Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and The... (121 page)

2 pounds ground beef or turkey

1 cup cooked organ meats, finely chopped (optional)

6 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 medium white onion, chopped

2 bunches green onions, chopped

2 red or green peppers, seeded and finely chopped

4-5 cloves garlic, peeled and mashed

3 carrots, peeled and grated

2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley

¼ cup chopped cilantro

1 cup cooked peas

1 cup cooked corn

1½ cups
basic brown rice

sea salt and pepper

2 recipes
yoghurt dough

unbleached white flour

Saute beef or turkey in 3 tablespoons olive oil until cooked through, allowing some of it to become well browned. Add ½ teaspoon cumin seeds and season to taste. In a separate skillet, saute onions and peppers in olive oil. Add carrots, garlic, ½ teaspoon cumin and salt to taste and saute a bit more. In a large bowl mix cooked meats, vegetable mixture, peas, corn, rice, parsley and cilantro. Season to taste.

Make a 1-inch ball of dough and roll into a round of about 6 inches, using unbleached white flour to prevent sticking. Place a scant ½ cup of filling off center, fold pastry in half and pinch edges together. Repeat until all of dough or filling is used. Bake at 350 degrees until lightly browned. The pastries may be individually wrapped in foil and frozen. Remove foil before reheating.

One will immediately ask about vegetarians. On close examination it will be found that vegetarians omit meat from their diet but include milk, cheese, dairy products, and eggs—all animal protein. Milk is a form of modified blood, more specifically it may be termed white blood. The white of an egg, which is better for the body when cooked, is 100 percent protein. It is necessary for a vegetarian to eat a relatively large amount of food in order to meet his basic needs because plant foods, due to their high cellulose content, are not easily assimilated and necessitate more work in chewing, flow of digestive juices, and intestinal movement. As far as the human body is concerned, vegetable protein is a poor substitute for animal protein. H. Leon Abrams
Your Body Is Your Best Doctor

Our ancestors knew nothing about vitamins, and they did fine. They didn't know about food additives, artificial coloring and flavoring, and, above all, about pasteurized, homogenized or skim milk. Medical researchers from other countries have attributed the high degree of heart disease and cancer in the U.S. to our high consumption of milk—pasteurized, of course, and in recent years homogenized or skim. This, along with our national addiction to Coca-cola, ice cream, donuts, pizza and candy bars, gives us one of the highest rates of degenerative diseases in the world. For all these and other such popular favorites as powdered fruit drinks, sugarcoated cereals, hot dogs, potato chips, are susceptibility foods—foods, that is, which nibble away at rather than build up, the body's immune system to disease. Bruce Pacetti, DDS
PPNF Health Journal

Shunned for several decades by orthodox practitioners as a high-cholesterol food wrongly believed to cause coronary heart disease, the egg is making the comeback it deserves. Eggs have provided mankind with high-quality protein and fat-soluble vitamins for millennia. Properly produced eggs are rich in just about every nutrient we have yet discovered, especially fat-soluble vitamins A and D. Eggs also provide sulphur-containing proteins, necessary for the integrity of cell membranes. They are an excellent a source of special long-chain fatty acids called EPA and DHA, which play a vital role in the development of the nervous system in the infant and the maintenance of mental acuity in the adult—no wonder Asians value eggs as a brain food. Egg yolk is the most concentrated source known of choline, a B vitamin found in lecithin that is necessary for keeping the cholesterol moving in the blood stream.

It pays to buy the best quality eggs you can find—eggs from chickens fed flax or fish meal or, better yet, pasture fed so they can eat bugs and worms. Their nutritional qualities are far superior to those of battery-raised eggs and even many so-called "free range" eggs. In particular, they contain a better fatty acid profile, one in which the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids exist in an almost one-to-one ratio; but in eggs from chickens fed only grains, the omega-6 content can be as much as 19 times greater than all important unsaturated omega-3. Other very-long-chain and highly unsaturated fatty acids—necessary for the development of the brain—are found in properly produced eggs but are almost wholly absent in most commercial eggs. Eggs from pasture-fed chickens will become more available with consumer demand.

When broken into a bowl, the egg should have a dark yellow yolk that stands up in a round hemisphere. The white should have two clearly defined sections—a more viscous part surrounding the yolk and a thinner area on the perimeter.

Never eat powdered eggs, a source of harmful oxidized cholesterol.

What about recent publicity regarding salmonella infections from eggs? The blame for such problems lies squarely on crowded production methods that require extensive use of antibiotics in feed. Eggs from pasture-fed hens pose no danger provided they have been properly refrigerated.

It's fine to eat raw yolks of fresh eggs, but raw egg whites should be consumed only on occasion. Raw egg whites contain a substance called avidin, which interferes with the absorption of biotin, a B vitamin; they also contain trypsin inhibitors, which interfere with protein digestion. These antinutrients are neutralized by light cooking.

FRIED EGG

Serves 1

1 egg

1 tablespoon butter

Some advocates of politically correct nutrition warn against eating fried eggs as if they were a veritable poison. However, many children—and adults as well—find a poached or boiled egg unpalatable but will eat an egg that has been fried or scrambled. There is absolutely nothing harmful in frying an egg gently in butter.

Melt butter in a heavy skillet over a medium flame and crack the egg into the pan. Cover with a lid and cook gently for several minutes until the white becomes firm and the yolk somewhat thickened. Serve with
hash browns
,
corned beef hash
,
roe cakes
or
turkey sausage
.

SCRAMBLED EGG

Serves 1

1 fresh egg

1 egg yollk (optional)

1 tablespoon cream

pinch sea salt

2 teaspoons butter

For results that have a more pleasant texture and superior taste, add cream rather than milk to eggs for scrambling. The extra yolk makes a super scramble!

Beat egg, optional yolk, cream and salt thoroughly with a wire whisk. Melt butter in a heavy skillet. Add beaten egg mixture and stir constantly with a wooden spoon until egg is scrambled. Serve immediately with
hash browns
,
corned beef hash
,
roe cakes
or
turkey sausage
.

Government sponsored health education programs have carried the lowfat propaganda into our public schools. "My mother is killing me—making me eat two eggs and bacon and toast with butter for breakfast," said an eighth grade boy after taking a health course in a public school near Albany, New York. Future parents are being told that the foods they need to have healthy babies contain cholesterol and saturated fats and will cause heart disease. Programs like these help boost the sales of breakfast cereals and skim milk and can be credited with high rates of injuries on the athletic field, eating disorders, depression, fatigue, infertility and other health problems as the years roll by. SWF

POACHED EGG

Serves 1

1-2 eggs

This is a good way to test the quality of your eggs. Gently crack 1-2 eggs into a pan of simmering water. If the whites hold together and do not come off in flaky bits, the protein is of good quality and the egg is very fresh. Simmer for about 5 minutes and remove with a slotted spoon.

MEXICAN EGGS

(Heuvos Rancheros)
Serves 4

4 fresh eggs, scrambled or fried

4 corn tortillas

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or lard

2 cups
Grandpa's salsa

Fry tortillas in olive oil or lard until crisp. Pat dry with paper towels. Place tortillas on individual plates that have been warmed in the oven. Place fried or scrambled egg on each and top with salsa.

While the fat fighters have been pushing skim milk and peanut oil, Dr. Alan Howard, Cambridge University, England, has discovered that whole milk actually protects against abnormally high cholesterol. Feeding two quarts of whole milk a day to volunteers caused a drop in cholesterol. Butter caused an increase in cholesterol. (That doesn't mean that butter is bad for you. There is
absolutely no proof
that a temporary rise in cholesterol is harmful.) Dr. George Mann, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, concurs with Dr. Howard. He found that four quarts of whole milk per day will lower the blood cholesterol level by twenty-five percent. Cambridge's Howard concluded, ". . .all this business that saturated fats in milk are bad for you is nonsense." William Campbell Douglass, MD
The Milk Book

DEVILED EGGS

Makes 12

6 medium eggs

½ cup
piima cream
or
creme fraiche

½ teaspoon sea salt

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

Place eggs in a pan of cold water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and chill in refrigerator. Slice lengthwise and remove yolks carefully. Place yolks, cultured cream, salt and cayenne pepper in a food processor and process until smooth. Carefully return the yolk mixture to the hollow of the egg whites.

PLAIN OMELET

Serves 2-4

4 fresh eggs, at room temperature

3 tablespoons water

dash of tabasco sauce

pinch sea salt

2 tablespoons butter

Crack eggs into a bowl, add water, tabasco and salt and blend with a wire whisk. (Do not whisk too long or the omelet will be tough.) Melt butter in a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet. When foam subsides, add egg mixture. Tip pan to allow egg to cover the entire pan. Cook several minutes over medium heat until underside is lightly browned. Lift up one side with a spatula and fold omelet in half. Reduce heat and cook another half minute or so—this will allow the egg on the inside to cook. Slide omelet onto a heated platter and serve.

Variation: Onion, Pepper and Cheese Omelet

Saute
1 small onion, thinly sliced
and
½ red pepper, cut into strips
in
2 tablespoons butter
until tender. Strew this evenly over the egg mixture as it begins to cook, along with
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese.

Variation: Herb Omelet

Scatter
1 tablespoon parsley, finely chopped, 1 tablespoon chives, finely chopped
and
1 tablespoon thyme or other garden herb, finely chopped
over the omelet as it begins to cook.

Variation: Mushroom Omelet

Saute
½ pound fresh mushrooms, washed, well dried and thinly sliced
in
2 tablespoons each of butter and olive oil
. Scatter over the omelet as it begins to cook.

Variation: Sausage Omelet

Saute
½ cup
turkey sausage
mixture
in
2 tablespoons butter
until crumbly and scatter over the omelet as it begins to cook. You may also use
½ cup leftover
samosa
filling
or
empanada
filling.