of all; if you're a carnivore and you've never tried it, seriously do yourself a favour.

Of course, I wouldn't buy the Bloody Goldfish.  Apart from anything, it's hard enough finding good sustainably-fished sardines from local waters let alone ones with organic extras so good ol' spring water it was for my little tinned guys.  I have eaten sardines before, but fresh luscious ones caught earlier that day, not the tinned ones, as I mentioned.  They do go with tomato really well.  And it's tomato season in my garden right now:  here's what I blended:

Tins sardines in springwater x 2
Light rye sourdough bread w caraway seeds (org, baked by me that morning),  large chunk.
Lettuce, various types, from the garden
Tomatoes, cherry pear variety, from the garden
Capsicum (bell pepper) from the garden
Basil and marjoram, from the garden
Garlic cloves, locally grown
Organic tomato paste
EVOO, organic, from just down the road.
Water.

I had an avocado in the fridge but it turned out to be what lots of chefs I know call a 'hand grenade' so its grey mooshiness is now happily feeding worms.  I added a splash more oil because of this.

As food, I imagine having roasted the little tomatoes and peppers in some oil, and mushed them into the sardines on to fresh hot toasted crusty rye sourdough, with the herbs roughly chopped through and some salad leaves.  Mm.

I didn't weigh or measure, and got 2 litres of pretty thick but rich and smooth not-too-fishy-smelling ochre-coloured blend that I had roughly estimate at about 35-40 cal/oz.  Not too fatty, and a good spread of nice nutrients. Very 'crunchy' in the green/locavore/organic/hippy sense too if you're not hung up on the whole animal death thing.  And I have to say, a couple of hours after a feed, it feels really very good.

I plan to honour the demise of a few more animals by consuming their flesh thoughtfully and respectfully in as friendly a way to them and our planet as I can in the near future.  I'll keep you all appraised of any interesting developments. :-)

This is Davis station in the summer after my dad lived there.  The Vestfold Hills area of Antarctica remains relatively ice-free, especially in summer.  Nice climate too.  On mid-summer days the temperature may even get up to freezing point - t-shirt weather.  40 below was more typical though.

Bloody Goldfish on toast for supper again.

Mini (ONE) Step At A Time

UPDATE:  PLEASE SEE BOTTOM OF POST FOR THE NEWS.


This might mark a little watershed moment.  Although I'll admit to a slight dose of skepticism, just for now.  What has happened to make this watershed?  In brief, that a large corporate market player has stepped out from under the wing of pharmaceutical company protectionism and made a bold statement in support of food.


The skeptic asks me how long this might remain the case; whether some backpedalling may occur, and wonders at exactly the motivations, but no matter - for now, this is a Good Thing.


For those outside the little loop world of we tubies, enteral feeding devices come in two types - tubes and 'buttons'.  Most people, especially for children with tubes, opt for buttons, as they don't dangle about the place.  Most buttons are retained by internal water-filled balloons which make them simple to replace at home.  The 'button' has now effectively lionized the market.  The market is controlled by just two companies, with different varieties of their own products.

AMT, makers of the rather popular MiniONE button amongst other enteral devices and one of the two main players has just said this on their website page, under the heading section of Are You New To Enteral Feeding?:

"Wherever possible, real food is still the best thing for feeding people, whether they eat the regular way or through a tube."

This is a BIG call.  I have seen device manufacturers' literature saying that their devices are suitable for enteral formula and blenderized foods before, but never have I seen a corporation, one of the Big Medicine Corps, effectively say to the entire marketplace that food is better than formula if you can do it.  Can they get away with it for long, do you think, before someone at Big Pharma takes countermeasures?  

Of course, such countermeasures have long been in place against using food for tube feeding, ever since a reliable and sanitary product that could be shown on paper to provide a spectrum of nutrients suitable for theoretical human life that could be profitably sold was created.  It's called education.  Doctors and dietitians are busy, time-poor people, who often feel under-rewarded for the long and arduous hours they put in at humanity's service, and despite the canniness of many of them, they are vulnerable to slick messaging from the only people with deep enough pockets to provide most of their free, ongoing postgraduate education - the Pharma Corps.  I do not mean to completely belittle the value of such education - of course they need to keep up with developments and changes in science and best practice, and for the most part it is pharmaceutical company funding that drives the research and innovation.  They also put on very nice dinners (I should know, I've hosted enough of them).  


But food has no such champion.  Big Food certainly throws it weight around the mass market and leans heavily on governments around the world to get their bidding done, but the tubie market is too small.  But we're a VERY lucrative market for Big Pharma.  Also, for AMT and their competition.  Naturally, they want the goodwill of the fastest-growing market segment of the fast-growing tubie market.


Still, I congratulate those at AMT with the stones to make this call, even if for now it is just on one part of their website.  They kindly link directly to our sister site (where many of this bog's posts are reproduced and I am a co-administrator also), blenderizeddiet.net.  

Here's to the notion that this might be a key moment in the opening up of the thinking of the medicalized world of tube feeding.  That one day, we might see food on an equally-respected footing with enteral formulae as an option, as well-supported and accepted if not more so, in the medico-industrial complex.


It's not too much to hope for, is it?


EDIT UPDATE: I have just been informed by AMT's marketing manager Lisa Szpak that they have amended their website, saying that "the wording on the website is what you requested to best describe blenderizeddiet.net".  I understand that Beverly Hanset-Burch, our co-admin there, previously provided them with some information they could use.  Lisa went on to say "AMT does not currently have a position regarding real food versus formula.  Nor are we aware of any movement by pharmaceutical companies or device manufacturers regarding real food versus formula.  I apologize for any confusion this may have caused.  We have modified our website to more accurately represent the subject matter of your website."


Sadly, my fears proved founded then.  They have bailed on us regards any endorsement.

Mini (ONE) Step At A Time

'Crunchy' blends can go smoothly too.....

For those unaware, recent times have seen the second-top definition of the word 'crunchy' in most dictionaries as "politically and environmentally liberal" (as in "music that incorporates whalesong sounds pretty crunchy to me"). Or this, more fully from urbandictionary.com - "Used to describe persons who have adjusted or altered their lifestyle for environmental reasons. Crunchy persons tend to be politically strongly left-leaning and may be additionally but not exclusively categorized as vegetarians, vegans, eco-tarians, conservationists, environmentalists, neo-hippies, tree huggers, nature enthusiasts, etc. "  Apparently the etymology of it goes back to a commonly-used phrase in certain circles in the US - shortened from "crunchy granola people".

Lately I've copped a bit of (mostly good-natured) flak about the crunchy nature of most of my blends.  Fair call, and being Australian I am all for the sort of well-meaning stirring we often charmingly refer to as "shit-giving", since being vile to each other and heaping insult and deprecation on our close friends and loved ones proved a valid means of overcoming the torpid emotional stifling and suppression that came with the English part of our foundation.  We're not quite so comfortable with declarations of love as we are with personal insult.  So when you meet an Australian, and when they first call you a bad word, then you know they like you a lot and have accepted you as a friend - just so as you know, OK?  You silly bastard.

So anyway, yes, my take on things nutritional is unapologetically a bit on the crunchy side.  Like a hippie into top-fuel drag racing though, I also wholeheartedly approve of Nigella Lawson's ridiculously consumption-oriented antics in the kitchen in that her message at heart is about joy and love and the shortness of life.  She just expresses it differently from the way I do, is all.

An oft-commented-upon phenomenon when people begin a blended Tube Food journey is the dawning of awareness of food in a whole new way - whether we are blending for ourselves or someone in our care.  In fact, it especially applies to parents of small children.  What happens, by simple virtue of putting stuff into a see-through container and turning it effectively into stomach contents minus the lumps and digestive juices is that we see and smell what a whole meal is really like, down at 'gut' level.  Of course there's the informational approach as well to do our heads in; just in case the blender wasn't illustrative enough.  We read the ingredients on a can of formula, are perhaps a little horrified as we fully understand what it is humans are being asked to subsist on, solely, for the foreseeable future. Then when we go to replace that with a 'regular' store-bought sort of pre-packaged meal (such as we'd happily eat at home), reading the ingredients and scrutinizing the caloric values and nutritional breakdowns gives us another pause for thought. So many unnatural chemicals, so much fat, sugar, salt, so highly denatured and processed...........but it's still OK because it isn't formula; that still makes it OK as Real Food doesn't it?

That, friends, is for each one of us to decide.

My last post here was all about choosing better over best, and why it's a sensible approach.  I stand by it, as I stand by Nigella's genuine quest to enhance our enjoyment of all things foody.  But my journey, and that of many tubies and tubie carers, takes a different path; one more akin to entering the food, to accepting the axiom "you are what you eat" as more than just a throwaway line. This runs the risk of being seen as very crunchy indeed.

We tubies tend to be an unwell lot on average, it must be said.  I mean there are reasons we have tubes, it's not a lifestyle choice for most of us.  And when you take the connection between nourishment and wellness,  then it's hard to turn away from.  The burden of such knowledge, that you can almost without any doubt make a huge difference on your spectrum of ill-health to good-health just by changing your diet, is a heavy one, unless acted upon with some grace.  Admitting that our average diet is frankly an unsustainable horror and abomination to the planet and our health is hard.  It means changing our ways.  Facing up to things.  Admitting we have been conned, perhaps.

But all too easily, steps on the road to this awareness can feel just so relentlessly negative, and this demotivates many of us. Such negativity is often cited as a reason to shy away from falling in with the crunchy brethren and settling for more of the 'regular' normative diet of Homo Microwavicus.  I'm referring to the set of discoveries that those seeking information about food and health make very early on - that pretty much everything that you used to think of as 'food' gives you cancer, heart disease, diabetes, makes you obese, is addictive, messes with your mood and stunts your intelligence.  Etcetera.  It can seem like it's an all-or-nothing venture, either you become a sandal-wearing vegan self-sufficient organic solar power producer and join the ranks of the annoyingly self righteous or you just shy back from the enormity of the whole modern diet catastrophe and settle down to a big dish of nice consoling 'low-fat' chocolate and bacon icecream.  I know many people are simply put off by the mention of a whole grain, an organic vegetable, a mung bean.  And anyway, isn't it all like really hard work?

This last myth is the one I want to bust today.  That using good whole foods is difficult, that *cooking* in itself is hard, takes loads of time, and is expensive.  Baloney.

Double baloney if you have a good blender at your disposal.  Many folks new to the idea of a blenderized diet start from the premise that food will need to be treated in very certain and specific ways to be safely used in a tube.  Not so; in fact, quite the contrary.  I found that getting to know my Vitamix was one of the most liberating things I'd ever experienced with food.  Simply put - I can blend anything.  Paradoxically, this makes it easy to just throw in some Carnation Instant Breakfast, skim milk powder, Cheerios and perhaps a Twinkie and be done with it.  Just as easy is opening a can of formula, and the formula would be arguably better for you too.  But the real possibilities such a blender opens up are awesome - if you're cooking a healthy meal for the family then that can go right in the blender too.  How simple is that?  Any food you can think of to eat in the whole world - you can blend it.

Maybe you've done a bit of reading, and been inspired to go down the local market and buy some bulk whole grains, or legumes.  Maybe you live in a food desert and have to travel to get such things, so you stock up - all good.  You've discovered that frozen vegetables are not only often better quality than 'fresh' from the supermarket but way cheaper too.  Perhaps you've gotten word around with friends and decided that if you all pool together you can buy half a grass-fed organic cow, have it butchered, divided between you and put up in the freezer.  These things all make crunchy so much cheaper than the cheapest junk food it's beyond belief.  Rice and beans or any grains, chosen well, with a little bit of some good fats, some vegetables, maybe some animal parts or secretions, that's the foundations we're talking about.  And if you only look at the adventure from a tube Food perspective, then the whole area of cooking becomes suddenly ten times easier.  Why?  Because it just doesn't matter how it looks, what it tastes like, or whether you cooked it totally 'right'.  It's pretty much impossible to fail.

Crunchy really is just as quick as the alternative, but there's a catch - crunchy usually means waiting.  Rice takes a little while to cook.  Soaking beans is a really good idea, so you'll find yourself spending a whole 120 seconds (that's two minutes) getting out a bowl and some water the night before.  Job's already half done then, you see.  Inventions like rice cookers and slow cookers make it so amazingly simple and easy to prepare too.  Grains, beans, vegetables, meats, whatever - in the crock.  Set.  Come back 3 or 4 hours later and blend.  That was 15 minutes of your life, just spread over a morning or afternoon.  And the rewards?  You've spent less cash (if you've shopped or grown well and wisely), gotten tastier food, better nutrition, a sense of providing and accomplishment, and taken less time than wrangling a bunch of cans/jars/plastic packets, microwaves and other gear, plus you've been quite a bit kinder to the environment.   But there are TWO extra benefits that come from this, neither of which seem obvious in the face of the other.

One, every step you make towards a more naturalistic and 'whole' crunchy approach to food makes every other step that more inviting, that bit more inspiring and easier, as you discover new sensations and flavours, and gain confidence.  Of course, noticing great health improvements can be pretty motivating as well.  But number two, opposite to this and just as important, you'll probably come to care far less about the occasional 'bad' food choice episode.  You'll stop feeling such guilt at consuming a processed convenience or indulgent luxury food here and there.  You'll recognize you're making a certain trade-off between your momentary sense of wellbeing (it was late, convenient, and it's a tasty treat for the family etc) and your desire to feed your tube or your tubie as healthfully as possible.  Why?  Because you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that all that other crunchy stuff you're doing is making up for such stuff.  You can have your Nigella Lawson moments and buy the extravagantly enriched dark chocolate nibblies without overly worrying about the transnational corporation's probable use of child labour or the empty fat-forming calories because you'll have realised by now it's impossible to 100% avoid doing all harm all the time, and because your choices are, for the most part, very responsible ones.  Importantly, that does something very profound to the food we eat (and the food we tube), I believe, or at least to how we assimilate it in ourselves.

How we feel about our food and tube food is just as important as the food itself, in my small and humble opinion.  If it's a burden, if there's a sense of stress, and it all comes down to being a chore - and if we doubt its goodness and whether it's the 'right' thing, then we are doing ourselves a great disservice.  Stress and worry are the biggest and most easily remedied influences on digestive health there are, and they're incredibly infectious.  A carer's stress will translate to a tubie's distress, without a word said or a mention made.  Just as if we're worrying about whether the processed comfort food we're eating is making us fatter and moving us ever closer to diabetes and a coronary before the age of 50 is more sure to make it so than being less worried, because the stress itself is bad for your heart and wreaks havoc with your digestion.  The worry itself creates that great, terrible feedback loop of nihilism - the one that returns you to the sofa with the soda, the chemically-enhanced 1500 cal popcorn with 1000% of your rdi of sodium, and the triple-choc fudge.

Better really is so much better than best in all this too.  Making a move in the crunchy direction not only makes further moves easier, but it makes 'retrograde' decisions less stressy too.  And you'll find over time you make fewer of those processed convenience-food type choices anyway, but enjoy them all the more because of it.

Nigella's hardly the role model for crunchy healthful planet-loving sustainable foodiness, but she's got one thing nailed for sure - genuine enjoyment is at least half the picture.

And since you're reading this here, chances are very high you already know the broad benefits of the Crunchy, and the major horrors of the slick, corporatized consumerist Smooth.  So your choice is fairly (or perhaps unfairly) clear - embrace a bit of a crunchwards direction in your food and tube life, or be prepared for the pressure and stress of your resistance to make you feel worse and more disconnected as time goes on.

I believe in the end that natural selection-type pressures will prevail over our dietary and lifestyle mistakes anyway.  We will all die too, of course; so in the light of this mortal reminder the only real question is this:

How smooth do we want our change into the crunchy future to be?

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'Crunchy' blends can go smoothly too.....

Better Versus Best

I almost called this post Dessert or Desert? But then I figured people might think I was going to talk about how bad spelling is on the internet lately.  No, I'm not - we all know how rotten spelling and grammar are getting these days and it's hardly news.  What that alternative title refers to is the trouble with actually finding real food in so many places these days.

As happens from time to time, I made some tactless comments with good intentions online, and managed to upset some people.  Part of it is that I forget how incredibly lucky I am.  Even though I live in small-town Western Australia, on a very low fixed disability pension, I can still manage to find (and grow) decent fresh food.  It still staggers me that with all the advances in modern civilization, and the explosion of consumer choice - I mean just think of the sheer SIZE of a supermarket these days - that an enormous percentage of the Western (especially American, it has to be said) urban population lives in a virtual food desert.  There is either no fresh or whole food available, or it is priced beyond the ordinary means of the average locals.  Very often what is available is factory-farmed, genetically mis-manipulated, artificially grown, processed, and OLD beyond belief, to the point of providing very little nutritional value.  But you can always find a cheap, tasty, fat-and-sugar laden frozen dessert made on a factory line somewhere from a bunch of industrial by-products from stuff that might once have qualified as food, or might not.

Really.  There exist in countless cities, towns and communities whole neighbourhoods that have NO access to fresh or whole foods.  And we tubies live in those places, too.

This is all a terrible shame, and an indictment on all of us; that we have allowed the very foundation of our health, wellbeing and even social fabric - food - to be so completely taken away from us in this way.

So while we all do what we can to fix our broken societies, we make do, and work around the problems as best we can.  That's why I ended up calling this post Better Versus Best.

It's all a matter of degrees after all, isn't it?  The decisions we make about our nutrition, I mean.  You all know I make a trade-off between the best possible nutrition I could have and factors lie ease, convenience and price.  Along with my pretty-good blends I use canned formula quite regularly; it's especially handy for going out places.  Again, I'm lucky in that I can handle it (as long as I have plentiful good food to balance it out), formula is subsidised to some degree by my government health system, and I CAN make blends of great fresh and whole foods.  Still, for various mainly psychological and availability reasons, I cut corners too and use pre-prepared stuff in my blends.  There is no good reason for me not to do this, as overall, my diet is good.

What to do with a Tube Food diet when you live in a food desert though?  Do you just throw your hands in the air, throw in the towel, and figure you can't win anyway?  No, of course you don't.  To torture some metaphors a little further, that knowledge you have gained about Real Food means you can't just stick your head in the sand now.  Or maybe there is a tiny bit of an oasis available to you, but you just can't afford the prices the locals charge for the good stuff.

Speaking of torture, some people find themselves in other invidious positions of bondage about the sorts of blends they feel they 'can' do.  I lost count a long time ago of the number of stories I've heard of threats from dietitians, doctors, and so on to call in child protective services, to refuse treatment, to even remove foster children from custody, for 'transgressions' such as daring to feed your child actual food, even when you can demonstrate very clearly that it really is, in fact and actually, far better for them than what has been prescribed.  I hear of dietitians who grudgingly agree to trials of blended food, insisting that parents and carers stick rigidly to recipes made for them by the dietitian, composed of highly refined or processed foods, fortified with all manner of artificial additives, presumably so they can justify themselves to their superiors should things come somehow unstuck.  "See, I did it by The Book - it's not my fault it didn't work."  This is not all that rare, sadly, right now.

What to do in the face of all this?  What I forgot when I offended by commenting on someone's blend (when I erroneously thought they were also saying their child had all sorts of terrible gastrointestinal issues, probably from the food) was my relative good fortune.  Turns out the child in question is actually thriving now they're off the formula, and given the situation with an obstinate RD, a foster-care situation and the subsequent financial difficulties with what is a pretty decent blend, all things considered.  One could never fault the parenting of the person in question.  This blend works for that child, and works for the family situation, so that's what matters.

The take-home message is that we might not be able to do best all or even some of the time, but that needn't stop us from doing better.

When people start using a blender to prepare food, and start dabbling in nutrient and calorie factors, a funny thing happens:  We get a totally different perspective on what is, and isn't food.  The scales fall from our eyes and we read ingredient labels, and discover things like The Thousand Names Of Sugar.  Then, faced with an entire society seemingly designed to ensure the oral eaters consume as much as possible of fast convenience foods high in all the wrong things but many of which are so cleverly marketed as 'healthy choices', it's no wonder that some of us fall into despair and let it demotivate us from doing the best we can given what we've got.  You know, just blending up a Carnation Instant Breakfast sachet with some Corn Syrup, 2% milk and Cheerios.

You can make an argument that this blend is 'better' than a can of formula, but do you know what?  I personally wouldn't say so, unless it's better tolerated than formula, and there's other, good food in the diet as well.  Then sure, it's better.  And if that's all you can do, then do it well, and feel good about it.

It's really easy to go too far with our urge to nourish well, especially when we're blending for the health and maybe even the very survival of a child or loved one.  We can obsess to the point of paralysis, and in fact this is exactly what happens with so many people when they first come to consider a blended diet - the question of "but how do I make sure it's complete?" can seem so incredibly overwhelming, especially for the majority of us who know with certainty that our own diets are a compromise at best and a health disaster at worst.  We often have a lot to learn very quickly about basic nutrition and we feel we have to get it right; right now.  The pressure can be too much, so we fold and go back to the canned formula, or the Carnation Instant Breakfast the RD told us we could try with some applesauce if we really must insist.

When that happens we can't feel sure of what best is, so we never move to something better.

And as with all things in life, it's a matter of direction and degree, not of absolutes.  This all applies to how oral eating folks nourish themselves too, you know.  As long as we're constantly looking to do better, we'll be moving always towards best.  Don't be holding out for best just because you can only do a little bit better.  DO that little bit better.  Better is the right direction.

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Better Versus Best

Perfect Salad Wrap; a Really Complete Meal.

Lately, I've been paying much closer attention to two things; to my foody 'cravings' for want of a better word, and to availability and the 'chance' factor.  They're both very important I feel.

I can actually count a special blessing with regards my feeding tube; freedom from the tyranny of our evolved sugar/fat/salt cravings.  Part of the modern obesity epidemic can be slated to the unconscious 'survival' behaviour some of us exhibit when presented with ready availability (or even just thoughts of) hi-calorie foods.  There's a part of the ancient reptile brain that instinctively still acts as if food may be about to be scarce at any moment now, so propels us to gorge and store the excess calories as fat.

This actually wouldn't be much of a problem at all, if what we were mainly presented with as 'food' these days was actually food, of course.  The more I learn, experience and grow, the more I deeply understand how modern manipulation of once-natural foodstuffs is the real underpinning of so much of not just our health ills, but our societal ones as well.  I'll save this conversation for another day however.

Since I cannot eat, I can listen to and hear my body's desires in a far deeper and less taste/texture/mouthfeel sort of way.  It's hard to explain, and of course I remember what things taste like very well.  I realise I can still (and I'll bet you can do this too) easily imagine what new combinations of flavours - things you've not tried together before - will taste like.  In your head right now try papaya and strawberry, then add a dash of lime juice. See? (I had some with millet, walnuts and pepitas earlier today).

Anyway, lately, I've been wanting some cheese, which I haven't had for over two years.  But not just any cheese, I wanted firm, white, crumbly brined cheese, like feta, and preferably non-cow milk cheese.

I shop for myself like this - I keep an eye out for good staples grains, seeds, legumes, nuts, oils, certain vegetables I love (always like to have sweet potato around) and snap up bargains or whatever I fancy at that moment in the market or supermarket aisle.  Then I also have a random wandering eye for whatever else looks good and is a *real* food.  You know, unprocessed or minimally processed, fresh, etc.  So I spotted this lovely sheep's milk cheese; just a simple, Eastern European-style no-fuss, non-'gourmet' (thus inexpensive) brined white sheep cheese.

Today, I was working in the garden, which has some salad leaf type things ready to pick, and I REALLY fancied a sheep's milk cheese salad and bread for lunch.  Seeing as how I blend mine, I can supercharge it.  I basically picked and prepared a salad for two, but doubled-down on the dressings and upped the cheese ratio by maybe an extra third.  So if you're doing this one for eating, halve the oil, vinegar, mustard and sesame seeds, and consider using a little less cheese.  You'll see from the calculations, it's nutritionally fabulous.

Before we jump into the recipe, a note on salads and calories: McDonalds (the 'restaurant' chain) introduced just a couple of years back in Australia (I'm unsure about the Rest Of The World) a revamp, the McCafe concept, and so-called Healthier Choices menu, including salads.  Many of their salads have higher caloric contents than their burgers, and the unrefined sugars and highly processed oils in the dressings and croutons and things actually make them a far less healthy choice in real terms than a burger.  Go figure.  Just remember, an undressed salad, without carb additives (like bread) is a VERY low-calorie thing.  Dressings etc turn this on its head, OK?  What we can take from this is that this sort of salad recipe is a completely excellent way of getting a good dose of fresh vital greens and raw veg, some sustaining carbs, good essential fats and oils which will help moderate the digestion (if chosen wisely) and amazingly even great protein.  Win-win-win.

Here it is; you can use any breadlike thing you like, or if it's just for blending, prepare a whole grain of your choice.  We had these pitas made from good stoneground whole wheat flour.  How easy!

Wholemeal Pita breads, small, x 2: 361cal
Sheep's milk cheese, drained, 200g: 535cal
Salad leaves, enough for two people (I used rocket and two types of non-hearting lettuce): zero cal.
Tomatoes, 125g (or anything you like): 25cal
Sesame seeds 50g: 300cal
Flax seed oil 30ml: 246cal
Balsamic vinegar 30ml: 79cal
Seeded wholegrain mustard 50g: 80cal
Fresh basil, thai (sacred) basil, garlic chives, borage flowers: zero cal.

If eating, simply tear up the leaves (including the basil), crumble the cheese, cut you tomatoes nice and small or just halve cherry tomatoes then mix up your dressing using half amounts of the mustard, oil and vinegar, add in the chopped garlic chives, toss, and sprinkle with the sesame seeds, which will stick to the moist cheese and the dressing and all over everything, giving a wonderful nutty little texture contrast, place the flowers on last.

Blending method: add water to approx 1 litre. Blend.

Total volume 1 litre, 1626 cal = 3 x servings of approx 333ml @542 cal each
1.6 cal/ml
48 cal/oz.

See how supercharged it is?  And it doesn't feel fatty in the least.  The breakdown is:
57g protein / 108g fat / 96g carbs,

BUT, if you halve those dressing items, you get 1.27 cal/ml (38 cal/oz) and a 41p / 54f / 74c ratio, which is a very nice allround profile.

Looked nicer before blending, but still - a lovely colour, don't you think?

Perfect Salad Wrap; a Really Complete Meal.

Universal Muesli Breakfast For Anytime

Today I made another simple no-cook blend, not unlike blends I've been making for some time now, but this process of measuring and calculating made me realise what I've got here - a good guideline to a nutritionally excellent, easy, totally healthful blend.  So I'm going to present this one a little differently from the last half-dozen efforts here.

The Way Of Seed And Nut Fruit Muesli.

Grains, that don't need cooking, 150g.
Seeds and nuts, whatever seems right together, 100g
Dried or semi-dried fruits, 100-125g
Fresh fruits, whatever is in season or you really feel like, 1-2 cups.
Some vegetable oil(s), 60ml total.
Herbs/spices as you like
1 litre red or blue spectrum fruit juice OR milk sub (eg oat milk, hemp milk) or even just milk.

This should get you very close to 2 litres, add water if needed.

It will get you over 30 cal/oz, most likely.  For less, use water instead of the juice or milky liquid.  For more, add a sweetener like agave syrup, blackstrap molasses, maple syrup, honey.  As natural as you can get it. Maybe 60 ml would be about right.  Or add fats - coconut oils or coconut pieces would be nice.  Alternatively, make it thicker.  Up the weights of everything a little and use less liquid.  But I like these measurements, and I'll tell you why below.

Method: Blend.

How simple is that?  The measurements make p a nice consistency to about 2 litres, or the size of a blender jug.  Convenient.  The ratios give a good balance of grains, proteins, complex and simpler carbohydrates and so on. You'll notice this is pretty low fat (60ml of olive oil is not a lot in 2 litres) as I want this blend to be a pretty high available-energy blend, but without giving a glycaemic spike.  Too many long-chain fats would slow digestion too much.  Ease to make, ease of digestion, they're the aims here.  Obviously this is not meant to provide a 100% complete nutritional balance for a whole diet, but can be enjoyed any time.  You'd rotate with higher-protein and higher-fat blends depending on your needs and situation. Using an animal milk would make this a much more 'complete' blend nutritionally.

The beauty part is that it's so adaptable.  You can buy whatever grains, nuts, seeds, and dried fruits you come across that look good and are the right price.  This is always the way I shop for myself - hunt out the best of what's available, and within that, ask myself what I feel like or what I mightn't have had enough of lately.  So your pantry always has a decent store of different go-to ingredients, and then you can use the freshest fruit in season, or use up preserves or even canned stuff at those other times of the year.

It's getting on late spring here, so today I did:

Rolled oats 100g, Amaranth grains 50g.
Pepitas 50g, Walnuts 50g
Dates 100g
2 Mangos, and 125g of strawberries.
Olive oil 60ml
Fresh mint, cardamom powder,
Pomegranate Juice 1 litre

Total volume 2 litres = 6 x servings of 333ml each @ 398 cal/serve
1.19 cal/ml
35 cal/oz.
Approx 35g protein / 79 g fat / 286g carbs.

What's with the red/blue spectrum juice?  Colour is important.  Without being all horribly reductionist and scientific, eating red things and blue things is very good for us, and it seems to work well with the energies and combinations of grains, fruits, seeds and nuts.  Citrus would not be good in this.  You could maybe do apple or pear, but something with the red (cranberry, pomegranate, etc) blue (blueberry) or in-between prune or dark grape) would work really nicely.  If you're going to use animal milk instead - and I seriously suggest you do not mix fruit juices with milk, OK? - then blend the hard stuff first with the fruit and a teeny bit of water, and only blend the milk in gently at the end.  Less froth, you see.

You'll notice I used two different grains, and different seeds and nuts.  You could use a mix, or single choices, it doesn't matter at all.  I wouldn't use all amaranth because that would feel too dense and 'strong', I like the bulk of the oats.  I wouldn't use 100g of sesame seeds for the same reason, but I'd use half them and half something else.

I'm sure you get the picture.  I want to encourage you to get inside the food a little, to really feel it out, to extend your senses not just into what might taste good together, but what seems right for you or your loved one today.  It's easier than you think, and with time you'll learn that you're usually spot-on, being rewarded with good digestion, health, and a heightened allround sense of nourishment and nourishing.

Food, after all, is a feel thing, in the end, isn't it?

Universal Muesli Breakfast For Anytime

Quickie Moroccan Couscous and Vegetable

For this one, you can just use 1 1/2 to 2 cups of whatever vegetable you happen to have tat needs using or seems 'right' today, cooked just enough.  I used artichokes, trimmed and steamed for about 15 minutes.  While they were simmering away I made the couscous - possibly the easiest grain-type substance ever to prepare now I have discovered it. (Just equal weight of boiling water, dash of salt and oil, off the heat add the couscous, stir for 2 minutes and add in some butter or oil, done!) I zapped the pistachios for one second first, then just added it all together with the steaming water and some extra up to 2 litres.  It smells and feels utterly, completely fantastic. The gentle warm spicy notes, overtones of mint and earthy pistachio make for happies. :-)  I don't do wheat stuff very often, so now I can really feel what a powerful grain it is.  I used almond dukkah, but any dukkah (it's a North African spice blend full of wonderful aromatic and digestive spices) would do.

For more ordinary human eating, I'd have served these artichokes quartered on a bed of couscous, but first I'd roll them while still steaming moist in a mixture of the dukkah (maybe more) , half the pistachios, the honey (I'd use less) a teeny bit of salt and most of the mint all banged up into a crumbly fineness in a mortar and pestle (or Vitamix), pressing the lovely fragrant crunchy bits in between the layered leaf edges. Or roll my cubed, steamed (or roasted even) veg in it, if not using artichoke.  A mix of pumpkin and grilled peppers would be nice.  Garnish with the remaining pistachios and sprig of mint.  Mm.

Artichokes, medium x 4: 240 cal.
Couscous 150g (dry weight): 536 cal
Pistachios 100g: 564 cal.
EVOO 60ml: 480 cal.
Butter 30g: 223 cal.
Honey 2 Tbsp: 170 cal.
Almond dukkah 1 Tbsp: 112 cal.
Mint, fresh handful: (probably nearly no cal).

Total volume 2 litres = 8 x 250ml servings @ 290 cal each
                                OR 6 x 333.3 ml servngs @ 387.5 cal each.
1.16 cal/ml
34.8 cal/oz.

Also, it's a pretty friendly 67g protein / 116g fat / 193g carb ratio.

Now if you're really wanting to pack in the cals, I'd use something like a litre of pomegranate juice ( the ready-to-drink natural kind) or similar hi-cal red or blue-spectrum juice instead of the water and with an extra 640 cals in there it would take it to:
1.48 cal/ml
44.5 cal/oz
..... and be no thicker.

It's not quite thin enough to gravity bolus, but as usual, I'll dilute a bit just prior to serving.  Nice greenish tinge too.  Enjoy this one. <3
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Quickie Moroccan Couscous and Vegetable