I love cooking from scratch and yesterday I made lard.  Watch this quick video on how easy it is to make it.

Lard is a very healthy oil to cook with and makes food taste fantastic. It is my secret ingredient in a lot of my meals! I had a dinner party last week and the guests were just raving about my roasted potatoes and wanted my recipe (unfortunately I only had a very small piece). The recipe was absolutely delicious – thanks to the LARD! Sure you can substitute butter, but lard gives a very light and crisp texture to food that makes it so wonderful. This is why pastries are made with lard.

Lard is very healthy! It is a traditional fat that many grandmothers used to make and cook with. It is very heat stable, does not burn and does not oxidize easily. This is the reason lard will NOT give you heart disease.  Lard also contains vitamins D and E (Alpha Tocopherol).  Eating foods with healthy fats like lard will also help the body absorb fat soluble vitamins. And since Lard is fat, eating it will suppress hunger and appetite.

Making it at home is far superior to buying it in the store.  You can choose your source of fat and make sure that it is organic and raised in the fresh air and pasture.  Store bought lard is most likely hydrogenated so make sure to read the list of ingredients. It will probably not contain Vitamin D if the pigs have been deprived of sunshine.

Making organic lard is cheaper than butter. I can’t tell you how much I paid for this fat because it came with the half a pig that I purchased but I know that organic butter costs 9.50 per pound.  Using this lard is a great way to make my butter stretch a bit further as I substitute it in my recipes.

Comment and share your thoughts!

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Do you ever wonder if your body has an immediate effect after eating a fast food meal? This news clip shows a visual effect of increased triglycerides and shows how much harder your heart has to work to pump blood. Go watch this 2 min news clip and come back to share your thoughts.

In this news video about fast food and its affect on triglycerides they demonize saturated fat. But we know that from this study and many low carb dieters that triglyceride levels go down when restricting carbohydrates.

Here Dr. Briffa writes about a group of McMaster University researchers in Ontario who reviewed all the scientific nutritional evidence linking to heart disease. They found saturated fats to not be on that list.

Some dietary factors were associated with an increased risk of heart disease. These were:

A higher intake of trans-fatty acids
A higher intake of foods of high glycaemic index or high glycaemic load

Please note the absence of saturated fat in this list. In other words, this review shows the totality of the evidence does not support a link between saturated fat and heart disease. By the way, higher intakes of meat and eggs were not associated with an increased risk of heart disease either. And neither was total fat consumption.

Most fast food is detrimental to your health because of rancid vegetable fats like canola, corn and soy. These oils are the omega 6 oils that are highly unstable.

One reason the polyunsaturates cause so many health problems is that they tend to become oxidized or rancid when subjected to heat, oxygen and moisture as in cooking and processing. Rancid oils are characterized by free radicals-that is, single atoms or clusters with an unpaired electron in an outer orbit. These compounds are extremely reactive chemically. They have been characterized as “marauders” in the body for they attack cell membranes and red blood cells and cause damage in DNA/RNA strands, thus triggering mutations in tissue, blood vessels and skin. Free radical damage to the skin causes wrinkles and premature aging; free radical damage to the tissues and organs sets the stage for tumors; free radical damage in the blood vessels initiates the buildup of plaque. Source: The Skinny on Fats By Mary Enig PhD and Sally Fallon

Trans fats have also been used in the fast food industries because they are cheap and make food taste good as well as increasing the shelf life of vegetable oils. Although some cities have banned the use of trans fats for frying deep fried food, restaurants may still serve margarine instead of real butter. Trans fats can also be hidden in pastries, peanut butter, pizza dough and cookies. So unless you are reading labels on your fast food, you can’t be certain that you are eating a trans fat free meal. Trans fats can have a negative effect on heart disease, cancer, diabetes, immunity, reproduction and lactation, and obesity. Source: Mary Enig PhD  Dangers of Trans Fats.

Some healthy choices for restaurant food:

• is baked fish with lemon and herbs
• bunless burgers (check for fillers)
• grilled steaks
• baked chicken
• vegetable stir fry’s minus rice cooked in butter

There must be more healthy options but I can’t think of anything else.

My question for you:

What are your healthy restaurant food options?

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday hosted by Kelly The Kitchen Kop

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In an attempt to get my children to eat (and like) liver I have been experimenting different ways to make it. I think I have come close. Although this recipe was not a hit with the kids at dinner time last night, it has great potential. I enjoyed and loved it very much and would not mind eating liver like this weekly. My children do not enjoy the texture of fried onions so I gave it to them without them.The onions contribute a lot of  the flavour. Next time I will add the fried onions into the food processor while making the liver mix.

I tried to make liver meatballs but had to much liquid and they went flat, turning into patties. This is a Low Carb Recipe using almonds instead of white flour or bread crumbs.

Yummy Liver Patties

1 lb of organic liver (I used pork)

1 organic pastured egg

1 cup of almonds (preferably soaked overnight and oven dried)

1/2 cup of milk

2 cloves of garlic

3/4 tsp cumin

1 large onion

Salt and Pepper to taste

Butter for frying

Chop onion and fry in butter until golden brown. Place liver, egg, almonds, milk, garlic, cumin in a food processor and blend mixture until smooth. Spoon out liver mixture into the frying pan and cook for a few minutes until golden brown. Flip the patties and cook for a few minutes. Top the patties with onions, salt and pepper.

My question to you:

What else could you add to make these kid friendly? I was also thinking about adding a can of tomato paste.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Kelly The Kitchen Kop.

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Constipation is a big problem for a lot of people. Especially those that are transitioning to a low carb, low fiber diet. Did you know that this transition to low fiber is actually very beneficial to your colon health?

Of course constipation is not good, but using fiber to relieve this constipation can be very damaging. Fiber may actually be the cause of your constipation.

Konstantin Monastyrsky, the author of the Fiber Menace  describes how all our belief systems about the virtues of fiber have been all lies.

1. Fiber does not prevent colon cancer
2. Fiber does not prevent breast cancer
3. Fiber does not lower cholesterol
4. Fiber does not reduce the risk of heart disease
5. Fiber does not regulate blood sugar
6. Fiber does not reduce the risk of diabetes
7. Fiber does not decrease appetite
8. Fiber does not help with weight loss
9. Fiber does not keep the colon clean
10. Fiber does not help stop diarrhea
11. Fiber does not ease constipation

Watch these videos as Konstantin Monastyrsky explains the fiber misconceptions with scientific studies.

I have found 2 effective ways of regulating bowels without the use of fiber.

Lacto-fermented foods and coconut oil.

The lacto-fermented foods provide my gut with beneficial probiotics and enzymes required for food digestion as well as nutrient assimilation. The coconut oil stimulates bile production.

Dietary fat stimulates the release of bile from the gallbladder, which, in turn, stimulates the gastrocolic reflex. This in turn stimulates peristaltic mass movement, which, in turn, stimulates defecation. Source.

For healthy bowel function I try to eat lacto-fermented foods with every meal and take 2 tablespoons of coconut oil daily.

Share your thoughts!

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Here is a Low Carb Recipe that you have to try. These Coconut Herb buns are extremely light and yummy. They also contain flax and from what I have read the oils in the flax do not get destroyed when baked.

These buns go great with tomato and cheese.

Low Carb Coconut Herb Buns

1/2 cup of dessicated unsweetened coconut

2 tablespoons of golden flax

3 eggs

1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon of dill

1/2 teaspoon oregano

1/2 teaspoon thyme

1/2 teaspoon basil

1/2 teaspoon tarragon

1/4 teaspoon of baking powder

1/4 teaspoon of bakins soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup of melted butter or coconut oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix together coconut and golden flax in a coffee grinder until the mixture is well mixed and finely ground. Put the coconut/flax mixture into a bowl. Add the herbs (garlic, dill, oregano, thyme, basil, tarragon). Add salt, baking powder and baking soda to the dry ingredients. Mix well. Add melted butter and eggs to the dry ingredients. Mix well again. Grease a muffin top pan or a muffin pan. I used a muffin top pan that I got at the grocery store. Place about a tablespoon and a half of mixture into each cup.

Place in the oven and bake for 17 min or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

Let me know what you think! This post was submitted to the Real Food Wednesday Blog Carnival hosted by Anne Marie aka CHEESESLAVE. To get more real food recipes check out her blog.

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In today’s culture of the low fat movement, the idea of slathering, eating and cooking with saturated fats is disgusting to most. To lose fat we need to eat light, light and even lighter. Popular weight loss shows demonize meats and saturated fats and forbid egg yolks and encourage anything lean.  So what else are we to think?

Low Fat Dogma!

If we eat light – we will be light, have a lighter carbon footprint, love our animals, and have clearer minds to see and know our inner spiritual selves and god.

What this is is an ideology. It is all perception.

When it is portrait on television as healthy, the government reinforcing it in food guides, doctors and nutritionist telling their patients, magazines touting it as the greatest way of losing weight and product manufactures jumping on the “lean” bandwagon it is no surprise that everyone would try to adopt this way of living.

It is easy to vilify the meat and fat as artery clogging.

Eating “light” saves the animals. Eating meat “murders” animals (I do own a t-shirt that reads “meat is murder”).

Heavy, greasy saturated fat is bad. Light vegetable polyunsaturated oils are good.

We know that studies have shown the opposite –  that saturated fats are good and vegetable fats (polyunsaturated fats) are bad. Meat does not cause heart disease.

We have evidence all around us. Obesity is epidemic. Never in history has obesity been so prevalent. Obesity has created new industries – new drugs and supplements, weight loss clinics, food products, food addiction centers etc. Do you think that spouting the truth, that eating saturated fat will decrease appetite and help folks lose weight is going to happen? No. There is too much money now in the weight loss industry and in the drug industries.

Just remember how persecuted Dr. Atkins was. Nobody wanted to hear his science. The perception of eating bacon and eggs as being healthy was laughed at.

How do you change this “low fat” and “eating light” perception? You can start by enjoying your saturated fats and not feeling guilty by doing so. If you have vegetarian ethics (and even if you don’t!), I recommend that you find a good organic farmer that loves their animals. You can find out how the animals are handled, what they are fed, if they get to hang out in the pasture fields and eat good healthy bugs.

Don’t forget that it is carbohydrates in all forms that increase insulin and get stored as fat (fruit, grains, breads, beans, lentils and sugars etc). To get the fat loss benefits of saturated fats, carbohydrates should be restricted.

When you eat meat and saturated fats you can

• be as spiritual as a vegetarian
• love your animals
• you can have a low carbon footprint by selecting food from local organic farms
• you can feel “light” by breaking your food addictions, feel satisfied after eating meals and stop carbohydrate cravings
• you can feel great and have lots of energy and a “clear mind” (brain fog is a symptom of candida  yeast which thrives on carbohydrates and sugars)

You can enjoy your bacon and eggs (yolks and all), lose weight and be healthier for it!

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So it has seemed that in the last week that I have gotten some flak for posting this series. I will address some concerns. Like I have reiterated in my previous blog posts about the veggie diet is that this series is inspired by health problems I have seen in my own daughter and the same problems I see in other vegetarian children. These children have no choice in being vegetarian even though it is their health that is at stake.

The Low Carb Fibre issue

The Low Carb diet is not deficient in fibre. Actually fibre reduces net carb counts and you can get plenty of fibre from ground flax seeds, coconut, nuts, seeds and vegetables.

Saturated Fats And Cholesterol

The comments that I received about saturated fats and cholesterol were that they are not healthy, that the low carb movement is a fad and “plain out of style”. All of this is false. Saturated fats are very healthy and cholesterol may actually be an anti-oxidant.

As for the low carb diet being a fad, Gary Taubes writes in his book Good Calories, Bad Calories that the Low Carb diets can be traced all the way to the 1800’s and they are still around to this day in many different forms:

The Mercola Diet, Susan Sommers diet, The Paleo Diet, The South Beach Diet, Protein Power Diet, Dr. Atkins Diet, The Leptin Diet, Dr. Richard Bernstein Diabetes Solution, Dr. Al Sears the Author of “The Doctor’s Heart Cure” and many more… All of these except the Susan Sommers diet have medical doctors who stand behind them. I believe Susan Sommers referred to nutritionists and dieticians to help her outline the principles of Sommercising.

So if you still think that these diets are “fads” let me refer to this study that was performed for 12 months (which is one of the longest and largest studies performed) and found that the Atkins Diet was the healthiest.

The results of the study:

At the end of a year, the 77 women assigned to the Atkins group had lost an average of 10.4 pounds. Those assigned to LEARN lost 5.7 pounds, the Ornish followers lost 4.8 pounds and women on the Zone lost 3.5 pounds, on average. In all four groups, however, some participants lost up to 30 pounds.

After 12 months, women following the Atkins diet, relative to at least one of the other groups, had larger decreases in body mass index, triglycerides and blood pressure; their high-density lipoprotein, the good kind of cholesterol, increased more than the women on the other diets.

The Atkin’s Diet is a High Fat, medium protein, low carb

The Ornish Diet is a Low Fat, vegetarian diet, high carb

This study is comparing the Low Carb Atkins diet and the High Carb Vegetarian diet together. And as you can see it is the Atkins diet that turned out to be healthier. This study was published in the March 7, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Saturated Fats are traditional fats and have been used since the times of Jacob, Issac and Moses.

In previous generations we have never had so much heart disease. But now we have introduced a lot of vegetable oils into our diets and guess what?? Heart disease has skyrocketed! Why? Because saturated fats are stable fats, they don’t oxidize and vegetable fats are easily oxidized.

Polyunsaturated vegetable fats are one of the greatest contributors of heart disease. Not only that but they also greatly contribute to increased cancer, immune system dysfunction, damage to the liver, reproductive organs and lungs, digestive disorders, depressed learning ability, impaired growth and weight gain. Source: Nourishing Traditions, Pg 10

I did call this article Low Carb Diet Vs. The Vegetarian Diet so I will give you another example…

Many people would say that Dr. Atkins died from eating a low carb diet which caused heart disease. But actually he died because he slipped and fell on some ice and hit his head.

There is even an online copy of his death certificate which states his death as a “blunt impact injury of head with epidural hematoma.”

As many people have vilified Dr. Atkins as having heart failure, I do have to mention the death of Jay Dinshah who was the founder of the American Vegan Society in 1960. He was born to a vegetarian family and had become vegan. His parents had congenital heart problems and he died of a heart attack at the age of 66.

It makes me question if these heart problems in the family could have been caused by oxidized polyunsaturated vegetable fats???

There is a lot of disagreement and just pure lies about what is healthy and what is not healthy. It is your choice what you feed your family. But our children need the best nutrition to thrive.

My daughter was not thriving on a vegetarian/vegan diet. We were able to heal her cavities, uncontrollable crying, and failure to thrive by following the dietary principles founded by Weston A. Price and written in Nourishing Traditions.

To your health and wellness,

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The media, doctors and health experts all agree on 2 things that we are supposed to adhere too to be healthy and fit. Those two things are to eat less and exercise more. But it is extremely hard to eat less when you have uncontrollable cravings and food obsessions. Are we to forget and ignore what our bodies are trying to tell us when we can’t stop eating?

A few months ago my husband and I went out to eat at a restaurant in the city. I had a hard time finding food on the menu because they mainly served pastas, pizzas and sandwiches. There was only one Low Carb option and that was the Salmon Plate for a whopping $16-17. It was a salmon steak served with a small amount of veggies and a ridiculously small salad. But the salmon was a good size. It did fill the plate up and it did look like it would fill me up too.

The problem was that after leaving the restaurant I should have been quite full but instead I was still hungry. The salmon, even though it was big in size was baked with only lemon juice. There was hardly any noticeable fat on it. Fat (especially healthy saturated fat from healthy animals) helps quench those hunger pangs. It was a tasty meal, but it really lacked substance.

When I got home, I had to eat again. There is nothing more frustrating than being hungry after a meal you paid $17 for!

Now lets look at a different scenario…

If you check out my May 8th Low Carb and Anti-Candida menus blog, you will notice that at 4:30 pm I had a high fat snack, at 6:30 pm I had a homemade Caesar Salad with organic bacon. I made my own high fat salad dressing and then I added my bacon drippings on my salad. And that was all I ate for the rest of the evening and I felt like I ate a very satisfying dinner. If I had a low fat salad, I would need to eat a full meal with it!

Now my 2pm lunch on that day was rather low fat because my beef stew was made with Organic Grass fed Beef (grass fed beef is naturally low fat) and I did not add butter to it like I did with my dinner the night before. So I ended up needing a high fat snack in mid-afternoon.

So if you feel like you still have food cravings while on a low carb diet then add some more fat to your meals.

I get dismayed when the “health professionals” demonize fat and then talk about portion control. Are we supposed to ignore our bodily signals and live feeling deprived and hungry? And what about getting more exercise? Well exercise stimulates appetite! So with the “eat less, eat low fat and exercise more” philosophy you are setting yourself up for failure.

To watch your portions and eat smaller meals, add more fat to them. You will not be left hungry.

With love,

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In the winter I really missed my hot creamy oatmeal that I used to have. Porridge can be a great comfort food especially on the cold, damp or snowy days. I have been experimenting in my kitchen to get a good morning Low Carb hot cereal substitute. This recipe is quick and easy. It is ready in less than 5 minutes. It tastes good too!

Low Carb Faux Oatmeal

¾ cup of warm whole milk (or cream and water, or coconut milk)

2 tablespoons ground golden flax

4 tablespoons sugar free desiccated coconut

1tablespoon of vanilla extract

1 drop of liquid stevia

½ teaspoon of nutmeg

Combine warm milk, flax, coconut, stevia and nutmeg in a bowl. Stir well and let sit for a few minutes until the “oatmeal” thickens.

Optional: you can add some nuts or low sugar berries to this recipe.

Enjoy!

This is a breakfast that I like to have daily. It is great for constipation if you are having trouble with that. It also contains healthy coconut and flax.  Flax is important because it contains lignans that have been shown to be effective for cancer treatment. It also aids immune health, fights inflammation and is great for brain health.

You can add Coconut Oil to this recipe and it would be a satisfying meal that can keep you full for hours.

Edit Note (May 5, 2009): This morning I sprinkled cinnamon on top and added 1 crushed clove to this. It tasted pretty awesome!

p.s. Check out my daily menus at www.healthyfitmomlowcarbmenus.blogspot.com.

p.p.s. Join Ann Marie on Real Food Wednesdays and enjoy some great recipes sharing and meal ideas.

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When it comes to weight loss there are so many products to choose from. There seems to be a food to fill any kind of need that we have. These franken foods come as…

Low Carb Tortilla’s, Low Carb Bread, Low Carb Chocolate, Low Carb Desserts, Low Carb Syrups, Low Carb Sweeteners and Low Carb Countdown Milk.

These foods all have artificial or modified ingredients in them. When I was vegetarian I ate plenty of fake meats, cheeses and sauces with horrible ingredients thinking they were healthy. I did not see any bad health problems until I was eating them for over a decade!

I now prefer to eat REAL food that my grandparents would recognize. So even if I am feeling emotional and want to sink my teeth into an apple or banana to get my sugar fix – I will. I will eat REAL honey. I will eat sprouted whole grain bread. It will cause my cravings to skyrocket and it will cause me to overeat. It may also cause a Candida Yeast outbreak.

But real food has real nutrition. Fake processed foods cause the real damage to your body (How else did I get insulin resistant!). Think about what happens every time man tries to interfere with food…

• Turning away from butter to margarine… we have created trans fats and a heart disease catastrophe!
• Turning away from raw milk/eggs to pasteurization… this has allowed for the industrialization and factory farming of animals and getting away from the traditional family farm.
• Turning away from whole grains to bleached and processed grains… These grains are so nutrient deficient that they need to ADD vitamins back into them.
• Turning away from nutrient dense spices to artificial flavours… These flavours are so dangerous that they kill brain cells.
• Turning to Genetically Modified Foods to mass produce food.
• Turning to fast food junk rather than slowly cooked nutrient dense traditional food.
• Turning to mass pesticide/fertilizer use and poisoning of our food, soil, water and air and abandoning traditional biodynamic organic ways.

There are still probably many ways that we alter food and in turn poison ourselves that I have not thought off.

Is it any wonder why we are sick?

Am I supposed to trust these people that put this junk on the market? I don’t think so.

All of this is done for one reason – For profit!

Don’t feel bad about cheating on your low carb diet with real food. Do it occasionally if it does not cause to much health and weight issues.

To your health and wellness,

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