Veggie Daddy Rule #5: Know Thy Food Source

"The stuff we throw away is what we're paying for...the packaging, printing, manufacturing, warehousing, refrigeration, and distribution. After all this has been paid off, there's not much money left for the actual ingredients in the food. This is why most processed, packaged, and prepared foods are full of chemical flavors, colors, and empty calories created to make actual food ingredients go further. Another reason for enjoying more whole, fresh, raw foods straight from the source." -- Ani Phyo, author of Ani's Raw Food Essentials.

Got this from Chapters for ten bucks. Good deal, I must say.

Veggie Daddy Rule #5: Know Thy Food Source

Veggie Daddy Fun Fact: Thomas F. Pawlick from The End of Food says the Canadian potato has lost 100% of its Vitamin A. This doesn't just apply to potatoes, but all of our fruits and vegetables, grains, and even our sodium-solution-pumped meat has lost massive amounts of nutrients over many years. Synthetic fertilizers are a big part of the blame, the food industry as a whole, but we, too, are a big part of the blame. We choose to buy inferior food. My guess is that this could turn around if we started to pay more attention to where our food comes from: who's growing it, who's making it, who's selling it, and who's buying it. And don't forget the most important question of all: What is in it? Take the Slate quiz and see how well you do. Our food has become so alien to us, we need the food companies to come up with a fancy brand name in order to tell us what it is we're eating. If the Slate quiz makes anything clear, it's that the food we are eating is not food at all. So, again, if it's not food, what in God's name is it?

That fruit you're buying that was shipped from God knows where isn't getting soft because the fruit is being harvested when it is barely ripe. Then the fruit gets subjected to bouts of toxic polyethelene gas as if in a modern-day Auschwitz re-enactment in order to "ripen" the fruit in the "ripening" rooms on the trucks as they get shipped thousands of miles to our favorite grocery store. The fruit looks amazing, and then we take it home with us and bite into that juicy tomato, which isn't juicy at all, it just looked juicy, and it has no flavor at all, it just looked like it did. What is happening to the food? It's being gassed to death in trucks. Do you think this gas might affect our health? I'll let you figure that one out.

Synthetic fertilizers only focus on three nutrients (the classic NPK formula) when we actually need seventeen essential nutrients to grow our food. Monsanto is trying to sue farmers for trying to steal their seeds as the genetically modified crops inadvertently contaminate organic, non GM crops. "The major biotech companies currently own 50 percent of the world’s commercial seeds, and we certainly don’t want to get into a situation where a few chemical companies own all our commercial seeds," says Andrew Kimbrell, founder and exec. director of the Center for Food Safety. Seeds aren't very profitable until you find some way to patent them. Now they can make you bank. Now you can "smile as you kill" as you join the others at "the top of the hill." 

Yet we must stay low to the ground and eat low on the food chain, foods close to the earth, as local and organic as possible. I just learned that genetically modified food is still considered organic. This is a joke. And the joke's on us. Thomas, a guy I know from down at Harbourside told me to Google "Cow Human Hybrid" and "Spider Goat". When I get the time, I will, but from what he told me last night, we are in serious trouble. And at the rate we are currently going, we are letting these people control our entire food supply. When will we TAKE THE POWER BACK? Only time will tell.  

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

And don't forget Veggie Daddy Rule #4!

Breakfast: Orange and Grape Salad

Breakfast time, what to eat? I know the pineapple isn't ripe yet because I can't easily pick off any of the top leaves. I've got loads of oranges and I still have some grapes, so I threw this little fruit salad together:

Simple, easy, totally fiberific. No dressing, the juice of the oranges and grapes replace any need for a dressing. The greens cut the sweetness and vice/versa. And as I mentioned yesterday, oranges and grapes combine very well. 

Oranges belong to the Acid family and grapes belong to the Sub-acid family, which can both be eaten with a lettuce mix. I could have thrown some avocado in this as well, but I decided not to this morning. This also adheres to Veggie Daddy Rule #1. I always try to eat at least one meal that is completely raw, and breakfast is a great way to do this. It's easy to get in the habit of eating a large fruit breakfast, because you're generally going to have a veggie-type salad with your lunch or dinner.

Eat (B)right,

Veggie Daddy

We've Lost Our Connection to the Double Rainbow, "Oh, my god"

FOOD DIARY


So for lunch today, my wife was home once again and ate exactly the same sandwich that she ate yesterday, as did my other little granola girl. I ate the braised-cauliflower leftovers.

Here's a picture of my hunter gal-therer showing the snacks we (the girls and I) ate after school:

Let's diagnose this plate, shall we? Let's see, we have pistachios in their shells, dried mango at 9 o'clock, raisins at the top, and those are those home-made Tamari-roasted almonds I've mentioned before, which you can make right-quick at home. Three out of four of those came from a package, but I don't know how many people would say these are typical snack foods they'd give to their kids, not to mention this particular gal-therer could be arrested if she were caught threatening the denizens of her school with wild offerings, recklessly waving bunched handfuls of almonds and pistachios like a puerile pirate.

I don't know, when I look at this picture myself, there's something very, er, non-North American about it, as if my daughter has been spending the last two weeks on a walk-about with Marlo Morgan (see Mutant Message Down Under) or the Tanzanian Hadza Tribe.



Perhaps it's because we forgot what it used to be like out there in nomad land as we scoured the trees and bushes before we learned how to make a spear. I wonder what we ate before we learned how to shoot a buffalo between the eyes with a well-honed arrow-tip. Did we just scavenge around eating left-over "roadkill" like the vultures? What drove us to hunting, I wonder. Weren't we just satisfied eating nuts and berries? Hmmm...



Veggie Daddy Fun Fact:
It took 150,000 years to learn how to sharpen one side of a spear. It took another 150,000 years to learn that we could sharpen the other side. From what I understand (from Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines) this is because the more technologically advanced we become, the faster time goes. So before the Industrial Revolution, there was a huge 5,000 year gap of technological advancement. Before the Industrial Revolution, the British didn't live all that much better than those of early civilizations 5,000 years prior. It is the Industrial Revolution which threw us out of the Malthusian Trap. So after the I.R., the time between significant events began to shrink exponentially, and so now, for us, time seems to actually speed up. I-Pad 2, Nintendo  3DS--we are like a gargantuan snowball careening ever-faster downwards, absorbing everything in our (some would say "destructive") path. Or are we rolling upwards? Are we rolling off a cliff?

So while time was uber-slow, molasses-dripping slow, and nothing significant ever happened, I have to ask the question, what did we eat during the 300,000 years it took us to learn how to carve a spearhead? Anyone? I imagine the meal must have looked something like the food on my daughter's plate, which looks...ancient. Like I can't identify with it, but seems somehow to make all the sense in the world if I think about it hard enough.

I must admit, eating kissed-by-the-sun dried mangoes (I'm lying, we bought them at Cost-Co--don't tell anyone!), pistachios, almonds, kissed-by-the-sun grapes (nope--Sunmaid!), choosing to consume such primitive nibbles as these does not come naturally to me. I have to actually make the conscious decision to go to the cupboard and eat these strange little pods that seem to have descended down from another planet. And why? We just aren't brought up that way, not the majority of us. And certainly, especially in today's world of blue dinosaurs bleeding their gelatinous insides into their instant-and-distant, runny oatmeal, neither are our kids.

Perhaps we've lost touch with our roots. Not all of us, though. There is now a small, very small, minority of us out there who are highly conscious of the fact that in our fast-paced, high-tech world, we have lost something big, something important, something like a connection to our ancient, ancient past, before the time that we hunted game with crude weaponry. We seemed to have lost the connection to the fact that we use to eat actual food, bright and vivid as a double rainbow, oh my god, and when we see something so colorful, we can only zone out on the literal acid trip we have riddled our bodies with when we eat non-food, processed food, food that has lost so much vitality that we must shoot them in their arms with chemicals and colors and pretend it is food that is alive, but is actually dead. And we do the same to livestock.

Veggie Daddy Fun (NOT FUN AT ALL!!!) Fact: 70% of antibiotics are given to our healthy livestock. 
I have actually heard it is more. Chilling...and so we're illing.

Veggie Daddy Parent Tip: Modeling, Modeling, Modeling

No, I'm not talking about walking down a runway pretending you're Pamela Anderson. If we want our kids to find this lost connection, we must model eating such real foods ourselves. We must let our kids see us enjoying the "fruits of our labor," and they too will follow. They, too, will begin to see, as they stroll through aisle after aisle of dead food on the shelves of the grocery store, that there is a true double rainbow of good food waiting for them, that there is a true difference between alive food that is bright and vivid as opposed to dead food that they have to throw thirty different additives to it so it actually tastes good, but mostly just tastes like sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

Veggie Daddy Rule #4: We must model eating b(right) food, and our kids will too. The kids actually want to.

Pick up an almond or a peach as consciously as you would go for a walk around the block or do a push-up because you know you have to exercise. It's not about eating right. It's about making the conscious decision to eat real food, pesticide-riddled or not. It is better than eating dead food.

Let's model eating food that has the real colors of the rainbow that nature naturally provided us while we were lying around in the sun wondering how to carve the other side of that spear, before we learned to hunt. EAT REAL FOOD the way nature intended and we can help our kids and ourselves discover our own (double) rainbow connection. Oh my god.

This rich, orange-colored butternut squash...

...became this butternut squash pasta bake spiced with chipotle pepper. It was quite good and can be found in the uber-cool cookbook, The Complete Guide to Vegan Substitutions.

The dish was good, but I would like to call attention to the colors of the squash when it was raw and when it was cooked. Notice anything different? Yep, the color is gone. Many of the best nutrients in raw food take a trip to Neverland once you cook them. The evidence is as plain as the taste of the glowing Kraft Dinner in your child's bowl. Even if you eat nothing raw all day, throwing in a salad, and there are so many kinds, with your dinner is a perfect way to get back to your roots.

If you would like advice on how to get your children to eat more real food, here is a little tip. And don't forget to model! Work it, baby, work it!

Why are there so many songs about rainbows

And what's on the other side?

Rainbows are visions, but only illusions,

And rainbows have nothing to hide.

So we've been told and some choose to believe it

I know they're wrong, wait and see.

Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection,

The lovers, the dreamers and me.

--Paul Williams

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

Veggie Daddy Rule# 3: Eat a Variety of Foods

Oh, great, it's lunch. The kids have come back from Church, and they're hungry. Once again, I have to figure out what to feed them. Does lunch ever seem like a battle with your kids? All they want is macaroni & cheese, the locals here always seem to call it Kraft Dinner, though we have never bought it; we always get the PC kind which doesn't glow in the dark or where you have to wear sunglasses because it's so bright, yellow # fill-in-the-blank, or what have you. But we hear from lots of folks, it's Kraft Dinner, that's all the kids want for lunch, dinner, etc. For vegetarian kids, it's usually the Franken-food veggie dogs or "chicken" nuggets.

Veggie Daddy Rule# 3: Eat a variety of foods. Meats are complete proteins, but plant proteins are scattered all over the place, so vary the foods you eat so you get a smattering of everything. But don't go all Nazi about it. A little of this, a little of that, be conscious of it, and you'll be fine. What are you doing right now? Are you daydreaming or are you conscious? Conscious? Good! Feels good, doesn't it? (The reason I mention this is because I used to eat very un-consciously. I'd eat a bag of cookies, load up on the ice-cream, sugar, sugar, sugar. Couldn't get enough of it! Not so, now...I'll explain later.)

So it's lunch and my oldest wants a PB&J. This might surprise you or it may not. Remember the old-fashioned PB&J which seemed to serve as the death sentence for so many of us kids in school as we got it for lunch every single day (I seemed to, anyway) is now absolutely, strictly banned from most schools today because of the most evil ingredient on earth: the terrible, killer peanut, Satan in a shell.

So, yes, my girl wants a PB&J as we do not torture her with such horrors during the week, and she seems to prefer getting tortured with such bland mundanities on the weekends. Luckily, this special daughter of mine has no inkling of the horrid memories that I have had to deal with (I also mostly ate PB&J for three straight months for lunch in NYC because I was so poor and pretty much jobless back in '98--I couldn't afford the heavenly-smelling gyros around the corner) and so who am I to oppose her? But I have a problem with something, mostly based on a lot of the research I have done. I don't really want her to eat too much store-bought bread; we get Dempster's.)

Veggie Daddy Fun Fact: Refined grains aren't all that good for you.

I'll probably go into it later as to why, but just take my word for it, for now. Refined grains, flour and such, should be seen as a sometime food. Keep off the bleached and enriched flours especially. But it's true, our bodies don't do all that well on processed, refined grains. But again, we're not extremists, so all things in moderation, right? Right.

So back to the PB&J. I don't want her to eat two pieces of highly processed bread with even more processed jam. What to do? I also want her to vary her foods. Like me, I know she hasn't had any fruit today, but store-bought jam is NOT fruit. So I gave her suggestions and she could pick. Here were her options:

• Apple
• Our home-made granola (so simple to make!)
• PB & J

Guess what? She said she wanted an apple! Right on. Then I put some peanut butter on it and made a sandwich. Apple slices with peanut butter. No bread, no jam. Fruit, legumes. Here's the picture:

We use Mara Natha peanut-butter, no stir. Uber-delish! Both girls loved the apple sandwiches.

Veggie Daddy Parent Tip: KISS--Keep it simple, stupid. Offer choices then let them choose.

And me? I'm still full from brunch, but I snatched some apple and peanut butter myself, so I am getting the same variety of nutrients. Still hungry? Big-ass glass of water. Yep, it topped me right up. Now it's time to go hit Rocket Bakery, that new bakery I've heard so much about.

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

Food Diary: Deluxe Pizza, Beet Salad, Chocolate "Tofutti" Ice Cream

FOOD DIARY

6:28 P.M. Dinner time! We always have pizza on Saturdays.

Deluxe Pizza:

Pepperoni Alternative (TVP)

Hot Banana Peppers (to make it spicier)

Olives

Mozarella Cheese (the only time I really eat cheese--My wife uses Daiya, but I don't like it)

Homemade pizza sauce

Just finished up with the pizza dough (water, olive oil, flour, salt, sugar, yeast) and we're going to have a jazzed-up version of a typical deluxe pizza sans pepperoni. Instead of pepperoni, which is pretty gross if you care to do the research, we are using a TVP mixture with loads of spices such as anise and liquid smoke to simulate the pepperoni-like flavor.

"What the hell is TVP?" you ask. That's a good question. Textured Vegetable Protein. Even Bulk Barn has it.

Salad:

Green Cabbage, Beets, Carrots, Broccoli Stems, Raisins

Dressing with shallots, brown rice syrup, flax oil/olive oil, lemon juice

Sprinkle Hemp seeds over the top

Would you believe my youngest girl, Age 3, ate her entire salad? I couldn't believe it either. Our oldest girl, Age 8, did not want to try it, but she ate her pizza.

Veggie Daddy Parent Tip: Always put strange/bizarre/yucky-looking food on your kids' dishes, even if you know they won't eat it or touch it. Don't ever force them. Don't bribe them. Put a small, tiny bit because you're gonna either have to throw it out or eat it yourself. If they do eat it, smile big and clap, as if they scored a touch-down. They love that.

Don't forget the glass of wine! (We don't buy our wine, we make it--much cheaper.)

No, that's not a pile of crap, but good guess. It's actually Chocolate-Tofu ice cream for dessert. It's like Tofutti without the brand name attached. And, no, we don't use GMO tofu. We use the Sunrise brand. It's excellent!

Total # of artificial additives, artificial colors, flavors: ZERO (mostly...nothing was processed, anyway.) We are not extremists, you know.

So that was a full, uber-delish meal. I'm sated, mos def. But not stuffed. I ate three big pieces and two generous helpings of salad, one serving of the ice cream, couple glasses of wine. I'm ready to go!

Don't forget Veggie Daddy Rule #2: Eat to 80% of your capacity. That means you got 20% emptiness left in your stomach to move around without feeling bloated.

Veggie Daddy Recap!

Here's all I ate today, (all thanks goes to my lovely wife who makes this amazing food!) :

Big-ass glass of orange/lemon juice.

Pumpkin and Oatmeal cookies

BBQ-Seitan Sandwich w/ crispy potato wedges and ketchup

Peanut-Butter and Chocolate muffin

Deluxe Pizza

Beet and Cabbage Salad

Chocolate Tofu Ice Cream

Wine

Maybe a snack before bed? We'll see...

Whoah, I am way SATED.

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy