Eating Green; Cookbook Review of More-With-Less

http://www.worldcommunitycookbook.org/more/about.html

My friend Ashley recommended this cookbook, More-With-Less by Doris Janzen Longacre, to me last year. I didn't know what to expect, but upon flipping through the introductory chapters, I realized they were writing about how wheat is processed today and how horrible it actually is for us consumers.

An excerpt from the intro section Overeating Sugar and Processed Foods: "Since Roman times, bakers have been aware that flour stored for a few months becomes whiter and has improved baking qualities. But storage time increases manufacturing costs. Around the beginning of the twentieth century, millers discovered they could get these same effects instantly by blowing nitrogen trichloride (Agene) or chlorine gas into the flour as it descended the chute into bags. Agene was used for forty-one years, but discontinued after a 1945 study showed that dogs fed the treated flour developed hysteria. Chemical bleaching and maturing of flour continues in many places." 

This was surprising to me.

It's one of those cookbooks that isn't just a bunch of recipes, it's also a philosophy. First off, it's a Mennonite Community Cookbook. Secondly, they don't like all these processed, packaged foods.  Thirdly, it's about keeping meals simple and nutritional. I can get behind that. The main idea is to ensure that there's enough food for everyone in the world; we can help by being less wasteful.

It never would have occurred to me that a religion would have an opinion about such a thing, but it does make sense. The web site for the book flat-out says: "...it addressed the concern that North American [sic] were doing the opposite — consuming more and more food made up of wasteful calories and unnecessary packaging." These people were green before it was cool. :)

From the More-With-Less site:

• "Written to challenge North Americans to consume less so others could eat enough, the book has sold an astonishing 830,000 copies since its release in 1976."
• "A global food crisis in the early 1970s with food reserves at a “precarious low” created the impetus for More-with-Less. In the first chapter of her cookbook, Longacre writes that the “average North American uses five times as much grain per person yearly as does one of the two billion persons living in poor countries.”
• "Longacre wrote to MCC friends around the world asking for economical low-meat recipes that would help North Americans reduce consumption by eating less animal protein and fewer highly processed foods." 

The only down-side for me is that it's not very allergy-friendly. On the plus side though, if a dish is just vegetables, lentils, and a meat, then there's nothing I can't eat anyway. There are things I can substitute too--almond milk for regular milk, gluten-free flours for flour, flax-meal for eggs, etc.

On Amazon.com, it sells for $7 used. Not too bad for a whole philosophy...

Below Stairs--The Original Downton Abbey

I recently read the book Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid's Memoir That Inspired "Upstairs, Downstairs" and "Downton Abbey" by Margaret Powell. I didn't think I would find anything at all relatable in it, but it turns out there's much the author (a cook) has to say about food and nutrition! This Guinea Pig recognizes the importance of healthy food in your belly...

www.goodreads.com

True, she wrote about how they didn't wash hunted animals before eating for fear of losing the flavor and I seem to remember something about food getting infested with maggots. Nonetheless, Margaret the maid and cook was also appalled at the rise of processed food! Even though she goes to great lengths to explain just how much time and effort went into making food in those great manors, she believes 100% it tastes better and is better for us that the newfangled foods.

About processed foods: "Nowadays they are at their wits' end to put things on the market to put back the flavour into food, the flavour that's come out with freezing. But it can't be done. No one can delude me into thinking that it can be, but of course if you've not had it the old way you don't know the difference."

About the taste: "Even nowadays when you see an economic recipe and they say you can't tell the difference from the original, well probably you can't if you've never eaten the original, but if you have there's a vast difference. It's like using margarine instead of butter, the top of the milk instead of the cream, having cheaper cuts of meat instead of the best, and having frozen salmon instead of fresh salmon. None of it tastes the same."

An excerpt that makes me so thankful for potato chips: "Nowadays everybody buys potato crisps in bags or tins, but in those days they had to be done by hand. First of all you peeled the potatoes, then you got a clean tea cloth and laid it out full length on the table and sliced the potatoes by hand so thinly that when you held them up you could see right through them. They were like little rashers of wind. You laid each one separately on the cloth. Then you covered them up with another cloth until they dried. They you melted fat--lard, not dripping because that was too coloured...You melted a portion of that in a frying-pan, a very deep one, and when it was boiling and blue smoke came off, you dropped these crisps in, one by one, because if you dropped two in at a time they stuck together..."

Margaret spent time grating Parmesan cheese by hand, making all sauces and condiments from scratch (horseradish sauce, hollandaise, tartar, mayonnaise), and mincing beef through a sieve!

I also thought the following two quotes were profound.

This one because it reminds me to really care for people by showing and doing: "In fact, all my life in domestic service I've found that employers were always greatly concerned with your moral welfare. They couldn't have cared less about your physical welfare; so long as you were able to do the work, it didn't matter in the least to them whether you had back-ache, stomach-ache, or what ache, but anything to do with your morals they considered was their concern."

And this one to remind me that sometimes kids need to do things they don't want to and it's in their best interest (it's not always about mushy, gooey, feeling good feelings!): "But the great thing about school in those days was that we had to learn. I don't think you can beat learning; how to read and write, and how to do arithmetic. Those are the three things that anyone who has got to work for a living needs. We were forced to learn and I think children need to be forced. I don't believe in this business of 'if they don't want to do it, it won't do them any good'. It will do them good."

Two More Things We Should Be Eating...

A little while ago, when I was still regularly struggling with the Big D, my doc ran a bunch of blood work. The most notable deficiencies were vitamin D and Iron. I was thinking about this again recently because a friend's mom has been struggling with food intolerances and the like.

I thought it was worth saying that I noticed a ton of improvement on that front when I started taking vitamin D and a little bit of iron. My husband pointed out that vitamin D was supposed to be good for intestinal health! Lo and behold...

http://gardenofeaden.blogspot.com/2012/02/what-is-vitamin-d.html

It's not new news. In this 2007 article from Celiac.com, researchers found that "...vitamin D may have a key role in maintaining the intestinal mucosal barrier and the integrity of tight junctions". I don't know what tight junctions are, but I don't care. This article also stipulates that vitamin D deficiency could play a role in the development of Celiac Disease and that healthy levels of vitamin D could help prevent cancer.

Besides being necessary for the absorption of calcium, this Slate article mentions the link between healthy levels of vitamin D and the prevention of autoimmune diseases: "The potential role of vitamin D in forestalling other diseases, particularly autoimmune conditions such as multiple sclerosis, Type 1 diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis, has generated widespread interest as well...Another study, published in the Lancet in 2001, concluded that children who were given vitamin D supplementation were less likely to develop Type 1 diabetes." Since I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis and my husband has Type 1 diabetes, this is important to me!

A fellow blogger with Crohn's Disease wrote about it here, saying, "...it can assist with lowering intestinal inflammation and possibly prevent cancer."

Anyway, vitamin D does all good things!

Sources of Vitamin D:

• The Sun
• Fatty Fish
• Cod Liver Oil

Now about iron...

This article about iron says that "Chronic malabsorption can contribute to iron depletion and deficiency by limiting dietary iron absorption or by contributing to intestinal blood loss. Most iron is absorbed in the small intestines. Gastrointestinal disorders that result in inflammation of the small intestine may result in diarrhea, poor absorption of dietary iron, and iron depletion".

Basically they're saying if you have intestinal problems and are having diarrhea--you are probably having trouble absorbing iron and other nutrients. Too much iron is also a problem; it's a fine line: "Symptoms of iron overload include fatigue, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, irritability, heart disease, and joint problems."

Sources of Iron:

• Meat
• Beans
• Spinach & Collard Greens

Eat up.