Monday Morning Mix-Up 9/19/2011

Good morning everyone.  Do you remember my friend Kristin who I told you about a while back, the one who changed their family's diet to help their son with ADHD?  First she called about a nutrition consultation, then she signed up for my Rookie class, next she moved to a house with land and they got chickens (it was fun seeing the picture of their first egg!), and now that crazy awesome girl is putting chicken feet in her bone broth, it took me years to get to that point!  She has got to be the fastest person ever to go from a rookie to a Real Foodie.  And I thought my food conversion was fast.  🙂

Let's get to today's scoop…

• I've shared before how fun it is to get creative with leftovers and stretch the healthy meat that we spend a lot of money on.  I did this again the other day, and it makes me giddy, I tell ya.  It feels like I'm really getting away with something when I can grab a whole slew of concoctions from the frig, from many different bowls and containers, and turn it into something everyone loves!  Here's what I did…  When I first made this fresh salsa last week it was gone in one day, but the next batch hung around a while, so I threw the leftovers into a crock pot.  We also enjoyed this family favorite, grass fed flank steak recently, but we had extra stir-fried peppers – they went into the crock pot, too.  Lastly, we'd had vegetable beef soup and some of the meat was gone, but part of the veggies and a lot of the super nourishing beef stock was left.  I wasn't about to waste that, so in it went.  I put it on low and let it simmer all day.  I didn't need to add any herbs or spices because the fresh salsa already had all that.  Later I served this “Taco Soup” with a dollop of sour cream, a hunk of cream cheese, some shredded cheddar, and crunched up organic tortilla chips.  We all loved it and had seconds, too!

• West Michigan readers, there are two things to run by you today:  1.  Tomorrow evening's local WAPF chapter meeting is a Q & A session where we'll be helping each other with cooking or Real Foodie dilemmas and answering any questions you might have, I hope you can come!  Visit our Meetup page for more info.  2.  Do you know any local farmers or Real Food producers who would like to be on our WAPF chapter resources page?  Have them email me because soon they'll be able to fill out a form with questions so customers can learn more about them.  It's not quite ready yet as I'm still working out the bugs with that form.  (My email:  [email protected].)

• The following scoop is something I haven't looked into, so I'm posting what another blogging friend, Emily, shared with me via email:  “I just learned something very interesting from an associate at Whole Foods. I plan to blog about it, but since you get a lot more traffic I thought it would be good to pass it on to you because I want to kick Coca-Cola and Pepsi in the shins as hard as I can!  Long story short: Garden of Life is no longer selling their coconut oil in 32-oz. jars, and is thinking about discontinuing their coconut oil altogether. Why? All of a sudden there's this coconut water fad, and Coke and Pepsi have jumped on the bandwagon and started producing coconut water.  According to the GOL reps, those 2 companies are using up so many coconuts so fast, that the supply of coconuts is dropping to dangerously low levels. GOL apparently wants to do the sustainable thing and not be a part of making coconuts an endangered species (not their words, simply my inference of the situation).  Another reason to boycott such processed food companies as Coca-Cola and Pepsi – as if their toxic drinks weren't enough reason to not touch them with a ten-foot pole!”  (Here's more scoop on coconut oil and why it's so good for us.)  Thank you for telling me about this Emily, and also thanks for finding a couple interesting links to go with it:  Where have all the coconuts gone? and more about Coke & Pepsi's coconut water.  One more disturbing link on the Coca Cola company.  I also found where Jimmy recently wrote about the coconut shortage.  Have any of you heard about this?!

• Everywhere you turn these days, there are ads telling you to “Get your flu shot”!  My advice is more like, “Don't get a flu shot!”  Have you seen this post, Should you or your kids get the flu shot?  Or you can read all about our vaccine decisions.  One more, here's an interesting post from Sarah recently, Survey results – are unvaccinated children healthier?

• Thank you Sue from New Jersey who sent me this link to a Dr. Oz video with these comments:  “I'm not sure when this aired or if you saw it, but I was watching Dr. Mercola on the the Dr. Oz show and he very briefly mentioned that if you are going to drink milk, it should be raw milk from healthy, grass-fed cows.  I don't think I've ever heard that on TV before.  Of course, Oz didn't comment on it, but I thought you'd like to know.”  (Read about the time Dr. Mercola was on my nerves, but in this case, YAY for him!  Also, you can read here more about raw milk.)