Paleo Kitchen Tools

If you are anything like me, you have/had a kitchen stocked with hard anodized cookware or some kind of teflon pans and cheerfully cooked with no-calorie PAM sprays. Would it surprise you to learn that in addition to all the chemicals you are exposed to from your carpet to your beauty products, the cookware you use can produce some of the worst? I'm not going to do a post on how bad crap like Teflon is to use, since Chris Kresser already did a great one here. What I am going to do is show you how much it costs to replace this garbage. Here's a little quote about Teflon from the article if you need a little convincing:

Teflon, made of the chemical known as PFOA, is the most persistent synthetic chemical known to man, and is found in the blood of nearly every person tested. (1) Animal studies have shown that PFOA causes cancer, liver damage, growth defects, immune system damage, and death in lab rats and monkeys. An EPA advisory panel reported that PFOA is a “likely carcinogen” in humans. (2)

Besides just leaching chemicals into the food, Teflon cookware has also been shown to release dangerous chemicals into the air during use. Toxic fumes released from heated non-stick cookware has been shown to be deadly to birds, with many hundreds of birds dying every year from “Teflon toxicosis.” (3) Even more scary is that DuPont’s own scientists have admitted that polymer fume fever in humans is possible at 662°F, a temperature easily exceeded when a pan is preheated on a burner or placed beneath a broiler. (4)

Avoid:
Aluminum
Teflon
Copper

Go For:
Enameled Cast Iron, Ceramic, Steel
Cast Iron - Everyday use
Stainless Steel - Good for quick cooking and browning meat


Things to remember:
Never clean cast iron with soap - wipe with a cloth, rinse with water and dry immediately. DO NOT SOAK.

You must use fat to cook with cast iron and keep food from sticking, however once you've used the pan several times, cooking gets easier and more tasty. Follow Chris Kresser's tips for cast iron.

Cast Iron can be a problem for people with toxically high levels of iron in their blood, but many of us (especially women) are iron deficient and cooking with cast iron can be beneficial.

Cook acidic dishes (i.e. tomato sauce) in an enameled dish or stainless steel. The acid can damage cast iron cookware.


PALEO KITCHEN ESSENTIALS:

1. Stainless Steel Utensils - $14.72 here
I recommend visiting a restaurant supply store or a Wal-Mart to check out prices if you can, otherwise you can find on Amazon.

2. Cast Iron Frying Pan - 16.99 for the one I have.

3. Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven - $70.99 for the one I have. Or splurge on Le Creuset for several hundred dollars.

4. Stainless Steel Frying Pan - 33.95 for the one I'd pick

5. Baking Dish - $59.95 for the enameled cast iron, or you could go less expensive and grab some glass pyrex for about half the price at Wal-Mart.

Anything else you probably already have and this is really all I would say you'd need other than a nice set of knives I hope you already got as a wedding present or something ;) Don't forget, it's ok to ask for gift cards for Christmas this year and GET RID OF THAT TEFLON!

Total Cost to redo the kitchen cookware: $196.60 + tax.

Optional:

Food Processor
Crockpot (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, especially if you are making bone broth)
    There has been some debate as to whether or not chemicals are leached from crockpots into the food  
     that is being cooked inside.. I'm not convinced there is anything to this, but I avoid brightly colored  
     anything that comes from China. I just ordered this one to replace my one that got all scratched up.
Pressure Cooker .. I personally don't cook much with this.

My new go-to "Paleo" cake recipe

Let me start this post by saying that if you are adding sweetener to anything, I really don't consider it "paleo." As I've read more and more about nutrition and spent time cooking paleo food, I've begun to think that things like coconut flour and almond meal aren't really paleo. In fact, I consider a bowl of fresh strawberries topped with freshly whipped heavy cream way more "paleo" than a grain/legume/dairy free cake, cookie or muffin.

That being said, I think there is a place for these  kinds of baked treats for families that just don't want to forgo baked goods at things like birthday parties.

So, for my son's fourth birthday party I decided to finally try baking a grain-free cake. My previous attempts at paleo treats were just ok. The best ones I've found come from Primal Palate's cookbook Make it Paleo. You can find a lot of the recipes that are in their book on their blog.. The pumpkin pie was great.

Anything I tried with coconut flour was extremely dense and required a nice cup of coffee or water to get it down. I had a ton of it in the pantry though, so I decided to give it one more try. I scoured the internet and finally found: THE BEST DAMN COCONUT FLOUR CAKE RECIPE EVER.

I made 12 cupcakes and made up a batch of frosting with whipped heavy cream (I was not impressed with my frosting and will do cream cheese instead next time). Rather than use regular food coloring, I went out the my local Whole Foods and spent way to much money on "all natural" dyes that were made from vegetable juice. I used India Tree food coloring.. if it was not super last-minute, I would probably not have purchased these since, I kid you not, they cost about $16.


I will probably never use a different coconut flour cake recipe I was so pleased with this one. Here's the cake (it's a dump truck, not a bus..):

My Husband's Before and After Paleo + CrossFit

I thought now would be a good time to share some before and after pictures of my husband with CrossFit plus Paleo. The family photo from 2008 and the summer 2009 were pretty much what my husband looked like up until Summer/Fall of 2010. Before this time we were eating the Standard American Diet, with a regular pasta night and a "fried food night" where we ate baked cheese sticks, chicken nuggets and french fries.



December 2008

Summer 2009

In the fall of 2010 my husband began to attend CrossFit classes at our base gym 4-5 days a week. I looked into this whole Paleo thing and around January of 2011 we went full on paleo with occasional ice cream cheats. These following pictures were taken within the last several weeks. He is now a Level 1 CrossFit instructor at our base gym, CrossFitting 4-5x a week. He eats Paleo and 2-3x per week has ice cream or has a meal like a burger and fries. He has not dropped any weight, but has leaned out quite a bit. During a recent Whole 30 we had our body fat percentages checked and the machine at our wellness center couldn't read his it was so low. Yay for CrossFit/Paleo!

Justin at CrossFit for Hope in Washington, D.C. June 9, 2012

Memorial Day Murph Challenge w/ a 20lb vest May 2012

Easy Paleo Meal: Kinda Pepper Stuffing

My plan for this meal had been to rice some cauliflower in the food processor to add to the sauce and stuff the beef/tomato/cauliflower mixture into halved bell peppers and throw them on the grill. That plan went out the window when my little man got sick. I needed a meal that was ready in 5 minutes and full of flavor because we were getting tired of sparsely flavored ground beef. I literally cooked this meal with my two-year-old in one arm and the spoon in the other.. my husband did help by opening cans and dumping them into the pan :)

Kinda Pepper Stuffing
1.5-2lbs ground beef
1 can diced green chiles
2 cans of diced tomatoes
Optional: Riced Cauliflower

Brown the ground beef and drain. Add chiles and tomatoes with all juices. Add salt/pepper to taste and serve. If adding the cauliflower, put in with browned ground beef before tomatoes/chiles and cook for an extra five or so minutes.

Optional: Serve over lettuce or with a bag of steamed veggies

Paleo is that easy people!

Making Wellness Mama's Homemade Sunscreen Bars

 I am a big fan of Wellness Mama's Website. She is a primal eating, natural-lifestyle living mom of four who posts wellness articles almost daily. When I saw her homemade sunscreen bar recipe, I had to give it a try.

To make the sunscreen you'll need 4 basic ingredients. The original recipe is here. Cocoa Butter, Beeswax, Zinc Oxide and Coconut Oil. Optional ingredients are Vitamin E Oil and Essential Oils.

Beeswax : Beeswax is a natural wax produced in the bee hive of honey bees of the genus Apis. It is mainly esters of fatty acids and various long chain alcohols. From Wikipedia

Cocoa Butter: Cocoa butter, also called theobroma oil, is a pale-yellow, pure, edible vegetable fat extracted from the cocoa bean. It is used to make chocolate, biscuits, and baked goods, as well as some pharmaceuticals, ointments, and toiletries.^[1] Cocoa butter has a mild chocolate flavor and aroma. From Wikipedia.

Zinc Oxide: Zinc oxide is an inorganic compound with the formula ZnO. ZnO is a white powder that is insoluble in water.. It occurs naturally as the mineral zincite but most zinc oxide is produced synthetically.^[3]  From Wikipedia.

Zinc Oxide is found in baby butt creams, calamine lotion and many sunscreens. Sunscreens will normally have either Zinc Oxide or Titanium Dioxide and these are the compounds that actually do the UV ray blocking/reflecting. It is also the ingredient that makes sunscreens leave the white paste on skin. Recently, Zinc Oxide has been made into smaller nano-sized particles that are smaller and do not leave the white paste look. That's why some sunscreens do not leave you looking pasty. However, there has been some debate as to whether or not these smaller particles can be absorbed into the skin and enter the blood stream. Some nanized zinc oxide particles are sold coated in compounds like silica to prevent this, but their efficacy isn't 100% proven. In my opinion, there is not enough research yet, so I chose to go with a NON-nanized Zinc Oxide for my homemade sunscreen. It is a powder and care should be taken to NOT INHALE!

Coconut Oil: Coconut oil is an edible oil extracted from the kernel or meat of matured coconuts harvested from the coconut palm (Cocos nucifera). Throughout the tropical world, it has provided the primary source of fat in the diets of millions of people for generations. It has various applications in food, medicine, and industry. Coconut oil is very heat-stable, which makes it suited to methods of cooking at high temperatures like frying. Because of its stability, it is slow to oxidize and, thus, resistant to rancidity, lasting up to two years due to high saturated fat content. From Wikipedia.

Coconut oil is an amazing superfood and if you're not eating is or putting it on your skin yet, maybe you should give it a try :) Just ask supermodel Miranda Kerr. It is also funny reading the articles when you google this about doctor's saying coconut oil will kill you. Check out The Healthy Home Economist's article if you think so, or do some research and learn just how poorly educated our doctors are. It might make you laugh.. or cry. Warning: coconut oil consumption alone won't make you skinny like a supermodel. That takes genetics and avoidance of processed foods.


I skipped the essential oils (I thought the cocoa butter scent was enough) and the Vitamin E oil (I couldn't find any at a great price and don't mind making these batch-by-batch so preservation wasn't a big concern).

Besides coconut oil, I had none of these ingredients in my house. And could find none of them at Walmart or Target. I did some sleuthing on the internet and decided to order from Mountain Rose Herb company. The Vitamin E oil was too expensive for me at this point and I found no versions at any store that weren't diluted with other oils like wheat germ oil or what not. Finding pure cocoa butter was also a problem for me. I ended up spending $68.27, but that was because I added two large bags of tea and arrowroot powder to my order. I was very pleasantly surprised with the tea - it will last me 3-4 months is great quality. Also, this was the most economical way for me to find arrowroot powder as well. A small jar at Whole Foods last Thanksgiving cost me around $5.00 and this huge bag was around that same price. Plus, when I opened the box, it smelled like herb heaven :) The package arrived in about a week.

My order from Mountain Rose Herb company, minus some of the bar of beeswax:

Invoices:

Cost Breakdown:


Cocoa Butter: Found here. Ordered the 1lb jar.
You can make about 2.5 batches of the sunscreen bars from this jar of cocoa butter. $13.75/2.5 = $5.50 per batch.












Beeswax: Found here. Ordered the 1lb bar.. this was a pain in the bum. I tried to grate it into flakes and ended up just sawing a little bit, then poking holes and wiggling a knife around until I'd made enough to break it. I will order the pastilles next time.

The 1lb bar was $13.00 and I estimate you can make 2.5 batches from this. So $13.00/2.5 = $5.20 per batch












Coconut Oil. I get mine via here subscribe and save at Amazon.com. I receive a shipment once every three month and that makes each jar about $7.65. I use it for everything from cooking to rubbing into my skin as a lotion that smells nice and isn't oily. It is soft and liquidy in my warm kitchen or solid at slightly cooler temps.You can find organic expeller pressed coconut oil pretty easily at chain grocery stores and places like Walmart. It will be in the cooking oil section. I estimate you can make 2 batches from the 15oz tubs. So, $7.65/2 = $3.83 per batch


 Zinc Oxide found here. Again, I avoided "micronized" and "nanized" zinc oxide. This was about $4.80/bag, but around $10.00 with shipping and I estimate you could make six batches or more with this amount of zinc oxide. So, $10.00/6 = $1.67 per batch













Total Cost per Batch: $16.20

I am satisfied with this price, as I think these sunscreen bars will last the summer with some smart midday sun avoidance and use of UV protective clothing. This is an acceptable price to me especially considering the only sunscreen I found that I really liked was Badger Balm. And that was pricey. If I were in a pinch or strapped for cash, I would buy one of the sunscreens off of Environmental Working Group's Best Sunscreens list.

All the ingredients together

Batch of Sunscreen!

Final Thoughts:

*If I were to make these as gifts, I would use the Vitamin E oil as a preservative. You never know how long they'll be sitting in a fridge waiting to get used!
* These are slightly less melty than butter, so please keep in the refrigerator.
* Wellness Mama also has a sunscreen lotion that I will try to make sometime.
* The great thing about these ingredients (minus the zinc oxide) is that they can be used in cooking or other homemade health and beauty products. I will be buying these in large bulk to save money and making homemade lotion bars and things of that nature.
* It is a pain in the bum to clean up the pans after this, so rinse right away with hot water and keep it running for a bit. I will probably try to use parchment paper as a liner next time.
* No need to grease the silicon molds or even regular dark metal molds. These popped right out when cooled and left no residue.

Extra Sun Protection on the Cheap:

I purchased for each of my boys UV treated clothing from Children's Place that has a UV protection factor of 50. I used a coupon at the Children's Place Outlet and here's the cost breakdown:

Sun shirts tend to run small, so I ordered size 7/8 for my almost 4 year old. For my small 2 year old I ordered a size 3T. Big kids sun wear here. Little kids here. There is way more availability in store than online if you can find a Children's Place near you. There is also UV clothing available at Gymboree and Carter's.

Shark Bay Rashguard $9.99 - $2.50 (coupon) = $7.49
Shark Swim Trunks $7.99 - $2.00 (coupon) = $5.99
Blue Bay Rash Guard $7.99 - $2.00 (coupon) = $5.99
2 year old's swim trunks found at a garage sale last year!

Homemade Sunscreen / Protecting Your Skin this Summer

Before now I have been one of the many moms who liberally coats their children with sunscreen while outside during the summer months. Trees are far between here, so there isn't much protection from shade. I remember seeing the aerosol baby sunscreens and thinking - NEAT! So much easier to apply and the bottle says "natural" or "designed for baby" or whatever. Funny thing is, I never really knew what was in them and kind of assumed some government agency was looking out for my best interest and making sure there was nothing bad in sunscreen..

Welp, I was wrong. Ever seen oxybenzone on the back of your sunscreen bottle? Did you know it's a synthetic compound and hormone disrupter that is especially harmful to children, linked with low birth weight, cell damage and is a penetration enhance - meaning it helps other chemicals enter the body through the skin? The FDA says it's safe for use. During a 2003-2004 nutrition survey conducted by the CDC, 97% of urine samples collected contained oxybenzone. That means it doesn't stay on the surface of skin, it gets into our body and travels around.

The hot, burning sensation from too much sun is a natural protective mechanism for our bodies. Sunscreens that block UVB radiation (necessary for vitamin D production) better than UVA (the free-radical-forming, very damaging rays), can fool us into thinking we're protected simply because we have no burn.

Oh? And those aerosolized sprays - not so cool either. They can easily get into and coat the lungs of our kids. And titanium dioxide (one of the compounds used for broad spectrum sun protection) has been linked with cancer when inhaled.

p.s. I'm an armchair scientist, so I strongly urge you to do your own investigation. And strongly urge you to read the EWG's website.
Environment Working Group's Hall of Shame
New York Times Article

All this kind of hit home when I went to the dermatologist and had a suspicious mole removed. It kind of never entered my brain that I'd ever have something like that done, even though I have burnt often and spent a year in high school working at a tanning salon tanning regularly! So, I'm taking a little bit more care with mine and my family's skin. The reality is, skin cancer can be aggressive and deadly.

In my opinion, the best way to avoid all this mess is to just not put any synthetic chemicals in or on our bodies.

Steps I'm taking to Avoid Sun Overexposure:

1. Avoid outside play during 10am-4pm unless I have guaranteed shade. Lucky that when it's warm the day is long, so it's easy to get plenty of outside playtime out of these hours.

2. Use protective clothing. I haven't been able to find ANYTHING about UV treated clothing being harmful, so my kids (and hopefully I will have some soon) use it. If you know of something, send it my way. Hats, rash guards and swim suits for the kidlets.

3. Eat an anti-inflammatory, antioxidant-rich diet. Our bodies easily repair any damage the sun might be causing to our skin. Paleo = anti-inflammatory, antioxidant-rich. Check out:  Wellness Mama's Eat Your Sunscreen?  We eat Paleo and cod-liver oil, but we don't follow the other supplementation.

4. Making my own HOMEMADE sunscreen with Wellness Mama's Recipe. I will be doing a review post as all the ingredients just arrived tonight and I will be making them tomorrow.

5. Check yourself and get to that dermatologist. Make an appointment. Find someone to watch the kids. It took me a very long time to just even remember that I had this concern for myself before I sat down and made the call. For a person with melanoma, months of waiting can mean the difference life and death.

Goodbye Mole, I'll see ya on the flip side.

Good luck and don't burn!

P.s. Yuki, if you read this blog - I got this tattoo when I was 18 and yes I realize now how dumb it is to get kanji tattoos haha :) Someday I'll get that covered.

How and Why I decided to stop buying Organic Milk

Why I decided to stop buying organic milk

Both of my kiddos were formula fed after attempts at breastfeeding failed. So, following the recommendation of my son's pediatrician, it was easy for me to make the transition from bottled formula to sippy cup milk - especially since my children used their milk cups as a comfort before bed and nap time.

Even after learning that dairy can be a gut irritant during our paleo transition a year ago, I convinced myself that at least there was some protein and my kids needed fat for healthy brain development. I told myself at least I was buying whole fat organic milk. Milk seemed to be the only thing I could reliably get them to drink/eat. I chose to ignore the insulinogenic effects of milk, just for the peace and ease of giving my kids a cup whenever they were crabby or tired. You see, the special combination of protein and sugar in milk of all kinds make it very, very good at driving up insulin in the blood - causing blood sugar crashes and eventually insulin resistance.. yea, that little thing that eventually becomes full blown diabetes.

To give you an idea, my kids (2 and 3) were given 6-8oz of milk upon waking, after lunch/before nap, and right before bed every night. They sometimes were given a mid-morning cup if things were crazy and I just needed fighting to stop. And they weren't eating anything at mealtime. Plates of veggies and pastured meats would go untouched and eventually be fed to the dogs. About the only thing my kids would eat in addition were sausage links and fruit. It was supremely frustrating and entirely my fault.

I was purchasing 4 gallons of milk every week to support this and my husband's occasional glass of milk. The best price you can find on a gallon of organic milk is about $6.00. Often, though, the gallons would be out of stock at the local Target where I found them, so I would go for the $3.60 half-gallons in the Commissary. Every single week I spent anywhere from $24-$29 on milk alone. Plus the money on pastured meat and organic veggies that were getting thrown away!!

The money issue coupled with the concern that my kids weren't getting the best nutrition without consuming SOME vegetable matter led me to examine whether or not milk deserved a place in my kids' diet.

Milk's nutrition data. 1 cup has:

144 calories
8 grams fat
12 grams sugar
8 grams protein
5% RDA of Vitamin A
28% RDA of Calcium

Not really impressive in my opinion. Even better, the USDA recommends low-fat milk.. so get rid of the fat and you are left with a little protein and a lot of sugar. Get rid of the fat and you make milk worthless nutritionally (in my humble opinion). It is considered a good source of Vitamin D (because it's fortified), riboflavin, B12, Calcium and Phosphorus.. but you can get that and more from sunshine and vegetables. In fact, not only can you get enough calcium from vegetables, the key nutrients are needed for calcium absorption are higher in a paleo style diet and the phytic acid in whole-grains can block calcium absorption. Check out the article: How Will I Get Calcium on a Paleo Diet? Armed with this info, I decided to ditch the milk.


How I Got Rid of Milk

1. Stopped giving the kids milk other than right before nap/bed at first. This was tough because the kids would still open of the fridge and cry about 'wanting milkie' during waking hours. I learned eventually that this was code for 'I'm hungry' or 'I'm tired.' If I had observed my children and helped them express their needs better, they would have learned that they were hungry or tired instead of needing milk. This is hard - stick to your guns.

2. Put out plates of chopped veggies and a bowl filled with mixed nuts + dried fruit like raisins all the time for snacking. In addition, I made water available ALL the time in cups that were age appropriate (i.e. spill proof). I did not go from milk to juice.

3. Offered calcium rich vegetables every single day. Leafy green veggies like kale, spinach, bok choy all make their way to my kids' plates. Heck, even broccoli and almonds have calcium in them. One thing I do use is pastured Kerry Gold butter that my kiddos love on sweet potatoes or even just eating little pieces of it.

Non-Dairy Sources of Calcium:
Almonds, Broccoli, Kale, Spinach, Mustard Greens, Sardines, Seaweed, even some fruits like dates have calcium and so do eggs!

4. Offered other comforting warm beverages like chamomile tea.. which my oldest just started drinking.

5. Started making my kids drink milk (if they wanted it) with their lunch/dinner instead of just before going to sleep to separate it from their sleep/comfort routine. We already read books and said prayers, so we still kept those parts of the routine.

6. After a couple of weeks of this I decided that once the last gallon of milk ran out, I would not buy any more. And I didn't. When my kids told me they wanted milk, I told them matter-of-factly that it was all gone and moved them onto the next thing. We didn't dwell and I kept a positive tone. It only took a few days for them to stop asking.

We have been milk-free for nearly three months now, though my kids do have the occasional milk at Starbucks if we stop by or some cream from my coffee. My kids have been eating more vegetables and meats than ever before and I completely attribute this to the lack of milk filling their bellies.


Breakfast Now:





Tips/Resources

* Don't panic if your kids aren't eating leafy greens - just keep putting them out there. Mine go through phases where they want nothing to do with green veggies and then eat a ton. It helps if you are positive and cheer them on when they do eat their veggies. Ignore it when they don't.. no nagging.

* I'm going to try to give my kids SeaSnax. I've been wanting to check out this snack for awhile and seaweed is one of the richest sources of calcium, magnesium, and many other minerals that are bioavailable. That is, they can easily be used by the body.

Articles:

Kids, Paleo and Nutrient Density by Robb Wolf 

How Will I Get Calcium on a Paleo Diet? by Diane Sanfilippo .. Love this post because of the graphics.

Hope this helps, best wishes!





This has become funny to me now...