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This ultimate guide to fermentation troubleshooting will answer all of your fermenting FAQs… including why your ferment isn't bubbling, what to do if your ferment is mushy or moldy, how to tell if your ferment is done, safety tips, and more. Even though fermentation is safe and has been done since the beginning of time… Even though you can do it at home, and you don't need really special equipment… …fermentation problems do come up now and then. So today we're all about troubleshooting ferments. Whether it's not bubbling, it's mushy, or you plain and simple just don't like it. Questions include: Why isn't my ferment bubbling? What to do if your ferment is moldy. How can I tell if my ferment is done? I'm dairy-free. Can I use something other than whey? and many more fermentation troubleshooting tips! Don't have time to listen or watch? The complete transcript of fermenting FAQs is below, too. Fermentation Troubleshooting Subscribe to the Know Your Food with Wardee podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, YouTube, or the Podcasts app. For past or current episodes, check out the Know Your Food with Wardee podcast archives. What Is Fermenting? First, let's get on the same page. What is fermenting? Most of us think about fermentation in terms of vegetables, like sauerkraut or pickles. But you can ferment virtually anything: fruit and veggies into chutney, relish, pickles, salsa, and other condiments; grains through sourdough; dairy into milk kefir, yogurt, cheeses, and more; beans into hummus, natto, and tempeh; meats into sausage and other cured meats; even beverages like water kefir and Kombucha! Although there are differences depending on what you're fermenting, the basic fermentation process goes like this. Sea salt and/or whey are added to food and left at room temperature for a few days to a few weeks. The naturally present organisms on the fruits and vegetables will begin to feast on the starches and sugars in the foods. And as they do that, they will multiply. They'll also produce enzymes, vitamins, beneficial acids, even gases — that's how you get bubbly ferments. The final result is a naturally preserved food because the huge population of beneficial organisms repels spoiling organisms. Fruits and vegetables are wonderful, but if you ferment them, you make them better! Safety Tips Fermentation is safe. You can do it at home without special equipment. It's been done since the beginning of time! According to U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist Fred Bright, “As far as I know, there has never been a documented case of food-born illness from fermented vegetables. Risky is not a word I would use to describe vegetable fermentation. It is one of the oldest and safest technologies we have.” Yet fermentation problems do come up now and then, so let's cover some basic safety tips. Practice cleanliness. Keep your containers, utensils, and counter tops clean. Wash your hands. Use organic produce so pesticides don't mess with the natural processes. Source a high quality sea salt. I like Redmond's Real Salt. It's an unrefined salt with lots of color so you know it hasn't been bleached or fortified with chemicals. Ferments love salt, and especially unrefined salt because they flourish with the extra minerals. Use uncontaminated, pure water. The beneficial bacteria and yeasts in ferments may have trouble thriving in water contaminated with chlorine, chloramine, or flouride (among thousands of other contaminants found in city water). If your water is not clean or you don’t filter it, I recommend purchasing spring water or filtered water (here's how to choose the best water filter for your family!). If your water is filtered and does not re-add minerals back, consider fortifying it with natural mineral drops. I discuss using reverse osmosis water for sourdough in this #AskWardee. Fermenting FAQs A lot of fermenting questions have made their way into my inbox over the years. I've compiled the most common issues and solutions here for you! Can I reduce the salt in any of Traditional Cooking School's recipes? No, salt protects ferments from spoiling organisms while allowing the Lactobacilli bacteria necessary for proper fermentation to thrive. It's essential, in the amounts written, for safe fermentation. My ferment tastes too salty. Is there anything I can do? The saltiness can mellow once you put it in the fridge. Otherwise, if it's still too salty, you can rinse it (sauerkraut, carrot sticks, etc.) before eating… or enjoy a small portion of these condiment-type fermented foods as a side for something less seasoned. For instance, enjoy your kimchi with eggs or rice, or your sauerkraut with potatoes or steak, and perhaps hold off on salting these other foods entirely until you see if the ferment will be salty enough for it all. I'm dairy-free. Is there another starter culture I can use instead of whey? With most fruit ferments, you need a starter culture. Usually I use whey. If you don’t have whey, don’t want to use it, or wish to be dairy-free, we recommend a purchased veggie starter culture such as this one from Homesteader Supply. If using the single-strength starter culture, add this to your ferments in place of whey at the rate of 1/16 teaspoon per quart of ferment. Mix the powdered culture with the same amount of filtered water as whey is called for. For instance, if the recipe calls for 1/4 cup of whey for a quart of ferment, then mix 1/16 teaspoon with 1/4 cup filtered water and add that to the recipe in place of the whey. You can also use either finished water kefir (or even extra hydrated water kefir grains) or Kombucha. In vegetable and other fermentation, you may also use these non-dairy options as well as just using additional sea salt. Is there really an advantage to buying a starter culture rather than using a food (water kefir, Kombucha, etc.) with active cultures to inoculate a ferment? The advantage to using starter cultures is, if they are new and not degraded from being stored too hot or something, you can ensure a better result. Having said that, either can be used, and if one option is much more economical for you, you can go with that! Can I use frozen fruits or vegetables in my ferments, instead of fresh? Typically you don't get good results with frozen fruits or vegetables. They will ferment but the texture is not good, unless making a paste. I would use fresh produce for most recipes. What are the different “types” of ferments that need to be separated by at least 5 feet to prevent cross-contamination? The main ones are: veggie/fruit ferments, cultured dairy, and sourdough. Beyond the different types, you would also want to separate ferments if they use different starter cultures, for example whey and water kefir. More information here. If two lacto-ferments are typically different types but in this case I used the same starter culture for both of them, do I have to keep them 5 feet apart? Great question! If ferments are started with the same culture, even if they're different types, it's okay to keep them in close proximity. Do I need any type of special fermenting lid, such as an airlock or Pickle Pipe, to ferment? No, you can use a Mason jar with a metal band and lid. Keep in mind that you should burp your ferments at least daily to prevent a build-up of gases. Why isn't my ferment bubbling? Ferments bubble to varying degrees. Both pickles and sauerkraut tend to bubble a lot. Foods like apple chutney and ketchup are thick mixtures that may not bubble as much. Even if your ferment usually bubbles but this batch isn't, don't toss it out! Look for other signs of fermentation, such as texture changes, color changes, and the whole mixture starting to develop sourness from the lactic acid that’s produced. If you’re seeing these signs, all is well. If you’re not, is your ferment kept in a warm enough place to allow the beneficial bacteria to thrive? What can I do to keep my ferment warm enough? Most fermentation happens best around room temperature, or 72 degrees Fahrenheit. If your house is on the cool side, here's what you can do to keep your ferment happy and the beneficial bacteria thriving: Insulate your ferment by wrapping it in towels. Keep your ferment on a seedling warming mat. Keep your ferment on top of a warm appliance, such as the fridge. This #AskWardee has even more ideas for you! My ferment smells bad… is it still safe to eat? Before you start troubleshooting, know that many people aren't used to the sour taste and smell of normal fermentation, so what is actually fine can be very off-putting at first. I recommend getting hands-on with your ferment. Open up the jar or crock and see how it's doing every day — smell it, taste it, and the more you learn, the more you'll know for future fermentation. Wait until the initial gases have dispersed before smelling your ferment. The first puff of air is often stronger smelling than the rest, and you want an accurate sense of how the ferment is doing. Does it smell sour, acidic, and a little bit yeasty? That's normal and a sign of a healthy ferment. Does it smell excessively yeasty, alcoholic, metallic or like paint thinner? This is a common problem when your ferment is too warm. Most fermentation should be done at room temperature, around 72 degrees Fahreheit. If you're getting into the high 80s or 90s, move your ferment to a cooler location. Use your air conditioning. Or, postpone fermenting for cooler weather! If it smells rotten and disgusting, then it has spoiled. Toss it. My ferment tastes bad. What should I do? As mentioned above, ferments are an acquired taste for many people. So, unless your ferment tastes rotten (in that case, toss it!), give yourself time to adjust. If you don't like it the first time, that's okay; don't assume you're never gonna like it. Try again in a week or two. There is something you can do about the taste, though. If you're tasting a ferment that just finished, try moving it to cold storage for a while before trying it again. The activity of the organisms will slow down, but the ferment will continue to age. Often, aging leads to mellowed out flavors: a different complexity, even less saltiness. How can I tell if my ferment is spoiled or not? Trust your nose! Though be aware that if it repels you but is not spoiled, it might be because you’re unaccustomed to fermented foods and need time to adjust to a new normal. If you aren’t sure, you can take a little taste and see how it goes. It’s always okay to be on the safe side and compost the ferment or feed the chickens with it. Here are signs your ferment is on the right track: It's sour and salty, both in taste and smell. It has a pleasant tang. It develops a complex sour and salty flavor over time. It's crisp or crunchy, depending on the food your fermenting — like pickles or kraut. It may be sour, but not repelling. It may give off a strong odor when opened, but that dissipates. The odor was from pent-up gasses. Here are hard and fast signs that a ferment has gone wrong: It's moldy. Pink, blue or green and fuzzy is not good. It's mushy. Who wants mushy vegetables like pickles or kraut? Its smell repels you because it's putrid or rotten, not just sour. Your nose KNOWS this! When you taste it, it gives you an upset stomach. I see mold in/on my ferment. Is it safe to eat if I skim it away, or should I toss the whole thing? It depends. Little patches or a thin layer of mold is fine to skim away. If you have mold tendrils throughout your ferment, you'd better toss it. Sometimes you may not be able to see the mold tendrils, so skim away the top layer, let the air dissipate, then taste or smell what's left. If it tastes or smells rotten, it is. Remember that mold is relatively normal — the molds in the air can grow right at the top of ferments. They usually don’t go any deeper, as long as the salt brine is sufficiently acidic or the organisms in the ferment strong enough a colony. Just skim the ferment when needed. As a general rule, let your nose be your guide. If the fermenting food smells spoiled, it probably is. Toss it. Also, mold is gray, pink, blue or green and fuzzy. If what you think is mold is flat instead of fuzzy, it's probably kahm yeast — a white grayish yeast growth that looks like a dusty layer on top. It's not harmful, but can cause off-flavors. It's due to too much oxygen. Here are a few factors that can lead to moldy ferments. Troubleshooting one or more of them should help you get your fermentation game back on track! too much air getting in and out of the fermenting vessel (most ferments need to be airtight) not completely submerged in brine (pack your ferment down or try a fermenting weight!) not enough salt (salt inhibits growth of bad bacteria) too warm (fermentation happens best at around 72 degrees Fahrenheit) I covered how to prevent moldy ferments in this #AskWardee. Is it normal for my ferment to be discolored on top? Yes, that is normal in ferments, no need for further troubleshooting! It happens at the top of the jar or crock where there might be more exposure to air. As long as there is no mold, it is fine. Why is my ferment mushy? If your ferment is mushy instead of crunchy and crisp, you can try a few things. Replace the whey. Whey doesn't always lead to mushy ferments, but it sometimes can. Try using a veggie starter culture such as this one next time, or skip the starter culture altogether if you're making a vegetable ferment. Try increasing the salt. Salt is key for crunchiness. Double check your seals. If you're fermenting in jars where the air is getting in and out, the extra oxygen can lead to mushiness. Source crocks that seal completely, try an airlock lid, or use a Fido jar. I share the pros and cons of different fermentation vessels here. Pack it carefully. Open your jar every day or as needed to pack the contents back down. A happy, bubbly ferment has air pockets which can lead to mushiness if not packed down. My ferment is dry — it doesn't have enough liquid to submerge the mixture. What should I do? Tamp the mixture down as far as it will go. Dissolve 1 teaspoon of a mineral-rich salt into 1/2 cup of pure, uncontaminated water, and pour to cover. My ferment is producing way too much liquid — it leaked and spilled everywhere. What should I do? First, tamp the mixture back down. If there isn't enough brine left to submerge the mixture, simply dissolve 1 teaspoon of a mineral-rich salt into 1/2 cup of pure, uncontaminated water, and pour to cover. Can I drain the liquid away after my ferment has finished fermenting? No, we don't recommend draining any of the liquid away. Even once the ferment is done and in the fridge, it's important to keep the foods submerged and packed properly. Instead, if you don't like the extra liquid, I would use a slotted spoon to serve, leaving any extra liquid behind in the jar to stay with the remaining ferment. That's often what I do, and then the extra juice can be drunk (after the rest of the ferment is gone) or used again for fermenting (such as sauerkraut juice)! My ferment won’t stay down. What should I do? Every day, tamp it back down to release the air bubbles lifting the mixture up. You want to keep it submerged. Feel free to use fermentation weights to help, or even half of an apple wedged down into the jar to keep the mixture covered by brine. The brine for my ferment has turned cloudy. Is that normal? Yes, totally normal! It's a good sign! Help! What is this sediment at the bottom of my ferment? That is completely normal and a sign of good fermenting! Just a normal part of the process! How can I tell if my ferment is done? Go ahead and open it up and smell and taste it! No two ferments are going to be exactly alike — this is a flexible process and you really have to open the jar and dig in to see what's going on in there. Typical signs of a finished ferment are: dimming or brightening of food colors sour taste (from acids produced) softening of foods (but hopefully still crunchy) flavor complexity – think of sauerkraut or pickles I need help with a specific ferment! What should I do? From fruit and veggie ferments to sourdough, beverages to cultured dairy, we have many articles to help with troubleshooting specific ferments! If you don't see the ferment you're looking for, we're always adding more so check back soon. Sourdough FAQs Water Kefir FAQs Kombucha FAQs Dairy Kefir FAQs Beet Kvass FAQs Sauerkraut FAQs Pickled Radishes FAQs Cream Cheese FAQs Sour Cream FAQs Cultured Butter FAQs Whey FAQs Fermenting Cheat Sheet If you're really excited about fermentation, I have a free gift for you! Pick it up here. It's a quick guide where I go through formulas for fermenting. For instance, if you want to make a quart of pickles or salsa, I give you all the amounts needed: this many vegetables, this amount of salt, this much brine, etc.! A formula allows you to use whatever you have on hand to create a foolproof recipe. I also provide some basic guidelines for fermenting so that you can make delicious, healthy, and safe ferments. Click here for your copy. Links Mentioned Free Fermenting Formulas Cheat Sheet Pickle Pro Airlock Lids The Complete Idiot's Guide to Fermenting Foods — my book Allergy-Free Cooking eCourse Pickle Pro fermenting lids Fido jar Redmond's Real Salt Did you find these fermentation troubleshooting tips helpful? Do you have any more fermenting questions we can answer? If so, feel free to leave a comment below! The post Fermentation Troubleshooting & FAQs (KYF172) appeared first on Traditional Cooking School by GNOWFGLINS.

This ultimate guide to sourdough tips and troubleshooting will answer all of your sourdough FAQs… including what kind of flour to use, reviving a sourdough starter, converting recipes to sourdough, and more. Years ago, I answered your sourdough questions in not one, but two Know Your Food with Wardee podcast episodes. I've received many more questions since then, so I decided it was time to combine and update those original posts! Below you will find the original podcast episodes (092 and 167) in video and/or audio format, plus reader questions and my answers and sourdough tips written out for those of you who prefer the transcript. Questions include: How to make a sourdough starter Reviving a starter that's been stored in the fridge A low maintenance way to care for a starter What flours to feed your starter How often to feed your starter and many, many more sourdough tips and FAQs! Sourdough Tips: Troubleshooting, FAQs & More! Subscribe to the Know Your Food with Wardee podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, YouTube, or the Podcasts app. KYF episode 167 “Sourdough Frequently Asked Questions”: KYF episode 092 “Sourdough Questions Answered”: Sourdough Frequently Asked Questions & Care Tips If you're interested in sourdough, be sure to grab my free sourdough starter instructions and tips! In 5 minutes, you could have a starter beginning to grow and flourish in your very own kitchen — that will serve you with delicious and healthy baked goods for a lifetime or more! What is a sourdough starter? All sourdough foods begin with a sourdough starter — an active colony of wild yeasts and Lactobacilli suspended in a batter of flour and water. The wild yeasts and Lactobacilli are everywhere — in the air, in unprocessed whole-grain flours, on your fruits and veggies, and on your skin. Creating and maintaining a starter is a process of feeding the naturally present organisms to encourage them to multiply over and over until the jar is full of millions of them. How do I make a sourdough starter? I have a whole post written just for you! Learn how to make your own sourdough starter here. I also help you troubleshoot and answer your sourdough FAQs related to making a new sourdough starter from scratch. And here's how to make an einkorn sourdough starter! Do I really have to discard my sourdough starter when first making it? Yes… and I wrote a whole post about sourdough discard here where I explain that it's actually the most frugal way to make a sourdough starter, plus ideas for what to do with your discard instead of throwing it away. Is it true that I shouldn't use a metal spoon with my sourdough starter? As a general rule, use non-reactive materials such as glass or wood with sourdough. Of the different metals, however, I find stainless steel to be okay, as it is minimally reactive. Avoid plastic containers because over time, the acidity of the starter can cause the plastic to leach into it. Always remember to choose a container that gives your starter room to double or triple in volume if it needs to! Will you share your sourdough care routine with me? Absolutely. I explain two sourdough care routines, one daily and one weekly, in this #AskWardee. And here is my personal routine of feeding my sourdough maintenance amounts, including tips for keeping things simple. What type of flour can I feed my starter? I am having an issue with too much fiber even with eating plenty of cultured food. Can I feed the starter with white flour or sifted whole grain? Will the starter will work well with this kind of flour on 2 feedings a day? -Pam F. For new sourdough starters, my best tip is to use a whole grain flour (such as whole wheat, spelt, einkorn, or rye flour), preferably organic and definitely unbleached. You can also grind your own flour such as with the Mockmill. Whole grain is preferred to all-purpose flour because it is more abundant in wild yeasts and lactobacilli, which we're trying to catch and nurture into a starter. The process of refining flour removes the microorganisms, which are on the outer hull of the grain. Once the starter is mature and established, it's okay to use your all-purpose, white, or soft wheat flours. For more information on the Mockmill, check out our Home Grain Milling 101 series. You can also visit this link for 5% off (no coupon code needed) your purchase of a Mockmill! Can I feed sprouted flour to my sourdough starter? Yes! The only thing to watch for with sprouted flour is that the grain is already partially broken down due to sprouting. This means your starter may run out of food faster and you might have to do feedings three times a day. You'll know that's the case if it's producing a lot of hooch early on, rather than toward the 12 hour mark. However… sourdough is the most effective method of traditional food preparation when it comes to deactivating anti-nutrients and enhancing nutrition, so there's really no need to use sprouted flour in your starter or in sourdough baking. Regular flour will yield the same results nutritionally, so you might want to save your sprouted flour for baking where sourdough isn't an option. This will save you time (if you're sprouting grains yourself) or money (if you're buying sprouted flour). Do I have to keep feeding my starter the same flour, or can I switch? Yes, you can switch flours. Here's how to do it! More specifically, I share how to transition a sourdough starter to einkorn flour here. How should I store my flour before feeding it to my starter? When you mill your whole wheat or einkorn flour and have leftover flour, do you leave the leftover flour at room temperature and use that to feed the starter everyday? I understand that it immediately starts to go rancid after it is milled. How many days can I leave it out of the refrigerator or freezer? I would think it is better to have it at room temperature to feed the starter rather than refrigerator or freezer temperature? -Pam F. Room temperature flour is best when your starter is still young and not established. After it's mature, you can feed it flour that has been kept in the fridge or freezer. I discuss the issue of room temperature flour and water here. If you'd like to leave leftover flour out at room temperature just for feeding your starter, that's fine. It's hard to know how long it lasts before going rancid, but you’re not really using it for health at this point. Instead, it's just a food source for the starter. So I’m not as concerned with how long as I would be if it was the bulk of the flour for the recipe. Check out this past #AskWardee, where I share my daily sourdough routine. It will help! How long does flour stay fresh? Use flour within three days of grinding (room temperature), or refrigerate for up to seven days, or freeze up to six months. Milled grains should not be stored at room temperature for more than three days because of the danger of rancidity. Sprouted flour should be used/stored similarly. Although it does last longer than unsprouted, we follow these guidelines to be on the safe side of rancidity. Here's more information on storage of grains and flour! Can I feed my starter something other than flour? Yes! Both cooked oatmeal and cooked rice can be used to feed your starter. More information here. Does it matter what kind of water I give my starter? Yes, it matters! The beneficial bacteria and yeasts in a sourdough starter may have trouble thriving in water contaminated with chlorine, chloramine, or flouride (among thousands of other contaminants found in city water). If your water is not clean or you don’t filter it, I recommend purchasing spring water or filtered water (here's how to choose the best water filter for your family!). If your water is filtered and does not re-add minerals back, consider fortifying it with natural mineral drops. I discuss using reverse osmosis water for sourdough in this #AskWardee. I also recommend, if possible, giving your starter warm or room temperature water. It's not a set-in-stone thing, but it is best practice. More information here. Can I keep my sourdough starters next to each other, or do I need to separate them like other ferments? You can keep them side by side. You might find they influence each other though, like one might behave better than the other or vice versa, until they get used to each other's presence. That happened to me and my daughters; I share our story here. My sourdough starter is very thick and pasty… is this okay? Thick is totally fine, however, you can add a bit more water if it's hard to stir. Somewhere between cake batter and cookie dough is a good consistency! All amounts are approximate and geography/humidity/flour variety has an impact on thickness. Why isn't my starter doubling in size? It looks so flat. Not everyone gets doubling or tripling in volume. It depends on the flour and water ratio, among other things. To troubleshoot, try feeding your sourdough starter more flour than water for a stiffer, thicker consistency. The other thing is, you might be missing when it gets high because often a starter collapses at the end of the 12 hour cycle. Don't give up and don't worry… if it's bubbly and active, it's doing great! What does a starter in its active, domed state look like? It has a curve on the top of it with lots of bubbles all around. This is considered “active” and ready to bake because it's domed and bubbly and hasn't begun to spill out hooch (yellow liquid). Spilling out hooch is a sign that it's past the height of activity. When is my sourdough starter mature and ready for baking bread? If it's bubbling, producing hooch, doming up/enlarging in size, and has a fresh/sour smell regularly for three weeks, it is considered established and mature… at which time we say it's ready for bread-making! Here are my best tips for baking sourdough bread that isn't dense. It's also ready for maintenance feedings and refrigeration at this point. Looking for sourdough bread recipes? Here are our favorites! Whole Grain Sourdough Bread (einkorn, spelt, or whole wheat) Not-So-Dense (Or Sour) Sourdough Bread Sourdough Sandwich Bread {made with einkorn, spelt, & oat} If my starter isn't ready for baking bread yet, is there anything else I can make with it? Yes! Once your starter is five days old, use it in any of these easy, delicious sourdough discard recipes: fluffy pancakes, waffles, English muffins, crepes, chocolate cake, spice cake, or pizza crust — all free recipes right here at TCS. My starter smells unpleasant, not the clean, sour smell you describe. If your starter is new, off smells can be normal. The organism balance is shifting… please give it all time. Also, if you have your new starter near an established starter, this can cause it too. If your starter has an alcohol smell, then you may have to do a little troubleshooting. The wild yeasts need oxygen. If oxygen is not given to the yeasts, other organisms which don’t need oxygen are encouraged to proliferate instead, such as the yeasts that make beer and wine. Try using a cover for your jar that encourages more air flow. Here's more information on troubleshooting an off smell or taste in your sourdough starter. My sourdough starter has spots of mold growing on it. What should I do? Bummer! It's probably best to toss it, although sometimes you can just skim it off and with TLC the mold won't return. It's okay to start over, too! Can I feed my starter once a day instead of twice? Skipping creates a less powerful starter, so if you want a high-performing starter, it's best to feed twice daily, or more often in warm weather. Can I feed my starter more than twice a day to build it up for baking? Yes! You can feed your starter three, four, or five times a day. Just wait for it to show that it's absorbing/using what was fed (it should be domed and bubbly) before feeding again. So that way you can build up quite a bit in a day if you need to. How long after feeding starter can it be used? Ideally, you should let your starter sit for a good 7 to 8 hours after feeding. However, you can use it in 3 or 4 hours in a pinch. Just keep in mind not all of the flour will be soured. What is the minimum amount of flour I can feed my starter? With 1/2 cup or less of starter, the minimum amount is a tablespoon or 2 of flour. With larger amounts of starter, the need to feed more increases. If you notice it's going through food faster, producing hooch sooner, or it isn't as active… you underfed it, so increase next time. What is the maximum amount of flour I can feed my starter? As a general rule, never feed the starter more flour than three times its volume. If you have 1 cup starter, don’t feed it more than 3 cups flour (and 3 cups water). If you have 2 cups starter, don’t feed it more than 6 cups of flour (along with the 6 cups of water). I need a break from my sourdough starter! What should I do? You have a few options. You can move it to the fridge, which will slow down its activity. Ideally, take it out once a week to feed it and then move it back to the fridge, but if you forget or go on vacation, it can stay like that for weeks or even months. Or, you can dehydrate and freeze it for long-term storage! Learn about that here. Can I use my sourdough starter straight from the fridge? Can you take your starter straight out of fridge (w/o recent feeding) and add it to fresh ground wheat? Will it work? -Chris @VitalFoundations Yes. I do this after taking a sourdough starter break (where it's stored in fridge). Get it out, feed it. After 12 hours, if it’s bubbly, it’s ready to be used. If you want to see more activity, feed again before using. A starter stored for months won’t bounce back as quickly as one stored for days or weeks. My starter has been in the fridge and is covered with a black liquid. Is it safe to use? I have a starter that’s been in the fridge for eight months. Now it’s covered with a thick black liquid. Is it okay? What should I do with it? -Traci @WholesomeLiving Yes. It’s hooch. It looks yellow at first, and gets blacker over time. It’s the acids produced by the organisms. Pour it off, feed your starter regularly, and it will revive! It can take days or even a few weeks to be fully active and strong again, depending on how long it has been dormant in the fridge. I live at a high altitude. Do I need to do anything differently when baking with sourdough? Yes! Here is our recommended resource for high altitude baking. How long should I sour my dough? In general, the longer the souring time, the better for nutrition. We recommend a souring time of at least 7 to 8 hours at room temperature, or overnight for most sourdough recipes, but you can go up to 24 hours, too. Whether you do will depend on the recipe (and if you like a strong “sour” taste). For example, it's best not to exceed about 8 hours of souring time for doughs that need to be rolled out, such as tortillas or pizza crusts. Otherwise they will lose elasticity and break when stretched. This is less of an issue when your temperature is cool; you can go longer with no bad results. My sourdough is too “sour” for me. Is there anything I can do? Yes! There are several things you can do. Try feeding more frequently, especially in hot weather, and/or move your starter to a cooler place. You can also pour off the hooch before using your starter in recipes — the hooch is where the sourness from the Lactobacilli bacteria resides. I share more tips to prevent “too sour” sourdough in this article. Is sourdough nutrient-dense? Is sourdough considered a nutrient-dense food? -Tami T. Hmmm…. not really. It’s a healthy part of a nutrient-dense diet but it’s not one of the superfoods like liver, fermented foods, butter, cream, etc. Is sourdough gluten-free? No, although the gluten protein will be degraded by the sourdough process, making it easier to digest. Some sensitive individuals will still have trouble with it though. This post goes into why regular sourdough is not gluten-free in much more detail. And, of course, some sourdough is gluten-free! Here is a run-down of gluten-free sourdough baking, plus how to make a gluten-free sourdough starter! How do I know it's okay to re-introduce gluten to someone who has a gluten sensitivity? How did Wardee know her daughter could eat the gluten sourdough bread? My daughter is gluten sensitive-no celiac but afraid to try anything with gluten because she developed so many food allergies. She got some treated (natural method) so she can eat most things now but dairy, gluten, new development of stomach bothering her after coconut anything now. So how do you know it's okay to try? -Gaylene K. Is soaking of grains always less effective than sourdough or sprouting? Is soaking still less effective even when using an acid medium, than souring or sprouting? I have a soaked kamut tortilla recipe that we really like. It does only use 1 T of ACV for the 3 cups of kamut used. -Tami T. Yes, soaking is still less effective. (And soaking often involves an acid, except with nuts and beans.) You might try using 1 tablespoon of sourdough starter in your recipe to get the benefits of sourdough in a recipe you like. Is converting recipes to sourdough possible? Yes! There are a few rules of thumb, depending on whether you want to convert a yeasted bread; quick bread; or waffles, pancakes, or crepes to sourdough. I share more tips for the sourdough conversion process in this #AskWardee. Should I avoid all grains? Many experts recommend a permanent avoidance of gluten and grain. If your gut is healed, do you personally feel this is necessary? I think I know the answer but would enjoy hearing you discuss it! -Tami T. This is not one-size fits all. Some may avoid it for their entire lives because if they start again, symptoms return. For others, light-moderate consumption works and they still maintain a healthy gut. Our experience has been that we can return to light-moderate consumption. That doesn’t mean it works for all! I’d definitely say that one should sprout and/or sourdough for the best chance of not having a recurrence of symptoms or sliding backward on healing. And take it slowly… Eat a small amount and watch for a few hours to a few days before maybe having more (or not). Did you find these sourdough troubleshooting tips helpful? Do you have any more questions we can answer? If so, feel free to leave a comment below! Links Mentioned Free Sourdough Starter Instructions Free Traditional Cooking Video Series What's your daily sourdough routine? #AskWardee 018 This post is a combination of two posts originally published and written by Wardee Harmon on 12/19/14 and 6/24/16. The posts were combined, updated, and republished on 6/23/21. The post Sourdough Tips, Troubleshooting & Frequently Asked Questions (KYF092, 167) appeared first on Traditional Cooking School by GNOWFGLINS.

Want to learn more about essential oils? Using them safely and confidently? Knowing whether to use topically, internally, with or without a carrier? Essential oils are the potent extracts from plants, and they not only have aromatic properties, they have health properties that can help us with our immune system, to fighting off disease and illness, to helping digestion, to many, many common ailments. They're a gift from God! Today I'm sharing my top 5 essential oil resources… share yours in the comments! Don't have time to listen or watch? The complete transcript is below, too. Won't play for you? Try here. Mobile or desktop users, you can hear my podcast with Stitcher, on-demand and on-the-go. (What's Stitcher?) You can also get it on iTunes or subscribe in the Podcasts app. Video I recorded this podcast live on Facebook Live last week, and here's the video from that! It's just like the audio file above, except you can see it, too. Want to join the fun of the live recording? Follow me on Facebook or @TradCookSchool on Periscope. I hop on to record most Thursdays! Top 5 Essential Oil Resources Transcript Hi everyone! Welcome to Know Your Food with Wardee podcast. This is episode 173. A big warm welcome to my live audience and those of you who are checking this out later via iTunes or the blog, knowyourfoodpodcast.com. When this is released — it's not released quite yet as our live audience knows — then the show notes are available for you at knowyourfoodpodcast.com/173. That will be about the second week of August. If you're listening to this now on your earbuds or the video replay, that's at traditionalcookingschool.com. You could switch to either version, you could also go to the show notes, knowyourfoodpodcast.com/173. So as as we begin this podcast, I want to give an invitation to live listeners on Facebook live, to share; and if you're on Periscope, you can leave hearts. Either platform you can comment. Love to hear your comments as we discuss resources for essential oils. This should make for a great episode. All right, so we're talking about the best essential oil resources, and I have 5 to share with you. It's not exhaustive, it's just the things that I turn to over and over again. As my family and I are learning about essential oil, using them, it's a lifelong journey. Even though we've had essential oils in our home for a number of years, we're always learning new things, and as I said the other day on another broadcast, feel like we're just barely scratching the surface. It's a really fun journey, and as you all know, essential oils are kind of the rage these days; they're touted as the answer to everything. And while I don't believe that's completely true, I do believe they are a gift from God. They're the potent extracts from plants, and they not only have aromatic properties, but they have health properties that can help us with our immune system: to fighting off disease and illness, to helping digestion, to many, many common ailments. And as we embarked on that journey — I think a lot of you here are on that journey with me — it's really important that we find information that we can trust. That's why I'm coming to you today. To share with you my top essential oil resources, so that we can do the best we can for our families. We are all responsible for our families. And there's nobody telling us what to do. It's on our shoulders to research and figure out what we're going to do when this or that comes up. I hope that you find this list that I'm gonna share today helpful for you, as your families are doing similar things to ours, which is, something comes up and you want to find a natural remedy, right? Essential oils are so much of the time, the remedy that comes up. Not the only one, it's another tool in our natural medicine cabinet. All right, so I am going to share our favorite essential oil resources with you. 1. The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy by Valerie Ann Wormwood The first one is a book. It's not an expensive book. And I have a link for you with the show notes, knowyourfoodpodcast.com/173. I hear that there's gonna be a new edition of this book coming out. In fact, I don't just hear it, I know it because my daughter has preordered it. But I have the existing version. The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy. It's by Valerie Ann Wormwood. I turn to this again and again. Any time something comes up, I go to this book and I look it up. It goes through all kinds of ailments. You can find out what's recommended and how to use it, and 99% of the time, we experience great results. The other one percent of the time is probably because it's just not quite the right remedy, or user error, or something like that. It seems to be spot on a lot of the time. So that is really the resource that I refer to when things come up on the spot. I look them up there. Now we do have some little booklets and things that have been given us. I've been gifted a lot of oils, and I'm very thankful for that. I've actually accumulated some different brands of oils and often when I'm given a gift set of oils, there will be a little booklet or something that comes along with it. Well, I keep those, because they're just another thing to refer to. While this one is my go-to source, I do often look up remedies in the little booklets that come with different oil brands, because they're helpful too. So that was number 1. The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy. Valerie Ann Wormwood. And for those of you listening to this later on iTunes, or through the blog, the link will be at the show notes, but otherwise you can search for it on Amazon. Look at the new version as well, that's available for pre-order. All right. My second resource… 2. Vintage Remedies' eCourses Now some of these are free and some of these are not, and I think you, like me, realize that there's people doing great work in whatever field we're interested in learning. So, if we're really interested in learning it, and somebody has paved the way with a lot of research, a lot of work, a lot of time and energy putting together things, then often, if that's what we really want to know, it's worth considering making the investment. I'm not coming to you saying you know, these are my top free essential oil resources. They're not. Some of them are, some of them aren't. But if we're interested in learning, I think we at least need to consider that making an investment of money would be worth it. So, having said that, my next resource is an online site for learning. It's called Vintage Remedies. Vintage Remedies is run by Jessie Hawkins. The link for you to check out the courses is http://tradcookschool.com/vintageremedies. They're really good, they're not branded, they're unbiased, there's deep research, a lot of information. Pretty short courses, like the one that I looked up today on aromatics, which also — I think it's called Aromatics or Simply Aromatics or something like that — covers internal use of oils. It's just like six weeks of very thorough, efficient lessons to give you a really good essential oil education. Now the one that I just mentioned on aromatics, I have not taken. But I'm planning to because I saw it today and I thought, ‘this will be good for my own education, I'm signing up.' I have gone through, in the past, a very good basics course on herbs and oils. Those of you who purchased the recent — I can't remember if it was the recent Healthy Living bundle or if it was the recent herbs and oils bundle — but you would have access to that same course like I do. Anyway, tradcookschool.com/vintageremedies is excellent essential oil education. If you, like me, are interested in taking your learning further, from a really good source, consider Vintage Remedies. Tammy is saying she really liked the Vintage Remedies courses too. Great, me too. All right. Next. 3. Rocky Mountain Oils Next is Rocky Mountain Oils. Now I bring them up not only because they're my chosen source of purchasing oils, tradcookschool.com/oils, but I bring them up because they have some great educational articles at their site. A recent one I read about essential oils with kids. It had great information. A link to that for you is tradcookschool.com/oilskids. You could peruse their site, and they have a lot of educational, wonderful articles. Now, because this comes up the last month or so as I've been mentioning Rocky Mountain Oils, people say ‘why do you like them,' ‘what's the big deal,' ‘never heard of them.' Well, I just wanted to do a really quick blurb on why I like Rocky Mountain Oils. Number one, the oils are quality. And that's another topic, for another day. But in looking into them, I feel their oils are quality. tradcookschool.com/oils, Rocky Mountain Oils. So the oils are quality. Another thing that's a really big deal to me is that the oils are affordable. There is no middle man. I don't have anything against the organizations that sell essential oils, we probably have listeners in here who are part of some of those organizations. But you pay a higher price, because you're not going directly to the company and ordering right from them. There's other people on the chain that are making money off your purchase. So, I like Rocky Mountain Oils because they're affordable because you're buying right from them. Also, you don't have any monthly minimums to meet, which is what the case is if you're part of an organization, from what I understand. With Rocky Mountain Oils, you purchase what you want, when you want, you don't have to commit to a certain amount of money. So, you're not only saving money overall, since the oils are less expensive, but you're not having to commit to purchases that you don't really need. And again, I don't have anything against the organizations that are out there. This is just my perspective and some of the things that were important to me when our family was choosing a company from which we want to get our oils. We wanted to get quality, and I just looked for affordability, and I also looked for the fact that I didn't have to be part of an organization or meet any monthly minimums. Again, totally my take on it. The reason I brought them up is because of their articles. I have spent lots of time reading at their site, and I encourage you to do that as well. TradCookSchool.com/oils is the link for you to check it out. You'll also find that link at the show notes. 4. Ultimate Guide to Essential Oils Properties (blog post) Number four is actually a resource that we have at Traditional Cooking School. It is a free resource. This was put together by Lindsey, who is one of our writers. It's an article. The link is tradcookschool.com/oilproperties. It's the Ultimate Guide to Essential Oil Properties, aka which oils do what. Lindsey has the article organized by properties; like digestive, analgesic, you know, any effect or benefit you might want to have on your body, it's listed in alphabetical order in this post. Then it gives you specific suggestions of which oils can help with those remedies. We're not claiming to be a replacement for the book I mentioned in number 1, The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy, but it is a starting place. A pretty exhaustive guide that you could refer to. I encourage you to bookmark it. It's tradcookschool.com/oilproperties. The reason we put this together is because we felt that essential oils could be tricky for beginners. Like there are oils that need carriers, there are oils that don't, oils that are safe for children, oils that are safe for internal use, oils that are not. So, we wanted to put together a blog post that was readily available, anybody could check out, as sort of a one stop, or at least starting place guide to understanding and decoding the various properties of essential oils. I encourage you to bookmark it. Refer to it again and again, share it with your friends. It's tradcookschool.com/oilproperties. Again, links will be in the show notes. 5. Essential Oil Revolution Online Conference All right, the fifth resource I have for you… This is a free one as well. It's upcoming, so it's timely. It's in August, coming up in August 2016, but if you are listening to this podcast, later and afterward, you can still follow this link because there's still a way to take advantage, although the free way is probably over by then. It's an online conference coming up in August. It's called The Essential Oils Revolution 2. The reason it is ‘2' is because they had one back in 2015. It was such a huge success. 165,000 people attended and clamored for more. So, the host, Doctor Eric Z, who is a friend of Traditional Cooking School, decided to do it again. So he's hosting it again. There are dozens of talks. There's aromatherapy, medicine, research, in-depth discussion, debunking myths, all kinds of talk about health conditions and how essential oils can help. I myself am giving a talk. It's not on health, it's on practical tips for using essential oils in your cooking, if you've decided that that is a use that you feel comfortable with. I'm sharing some practical tips about how to do it safely, how to store them, which oils are good for that, etc. So, let me give you a link for that. Tradcookschool.com/eosummit is where you can sign up for that. It is a free resource. It will take place over the course of a week in August, and every day there will be five to seven talks that are available for free. Every morning they switch them out. They send you an email, you go and you can listen to one or all or none of the day's talks. Over the course of the week, every day there will be a new set of speakers. And you have 24 hours to listen to them for free. So, in the comfort of your home, in your pajamas. It's not like you have to travel somewhere, it's not like you have to dress up. You can have your kids around, you can be listening to it while you're cooking. It's a wonderful resource. I attended the last one, I was not a speaker. This time I'm a speaker. Again, talking about cooking with essential oils, and I'm planning to listen to a lot of the talks as well. So check that out, tradcookschool.com/eosummit. If somebody could type that in the comments, in Periscope and Facebook live, that would be great. For those of you listening on iTunes, please, visit the show notes, knowyourfoodpodcast.com/173 and you will have links to this and all the other resources mentioned. Again, the summit link is tradcookschool.com/eosummit. Recap… All right. I think that's it. Let's do a recap of my top 5 essential oil resources. #1 was The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy by Valerie Ann Wormwood, my go to, in-depth resource when anything comes up for which I want to find a natural remedy. I'll have the link for you at the show notes. #2 is any of Vintage Remedies eCourses on essential oils. Tradcookschool.com/vintageremedies. This is a paid resource but well worth it. #3 is Rocky Mountain Oils, our preferred source of purchasing oils. Tradcookschool.com/oils. They also have great, free educational articles at their site. Tradcookschool.com/oils to read more about them. #4 is our own guide at Traditional Cooking School, the Ultimate Guide to Essential Oil Properties. Tradcookschool.com/oilproperties. It's a pretty cool list so bookmark it. And #5 is the upcoming FREE Essential Oils Revolution 2 online conference that I really hope you attend. Hope to see you there, or at least listen to my talk. I'm gonna give you the link. Tradcookschool.com/eosummit. I have been putting together a one page document, I'm calling it a cheat sheet, where it lists how to store your oils, which oils can be used for cooking, which oils can't be used for cooking, how to use the oils in cooking, and I put it all together in a one page download. It will be free. I'm giving it away with my talk. I will give it away later but for now the only place you can get it is through the summit, so, tradcookschool.com/eosummit. Make sure to at least attend my talk, because I'll give you a download link during the talk. Tradcookschool.com/eosummit. There's a little teaser and another little urge, another little prick to get you over there and take advantage of a great education. All right. Well, thank you so much everybody for being here. God bless you, and remember you can check out the show notes, tradcookschool.com/173. Bye-bye! Links Mentioned The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy by Valerie Ann Wormwood Vintage Remedies eCourses Rocky Mountain Oils Essential Oils & Kids article at Rocky Mountain Oils Ultimate Guide to Essential Oil Properties FREE Essential Oils Revolution 2 online conference — see you there in August! iTunes I'm so grateful when you visit my show on iTunes and leave a rating and/or review! KnowYourFoodPodcast.com/iTunes This helps me make my podcast better and also helps others find it. Thank you! For past or current episodes, check out the Know Your Food with Wardee podcast archives. Anything to Add? I would love to hear from you! Do you have questions for me, or comments about anything shared in this episode? Like this podcast? Please help me reach others by using the share buttons at the top of this post. Thanks! The post Top 5 Essential Oil Resources (KYF173) appeared first on Traditional Cooking School by GNOWFGLINS.

Tired all the time? After a whole weekend of rest, you still feel like you didn't get enough sleep? Can't wake up in the morning? Can't get through the day? Perhaps even wired at night? Feel extremely tired and overwhelmed? These could all be signs of adrenal fatigue. The adrenal glands' (you have 2, one attached to each kidney) job is to produce certain hormones, like adrenaline and cortisol, that respond to stressors and run from tigers. They also produce precursors to reproductive hormones. Yet when the adrenal glands are overly taxed, tired, or seriously fatigued, they come out with the wrong hormones at the wrong times. Why? In our modern society, the way that we live and eat constantly tells the adrenals there is something to run from or there is something to be scared of. They come out with hormones… but not the right ones at the right times. Most conventional doctors don't recognize adrenal fatigue as an actual thing. They don't see any issues with the adrenals until they absolutely stop working. If you're just tired all of the time, they're not usually going to look at the adrenal glands. On the other hand, most holistic doctors and herbalists do consider adrenal fatigue as your adrenal glands being simply tired– and worth addressing before the adrenal fatigue gets worse. My friend Donielle Baker has been there and she joined me for this podcast to talk more about what adrenal fatigue is, what's going on, and most importantly — simple steps for overcoming adrenal fatigue. If you are or have been through this, we dearly look forward to hearing from you in the comments. Don't have time to listen? The complete transcript is below, too. Won't play for you? Try here. Mobile or desktop users, you can hear my podcast with Stitcher, on-demand and on-the-go. (What's Stitcher?) You can also get it on iTunes or subscribe in the Podcasts app. Overcoming Adrenal Fatigue Transcript Wardee: Hey everyone, welcome to Know Your Food with Wardee Podcast. Hi Donielle. Donielle: Hi, glad to be here. Wardee: Me, too. Everyone, Donielle is my special guest. We are going to be talking about overcoming adrenal fatigue. Let me just do a couple housekeeping notes before we launch into it. This is Know Your Food with Wardee, Episode 171. The show notes are at KnowYourFoodpPodcast.com/171. That's where you'll find links and more to everything we have mentioned, including a transcript and if you are listening to this in your earbuds, you will find the video. If you are watching the video, you will find the audio version. That's where you head for the hub for everything to backup and alternate versions of what we are talking about, the KnowYourFoodPodcast.com/171. We are talking about adrenal fatigue, overcoming it. This question actually came in from one of our members at Traditional Cooking School, L.J., call her L.J. She is asking for guidance on adrenal fatigue and healing from it. I myself am not experienced in the matter. I am a really good cook, but I don't know a lot about adrenal fatigue. You may know that Millie assists me at Traditional Cooking School with tons of stuff and so I was like, “Millie, who do we know that can help out with this topic?” She said, “How about Donielle?” and I said, “That's right, Donielle.” Actually, I think we both thought of Donielle independently, so it was a good confirmation that Donielle was going to be the one to guide us on this topic. Here is a little bit about what L.J. said. She has had emotional trauma during childhood, poor diet, weight gain for decades, 4 children born within 4 years and a lot of stress in her day-to-day life, so she thinks her adrenals are just in poor, poor shape. She is tired all day. She goes to bed wired. She cannot seem to lose weight, despite trying to improve her diet and she is one of our most devoted Traditional Cooking Schools members, so I know this for a fact. She struggles to control her sugar and fast food cravings and her memory is awful and she experiences brain fog a lot of the time, so she was asking for information on how to heal from adrenal fatigue. Obviously, food plays a big part and we will talk about other things as well. That's setting the stage for how Donielle is going to help us today. Let me tell you a little bit about Donielle. This is from her website, Natural Fertility and Wellness, so I'm just reading a little bit from her about page. You can head to Naturalfertilityandwellness.com and go to the about page to learn more about Donielle and dig further in addition to what we are talking about today. Donielle believes that so much more can be done to better our reproductive health. For many of us women, it has to do with conceiving and carrying healthy babies or after work. Donielle was once quite happy and comfortable, living a very conventional life like many of us, but she began to look at things differently when she had to stare fertility challenges right in the face. A side note here, not all of us have had fertility challenges, but I do believe that health crisis, in all kinds of shapes and forms and that those are the things that make many of us, like Donielle, begin to look at things differently. Donielle believes food is the foundation for health and fertility and alternative therapies can be just as or more effective than conventional medical treatments. She is an advocate for natural living. She does what she can to put toxins out of her own home and environment. She's very passionate about real and whole foods because she believes it's the key to our fertility and the future health of our children. You may remember Donielle as my guest on way back Know Your Food with Wardee, Episode 8 because she is the author of the book “Naturally Knocked Up.” She was my guest to talk about that book and her fertility story. I don't think we are going to cover a lot of the same ground today, so if you are interested more in depth upon fertility in particular that's a great episode for you to catch up on if you have not already listened. That's Knowyourfoodpodcast.com/8. I think I have said enough. I need to turn it over to Donielle. Welcome Donielle and why don't you say hi and just give us your story in a nutshell, your hormone story and lead into why adrenal fatigue and healing adrenal fatigue, why that's so relevant today. Donielle: Thanks so much, Wardee, before having me on it today. This is a topic that I am passionate about, especially after having dealt with infertility. My story started back probably over 10 years ago now when my husband and I started thinking about having a family. Before then I knew my hormones were off. I had been diagnosed with PCOS or Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. I did not ovulate. Basically, the doctors just said, “Well, if you can't get pregnant, we would just put you on medication.” At that point I was basically all for medication. I had no idea what else I could do to increase my fertility. At that time I actually started Googling different things, trying to find different things that I could do and did not come up with much. We actually ended up conceiving our first right before, literally weeks before I called my doctor for medication. After my son started getting a little bit older, started eating food, I got to researching and found that there was this whole almost underground movement at that point for real foods. The more I kept reading about the foods that I wanted to feed him, things about fertility kept coming up and it stopped me in my tracks and I thought, “Whoa, not only is it important for his health as he grows, maybe I can do something to change my hormone issues right now.” I completely overhauled my diet and was in probably I would say about six to eight months I went from ovulating maybe once a year, which definitely signals some of major hormone issues going on, to ovulating every four weeks for the first time in my life. It was then that I realized that the food is so important. It can heal the things that we can't even see when we give our bodies the nutrients that it needs. Fast forward a few years after our second, I had already started my blog. I was really busy. We had two small kids. I was involved with so many things outside of the home. I was trying to promote my blog, write an e-course. I was doing all of these things and I started to wear out a lot and I got to the point where I could not sleep at night. During the day I was completely dragging, so I worked with a chiropractor friend of mine and we got my adrenals back in shape and I started feeling a lot better. At that point I would probably consider that more mild adrenal fatigue because it only took a couple of months for me to start to feel better. Finally, after I started to feel better about six months later we got pregnant and then miscarried. That pretty much threw me into major adrenal fatigue for about 2 years. The first year I kept thinking, “OK, I'm eating right. I'm trying to get sleep. My body would just figure itself out. We would just keep eating the way we have been and things will get better pay.” It just did not get better and did not get better. Finally, I found a holistic doctor in town and that helped me run some lab tests that showed the state my adrenals were in, so they could take it seriously. It was so helpful to see those lab tests as well because I could bring them home and show my husband, “Hey, there really is a problem. This is why I can't wake up in the morning. This is why exercise makes me feel like I need to sleep for three days.” It was really a turning point where I had to put myself first and focus on myself, instead of … Granted everyone else came along with that because what I was doing was healthy for everyone, but I had to really focus on me instead of every little, tiny thing and dietary change that we had been doing for our kids. It took a good probably six months to really start feeling better. Even now I have to pay attention to those small clues that my adrenals are getting a little too stressed out and it's something I have to be very careful about. Hopefully one day, maybe I won't, but for right now in our state of life at this moment, I have to keep it at the forefront to make sure that I don't wear myself out too quickly. Wardee: Yes, you are juggling a lot and I know so many moms are juggling a lot and we tend to not put ourselves first. You have to be very intentional to pay attention to those clues that you are wearing out so you can say, “Hang on, we could steer this in another direction.” Let's back up. What a wonderful story and let's start covering this topic with some basics so that we all have a good understanding of adrenal fatigue. We have mentioned it. We have mentioned the adrenal glands. We have mentioned some things that are part of it, but let's do a definition so everybody understands what is adrenal fatigue. Donielle: It almost depends on who you talk to because most conventional doctors do not recognize adrenal fatigue as an actual thing. They don't see any issues with the adrenals until they absolutely stop working. Just being tired all of the time, they usually don't even look at the adrenals. Most holistic doctors and herbalists basically consider adrenal fatigue as your adrenal glands being tired. They have been overworked. They have been responding to so much stress in the system that they can no longer keep up and so it leaves people feeling extremely exhausted. It's that they cannot wake up in the morning. They cannot get through the day. They feel extremely overwhelmed. Your adrenals produce hormones and they are in communication with the brain. It's when all of those signals get crossed and they just cannot get back on track. Wardee: Now I'm going to ask an indirect question, but the adrenal glands produce certain hormones. People talk about worn out, completely shot. Are they popping out too much of the hormones because of the stress and so then they are depleted of nutrients? What is it that makes it so they are worn out? Donielle: Basically, what the adrenal's job is is to produce certain hormones that help us like run from tigers, which we no longer need to do, but they produce adrenaline and cortisol. They also produce precursors to reproductive hormones like pregnenolone. That is the precursor to both cortisol and progesterone, though that's often why women who are very stressed out are low in progesterone because their body is using it to make cortisol to help deal with it that stress instead. It's basically our modern society and the way that we live and the way that we eat constantly tells the adrenals there is something to run from, there is something to be scared of. It comes out hormones, a lot of times at the wrong time. Some people dealing with adrenal fatigue find that their body does not produce much cortisol in the morning, but then all of a sudden 10:00, 11:00 at night, it pumps up cortisol production and then they are awake all night or they deal with insomnia and it's just as horrible cycle that repeats. It's almost like the circadian rhythm for the adrenals gets off and it's almost backwards. There is a lot of science behind it and Chris Kresser is actually great at discussing all the little idiosyncrasies of the adrenals and what hormones basically cascade into other ones and how that has to work and how that gets off per se. Basically, they are just doing the wrong thing at the wrong time or they are sending out too much adrenaline and they get stuck in that fight or flight mode and they just push out adrenaline and then they have to use the cortisol to take care of that. One reason why people put on weight is because they start getting too much cortisol and it's this huge cascading effect and all of a sudden you end up tired and overweight and you can't do anything. Wardee: Especially with the cortisol thing, if somebody's cortisol is backward so it's low in the morning, high at night, then they are not sleeping so then their body is not getting rest. It seems to me it would be this vicious cycle of you can't rest and heal, so that's really hard to recover from. Donielle: It is because you are awake at night so you are not getting at least 6, preferably 8 hours of sleep at night for your body to rest and repair. At night is when our bodies naturally ramp up the detoxifying process, though our bodies are not detoxifying the way that they should and things are not healing the way they should. It just becomes this horrible cycle where in each person they can have a multitude of different symptoms that can look like other things. A lot of it just goes back to not getting to sleep that they need. Wardee: That's a great way to set it up. Shockingly, I did not know this. A lot of times doctors don't recognize or treat it or even test for it when somebody says they are tired … Or I would say conventional doctors, maybe I shouldn't be surprised. I tend to assume the best. Somebody is tired. Our member L.J., who wrote in, and probably so many other moms out there are tired. Tired is one thing. Adrenal fatigue is another, mild, moderate, high adrenal fatigue. I assume there are different levels. How do you go about finding out if your adrenals are fatigue may you be to change course and address that? Are there tests? Are there indicators that you can ask yourself or test yourself, symptom-less? What would you say? Donielle: I would say if you are feeling tired and exhausted and a good weekend of extra sleep is not helpful, you can just feel so tired, but a mid-day nap makes you feel a million times better and then you can just go on with your life. It's normal to feel tired after a stressful event or a busy couple of weeks, but if your body is not moving past that it's time to start looking into adrenal issues and extra adrenal support. There are tests that doctors can do. My conventional MD laughed at me when I mentioned the cortisol-saliva test. He basically said it was just a waste of money and it wasn't going to show anything and that was the one test that solidified my adrenal issues for me. What it is is it's a cortisol-saliva test. You can actually order it yourself on Amazon and send it in. It's $125. Or you can have your holistic practitioner, as long as they are like a [inaudible 00:18:38] or some type of MD can actually order that. They can order it as well. Basically, what you do is they send you four vials and you spit in them four times a day. It's usually 6am, noon, 4pm and then 10pm at night. The times are all listed on the test. When you send it back it will tell you what your cortisol levels are for each part of that state. It's not perfect. There are a lot of people that say, “Well, it's not the best way to do it, via saliva,” but from everyone that I have talked to it has been helpful, so it's something to look at into at least. It will also tell you how, I hate to use the word bad, but how bad off your adrenals actually are. If you are getting a cortisol spike at night instead of in the morning, you know you are in that moderate adrenal fatigue area. My test came back, my cortisol was pretty much level the entire day, so I never, ever saw a spike in cortisol or energy at all. That just put me over into the major adrenal fatigue arena. Once you know what's going on with your adrenals, you can better look at exactly what you need to do to try and get on that path to healing. Another thing that helped me as well, there's a book called “Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndrome” I forget what the subtitle is. It was by Dr. James Wilson. That one is really good and it also has a test in the book, so you can actually go through and you give yourself a marker number for each thing. When you are done you add them all up and it tells you where you are on the adrenal fatigue spectrum. That matched up with my cortisol test completely. It was a really long, multi-choice test about when is the last time you felt good? How are you feeling now? They go through all the symptoms before and now. That was really helpful as well. For people who cannot afford the saliva test, simply taking the adrenal test that he has in his book, which you can order on Amazon or get it from a local library. That can help guide people as well to see exactly where their adrenals might be just based on a questionnaire … Go ahead. Wardee: I was just going to say really good information and I will have links to those two resources: the saliva test and the book that Donielle mentioned at the show notes, Knowyourfoodpodcast.com/171. Donielle: I think that book was one of the first things I purchased after I realized how bad my adrenal fatigue was and there is some helpful advice on there. Wardee: I think we used to own that book. I think it was given to us by a naturopath, but I loaned it and I have no idea who, but it was a long time ago. I remember that quiz and I remembered the book, very clear reading, kind of mind blowing actually. Donielle: Yes. Wardee: It makes a lot of things make sense. Let's continue on this path, unpacking this topic. I was reading at your site because you have articles, blog posts about your journey and things you have done in the past and keep doing about adrenal fatigue. You have brought up this genetic mutation, MTHFR. I don't want to spend a ton of time on it, but I at least want to touch on it because it seems to be related. Could you address that topic? Donielle: It's MTHFR and it's not a swear word. I first saw it on an infertility forum a long time ago, women saying they had this specific gene and I thought, “Wow, they really don't like this gene.” The scientific name for it is so long that everybody just shortens it to MTHFR. Basically, what it is is it's a genetic mutation. Most people actually carry this mutation. It does not always mean that it's active, which in the world of epigenetics, genes can turn on and off and depending on the stress we have been exposed to and our diets and the way we live, sometimes those mutated genes are never turned on. Other times there can be something that comes up where that genetic mutation is then turned on. It can cause more problems within the body. This specific genetic mutation has to do with a multitude of bodily functions. It seems like it almost has an effect on most systems of the body in some way or another, but one of the biggest is the way that it changes the way our bodies can absorb B vitamins and how it utilizes it and absorbs the B vitamins that we eat and can change them into usable forms. Of course, B vitamins are connected to, again … Wardee: Energy. Donielle: Yes, all sorts of bodily functions and energy is one of the big ones. If we are not able to absorb or get in the B vitamins that we need, we are naturally going to just be tired. It also changes the way our bodies can detoxify, making those systems run almost at a slower pace. Of course, there is a couple different mutations. There are two different parts of that gene, so it depends on which part is mutated and then since we get half our DNA from dad and half our DNA from mom, sometimes only one side of it is a mutation and the other side is not. It all changes basically the effectiveness of certain aspects of our body. I only have one half of one of my genes is a mutation. Though that decreases some of my effectiveness down to 60% or 70%, whereas I know other people who have the double mutation and it can decrease those all the way down to 30%. Just because you have it, it does not mean it's going to be as bad as someone else or it's going to affect you in the same way it's going to affect someone else. One of the key issues with this mutation though is if you have the mutation, you cannot probably utilize folic acid at all. Folic acid is the synthetic version of folate and is in most over-the-counter vitamins. They add it to breads and cereals and to pastas. A lot of people are getting this folic acid and they are coming to find out that it's actually detrimental because if you cannot process it, it almost builds up. It's odd to talk about a vitamin harming somebody, but to someone who has these mutations really has to be careful in making sure they only get folate versions or whole food versions of the B vitamins, otherwise it can cause more problems. There is one great website called MTHFR.net that will actually list the differences between the two different mutations and different things you can do to help deal with them. Most of the time we are not going to change it. Granted with epigenetics, they say they cannot turn off, but a lot of times the people who struggle with it are going to end up dealing with it lifelong. They give different dietary and lifestyle changes you can make to help your body utilize the nutrients you are eating and to better detoxify and just get the system running back to where it should be. Wardee: Really quick, that sounds like a great resource. How do you get it? How do you get yourself tested if you have the genetic mutation or not or if you have half of it? Donielle: You can ask your doctor. Not a lot of doctors want to test for it because they don't know what to do if you have it so for them that just means nothing. Being in the fertility-infertility world, usually reproductive endocrinologists will start ordering those genetic tests if a woman has had three miscarriages and this gene is actually related to multiple miscarriages. One of the reasons is because of the B vitamin or at least that's what they think. It's so hard to study it exact … Sometimes reproductive endocrinologists or any endocrinologists will be more apt to order them. There are also a couple of different websites now where you can order the genetic tests yourself. One of them is 23andme.com and this other one I just came across recently. They basically do the same thing. It's a saliva test, so basically they send you a vial. You spit in it. You send it back and it takes 6 weeks to get your results back and then you will be able to see what genes you have mutations on. It's more than just the MTHFR gene, but that is the one that a lot of people are getting those test to figure out. I think it's right around $100. Wardee: I will try to track down that other link or maybe you and I can get together by the time this podcast goes up and make sure that show notes are complete with links for everyone listening who is interested. That's Knowyourfoodpodcast.com/171, all right really good information. Now we get to the part of healing. I know you are loaded with tips for helping people overcome adrenal fatigue, so can we get right into some practical and/or important tips for healing? Donielle: Let's do it. Of course, the first one I always go back to is our food and the foods that we are eating. There is something with adrenal fatigue that makes us crave sugar and caffeine. One of the reasons is that sugar, it's great for quick energy. It's what the body uses it for. If we even think about seasonal foods, the seasonal foods we have in the summer, they had a higher sugar content, which we need for brain function. Our brains actually use sugar to function and our muscles. Our muscles use sugar to function. Though sometimes having those quick carbs or actually quick sources of energy is what keeps so many of us going through the day. In the long run though, unfortunately when we do it day after day after day, it's not just a one day thing, which our bodies can deal with. It's weeks or months of “Quick, grab the sugar,” or something quick that my body can use. It causes major insulin issues and dust makes the adrenal fatigue so much worse. Reducing your sugar consumption is huge for adrenal fatigue. I know it's one of the hardest things to do, but it also needs to be one of the first steps because a lot of times it does not matter what other all curative therapies into with other herbs, with other supplements, dealing with emotional through a therapy, if your food is not nourishing your body the way it needs, everything else is not going to be as active. Start with food and start with taking the sugar out. Wardee: Can we define the sugar? Are we talking white sugar, honey, maple syrup, natural sweeteners? Are we talking fruit? Are we even talking starchy foods like potatoes and breads? What does sugar encompass? Donielle: My idea of sugar is added sugar to things, white sugar, even honey, maple syrup to some extent. Right now I use honey and maple syrup and don't have any major issue with them, but for someone who really wants to get a handle on things we need to stop adding sugar to our food. I am fine with fruit, even most normal carbs, especially if they are properly prepared can be a benefit. I actually found when I took all grains and most starches out of my diet, it's made my adrenal fatigue worse. For me, I need some of those carbs from grains. It's just something that over the last 3 or 4 years I have experimented with and have found that serving your 2 grains a day is really beneficial for me. Without it I feel like I am going to crash. Some carbs are good. You just have to watch what type. I actually started reading a book called “The Adrenal Reset Diet” by Alan Christiansen and he recommends having carbs at night. You start your day with protein and fat-rich foods, more like the Paleo-primal type of lifestyle. Then as you go through the day, if you add a little bit of carbs with lunch and then you add a little bit more with dinner. He seems to think that helps with adrenal issues. I have not experienced this specific protocol yet, but a friend of mine did and she said she saw some benefit to it after a few weeks. Wardee: I want to say there is one person in our family that struggles with cortisol at the wrong time of day and sleep issues and that very thing has helped to have the carbs at the end of the day. Donielle: That's good to know. For me, my thoughts on it are carbs can be good, but of course, it always depends on the person. It's something that people need to experiment with and figure out what works for them. Wardee: Probably what amount works, too, because you could still go overboard either way. Donielle: Yes. We are talking about a serving of rice. Wardee: Not a whole bag of potato chips or a box of donuts, no, not talking about that. That was number one, food, especially sugar. Donielle: Number 2 is going to be to cut out the caffeine. Wardee: I knew that was coming. Donielle: I know it seems like it's the only thing that can wake you up in the morning that gets you through the day. I have little kids at home and sometimes I just think, “Man, if I had a cup of coffee I could deal with all of this a lot better.” The problem with coffee when you are dealing with adrenal fatigue is it signals the brain that something is coming, like you need to run. It prepares the body for a fight or flight instinct and signals the adrenals to start producing the adrenaline and then there is nowhere for that adrenaline to go because most of us, if we are really honest, we have our cup of coffee and we sit down at a desk to work. Or we are not out doing the school work for our body to actually do something with all that adrenaline and that fight or flight instinct that's building up inside of it. As much as I love coffee, it had to go. If it's not something that people can give up right away, cut back to 1 cup a day. Make sure you have a solid breakfast and a whole glass of water before you have any coffee. Make sure you are drinking it with food so it lessens the caffeinated effects. Slowly reduce it, add more de-caffeinated coffee to it, try and get off of it over the course of a few weeks or a month if need be. I am not completely anti-coffee. A few cups a week is probably fine for most people, but if you are dealing with adrenal fatigue, it's really not fine at all. That was one thing that really helped me get over that hump and I almost had to set aside a couple of weeks when I cut out coffee. I thought, “These two weeks, I had to cut back on my schedule. I need to be able to be home more often because if I get tired in the middle of the afternoon, instead of grabbing a cup of coffee, I took a nap.” It really took a couple of weeks for my body to not rely on that the caffeine to push to do the next thing. Instead of taking a nap every day, only take a nap once or twice a week and then not at all, but definitely caffeine has to go. Wardee: I just want to add, we have a couple relevant resources for everyone at Traditional Cooking School. First is actually one of our most popular posts of 2016, which is a roundup of non-caffeine energy boosting drinks. You can search for that at Traditionalcookingschool.com. Also I will include a link in the show notes Knowyourfoodpodcast.com/171. The other thing is there is a great DIY herbal coffee blend that can actually help with detox and all kinds of things, help you with your hormones. It's not going to give you energy, but it can be a substitute that you enjoy drinking. It can help with healing. If you go back to podcast Knowyourfoodpodcast.com/125, you will hear more about that, plus there's a book with recipes. Great tips, Donielle, thank you. Donielle: There's a few other things that people can tweak just to help. There are different supplements you can take. There is a desiccated adrenal supplement. Multiple companies actually sell this. Basically, it's just dried … Usually I think is it bovine adrenal? But that was helpful for me in getting over adrenal fatigue. It helps support the system while you are working on other things, which I really needed because so often you are so exhausted and you are so tired. The last thing you want to do is make things harder and make cooking meals harder and doing all these massive changes. Having something just to help support that system while you are working on healing words is really helpful for me. Dr. Wilson, who wrote the Adrenal Fatigue book, he actually had a set of supplements that I ended up taking that I really liked. If someone has access to a chiropractor, usually chiropractor's sale a specific brand of supplements and you can get that type of stuff there as well. That's what I used when I first worked on adrenal fatigue with my chiropractor friends. Another good thing to take is Vitamin C because the adrenals really love vitamin C. Sometimes just supplementing with Vitamin C is helpful, using a good B vitamin, either whole foods or something that's listed as folate. You will also find supplements that have methyl folate, which is the best form, so your body converts the folate to methyl folate. You can find supplements that actually have that methyl folate in them. A lot of times that's really helpful for people. I found that B-12 was really what I needed to help sleep better. Within a few nights it had me sleeping so much better and my lab test had actually shown that I was slow in B-12, so my body definitely needed it. But that was probably the one supplement that I can say I saw a big difference in taking it now I don't take it very often at all. I don't find that I need it, but at that time I really did need it. I don't like to rely on supplements, but again when you are tired and you are exhausted sometimes you just can't think of the next step to take, so we need a life raft, if you will, to keep us afloat while we are working on things. Another thing I did that kept everyone in my house from taking my water once I started was adding salt to my water, a nice quality sea salt just for the extra minerals. Your adrenals need minerals to work and so often we don't get what we need. I was finding that even eating more traditional foods and eating a whole foods diet, because I was so tired I just was not going the extra step to making sure we had lots of vegetables, which vegetables are how we get a majority of the minerals that we eat. My diet was, it was whole foods, but it was the same. I just didn't have a lot of variety and I didn't have it in me to do it. I was probably quite deficient in many different minerals at that point and so adding sea salt to my water, especially in the morning seems to really be helpful. Then of course, getting in enough water as well, staying hydrated and not having my family drink my water was really helpful. Then I could see exactly how much I was drinking or not drinking at that time. Those are just a few things I started to do that put me on the path to full healing and got me feeling better within a few weeks where I could take that next step and I could work with my holistic doctor or my chiropractor and do that next thing to complete the healing. Wardee: Those are great basic tips and strategies for someone to overcome adrenal fatigue. I noticed you mentioned, you did mention supplementation there, like the folate, the B-12, the Vitamin C. Did you find, and may be this was when you started working more with your chiropractor or your other doctor, but are there any other herbs or supplements that people could consider to look into? Donielle: One of the other things to look at is the herbs that are called adaptogens. Wardee: I was going to ask that and then I was like, “Ah, I don't want to put her on the spot,” because we did not discuss this. Donielle: There are a lot of different adaptogens, so it depends on who it is and what urban is going to help them the best because what helps me might not help you. It's really best to look into all the different adaptogens, find one that fits you best or work with an herbalist or a holistic health practitioner that can't figure out what's going to work best for you. In one of the tinctures that I was taking, which one was it? Ashwagandha. It's hard for me to say that one specific thing helped because I was taking a multitude of different things all at one time, but herbal medicine and definitely can help support the body and change how things function. What's her name? I am totally blanking. There is an herbal OB/GYN that has an entire article … She has a podcast as well. She has an entire article that lists all of the different adaptogenic herbs and who might be a best fit for each one. I will send you that link so you can put it on the show notes, but that to me was really helpful because I could go through and match my symptoms and match what was going on and find the best one for me at that time. Wardee: I was wondering, now this is going to put you on the spot, but with the MTHFR genetic mutation, whether somebody is full or half or whatnot, in combination if they are facing that and that means they are not utilizing the B vitamins well, not detoxing well and the other things you mentioned, but if they were to incorporate adaptogens into their healing protocol might that not … I am just speculating, but isn't that one of the best courses of action for making MTHFR not such a huge factor because it's a genetic mutation and then adaptogens adapt? Donielle: Exactly, adaptogen herbs are adaptogenic herbs. They are meant to balance the body. I would absolutely love to see someone study that. Unfortunately, people don't study herbs that often. Yes, it would in theory help balance everything out and help the body to function better, even with a genetic mutation. Wardee: This has been such good information, Donielle. I really appreciate that you are so willing to share your personal story and your personal journey. It means so much more just to hear somebody say, “I tried this and this is important,” and even to share your struggles, like having to give up coffee and setting aside the time so you can do that or giving up sugar. It's just so wonderful that you are willing to share that, share your wisdom and your experience so I thank you very much for that. Donielle: While I'm sitting here, there is just 1 extra thing. I do talk about adrenal fatigue a lot and within the community I have on my website, it comes up a lot and when I have spoken in the past is so many people do all the dietary changes, the supplements. They basically follow the rules so to speak when it comes to adrenal fatigue, but they are not getting better. There is one missing element a lot of times in adrenal fatigue healing and that is dealing with either emotional trauma or lifestyle. There are 2 things that people really struggle to change because if your lifestyle where you have let's say a job, where you are constantly stressed out, you are probably still going to deal with adrenal fatigue no matter what you do, unless you figure out a way to deal with that stress is going to continue. I know as a mom of young kids myself, you can't just make your children sleep through the night or not get sick … Wardee: Behave all the time. Donielle: Moms are chronically stressed, but we have to try and figure out how to not necessarily change that stress, but change how we react to it. I still have not found a great way to do that. I am still struggling and learning and trying to go down that path for healing, but the way that we internalize stress can cause a profound impact on our physical health. Often a lot of times the emotional trauma or the stress happened in the past, but our body is still stuck. I was reading a book about anxiety a couple of years ago and she mentioned that the way we respond to things and react we have a hard time changing because all the neurotransmitters that we use, it's like a car on a road basically. We keep going down the same path until it's all rotted up and our body has a hard time getting out of that specific path. It's important that we stop and figure out exactly what is causing us that stress and whether it's an emotional issue that you can work with a therapist on or find a mentor or finding outside help for the house or dealing with issues with your husband. Often we carry those past burdens with us and we have to try and figure out ways to let them go and to find freedom in moving past those negative experiences we have had in our lives. It's then that I think it all comes full circle and you are able to get past the adrenal fatigue once you have dealt with dietary issues and lifestyle and sleep and then working on also the emotional aspect of it, so you can really just find that freedom to live a vibrant life basically. Wardee: I am so glad you brought that up. It's only been maybe in the last year, no, it's been a couple years, but I have just come to recognize that stress is so much more a factor in our health and wellness than most anybody talks about. If you are chronically under stress and you pointed out there are stresses in your life that you cannot fix. You cannot take them away, but you can change how you handle it. There are some stresses in your life you can change like a job or somebody that does not have to be in your life because you are not married to them or related to them but anyway … I think that stress with not handled well can literally re-infect us day after day after day and significantly impact our health. I really do believe that. I am going to point out for our listeners so I don't say anymore or take away from Donielle, but I talked about stress and my perspective on it and even the Bible tells us how to deal with stress, be anxious for nothing. It tells us to rejoice and take our request to God with thanksgiving. Those are very, very practical ways to handle things that are in our life that we cannot change. It helps us put our perspective in the right place. Without going any further, I just want to just point you to Knowyourfoodpodcast.com/161 where I talked about stress, getting away from it, being happy in spite of it, being healthy in spite of it so check that out. I am so glad you brought that up, Donielle because you can just like you said. You can be doing all the right things and still not getting well because you are in a job or you have trauma or you are not handling the normal challenges of life, you … I am not talking you, I am talking about every one of us are not dealing with it well. Donielle: Exactly, yep. Wardee: We are letting it get to us. We are giving it to power over us and our health, is set of intentionally not choosing to go there or not letting it get to us or taking it to God in prayer instead of stewing and worrying about it or working too hard to overcome it when we are powerless to change it. There are so many different ways that we do the wrong thing when it comes to stress. Donielle: Exactly. Wardee: Well, let's wrap up. Do you have anything else you want to share or recommend before we do? Donielle: I don't think so. I think that was the last little thing I had in my heart that I needed to get out. Wardee: I am so glad you did. I think that was the highlight of this whole session we have had. Let me just wrap up by saying again thank you to you, Donielle. Everyone, you can find Donielle at Naturalfertilityandwellness.com. You can also refer to when she was a guest on KYF #8 talking about fertility in particular. We have mentioned a lot of links and resources in this podcast. You will find them linked at Knowyourfoodpodcast.com/171, which is the show notes. Thanks Donielle and God bless, everyone. Donielle: Thank you. About Donielle Baker Donielle from Natural Fertility and Wellness believes that so much more can be done to better our reproductive health so that women might conceive and carry healthy babies. She was once quite happy and comfortable living a very conventional life, but began to look at things very differently when she had to stare fertility challenges right in the face. She believes food is the foundation for health and fertility. And that alternative therapies can be just as, or more, effective than conventional medical treatments, as well as work with conventional treatments when necessary. She is an advocate for natural living, doing what she can to keep toxins out of her home and environment. She's also become very passionate about eating real/whole foods as she feels it’s the key to our fertility and future health of our children. Donielle is the author of the book “Naturally Knocked Up” and she was my guest on episode #8 of this podcast to talk about that… go back to that oldie but goodie for more information on fertility. Links Mentioned Donielle as a guest on KYF #8 — talking about fertility Donielle's book “Naturally Knocked Up” Donielle's website — Natural Fertility and Wellness Saliva Tests on Amazon Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndrome — book by Dr. Wilson MTHFR.net Seeking Health MTHFR test 23andme.com — MTHFR test 12 Energy-Boosting Drinks {no caffeine} DIY Herbal Coffee — podcast DIY Herbal Coffee — get the eBook Ashwagandha Extract/Tincture KYF #161: 6 Ways To Banish Stress And Find More Joy In Your Kitchen And Your Life iTunes I'm so grateful when you visit my show on iTunes and leave a rating and/or review! KnowYourFoodPodcast.com/iTunes This helps me make my podcast better and also helps others find it. Thank you! For past or current episodes, check out the Know Your Food with Wardee podcast archives. Anything to Add? I would love to hear from you! Do you have questions for me, or comments about anything shared in this episode? Like this podcast? Please help me reach others by using the share buttons at the top of this post. Thanks! Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor. All information is intended for your general knowledge only and is not a substitute for medical advice or treatment for specific medical conditions. You are responsible for your own health and for the use of any remedies, treatments, or medications you use at home. The post Overcoming Adrenal Fatigue (KYF171) appeared first on Traditional Cooking School by GNOWFGLINS.

You might be a Traditional Foodie if… …you find yourself doing any of these 12 things! Thanks to our members who contributed these! You're too funny and it's a blessing to have traditional cooking in common. Be sure to add your top reasons you might a Traditional Foodie in the comments… Won't play for you? Try here. Mobile or desktop users, you can hear my podcast with Stitcher, on-demand and on-the-go. (What's Stitcher?) You can also get it on iTunes or subscribe in the Podcasts app. Top 12 Reasons You Might Be A Traditional Foodie… #1 — Just a general overall juggling of things! TCS member Amy D. says: “Just generally a constant juggling of stuff. Rotating gallon kombucha jars around by date. And second ferments of kombucha….and making sure all of my ferments are properly spaced apart.” #2 — Your fridge has more mason jars than anything else! Anonymous TCS member says: “The fridge has more Mason jars than any other type of container. And… you're really glad Superhub baked up that old gift of “cookies in a jar” — the one with all the ingredients layered in — not because you want the cookies but because all the other jars are in use and this new jar means you can try another kraut from the fermenting course. Bonus: it's a wide mouth!” (Photo above is Lynn S.' fridge.) #3 — Your deep freeze is equal parts… Anonymous TCS member member says: “Your deep freeze is equal parts: a. Food that has been prepared: jars of stock, leftover turkey and chicken from roasts, baked bread and about four dozen English muffins for 2 people because, doggoneit, you're going to figure out that recipe if it kills you. b. Food waiting to be prepared: fruit from the summer, meat from the local farmer. c. Weird stuff that only cooks hold onto: Ziploc baggies filled with frozen apple cores to try out that Alice Waters apple cider vinegar recipe; vegetable peels and mushroom stems for stock; ice cubed broth, tomato paste, lemon and orange juices (all separate) for smaller volume cooking; rolled up wrappers of frozen herbs and herb butter; and of course the roasted poultry carcasses for the next round of broth-making.” #4 — The burnt crackers are now sitting in the dog treat bowl! Anonymous TCS member says: “The burnt crackers are now sitting in the dog treat bowl.” #5 — Your cast iron skillets never get put away. Your cast iron skillets never get put away; they take up permanent residence on a back burner of the stove. Because why put them away when you're going to use one again at the next meal? #6 — Your aloe vera plant on the windowsill functions as a plastic bag dryer. Yep, it's the world's best plastic bag dryer ever! #7 — Your family is trained to ask, “Can I eat this?” Your family members are trained to ask, “Can I eat this?” before putting any morsel of food in their mouth. Who knows if it's food for them or for a culture, or even a culture itself! #8 — If your house was on fire, you'd grab your cast iron skillet and sourdough starter on the way out! Your most valuable possessions (you'd grab them on your way out the door if your house was burning down) is your favorite cast iron skillet, your sourdough starter (and a bit of flour to keep it going), and your Vitamix (insert favorite appliance name here). #9 — Your dishwasher can't possibly hold all your dishes, so you also wash by hand. TCS member Chris C. says: “The dishwasher can't possibly hold all the dirty dishes so you hand wash also.” #10 — You don't know how you ever lived with just 1 freezer and refrigerator! TCS member Chris C. says: “You have 2 deep freezes and 2 fridges and don't know how you lived with just the one fridge for 5 years. The 2nd fridge holds ferments and brews.” #11 — No one but you know where to put away all the weird odds-n-ends. TCS member Chris C. says: “No one but you knows where the weird things live in your kitchen so even if someone kindly puts away all the clean dishes you have a pile of ‘where do these live?' to put away and it overflows the dish drainer.” #12 — You own 4 Instant Pots, but still want 1 more! TCS member Chris C. says: “You own 4 Instant Pots (or crockpots) but still want another.” Links Mentioned Instant Pot Pressure Cooker Free Traditional Cooking Video Series iTunes I'm so grateful when you visit my show on iTunes and leave a rating and/or review! KnowYourFoodPodcast.com/iTunes This helps me make my podcast better and also helps others find it. Thank you! For past or current episodes, check out the Know Your Food with Wardee podcast archives. Anything to Add? I would love to hear from you! Do you have questions for me, or comments about anything shared in this episode? Like this podcast? Please help me reach others by using the share buttons at the top of this post. Thanks! The post Top 12 Reasons You Might Be A Traditional Foodie… (KYF170) appeared first on Traditional Cooking School by GNOWFGLINS.

I've been pressure cooking for more than 2 years. And guess what? Pressure cooking is easy… but not as easy as everyone says. So in today's podcast (video and notes are below, too) I'm sharing the things no one else tells you about pressure cooking. Well, except for me… and Vickilynn and Haniya, who are helping me teach our Pressure Cooking eCourse. Be sure to add your lessons learned in the comments! Won't play for you? Try here. Mobile or desktop users, you can hear my podcast with Stitcher, on-demand and on-the-go. (What's Stitcher?) You can also get it on iTunes or subscribe in the Podcasts app. Video I recorded this podcast live on Facebook Live last week, and here's the video from that! It's just like the audio file above, except you can see it, too. Want to join the fun of the live recording? Follow me on Facebook or @TradCookSchool on Periscope. I hop on to record most Thursdays! 1. The Instant Pot makes pressure cooking soooooo much more doable. I know this from experience. I first got a stove-top pressure cooker and I loved that. But it was pretty hands on. I had to be right there; and to be honest, it was a big of a drag. Because for something that was supposed to be so easy, I sure was having to monitor it a lot… (Not hard, just not that easy.) Then I saw the Instant Pot and knew it was going to make pressure cooking so easy. It did not disappoint. I literally use it all the time. For eggs, reheating, whole chickens. Even if the dinner I’m cooking doesn’t involve the pressure cooker, I will still cook something in it while I can to free me up later. Example: last night we were barbecuing chicken. And potatoes were boiling on the camp stove. So I put a whole chicken in the Instant Pot and cooked that for today’s meals. 2. Use the saute function to pre-heat and save time! You can pre-heat your cooker by putting in the liquid and putting on saute function while prepping your ingredients. Then it’s all hotter when you’re ready to pressurize. You can also pre-heat your ingredients or prepare them at room temperature. The less cold everything is when you start the pressure cooking cycle, the faster you’ll get pressurized. Sometimes, it can take up to 30 minutes to get pressurized! 3. Add more water if you lost too much during pre-heat. Sometimes, you’re pre-heating the cooker with a bit of water and a lot of it evaporates by the time you’re ready to pressure cook. You MUST add more water or it won’t pressurize. (Pressure cooking is cooking with steam under pressure. In order to have steam, you must have water!) This happened to me the other day. I lost liquid and then I added broccoli and it went through the cooking cycle but not under pressure. I couldn’t figure it out… tried to pressurize it 3 times until it finally dawned on me… not enough liquid! 4. Pressure cooking helps me beat the heat! Our house gets hot in the summer and doesn’t ventilate. We do most of our cooking outside on the camp stove, or I take appliances outside and to use them. However, I am able to use the pressure cooker inside the house (even though sometimes I don’t) because it simply doesn’t output heat like the stove, oven, crockpot, or toaster oven. It’s amazing! When I need to release the steam, I can take it outside just for that (if I want). 5. You probably have most of what you need already. Other than the Instant Pot itself, you probably have most of what you need already in your kitchen to make fun and interesting dishes! This doesn’t mean you might not make the occasional purchase, but you can do A LOT with what you have. For instance, Pyrex glass storage bowls make great cooking containers. And a layer of parchment paper followed by aluminum foil makes a non-toxic cover. (We cover more accessories and necessities in the Pressure Cooking eCourse.) 6. Allow time for prep, pressurizing, de-pressurizing, and cooling down, too. Even though the main premise of pressure cooking is that things cook faster, you still need to allow for prep, coming to pressure, de-pressurizing, and cooling down. So… it’s not a huge time saver but the results are worth it enough to do it. Especially the hands-free aspect of the Instant Pot. I still factor in the same amount of cooking time for dinner than I did before pressure cooking. One of the biggies here is that the food is waaaayyyyy hotter when it’s done than with normal cooking. Therefore it’s really important to allow for 10 to 15 minutes so it can cool down enough for the family to actually enjoy eating it. Links Mentioned Instant Pot Pressure Cooker 8 Reasons To Love Pressure Cooking The Great Big Pressure Cooker Cookbook Our Pressure Cooking eCourse iTunes I'm so grateful when you visit my show on iTunes and leave a rating and/or review! KnowYourFoodPodcast.com/iTunes This helps me make my podcast better and also helps others find it. Thank you! For past or current episodes, check out the Know Your Food with Wardee podcast archives. Anything to Add? I would love to hear from you! Do you have questions for me, or comments about anything shared in this episode? Like this podcast? Please help me reach others by using the share buttons at the top of this post. Thanks! The post 6 Lessons Learned From 2+ Years Of Pressure Cooking (KYF169) appeared first on Traditional Cooking School by GNOWFGLINS.

Ah… vacations. Love 'em! And hate 'em — because it's so hard to get back on track with healthy eating when you get home, right? Most people either follow the 80/20 rule when eating out on vacation — or fall off the wagon completely. So they got home unmotivated, tired, and even a little depleted. TCS member Cathy P. recently shared in our members' Facebook group: “I do feel like I've fallen completely off the wagon with my cooking. Travel always seems to trip me up. It's hard for me to stay on track before and during the trip, and it's also hard for me to get back on track even after I get back home.” I feel for you, Cathy! Practically every one falls off the wagon while on vacation! But you can always turn things around… So I've got 5 tips to show you how to get back into healthy eating after vacation. (And one of them will help you prevent falling off the wagon as much next time!) Below, you'll find the audio, video, and print version of these tips for getting back on track after vacation… or new baby, or moving, or illness, or…. you name it. If you're interested in learning easy ways to cook healthy every day, be sure to grab my free traditional cooking video series! I share 5 of my favorite fundamentals traditional cooking techniques — they're easy, healthy, and delicious! Won't play for you? Try here. Mobile or desktop users, you can hear my podcast with Stitcher, on-demand and on-the-go. (What's Stitcher?) You can also get it on iTunes or subscribe in the Podcasts app. Video I recorded this podcast live on Periscope last week, and here's the video from that! It's just like the audio file above, except you can see it, too. Want to join the fun of the live recording? Follow me on Facebook or @TradCookSchool on Periscope. I hop on to record most Thursdays! How To Get Back On Track With Healthy Eating I went into more detail in the audio and video above. Here are the cliff notes of the 5 tips I shared for how to get back into healthy eating after vacation: 1. Know That It’s Ok It happens. “His mercies are new every morning…” God's word says. Same with food and health. Tomorrow is a new day. Or in Trim Healthy Mama, where every snack/meal is 2-1/2 to 3 hours apart, the saying is you get to start over in 3 hours. That's great news and very encouraging! In any case, let go of the guilt. It is what it is. You can’t change the past, but you can change the future. So… 2. Put It In Perspective Your extra tiredness is not only from traveling but it’s from not being nourished as well. It’s ok to admit this. Because it helps you find the motivation you need to make changes. Know that it’s going to take some work to get back on track. Set your mind that you’re pursuing that and prioritizing it. 3. Triage When you get home, you need to recover from vacation before you can get back to normal. That means 3 things — rest up, drink up, and eat simple, nourishing meals. The first 2 are obvious. The next — what do I mean by simple, nourishing meals? I mean meals that are super easy to fix (so they don’t tax or overwhelm you) but are really, really nourishing. Like: Eggs with sourdough toast Salads Whole chickens — just pull off the meat for sandwiches and salads Chicken soup Broth Grass-fed ground beef based dishes — ground beef is so easy to turn into hamburgers, spaghetti, tacos, burritos, chili! Make sure your ingredients are whole and nutrient-dense: healthy fats, grass-fed or pastured meats, especially. The fat and protein will help fuel you and restore your vigor. Also, feel free to use healthy convenience items, like: store-bought yogurt, artisan ferments (like Bubbie’s), sourdough bread, canned wild salmon, etc. You might have some nice take-out places that feature seasonal ingredients and broth. Don’t turn to fast food because you’re tired — either simple at home or quality eating out. Notice in triage there’s not a whole lot of soaking/sprouting/sourdough. Just basic whole foods that don’t need extra prep methods. This is because you’re resting and restoring and we’re keeping it very simple. Kind of like you’re sick. 4. Back To Normal Once you’re rested up, rehydrated, and even nourished, you should begin feeling more energetic and more desire to get back in the kitchen and back to normal. So do it. But do it slowly. Don’t burn out. Start introducing more tasks and cooking. Whatever you were doing before vacation, you can do again. Yogurt, broth, ferments, breads, beans… And use your Instant Pot! We have tons of easy recipes in our Pressure Cooking eCourse — if you’re not already a member, consider joining us! 5. Plan Ahead For Next Time If you can plan ahead for the next time you vacation, you'll not only make your vacation better but also your return home. There are 3 parts to this. #1 — How can you make your next vacation better in terms of how you eat? Check out this #AskWardee — real food while traveling. #2 — What can you make and put in your fridge and freezer so next time you come home, you have more options upon your return? Such as bread, broth, ferments, frozen dinners… Vacation is like having a baby. You don’t return to normal for awhile. So just like new mamas clean and put up freezer meals for when the big day comes, you can do the same thing when you know you’re going on vacation. This also includes: Try to leave for vacation with a clean house, clean fridge, and almost everything “in its place”. When you’re home again, the last thing you want to do is have to pick up messes. It’s much better to start with a clean slate. Right? #3 — Plan an extra day or 2 after vacation as a buffer where family activities are low-key or non-existent, so you can rest and recover before going back to work or going back to normal. Links Mentioned Canned Wild Salmon Free Traditional Cooking Video Series Whole Chickens in the Crockpot Instant Pot (easy pressure cooking!) #AskWardee 028: Real Food While Traveling Pressure Cooking eCourse What's your daily sourdough routine? #AskWardee iTunes I'm so grateful when you visit my show on iTunes and leave a rating and/or review! KnowYourFoodPodcast.com/iTunes This helps me make my podcast better and also helps others find it. Thank you! For past or current episodes, check out the Know Your Food with Wardee podcast archives. Anything to Add? I would love to hear from you! Do you have questions for me, or comments about anything shared in this episode? Like this podcast? Please help me reach others by using the share buttons at the top of this post. Thanks! The post How To Get Back Into Healthy Eating After Vacation (KYF168) appeared first on Traditional Cooking School by GNOWFGLINS.

So you know you should focus on gut-healing and you've heard that the GAPS diet can really help you and your family with that. But, you've also heard… …that GAPS is overwhelming — lots to wrap your head around! …or that your family might struggle with not enjoying food due to the restrictions and might get so sick of the cooked veggies and broth they'll stop eating altogether! …or that you might end up spending tons of time (you don't have) in the kitchen keeping up with the broth-making — so you won't have time for anything else. Well. GAPS can be that way. Or not. That's why I'm delighted to introduce you to my friend and certified GAPS practitioner Melanie Christner. She's joining me on this podcast (aka webclass) to share how you can make GAPS simple. Yes, SIMPLE. Finally. (Plus, how to know if you should do it in the first place… a very good question to answer first!) The GAPS diet is life-changing, I know that myself. I went on it several years ago and it helped me heal from a lifetime of debilitating seasonal allergies. I am allergy-free for 4 years now. By the way, my allergies were BAD. (Info: here and here.) Below, you'll find Melanie's 3 sensible ways to implement GAPS. Depending on your family's skill level and need, she'll help you figure out which is best for you or your family. Also, she gives oh-so-many tips for implementing it, how to know when to move on to the next stage, basic foods list, basic equipment list, resources for foods and equipment, and much, much, more. Melanie is one of the best guests I've ever had on my podcast. She knows her stuff, she was well prepared with amazingly valuable info, and she cares so much. You will get a lot out of this webclass! Check out the audio podcast, video replay, and complete print transcript below. Won't play for you? Try here. Mobile or desktop users, you can hear my podcast with Stitcher, on-demand and on-the-go. (What's Stitcher?) You can also get it on iTunes or subscribe in the Podcasts app. Video I recorded this podcast live on Blab last week, and here's the video from that! It's just like the audio file above, except you can see it, too. Want to join the fun of the live recording? Follow me on Facebook or @TradCookSchool on Periscope. I hop on to record most Thursdays! The Gut-Healing GAPS Diet Made Simple Transcript Here's the complete transcript from this podcast. ~~~~~ Wardee: Hey everyone! Welcome to Know Your Food with Wardee podcast. This is episode #165. If you're joining us live, we don't yet have the show notes ready, but if you're watching this as a video replay, or the podcast on Friday — on or after Friday, June 10th [2016]– then the show notes will be ready for you, and all the links and everything we've mentioned, even the complete transcript, at knowyourfoodpodcast.com/165 So, we are live right now on Blab, so I just want to give a quick rundown of how Blab works before I introduce you to my guest, Melanie, and we get into the topic. How Blab works is if you're here live, you will have a live chat on the right-hand side. Feel free to make use of that. If you want to ask a question of Melanie or I, you do a /q, and that will put it into the question queue. We will answer if it's relevant to what we're speaking about, or we'll save questions for the end. On the left-hand side of your screen is where you can share. You can share the last thirty seconds of what's been going on to Facebook or Twitter, and just let people know what's going on. If you have friends or family who need or are interesting in gut healing, we appreciate you sharing. And finally, Melanie and I would dearly love your participation and applause where appropriate. Chime in on the chat, but also where you see each of our faces in the bottom-right corner, there's two hands. Side by side, thumbs together. If you just click there, you can click multiple times if you like what's being said, like I'm doing to Melanie right now. I'm giving her applause. Feel free to do the props. Blab calls it props. So, welcome to everyone. Welcome to those who are live and the replay and podcast listeners later. This is going to be a great, great podcast/webcast today. I'm going to tell you Melanie now! Melanie is my guest that you can see up here too if you're watching the video… She is a nutritional therapy practitioner, and she's a certified GAPS practitioner in Vermont. She's been trained by the creator of the GAPS diet, Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, and she's had further training in functional nutrition as well. She has a passion for helping families in the area of digestive therapy, and she's known for making digestive therapy understandable and for supporting families in that endeavor. She has four children of her own, so she's well-versed in children and navigating these waters. She has a great desire to help other families follow this path of nourishment with a focus on gut health. So, welcome Melanie. I'm so glad you're here. Melanie: Thank you, Wardee, that was a great introduction. Thanks. Wardee: Well, you deserve it. I'm just so thrilled you're here to share. And I should say, you're taking time out of attending a conference right now, so we are especially blessed that you're taking this time with us! So, I gave kind of the bio that anyone could read on your site really, as they get to know you, but I'm hoping you'll take a few minutes and tell us more about you and your family, and kind of your life and some special things about you. Melanie: Okay. Well, as you said, I'm mom to 4, and I like to say I'm mom to 4 hungry eaters. I'm wife to a great guy, we've been together for 19 years. We were childhood sweethearts. We're celebrating our nineteenth anniversary this summer. Wardee: Congratulations. Melanie: Thank you. That's a feat. (Melanie laughs) Melanie: I have four kids. My oldest is Kade, who is 16. Then there's Jack, who is 13. Maggie, who's 11, and Charlotte, who's 9. They're all blonde. We live in the green mountains of Vermont where the people are of a very decent sort, and local food is plentiful and easy to come by, and there's plenty of mountain ponds and rivers to swim in, and cross-country skiing in the wintertime. Wardee: I see your pictures on Facebook often and I think you just live a perfect life. Melanie: Well, there are definitely some very good pieces to it. Wardee: Yep. As it is with all of us. We all have blessings and we have challenges, and we're going to talk about some of those challenges today; how we can make them easier. Melanie: So, that's kind of the synopsis of my little family. Or, big family, depending on how you look at it. Wardee: I love that. My husband and I are on our twentieth year as well. Melanie: Wow. Wardee: Well, we just hit 19 in December. We're about to hit 20, and like you said, it's quite amazing to have built a life of so many years, so many rich blessings and hard work. Melanie: Very, yep. Good stuff. Wardee: Well, let's get into your health story, and what brought you specifically into the realm of gut health and nutrition. Melanie: So I spoke of those four hungry eaters. Having babies takes a large draw on the bank of internal health, and by the time #4 came around, my maternal bank account was kind of in the red. Through a series of postpartum events, my health kind of spiraled and set off my own health crisis. Migraines, eczema, thrush… When I say thrush, I'm talking about five months of excruciating nursing. Like, crying whenever she latched on. That kind of thrush. Systemic candida, acne, fatigue, anxiety, just general aches and pains, that sort of thing. So, I tried real food diets, the candida diet, I tried natural remedies like herbs and different supplements, which moved the needle enough to encourage me, but it was not enough to deal with all of my issues. In the midst of my struggles, I found Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, who is this neurologist from the UK who has this amazing wealth of medical knowledge paired with this wonderful traditional Russian wisdom. I was able to hear her speak at a Weston Price conference when I was nursing my fourth. She spoke about the gut and psychology syndrome protocol, and it just… All the connections and synapses fired in my brain, you know, how, when given the proper tools, our bodies want to heal themselves. They want to take care of us and support us, but they need the right tools and often that's going back to traditional ways, but in a structured, healing protocol. I needed a protocol that went deeper. I found Dr. Natasha, I found GAPS. She designed the GAPS protocol out of her own need when her small son was diagnosed with autism, and she was able to heal him and then go on to use it in her clinic with hundreds, thousands, of families. She found that by focusing on this digestive protocol she not only helped children, but the families of the children who were doing the protocol with their kids. She found that it just helped a myriad of issues along with the autistic children. Wardee: When you hear typing, it's because you had so many little perfect quotes here. I'm sharing them on Twitter and Facebook. (Melanie and Wardee laugh) Melanie: Great. Wardee: It's just so wonderful to hear your story. I have heard her speak as well when I attended Wise Traditions in 2011, and it was the most memorable presentation. I think it was her knowledge combined with her heart. Melanie: Yes. Yeah. Wardee: You could just tell she is a doctor that has lived it, cared it, loved it, and puts 100% into continuing to help. Melanie: Absolutely. She's had to actually step back a few times for her own health because she's so passionate about her work. Wardee: Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing your story and how you got on this path. Let's talk now about what you do. You had your own health challenges, and the GAPS diet was what moved the needle significantly for you and your family, and now you are… I guess you could say following in Dr. Natasha's footsteps because you've been trained with her, and now you're helping children and families yourself. Talk a little about the work that you do, now. Melanie: Yeah, minus the neurologist part. (Wardee and Melanie laugh) Melanie: So, I am trained as a nutritional therapy practitioner, as you said before — or NTP, for short — and as a certified GAPS practitioner, with further certification in a functional nutrition training by restorative wellness solutions. What all means that I can help moms, kids, and individuals, to sort out their health in a very foundational way, crafting a GAPS plan that's very bio-individual. Using targeted lab tests to work efficiently and specifically to each individual's needs, or their body's needs. I also take their lifestyle into consideration. You need to factor in not just the food, but what's going on in their life, you know, what food sensitivities they have that could be causing inflammation. They could be the very GAPS foods that they're eating every day. So we test for that, we want to know what's going on in their digestive tract that we could help move along quicker. I'm able to very effectively help even some of the tougher cases, which a lot of GAPS cases end up being. Wardee: Right. That's what I've noticed. Everyone is just a slight bit different, and that difference is so crucial to getting over the hump to healing. Melanie: Yeah. Wardee: Because it can really hold you back. So, without divulging private client information, could you give us a simple example of something that you've run into that you discovered through testing, that then you were able to craft a more personalized plan? Melanie: Right off the top of my head, just in this year, I was working with a little boy who was put on the GAPS protocol. He was dealing with, from the time he was very little, constant vomiting and refluxing, and within a very short period of time on GAPS, that completely stopped. He'd been dealing with that since the time he was very little. But he continued to deal with some other issues, like tummy pain, and through the food sensitivity testing that I do, we were able to completely eliminate that, and get his digestion working well and kind of hammer out the rest of his health details. That's just a quick example right off the top of my head. Wardee: Great. Melanie: Within GAPS, you're eating — especially on GAPS Intro — you're eating some pretty specific foods, and let's for example say you have a sensitivity to chicken and cabbage, and you're making chicken broth every day, or eating sauerkraut or sauerkraut juice every day, and you're sensitive to those two foods. You're going to slow down or even halt your healing process. Just by limiting those and moving to, like, beef or venison or lamb or turkey, and choosing some other vegetables to ferment… Then you're able to kind of speed that healing process up. Wardee: Yeah. Melanie: Not have the daily inflammation from those problematic foods. Wardee: Because it's not a one-sized-fits-all. We have these classes of healing foods, but some people are allergic. Like some people are sensitive to most protein, and so they have to find the one that they can eat. Melanie: The one safe protein. Wardee: The one safe protein. Well, that's wonderful. Melanie: So that's my work, and then I've had the privilege of bringing over two hundred families through my online GAPS classes. That's a real treat to be able to do that. Wardee: Yeah. I mean, 'cause that's what it's about. It's about helping children and families. Well, let's back up because we've been talking about GAPS, which is a particular gut healing protocol, and it's the one that worked for you to significantly move the needle with your issues, it's also the one that you teach and that you [use to] help families. How can someone know whether they really need GAPS at all? Because I know there's a lot of people in our community — in the Traditional Cooking School community — who are like, ‘well, I'm not at my best…' I get this question all the time. ‘Do I need to do GAPS, or can I just do traditional cooking, traditional foods?' Melanie: Well, to give an example from my own story… I started with traditional foods, and made some good movement. It didn't quite do what I needed it to do. I would say that anyone who is unwell can do well with full GAPS. That's kind of tailored to them. Now the specific reasons to do the GAPS Introduction diet, I'm going to read from my notes because there's about six or so points. If you have diarrhea of any origin, abdominal pain, bloating, flatulence, that kind of thing. Those real digestive issues. If you have leaky gut and inflammatory bowel conditions. Autistic children, and all children on the spectrum, or with learning disabilities like Down syndrome, Cerebral palsy… Those are kids that should be doing GAPS Intro. Kids and adults diagnosed with Diabetes Type I or Celiac disease… These people have serious damage to their gut lining, and they need slow and methodical healing. Some cases of stubborn constipation, but I'll talk more about that in the full GAPS. And then multiple food allergies and intolerances. In those cases the gut lining is really damaged and, again, needs the slow and methodical healing. Those are the people groups that GAPS Introduction is really meant for. And then one more. If you have health issues that aren't resolving on full GAPS — if you've tried full GAPS and they aren't resolved — it would be time to try Intro. Wardee: Okay. I'm just leaving a link in the comments. Roxanne is asking where she can get more info, so I linked her to your site where you offer personalized consultations. Did you have anything else to add there? Did you get through all your six? Melanie: Yes. Wardee: Okay, great. So that was really helpful. I like that, I like that you pulled out very specific conditions or symptoms that people are experiencing, where, like you pointed out, traditional food will get you a little bit, but you need more, and that's where GAPS comes in. That's wonderful. Now let's get to the promise of today's web class. You've promised to give us some tips. So, GAPS can be so overwhelming. How do we make it simpler? The things that come to my mind are people thinking they have to be a slave to the broth making, they don't have time for anything else, they don't even have enough time. They're also faced with family members that are like, ‘I'm so sick of eating cooked veggies and broth and I'm not going to eat anything else ever again, because now I hate eating…' Or just, ‘I can't wrap my head around all the different stages of Intro, and what I can introduce when.' Talk us through how to demystify that and make it simpler. You have led two hundred families through your GAPS class. You've made it simple for them. Let's do it here. Melanie: Okay, so, let's start with talking about the main components of GAPS. There's three main components. That being the diet, which is further broken down into Introduction diet, the full diet, and transitioning off of GAPS. And then the second component is supplementation. And the third is detoxification. I'm going to focus on the diet component, and more specifically, the Introduction diet. (Melanie takes a break while Wardee recaps) Wardee: We'll continue with talking about how to simplify GAPS, how to make it not overwhelming. Melanie: Okay. So, back to the overview… What the GAPS protocol does is it treats the root issue, which is the gut. And it does this by gently cleaning up, removing the flow of toxins. It removes hard-to-digest foods, and it corrects nutritional deficiencies by emphasizing healing foods which in turn restores your immune system. Wardee: That's a great summary. Melanie: Great. Thanks. So, the diet component, as I said before, it's made of the six stage Introduction diet, the full GAPS diet, and the transitioning off of GAPS eventually. As a whole, the nutritional protocol of GAPS lasts for 1.5 to 2 years. We're ready to start adding in some transition foods when we've been about six months with no symptoms. Wardee: Okay. Melanie: So, that's when we start talking transition foods that we haven't been able to eat for awhile. Wardee: I like that. I've never heard anyone say that as a rule, but what a great thing to go by. Melanie: Yeah, so, we're talking… That's done in a very structured way, and very slowly. But if you've been without any digestive symptoms or symptoms that are unique to you for about six months, then you can start adding in, like, new potatoes and fermented buckwheat. Things like that. But for most, that's at least a year, year and a half. But for families like ours who are not coming in with issues like autism, that can be a shorter period of time, if that makes sense. Wardee: Sure does. Melanie: Good. The next thing I want to talk about is what the GAPS Introduction diet does. It provides building blocks for the kind of little baby cells in our digestive tract, the enterocytes, and it's very gentle and healing because it's low fiber. And it introduces those gentle foods gradually, starting with the very gentlest first. It also provides beneficial microbes. You could call it a holistic approach for diarrhea, to put it in basic terms. (Wardee and Melanie laugh) Wardee: I like that. (Wardee laughs) Melanie: I like to approach the Introduction diet with three different time frames. I call it my ‘three measured approaches' to starting GAPS with your family. Approach #1 is what is called the ‘3 to 6 month approach.' That's best if you're starting from ground zero, eating a standard American diet. You don't know much about real food, maybe you're just discovering Wardee's site and traditional cooking. There's still a lot of processed food in your diet. And you found out about GAPS but you are completely overwhelmed, and you need to educate yourself. So, in the 3 to 6 month approach, the first thing you want to do is transition to real food. And you might take a month just to remove processed foods and learn how to replace them with more traditional home versions. When you're searching for new recipes, you could use search terms like ‘paleo,' or ‘primal,' or ‘real food,' or ‘grain free.' And just get used to that kind of cooking. The second step would be to remove sugar and grains. The next step would be to move to full GAPS, and here's how I would recommend doing that. I would take a month, where in the first week you are doing all of your breakfasts full GAPS, and then maybe the second week, you're doing all of your snacks full GAPS, plus the breakfast. Then week three, you're adding in GAPS lunches, and then week four, you're adding in GAPS dinners. So that by the end of that month, you are on full GAPS. Wardee: So what you've done is you've taken somebody from standard American diet to cleaning up the diet so that it is whole food traditional, and then you started removing some of the foods that are not included on full GAPS so that by the end of that time, they've very simply transitioned to full GAPS. The removal of grains, sugars, processed foods, basically? Melanie: Yes. Wardee: Okay! Melanie: And then once you're fully transitioned to full GAPS, we've got your cooking skills in hand, and you're familiar with the skills that are needed, then I recommend doing the six stages of Intro in reverse, actually, before then doing them in the order they are meant to be done. Then when you're finally done with the six stages of Intro, then transition to full GAPS. Now that's the long view approach, the 3-6 months, wherein you plan tasks on your calendar by the week, gathering your sources, learning your skills, finding your recipes, that sort of thing. Wardee: I just want to take a moment to direct people to Melanie's site. She's at Honest Body. You can sign up for consultations and can also explore her recipes. She can walk you through the transition steps of gathering supplies, equipment, learning the techniques that you will need to do the GAPS diet. Melanie: Yep. My second approach is the ‘1-month approach.' That's best for the family, or the individual, who has a good understanding of real and traditional food. They're ready to take their health to the next level, but they still want to and can afford to take a more measured approach. So what that looks like is you're planning your tasks on your calendar by the day, but you're doing that 1 month trying GAPS foods, and week by week you're adding in one GAPS meal per day. First week, breakfast; second week, lunches; third week, snacks; fourth week, full GAPS; and then you start the six stage just of GAPS Intro as normally laid out. Wardee: I like that. Melanie: So that's kind of my 1 month approach. And the reason I'm giving time frames is that it's so helpful to put it on the calendar and schedule it, and work backwards from there. In our own family, we — just a little side note, here — did GAPS while traveling in an airstream around the Western half of the country, and in a moment of ‘life is what you make of it,' we set a date of when we were going to start GAPS, and just went for it. Wardee: So if you can do that, anybody can. The normal way is way easier. Melanie: It is! And if it can be done in our kitchen, it can be done. Lastly, as far as approaches… I do have what is called the ‘next week approach.' Wardee: This is like the cold turkey approach? Melanie: Yes, the cold turkey approach. But there are circumstances where that's needed. If you have severe digestive issues, children with autism, children who are in daily pain and distress — their tummies hurt no matter what they eat, they're doubled over and self-harming because they're in pain — that kind of situation. Wardee: Or wasting away. Melanie: Or wasting away. Like these kids need nutrients and they need them now. So in this case you don't have the luxury of a measured approach. Or if you just happen to like the cold turkey approach. In that case, I recommend clearing your calendar, a long weekend at least, removing some of the social obligations. I would say five days off of school or work is best. Some special needs kids need longer, of course. I would suggest using the menu plans on my site, and make a grocery list. Order the Heal Your Gut cookbook, which is an awesome cookbook that's just been available in the last couple years. It has all six stages of Intro with recipes for each stage, plus lots of amazing full GAPS recipes. You need to prep one day ahead of yourself, and I would caution to not run out of food. It's really when you're dealing with detoxing, and brain fog, and all those sorts of issues, you want to have food prepped ahead of yourself. That would be my ‘next week approach.' Wardee: So we've had the 3 to 6 months, the 1 month, and the next week approach. And they're all possible ways for people to get into GAPS very simply and not overwhelmingly. They also suit the type of family you are, where you are. The 3 to 6 month is the family who is standard American diet. The 1 month diet is the family who is well-versed with traditional methods, knows how to make stock and simple ferments, and has the equipment and the ingredients already down so they can transition easily into more restrictive, but they already know how to do everything. And there's the next week, because the person or family member just really needs the protocol right now. Melanie: Yes. Wardee: I love how you broke that down. Love it. Melanie: So, now I'd like to talk about some basic GAPS Intro tips. My first tip is about food sourcing, which is something really near and dear to my heart. I like to recommend that you get to know your local farmers, that you spend a day evaluating your budget and pricing out your local sources. You may say, ‘what if I live in a food desert?' That is a very possible thing in different parts of this country. So, there are some online resources. There's an Amish food membership called Miller's Organics, and they ship all around the country, and it's a lot of GAPS-friendly foods. There's the broths, the sauerkrauts, the 24-hour yogurts and kefirs… I believe you can just Google that and find it. There's also localharvest.org, eatwild.com, pickyourown.org, localfarmmarkets.org, and then for more pantry-type items, there is Thrive Market. Wardee: Great. I will have all of these links in our show notes: knowyourfoodpodcast.com/165 That will be available on Friday, June 10th [2016], if you're listening to the live recording. Melanie: Great. Then, a special note that's been added in recent years to the Introduction diet is that, for the first 30 days, we're doing meat stock instead of bone broth. Meat stock has less histamines, less glutamine. When there's a leaky gut, there's very likely leaky blood/brain barrier, and strong, hearty, bone broth can cause issues at first. So, chicken stock is especially gentle for Intro. The difference between meat stock and bone broth is that meat stock is made by boiling a cut of meat on the bone. For instance, if you took a whole chicken, or a bone-in roast, and you cooked that in water for a short period of time, say, 1.5-2 hours. Whereas bone broth is made with all kinds of bones for a really long simmering time from 2 to 48 hours. Meat stock is easier and gentler in the beginning of Intro. And you do that for 30 days, and it's easier to make, as you can just throw your chicken in the pot with some carrots and onions and garlic and whatnot, and then an hour and a half later you've got your cooked chicken and you've got your meat stock, and that's dinner. Everything in one pot. Wardee: Right, and it's not so much different as making chicken soup, right? Melanie: Right. Wardee: So it works no matter what. You already know how to do that. Melanie: You do. So, to speed up your healing, there are some foods to focus on. Those being bone marrow, the gelatinous soft-tissues around the bones of the skin — and I'll tell you a use for that in a minute — animal fats, and organ meats. Those are the four foods that, if possible, they need to be consumed as often as possible. They provide some of the best healing for the gut lining. They're the nuts and bolts of what goes into making a healthy gut lining. So, how we did this as a family… I would cook a whole chicken, and then I would collect all of the soft tissues, the skin, the fat, the connective tissues, etc., and I would combine them in a blender with salt and pepper, and this made a creamy patte that could be added to our soups and stews for extra flavor and all those reparative nutrients. Wardee: Great. It also thickens it up, it really is delicious. Melanie: Yes. It's like a cream replacement. So, tips for being smart in the kitchen. I recommend making two meals from every one that you're making. Wardee: Yes! That is good advice to anyone who has to cook. Melanie: Plan 24 hours in advance for every meal. Monday morning, you're thinking about Tuesday morning's breakfast, and Monday night you're thinking about Tuesday night's dinner. It's a great idea to chop a week's worth of veggies at a time and freeze them. That's a huge time saver on Intro. Wardee: Yeah, so you're talking about carrots, onions… Melanie: Carrots, squash, onions, broccoli, cauliflower. All of that can be chopped and frozen ahead of time. Wardee: Great. Melanie: If you don't live in the deep South where it's… Well, even if you do live in the warm part of the country, if you keep 1 pot of soup on your stone, and if you're home, you can reheat that throughout the day and not deal with multiple pulling out containers, heating up, then putting them back into the fridge. This is what can be done unless you have histamine issues, wherein you need to have your food as fresh as possible. I really can't stress enough that when you have detox brain and you're feeling foggy-headed, you don't want to make it worse by going hungry. If you keep food prepared and on hand — and most of the GAPS Intro foods can be prepared ahead of time, you can stock up on ghee, meats and bones, fruits and veggies, animal fats and butter, 24-hour yogurt and kefir, quarts of sauerkraut — they all keep. Wardee: Yep, they do. Great advice. Melanie: The basic foods to have on hand. Wardee: Oh, this is going to be good. Melanie: We've got about 8 foods here. A variety of meat and meaty bones and fish. Fats, such as tallow, lard, ghee, duck fat… I love duck fat. Yogurt and kefir, they need to be cultured for 24 hours or more. And there is a commercial brand of 24-hour cultured yogurt. It's by White Mountain, and it's coming to more and more health food stores. Just to put that note in there. Wardee: Fantastic. Melanie: Prepared meat stock. Sauerkraut. Vegetables. Eggs. And virgin olive oil. Those are the basic foods to have on hand. Wardee: Great list. Melanie: Basic supplements to have on hand… And these first two aren't technically supplements, but they kind of act as supplements digestively. Lemon-water in the morning, and ginger tea. And then the real supplements… A probiotic like Bio-Kult or Gut Pro. Cod liver oil, the most unprocessed and high quality like you can. Hydrochloric acid, which is the same acid that your own stomach cells secrete. Almost every one of my clients needs some hydrochloric acid at some point. One of the very first north-to-south digestive needs is good stomach acid which breaks down our proteins, chelates our minerals, sanitizes our foods. It has so many functions, and it sets up the rest of digestion to work properly. Magnesium glycinate could be helpful for constipation. And then essential fatty acids supplements, like orange or black currant seed oil, fish oil, that sort of thing. In general, we had to take a break from all supplements on Intro; and then in stage 3, we're adding in the probiotics and the cod liver oil; in stage 4 we're adding in the other essential fatty acid supplements. But there are 2 exceptions. If you're on prescriptions that need to be weaned off under a practitioner's care. The other exception is if digestive help is needed during Intro wherein you would use things like hydrochloric acid. So let me get into the basic equipment. If you're on a budget, here's your list; the most basic equipment. Most of us already have this in our kitchens. You need a stock pot, and a good pan. I like cast iron and stainless steel. You need good knives and cutting boards. It's really helpful to have at least an inexpensive juicer. You can pick up a Jack LaLanne juicer for less than $50, usually, from Craigslist. I'll get into my recommendations for a better juicer when I talk about more bonus fun equipment. Stick blender, like the Cuisinart Smart Stick. You can pick that up for like $35. And then mason jars of assorted sizes. Wardee: Yeah, so the family that is already traditional cooking, probably already has all those. Maybe not the juicer. Melanie: Maybe not the juicer, yep. So, the bonus equipment, if you have the budget. If you want to make food more fun, more gourmet sometimes, or easier… My personal favorite for a juicer is the Omega J8006. There are other comparable or better juicers, that's kind of my family favorite. A Vitamix or a Blendtec blender. Something high powered. I really like the Excalibur dehydrators. You can do your 24-hour yogurt in it, you can dehydrate fruits and vegetables for snacks during your whole GAPS experience. You have a jerky recipe, don't you? Wardee: Yep. Jerky's great. Here's the recipe. Melanie: A stand mixer, like a KitchenAid, is really useful for making GAPS baked goods or making Russian custards, which are actually a stage two legal dessert to be used judiciously. Wardee: Is that a recipe on your site? Melanie: It is, actually. Wardee: Okay. So when you guys are over at Melanie's site, you just search for Russian custard. Melanie: Yep. Wardee: I'll try to get a link to it at the show notes, knowyourfoodpodcast.com/165 Melanie: That is a recipe that comes from Dr. Natasha's book. It's about as simple as you can get. It's whipped egg yolks and honey. Wardee: Sounds delicious! Melanie: It is! (Wardee and Melanie laugh) Melanie: An Instant Pot is helpful for quicker cooking. A food processor, like Cuisinart, is wonderful to have. And then, if you have some of the more serious issues, or you know, histamine issues, or methylation issues, it's helpful to have air lock fermenting vessels like the Pickl-It or The Probiotic Jar to have a cleaner ferment. If you are fermenting long enough then there are less histamines to deal with. So that's kind of my bonus equipment list. It's common to deal with either stubborn constipation or diarrhea on Intro. In the case of stubborn constipation, some tips are to either add in fresh-pressed carrot juice early in stage two, and take that with your cod liver oil. Or to try to an enema, if you've not had a bowel movement in two days and nothing else is working. For diarrhea, we recommend that you stay put on the current stage you're at. If it's profuse and watery, then we would need to eliminate veggies until that clears up. You can also introduce the probiotic Bio-Kult which has been well-tested for diarrhea. Wardee: Okay. Melanie: Those are kind of my basic tips. Wardee: Those were fantastic. I want to remind everyone that at the show notes that will be up on Friday, June 10th [2016], we will have a complete transcript that I know you're going to want to copy and paste to Evernote, or wherever you keep your notes, because if you go on GAPS, these are so valuable. The basic equipment, basic supplements, basic pantry list. Then there's the special conditions of constipation or diarrhea, and Melanie has got a wealth of really simple ways to proceed. Show notes are going to be useful for you. Melanie: In regards to proceeding, I just want to give a couple tips on moving through Intro, because a lot of people are confused by how to move through the six stages of Intro. Stage one is generally 1 to 2 days, unless you're dealing with diarrhea, then you stay put until the diarrhea clears up. Stages 2 to 4, we're taking about 4 to 7 days for each of those stages. Now, however, if you have a whole plethora of sensitivities or if you're one of the more severe cases like the kind requiring that you start GAPS next week, then I usually suggest one new food every third day for stages 2 through 4. Stage 5, we're adding in local and seasonal veggies. Raw, that is. When you're talking about vegetables, there are endless amounts of vegetables you could be adding in. What I recommend is that you stick to what is seasonal to you and work through those one by one. And the same for stage 6, where you're adding in more fruits. Stick to what is seasonal, that will shrink your list of foods to work through so you're not overwhelmed with what you can eat. And still taking a careful approach. One new food at a time. Wardee: That's a great tip. Melanie: And I've mentioned this before, but if you are on a stage… Here's my kind of flow chart for how to decide how to move on. Say you're at Intro stage 1. If you do have diarrhea, you stay put; consider the no veggies, consider the Bio-Kult. If not, move to stage 2. In terms of adding in new foods, if you have a food that you're kind of wondering about adding in or not, then what is recommended is to do the skin sensitivity test. Say you want to try egg yolk on stage 2. The night before you want to try that food, you put a drop on the inside of your wrist. If it's a dry food, you can add a little water and make a mash. Put it on your skin. This is a simple, at home, free test. There's more expensive lab tests that they do with clients, but this is simple, free stuff at home. So you would put a drop of egg yolk on the inside of your wrist and go to bed. In the morning, if there is kind of an irritated, red rash or something like that, then you would not add in that food at that time. You would move on to the next food and keep increasing what is already tolerated. That's basically how we approach adding in new foods as we move through the new stages. You don't have to halt at a stage until you can eat all the foods in that stage, you can keep moving on and just skip over the problematic foods and try them again later. Wardee: Great. I'm glad you mentioned that, because I know so many people wonder. ‘I can't have this one, do I have to stay here, or can I move on to something else?' So that's good. Lots of freedom and possibilities there. Melanie: Yep. My next thing I'd like to talk about if we have time, I see we're coming up on 3 o'clock Eastern… Wardee: Yeah, this has been amazing! You're sharing amazing info. Sure, how about one more point, and then I want to be sure to address and talk a little bit about your GAPS class, because I know people are going to be interested in maybe some more hand-holding. Melanie: So I have kind of scripts that I have for people who want to get an idea of how to talk to their kids about GAPS. If I could, I've got a script that is for younger kids, and then my 16 year old son Kade actually shared a piece for teenagers. If I may, I'll just read those. Wardee: Oh, I think this is fantastic. Melanie: I'll try to read somewhat slow, if folks want to take notes. Wardee: They will be in a show notes, word for word. Just read at a conversational speed. Melanie: Okay. So, for little kids, younger kids… Your body has lots of little helpers, tiny bugs inside, but your body can also get too many unhelpful bugs, or insert whatever word appropriate for your child. These unhelpful bugs don't help us to be strong and healthy, so we need to tell them to move out and let the good bugs thrive. We do this by taking away the unhelpful bugs' favorite foods, like sugar, and junk food. And for awhile, we eat only food that feeds the good bugs, and makes them stronger so that they can do their jobs. This diet can also help us by repairing our tummies, building our muscles and our bones, and helping our brains work better. It really helps all the parts of us. For a little while, though, while the unhelpful bugs are dying off, we can feel yucky and we might miss the foods that made those unhelpful bugs happy. We can't avoid that part, but I will help you as much as I can while they move out. We'll take special baths, we'll get fresh air and sunshine, watch some movies and read books, or insert favorite activities. It's good to reward with experiences rather than food. I also find it helpful to show the kids the stages and read to them what they can eat on each stage, and then that makes the list the guide, rather than you, and makes the list the heavy rather than you. Wardee: Right. Good point. Melanie: They can help make the plan from that as well. So, my 16-year-old son Kade's take on GAPS. He says… It sucks sometimes. Your friends will make fun of you. It's not a miracle that is going to fix you tomorrow, but if you ever want to feel good, if there was ever something that could benefit you more than exercise, more than just eating a few more vegetables a day or avoiding that tasty box of cereal manufactured in some lab… It's hard, but if you really want my opinion, it's worth it. Anecdotally, if your teenagers have athletic goals, GAPS can help them stay really healthy, be less prone to injuries, and promote strong bones. I can attest to that in my own kids. Wardee: Fantastic. I hope you thank your son Kade for sharing, that was a really good approach from him. Melanie: I did. Wardee: I think it's great it's coming from another teenager. Melanie: It's real. Wardee: It's real, it's just what they think about. Great. Melanie: Unscripted. Wardee: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for the wealth of tips on simplifying GAPS. We covered a lot of ground, but it was very simple, simple lists you shared. Everyone who is listening now or later, the show notes are knowyourfoodpodcast.com/165, those will be up on Friday, June 10th [2016]. Be sure to come by, because the sources and ingredients and foods and equipment lists, we'll have lots of lists and you could just copy and paste wherever you want to save your document. If you're listening and want to switch to video, if you're on video and want to switch to the audio version so you could listen while you're doing dishes or walking, that's all there for you as well. Well, Melanie, thank you so much for your time. You've taken time out of the conference, you put together an amazing set of tips and lists for everyone. I really appreciate you being so, so, generous with your wisdom and your experience. Melanie: Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here, Wardee. Wardee: It was a pleasure for me, too, to visit with you. Alright, everyone, well, check out the show notes and Melanie's GAPS consultations, and be sure to let me or Melanie know if you need any help with GAPS, or questions or anything about what's been shared today. God Bless you all, bye-bye. Melanie: Bye. ~~~~~ About Melanie Christner, Nutritional Therapy Practitioner & Certified GAPS Practitioner Melanie Christner is a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and Certified GAPS Practitioner in VT, trained by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, with further training in functional nutrition through Restorative Wellness Solutions. Melanie’s passion is helping families navigate digestive therapy in a way that is understandable and well-supported. Having four children of her own, she loves working with children and families, and she endeavors to pair her desire to nourish with practical efficacy for clients. Work with Melanie through her GAPS consultations and join hundreds of our families with children who have successfully used GAPS to get further on their healing journeys! Links Mentioned GAPS Class [no longer offered — Melanie provides consultations instead] Free 30-Day GAPS Prep Guide [no longer offered — Melanie provides consultations instead] see transcript above for specific foods or tools mentioned iTunes I'm so grateful when you visit my show on iTunes and leave a rating and/or review! KnowYourFoodPodcast.com/iTunes This helps me make my podcast better and also helps others find it. Thank you! For past or current episodes, check out the Know Your Food with Wardee podcast archives. Thinking Of Doing GAPS? Here is some more helpful info from TCS: The Harmon Family's Experience On The GAPS Intro Diet Why You Might Consider The GAPS Diet Let's Demystify The GAPS Diet What's The Difference Between Intro & Full GAPS? 82 Ways To Heal Your Gut 41 Healing & Indulgent GAPS Diet Baked Goods Instant Pot GAPS Diet Beef Pho {keto & paleo, too!} 30 Minute Meals for Special Diets. Anything to Add? I would love to hear from you! Do you have questions for me, or comments about anything shared in this episode? Like this podcast? Please help me reach others by using the share buttons at the top of this post. Thanks! The post The Gut-Healing GAPS Diet Made Simple (KYF165) appeared first on Traditional Cooking School by GNOWFGLINS.

Karen and her family don't live on a farm or milk their own cows. And they even failed terribly at gardening (so far). Yet… …they are passionate about keeping traditional homesteading skills alive, so they age their own cheeses, they butcher and process animals, they make salami and dried cured meets, they brew beer, they ferment veggies, they make yogurt, and they bake their own bread. They are truly an inspiration, showing that even if you don't have 100 acres and a cow, you can still do the homesteading thing! And… now they are bringing us The Cave. The Cave is a chamber that can heat, cool, humidify, and circulate air for making cheeses, dry curing meats, and fermenting almost anything. Finally… home fermenters living in a modern world where houses don't have cellars or cheese caves… can stick their ferments in a “cave” with just the right temperature and humidity. It's so exciting! Listen, watch, or read the podcast below to learn more about Karen and her family, get her simple tips for fermenting anything, and to hear more about how you can help get The Cave off the ground by supporting their Kickstarter project*. (*The Cave is being funded through a Kickstarter project that you can support. Our family has pledged support! And we truly hope it succeeds because I am really looking forward to having my own cave someday… soon!) Won't play for you? Try here. Mobile or desktop users, you can hear my podcast with Stitcher, on-demand and on-the-go. (What's Stitcher?) You can also get it on iTunes or subscribe in the Podcasts app.  “The Cave” Home Fermenting Chamber Here's the complete transcript from this podcast. ~~~~~ Wardee: Hey, everyone! This is Wardee, with Know Your Food with Wardee podcast. Welcome to episode #164. If you're catching this later, you can visit the show notes for links and more that I mention today at knowyourfoodpodcast.com/164 There's going to be a lot of information about my special guest, who you'll get to meet in a moment, and as I said, links and more about everything we're discussing today. If you have been listening or reading for awhile — my podcasts, or Traditional Cooking School — you know that I love fermenting, and that's why I was so excited to have my guest today, Karen Christian. She and her family… Boy, you're just going to love hearing from them. First I want to start out with some ‘don't's that Karen shared with me… They don't live on a farm. They don't milk their own cows. She even said they failed terribly at gardening. But even though they don't have any of those things, they really have a strong desire to keep traditional homesteading skills alive, so they age their own cheeses, they butcher and process animals, they make salami and dried cured meets, they brew beer, they ferment veggies, they make yogurt, and they bake their own bread. So, see, you don't need a hundred acres, you don't need a milk cow, to keep those homesteading skills alive. I know you're all going to be really inspired by what Karen and her family are doing. Let me a give a warm hello to Karen. Hi, Karen. Karen: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. Wardee: This is going to be so thrilling. I just gave a little bit of a teaser about you and your family. I'd love you to fill us in on the rest. Tell us a little bit about your family, and what you guys do, and about your life. Karen: Okay, well, we have just this drive to keep doing things ourselves. Even though, like you said, we're not very successful at gardening, or homesteading, or anything like that, it seems like everywhere we look, we're trying to find ways to make our lives more complicated. (Wardee laughs) Wardee: I love how you said that! Gluttons for punishment. Karen: Yeah. Well, I don't know, there's just something so satisfying about doing something yourself, and I think there's a real movement toward trying to bring back some traditional skills that are being lost, and you know, trying to make things that you could buy if you wanted to, that might still be readily available, but there's just such a satisfaction in making them yourself. Wardee: For sure. Karen: Yeah, like you said… We've been making cheese for about five years, and that probably is where our fermentation journey began: making yogurt and cheese. Then we started adding all these different kitchen projects, like making sausages, and then we wanted to make salami. Then, dry curing our meats, and then taking a pork loin and making lonza, or something like that. It just kind of snowballed. I read Nourishing Traditions and got the idea, and that idea just meshed really well with our prior philosophy of making our own things and fermenting, and we've just kind of been adding lots of different projects along the way. Wardee: I love that. I can totally resonate with that. It's like, you start with one thing and it snowballs into more. And I think a lot of people that are listening today are going to be similar, because you know, other people might look at us and think, ‘you are crazy to do all that yourselves!' But there is such a joy! And yes, you can buy it, but there's that joy in the process, and there's also that it's so much better. It tastes better and it tastes so much better for you, if you do it yourself. So, keep going, tell us a little bit more about this journey. Karen: Yeah, well, almost all of these things that we have started doing ourselves, we had to self learn… I mean, not in the sense that we rediscovered on our own how to make these things, but we didn't have a family tradition of making cheese or making salami or things like this. We had to go look online and read books and seek out some mentors and friends who could show us how to do some of these things. It's been an interesting experience, it feels like we're kind of relearning these skills. James', my husband, grandfather grew up on a farm. And he used to make sausages, butcher his pigs and his animals, and things like that, and talking to him… It's like there are all these skills that we're trying to learn, that they used to be common knowledge. People used to do these things. We just have this passion to not only learn them from ourselves but to try to make it possible to bring some of these traditions back and help people keep them living; to keep them alive. Wardee: And you have two young children. How do they feel about all of this? Karen: Well, we have three now, actually. Wardee: Oh, three! Okay. Karen: They like to help. We have a 4-year-old, a 2-year-old, and a 6-month-old. The 2-year-old and the 4-year-old are very helpful in the kitchen… My 4-year-old will cut up the carrots that we're fermenting, she even helps my husband when he's siphoning beer into the bottles. That's a really fun activity. She doesn't drink it, but you know, she helps. They're good helpers. It's funny, too, because a few months ago we butchered a pig, and they were there. They were running around. This was before the 6-month-old was there. But we kind of wondered how they would react to that, because the last time we had butchered an animal, we had a babysitter to watch them. It was actually pretty surprising. There was no fear, or disgust, or anything that someone maybe a little bit older would feel when they would see… You know, it looked like a pig when they saw it. It had already been slaughtered, but we skin the pig and we cut it into sections and everything. They were just interested. And it's interesting to see, if you don't taint your children with some of those preconceived notions… They just really accepted it. Wardee: Yeah. Yeah, totally. So, give us a little bit of a peak into how actually you make this happen, practically speaking, because you're not on land… You're trying at gardening. (Karen laughs) Wardee: Where are you acquiring your ingredients? And are you raising these animals, or are you having other people raise them? How does this actually work for you? Karen: Oh, well, we don't raise any animals. I think our renters would throw a fit if we tried to keep some animals in our backyard here. But no, we've gotten things from several sources. We have a contact where we've gotten pigs from, or from our farmer's market, we've gotten beef. James has gone hunting — he hasn't always been very successful — but we're trying to source our meats locally or more naturally. We also get meats from the grocery stores to work and play with. When we've made cheeses and things like that… When I started making cheese, I had this thought that, ‘you know, I'm going to learn to make cheese so that someday when I live on a homestead, I'll be able to put my goats milk to use, or my cow's milk…' That hasn't happened yet. We don't live in an area which would support raising animals. But we either use grocery store milk, or we have a cowshare where we can get some raw milk sometimes that I'll use. We just cobble things together from whatever sources we have to use as ingredients. Wardee: I love that. I think you are just such a great example, and inspiration, of someone who doesn't let things other people would find insurmountable, stop you. And that is fantastic. Kudos to you for that. Karen: Thank you. Wardee: So, here's the thing I'm so excited to get into. You and your husband have developed an awesome thing called The Cave. Will you tell us about The Cave? Karen: I would love to tell you about The Cave! So, as we were starting our journey on making all of these different things, we realized that the one thing we were missing was an actual cave. You know, like a place in the hillside to tunnel in, that has cool conditions and humidity, and would be perfect for aging cheeses or hanging salamis, or something like this. But we didn't have access to that. In our modern world, there are ways that we could try to cobble these environmental conditions together, but we realized that it took a lot of work… So what my husband and I have done is we have created a product that we're calling The Cave, and it gives you the perfect environmental conditions for pretty much any fermentation project that you want to do. You can have cool and humid conditions for aging your cheeses, or dry curing your salamis, or it can also control temperature to heat it so that you can have conditions for proofing bread or making yogurt. I mean, there's a number of applications that you can use for it. Yeah, so, we saw this need of something we needed, and then we created a product that can control these conditions. We are launching a Kickstarter campaign to see if other people would like to use this, and to be as crazy as we are in making all of these different food things. Wardee: It is so awesome! Yet another example of how you're not letting anything stop you. Now, everyone who is listening, I know you're anxious to check it out. I have a link for you. If you want to check out the Kickstarter in particular, which is ongoing right now at the time we're recording this but will be wrapping up shortly afterward, that's tradcookschool.com/thecave I love The Cave, and I'm planning to support your Kickstarter, Karen. You just got one more supporter. It's exciting. (Wardee laughs) Karen: Thank you! Wardee: So, now let's get practical. First of all, you and James… This is right up your ally. You have a doctorate in chemistry… Karen: Yes. Wardee: …which you are applying towards fermenting, and James is a very good businessman. I love that the two of you are combining your talents to something that is so awesome for those of us who love fermenting. So again, kudos to you. Let's get practical with what you can use The Cave for. How does it work, and what can you do it in? Just walk us through some of these things. Karen: Sure. The Cave is a fermentation control unit. I'll just explain briefly how it works, then I'll give you some examples. It installs on a refrigerator. You will need some type of cooling element to put it on. The Cave has a touchscreen, and you can control the temperature just from that. It will tell your refrigerator when to turn on, and when to turn off. If you need heat, it has a heater included in it so it will pump some heat into your chamber. And then, it also has an interior port where you can plug a humidifier in. So that if you need those nice humid conditions for certain applications, it can control it just at the touch of a button. It also has a wireless application. If you want to check in and see what your conditions are, while you're at work or something, or out of town, you can just check it on your computer or your phone or your tablet or something like that. It's designed to be very user-friendly, very easy to install… It's just a simple application that you can put on your fridge to get you started right away, and you don't have to worry about figuring, basically re-figuring out, how to make the conditions you need. Wardee: So can you fit this on a full-sized refrigerator, or even like a small refrigerator, like the ones you get in a motel room? Can you retro-fit any refrigerator? Karen: Almost almost any refrigerator. Wardee: Cool. Karen: Ideally, you're going to want one that doesn't have dual temperature zones. So, one that doesn't have a freezer component to it. If you want a big one, the best way to do that would be to get a stand-up freezer, or even a chest-freezer would work too, because those don't have different temperature zones to try to control. Wardee: I see. And you have one, built and functioning, and at tradcookschool.com/thecave, which is the kick-starter, I see some gorgeous photos of what has come out of your Cave. Karen: Thank you! Wardee: Wow. So walk us through some of the things we can do in a Cave. Karen: Well, actually, in our kickstarter video, we're trying to highlight more than anything all the things you can make with it. We have on there all the different cheeses you can make, you can dry cure salami, you can make a venison ham or something like that, you can proof bread in there because you can control the temperature — and also humidity, so you don't have to put plastic over it — you can make yogurt, you can ferment your beer or wine in there and have those specific controls… Especially helpful if you want to lager your beer, because lagering a beer requires lowering the temperature incrementally to almost freezing. So that is a pretty easy way to do it. Let me think what else. I've made rice wine in there, I've made sauerkraut in there… I don't know. I'm sure I'm forgetting something. Tempeh you could probably make it there, although I haven't done that. Not all at the same time, of course! Wardee: Yes. Karen: Because they require different conditions. But these are all the possibilities. Wardee: Wow. So, everyone, you need to go check this out: tradcookschool.com/thecave Or if the Kickstarter campaign is no longer going, you can check out the details at swisshillsferments.com Karen, since you are a long-time fermenter now, you know, many years you've been experimenting and getting into this, could you give us some tips on something that you've learned that our listeners would find helpful in fermenting? Karen: Oh, yes. Well, let me think. Well, I'll bring it back to temperature and say that for pretty much anything that you're going to ferment, temperature is a factor. A lot of things that people can ferment can be fermented at room temperature, which is so convenient. You can make your lacto-fermented items at room temperature, which I do all the time. But understanding how temperature plays a role will really, I think, help to create a more consistent product. For example, if your kombucha is sluggish, if it doesn't seem to be progressing fast enough, if you warm it up just a few degrees, sometimes that makes all the difference. Or, if you're brewing beer for example, and your temperatures are swinging wildly throughout the day because you live in the desert and it's 30 degrees colder — I don't know, you're keeping it in your back porch or something, and at night, it gets 30 degrees colder — your beer is going to suffer. So, whether you have a Cave unit or not, there are things you can do to help your ferments proceed in a better way, and to help those beneficial bacteria and yeast and molds to thrive as opposed to negative ones, and a lot of time that comes down to what the temperature is, and controlling how fast your fast your foods are fermenting. I would say that for anything that ferments, temperature is going to be kind of the consistent factor there. Wardee: Oh, I would totally agree. I receive requests all the time to troubleshoot different ferments — sourdough, or veggies, or cheese — and the first thing I bring up is ‘tell me about the temperature.' If it's not warm enough, or if it's too hot, or if there are too many fluctuations, then it's not necessarily going to be a bad result, but it's not going to be the result that the recipe says. Karen: Yes. Wardee: It's not going to proceed just like that. In some of the examples you shared, it might not turn out to be what you want. So, yeah, temperature. Totally agree with that. I love that The Cave solves the temperature issue for us. Karen: Right, yeah. Wardee: So, I know that people are very excited to check this out. Tell us how they can get involved. Like, when they go to tradcookschool.com/thecave, walk us through some of the options. Karen: So, if you take a look at our Kickstarter site, you should watch the video. It will explain some more about what you can do with The Cave and how it works, and there's a description on there to explain what our Kickstarter is doing, what we're trying to raise money for. There are also different rewards that you can select. If you're interested in The Cave, you can pledge money, and if we reach enough funding goal, then we'll ship you one. That would be great. But if you're not to that level yet, if you just want to know more information about how to make cheese, or how to make salami, we also have an ebook that we're selling that you could look for. We've got some other really cool prizes. Like a sourdough starter, or a bacon-making kit, or a beer stein. Things like that. So, check it out. See what we have, and spread the word. Wardee: Yeah, and I love it. I love that you've given people options if they're not quite ready for The Cave but they believe in what you're doing… A very small pledge, $8, nets you three eBooks that are beautiful. There's the Swiss Hills Guide to Brewing, the Swiss Hills Guide to Cheese-Making, and the Swiss Hills Guide to Meats. They look beautiful. Karen: Thank you! I've tried really hard to distill all the really important information, all the things you would need, and put it in an approachable guide that's got pictures, and some of them have recipes. Wardee: Okay, well, everyone, we're going to wrap up here. I just want to point you to tradcookschool.com/thecave, for the Kickstarter information. You can also do swisshillsferments.com, which is Karen's website to learn more. It's probably the portal for everything that they're doing and sharing. And Karen, as we wrap up, is there anything you want to add before we say goodbye? Karen: Oh, I just want to give… I would just say that I hope that you are inspired, because some of these things that I've done, like making cheese, it just sounds unapproachable to some people, but at the same time, it's a lot simpler once you understand the steps and once you know what the process is like. I just hope that you are inspired to go try something, whatever it is… If it's cheesemaking, if it's another traditional skill like wood carving, or I don't know! Anything that is interesting to you. I think that hobbies like fermentation just expand who you are as a person, and make you more interesting, and bring more culture to our lives. (Wardee and Karen laugh) Karen: I'll just end with that, I guess. Wardee: I love that. Couldn't have ended on a better note. I totally agree. So get out there and make something simple, ferment something simple… I mean, you can take your yogurt or your kefir, and you can drip it through cheesecloth, and you have the easiest cheese in the world, and it's so delicious and so wonderful. Well, thank you, Karen, so much for being here. I want to tell you and your husband God bless you, and I really hope your kickstarter succeeds, and that you are able to bring The Cave to the world. It's so exciting, and as I said before, I am planning to support it. I hope that others will join me! Karen: Thank you so much, Wardee! I really appreciate being on your show. Wardee: Thanks, Karen. Bye-bye. Karen: Bye. ~~~~~ About Karen (and her husband James and family) We don't live on a farm, we don't milk our own cows, and we have failed terribly at gardening (though we keep trying every year). But even though we don't live out on a farm (yet), we have a desire to keep those traditional homesteading skills alive. So we age our own cheeses, and we butcher and process animals (sometimes in our garage). We make salami and dry cured meats, and we brew beer, ferment veggies, make yogurt, and bake our own bread. We think these are important skills that a lot of us in the modern world are forgetting, and we want to help bring them back. We realized about two years ago how difficult it can be to do some of these projects that require temperature and humidity control, and that's when the idea for The Cave was born: a chamber that can heat, cool, humidify, and circulate air for making cheeses, dry curing meats, and fermenting almost anything. Since then we've been working hard to start up our business, and we're finally ready to unveil our pre-sales! My favorite ferment is triple cream brie. James' is probably sour beer. Our children's favorites are yogurt and fermented carrots and sourdough bread. Visit Karen and her family at their website, Swiss Hills Ferments, or check out (and support) The Cave kickstarter here. Links Mentioned Swiss Hills Ferments — Karen's beautiful website and blog The Cave Kickstarter page — support this project! iTunes I'm so grateful when you visit my show on iTunes and leave a rating and/or review! KnowYourFoodPodcast.com/iTunes This helps me make my podcast better and also helps others find it. Thank you! For past or current episodes, check out the Know Your Food with Wardee podcast archives. Anything to Add? I would love to hear from you! Do you have questions for me, or comments about anything shared in this episode? Like this podcast? Please help me reach others by using the share buttons at the top of this post. Thanks! The post The Cave” Homemade Cheese Cave & Fermenting Chamber (KYF164) appeared first on Traditional Cooking School by GNOWFGLINS.

“I hate the heat. When it gets above 65° F, I get cranky,” says my friend Jessica. No doubt about it. When summer hits, a big ole' need to stay cool tops the list of dietary concerns! Right? And if you or your kiddos, like Jessica, get cranky in the heat and need to eat cold foods a lot during the summer to keep your cool… … then you'll find lots of reasons to make your own, like: you can work around allergies, you can save money over buying it, and you'll create healthier homemade ice cream (and other frozen desserts). Jessica, author of the new eBook, The Splendid Scoop, joins me on today's podcast (print transcript, audio, and video below) to share tips and tricks for healthy homemade ice cream. Enjoy! Won't play for you? Try here. Mobile or desktop users, you can hear my podcast with Stitcher, on-demand and on-the-go. (What's Stitcher?) You can also get it on iTunes or subscribe in the Podcasts app. Video I recorded this podcast live on Blab last week, and here's the video from that! It's just like the audio file above, except you can see it, too. Want to join the fun of the live recording? Follow me on Facebook or @TradCookSchool on Periscope. I hop on to record most Thursdays! Tips and Tricks For Homemade Ice Cream and Other Frozen Desserts Here's the complete transcript from this podcast. ~~~~~ Wardee: Hey everyone! Welcome to Know Your Food with Wardee. This is episode 163. I am here with my guest Jessica Espinoza from Delicious Obsessions. Hi, Jessica! Jessica: Hello. Thanks for having me. Wardee: It's going to be so fun. So, a couple of housekeeping notes before we jump into our talking about our favorite homemade frozen desserts and treats. We are live right now on Blab. If you are joining us live, hello and welcome. I'll give you some pointers on how to use Blab in just a moment. If you're joining us later for the replay either through the video replay or on iTunes, welcome to you as well. You will find complete show notes for all the links and everything we share today at: http://knowyourfoodpodcast.com/163 If you're live, those notes are not ready for you yet. But if you're watching a replay when this podcast is released, they will be ready. You definitely want to check them out; the recipes and tips are right there for you. So, a couple notes about using Blab if you're live with us. On Blab, on the right-hand column, if you're on the desktop browser, you will see chat. If you're just watching without a twitter account, I'm not sure you can participate, but if you are logged in with twitter, you can participate in the chat. Feel free to visit and talk with each other, and if you do have a question, make sure to use the – cue, and then it will go into a question that we will take at the end, or if it's relevant during what we're talking about. We'd love to take your questions, both Jessica and I. Well, I'm going to be put Jessica on the hot-seat for the questions as much as I can. (Wardee and Jessica laugh) Jessica: Great. Wardee: The other thing about Blab is you can give us applause. So, you can see Jessica's video feed and mine, in the right-hand corner, there's two little hands like this, and you just click as many times as you want to give Jessica a lot of love (I'll take love too). Do that if you like what she's saying, or whatever. Finally, if you're here with us live, we appreciate your shares! You've got a share button somewhere near the top-left. I'm going to do that right now, I'm going to say, ‘…dishing up homemade, frozen ice cream and more with @deliciousobsess. Join us!' And I'm going to share that now to Twitter. I'm also going to do another share to Facebook. Actually, I'll do that while I'm getting some questions for you, Jessica. So, anyway, please share. Be liberal with the applause. Now, let's get into homemade frozen desserts. Jessica, first, I just want to mention that you have been a guest on this podcast, I think, twice now! You have such great stuff. Or, once? Jessica: I think twice. Wardee: Yeah. I think once you were sharing your real food journey, and I think the second time which I know everyone remembers, is when you talked about your DIY herbal coffee blends. And they — I have to say that Traditional Cooking School members and readers — love your DIY herbal coffee blends. And as does my family, we make it all the time. We always have some in the fridge. Jessica: Yay. Wardee: That's why I'm so excited to have you back to talk about your new speciality — homemade frozen treats with a dairy-free bent, but I know it's going to apply to people who are not necessarily dairy-free. Which is how I'm taking it. So excited to share this. First I just want you to give us a quick recap about who you are, maybe a little about your health journey and how you got to doing what you do now with real foods and creating these amazing, healthy recipes. Jessica: Sure! Well, I actually kind of grew up in a real food household. I always like to joke that my mom was buying organic and shopping at a health food store before it was considered ‘cool.' So I grew up eating a really clean diet. They minimized the sugar, and they didn't buy junk food and that stuff. Once I graduated from high school, and started working full time, and going to college, and I moved down to Denver, I lived in the mountains outside of Denver, about an hour. Up in the mountain with no stores, no fast food, any of that stuff. Once I moved down to the city, all of a sudden I was rebelling against this good food I had been forced to eat. Now, I could eat junk. Taco Bell was just down the street, and I could go to King Soopers or Kroger in the middle of the night and get ice cream if I wanted to. I took this major detour as far as nutrition goes. Then, I started getting back into real food. I kind of had this nagging voice in my head the whole time, like ‘what you're eating is not good for you,' ‘you should clean up your diet,' that kind of stuff, but it took me a little while to get back to my roots. That started about 2010. I started the site, a blog, and I really just started it as a way for me to categorize my recipes and keep track of stuff. I like to scribble recipes down on little pieces of paper, and then they get lost, then I can never remember how I made it. If somebody likes it, I can't share it with them. It started out as just as a way for me to catalog recipes and share them with friends. Then it kind of evolved into what it is today. I'm really proud of the community that we have. People that are really looking for information and recipes on how to eat real food, and live naturally, and clean up their household, and stuff like that. I have been on an official healing journey since about 2012, when I got my autoimmune thyroid disease diagnosis. I've had some ups and downs all the way through, and I finally have realized that health is not necessarily a destination. I think I had this idea that I was going to get to health, like that was a destination that I had to get to before the rest of my life could start. And I kept postponing things. So, now, it was kind of just earlier this year, I started really having a lot of epiphanies around that. Now, I'm more enjoying the journey. I don't necessarily enjoy dealing with chronic illness, but it really is a constant investigation into who I am. Real food and nutrition is the core of everything. That has to be the foundation of everything we eat for our health. That's just a quick snapshot, I guess. Wardee: I love it. I love the wisdom there, because I think we can often get hung up on ‘when I get there, when I get there,' but you're so right. We live in the fallen world, actually, and we're probably never going to get there, but that doesn't mean we can't just enjoy the moments that come to us, and also pursue the healing that we so desperately need, many more than others. It sounds like you were at a poor place of healing so it's wonderful to see how far you've come now to be as vibrant and healthy as you are now. Just the fact that you're sharing so much with your community, and now our community. I really appreciate it, and I love working with you. Well, we are, in particular, going to talk about homemade frozen treats. You have something funny that you say in your new book, The Splendid Scoop. I actually quoted it in my blog post today. “I hate the heat. When it gets about 65 degrees Fahrenheit, I get cranky.” And I know that everyone resonates with that, although 65 degrees Fahrenheit is pretty low! (Wardee and Jessica laugh) Jessica: I know. I'm definitely a spring and fall kind of gal. I have a number of friends from California, and one of my business partners actually, and she'll complain that 75F degrees is too cold. And I'm like, ‘it's like 32F here and I like it.' Wardee: Totally. So, tell us, that led to your — I don't know how long, possibly lifelong — but at least many year's quest to eat as many cold things as you could during the summer. (Jessica laughs) Wardee: Talk to us about some of the things you have to have around, that you have to eat, to keep your cool and not be cranky. Jessica: So, ice tea. I drink ice tea all year round, but especially a lot of it during the summer. Especially ice tea with hibiscus, and citrus flavors in it, or some fruity flavors, is super refreshing. I have a lifelong sweet tooth problem. I will totally admit it. That's one reason that I became certified in this 21-day sugar detox coaching because I needed the tool to be able to keep myself accountable. It's really easy even though I'm not using refined sugars, and I'm using healthy sweeteners, it's still sugar. We have to really be careful we much sweetener we use. Wardee: For sure. Jessica: You know, my goal really has been to recreate those comfort foods that we all like. Ice cream is a huge thing for people. For me, I always want to figure out, ‘okay, so, I really want this, but how can I make it at home and make it healthier?' So that was kind of like ice cream is just always something I loved, so I tried to figure out how I could take the things that I love and make them healthier for me and then share those recipes with other people as well. Yeah, ice cream and smoothies and slushes, are always a great way to cool down in the summer. I try to keep the sweeteners down as much as possible. In my slushes, and smoothies, I typically will just use some stevia. I don't even use maple syrup or honey or coconut sugar or anything like that. Stevia is my primary sweetener. But just stevia alone in ice cream doesn't give it the right flavor. In my experience, you need to use a little bit of a granulated sweetener, of some sort, to get the right consistency, right flavor, that kind of stuff. Wardee: Yeah, I would agree with that. Well, that leads me into my next question — which you sort of answered but let's be more specific — which is, you know, there's so many things out there to buy and eat. Trader Joes, Whole Foods, your health food store… They've got a freezer section with all of these frozen treat choices for you, but you've chosen to make them at home. I think lots of people listening are at least interested if not having dabbled or make a lot of things at home, but what are your reasons in particular for going the homemade route? Why don't we just buy them? Jessica: Well, there's a lot of great brands out there that have really done good things to clean up their ingredient list. The number one thing for me has always been that it is healthier. I get to control the ingredients of what I put in there. I get to make sure there's no refined sugars, that there's no artificial colors, or artificial flavors. I always say it wrong, but castoreum is a natural flavor that they use in ice cream, quite often, and for people that don't know what that is… That is substance from beaver anal glands. So that's in your ice cream. You can go Google that. It's pretty disgusting. Anytime you see the title ‘natural flavors,' those can technically be really questionable about their sources. Even some of the natural colors come from bugs. I feel weird about stuff like that. For me, it was healthier being able to control the ingredients and only put the things in it that I knew what it was; pure ingredients. The next thing is that it's cheaper. At my local health food store, a little pint of high quality ice cream, either the coconut milk or the cashew milk, those ice creams tend to be a little bit more expensive than just a cream-based milk or ice cream. But depending on the brand, it can run anywhere from $5.50 to $10.50 for a pint. I've seen a pint of ice cream being as expensive as $10.50. If I'm going to spend $10.50 on something, it's not going to be one pint of ice cream. It's going to have to be a bunch of vegetables or something, so I can get more bang for my buck. It's a lot cheaper in the long run, to make it yourself. Then, the last thing is that it's a lot of fun. You get to customize your flavors how you want them. Sometimes there's so many ice cream flavors out there, but maybe you want to combine, like, two of your favorite flavors into one. So, you are in complete control and you can make whatever concoction you want to. Those are really my top three reasons for why you should make your own ice cream and frozen treats at home. Wardee: Yeah. I love it. I would add, too, I think #1 is very related to your ingredient reason, but I think people like you who discovered autoimmune disease or are on a particular restricted path, it's not only that we can do better ingredients, but we may have specialty ingredients. We have to go a really special direction, a really restricted direction, and especially when it's hot, a lot of eating is about pleasure and happiness. It's not gluttony, it's life, enjoying life. So, how exciting is it that you can create frozen treats around a very restricted diet? The other thing I would add is not only the money aspect of the store, but if you keep a well-stocked pantry, with the sweeteners that you can have, the basic flavors, and either dairy or non-diary bases, you can just whip something up really fast. Faster than it would take to go to the store and deal with the people and possibly pick up germs and all that. That's part of the joy for me, and it's actually very practical I think. I think we live in a society where people are like, ‘well, I want this, so I'm going to go to the store.' That sounds like a headache to me, something I'd like to avoid. I'd rather be able to dive into the pantry and make something. That sounds easy to me. Jessica: Right? I'm kind of the same way. Wardee: Yep. So, I think between us we have some great reasons for making our own. So, I know that you have a new book — the Splendid Scoop, we're going to talk about it soon — and you share tips in there. Would you give us some of those tips about homemade treats? I think they're fantastic, simple, no-nonsense, and make a big difference in how successful, or not successful, unfortunately… Hopefully we will be on the successful end of it. But share some of your tips. Jessica: Yeah. So, a lot of people get overwhelmed with making their own ice cream. They feel like it's this big, in depth process, and they just don't know how to do it. Really, it's really easy. I have a whole section on there on how to make ice cream without an ice cream maker. If you don't have an ice cream maker, you don't have to go out there and buy one. It's a little easier if you have one, and sometimes you can pick up some good deals in places, but you don't have to have an ice cream maker. Especially, you can make really fast, simple ice creams just using frozen bananas and frozen strawberries, in a really high-power blender like a Vitamix or Blendtec. You get a super creamy consistency. Those are even faster. You just dump the stuff in the blender, you add a little bit of sweetener if you want, some vanilla. There are definitely ways to get sweet treats in without having to go to a lot of work. The number one tip that I can say is to start with a really good base. All of the recipes I have developed for myself really have started out with a really basic vanilla ice cream created years and years ago. From there, you have a really good base, you can tweak it to be whatever you want. All the recipes I have developed all stemmed from that base. Once you have a really good base, you can create any kind of treat that you want to create. Probably the second tip would be — I kind of alluded to this earlier — to use a really fine, granulated sweetener. So, coconut sugar, you can use organic cane sugar, or sucanat… Whatever sugars you're allowing. And to get it super fine, you can throw it in a food processor and whiz it up until it's a powder, kind of like a powdered sugar texture. So, what they do, granulated sugars, rather than using honey or maple syrup or stuff like that, they really help keep the water crystals down in the ice cream. When you have lots of extra water crystals, the finished product tends to be not as smooth and creamy as you might want. I do have to say that my friend Starlene — over at GAPS Diet Journey — she posted a review, and she's on GAPS so she couldn't have the organic cane sugar, I don't even think she can even have stevia, so she actually made a whole bunch of my recipes using honey, and put her notes in there about how she made it. She said they turned out great. I personally don't use liquid sweeteners, but you can use the honey. The texture might be a little different than the granulated sugar. I thought that was super helpful. She went through and made like, six of the recipes. Wardee: She's a trooper. I love Starlene. Jessica: Apparently she was eating a lot of ice cream. Wardee: Well, the thing about ice cream is that it keeps! Jessica: Absolutely. (Wardee and Jessica laugh) Wardee: Great tips. Do you have any others to add? Jessica: The last one — and this one probably goes back to real food in general — is don't fear the fat. Wardee: Love that. Jessica: I am dairy free so I always use full fat coconut milk or coconut cream. I love the coconut cream from Aroy-D. It has super rich, super thick fat. But the fat also keeps the water levels down in your ice cream, so you don't get as many ice crystals in there. So you get a smoother product. But fat is good for us, and you'll see a big difference. If you can do dairy, you can use heavy cream in place of coconut cream. If you make ice cream with half-and-half or milk, it's going to be more of an ice milk consistency and it will set up much harder in the freezer, than a heavy cream or a coconut cream base. So, don't fear the fats. Enjoy that stuff. Wardee: Love that. Fat is really, really, healing. The favorite way that we make ice cream at home… Well, we used to have our own Jersey cow, now we participate in a herd-share, and we get Jersey milk, and we just add cream. Sweet or even cultured makes amazing smooth, creamy, ice cream. And I swear — I don't swear — Jersey cream… (Wardee and Jessica laugh) Wardee: …is like ice cream. It's so naturally sweet. It's just beautiful. A favorite thing that I do, like you were talking about like you can make ice cream in a blender… in fact, if you go to traditionalcookingschool.com and just search for instant frozen strawberry ice cream, you can take frozen strawberries in the Vitamix or the Blendtec, and just add as much cream as you need so it will circulate and you can make an instant strawberry ice cream. We're back to your tip on you don't have to have an ice cream maker. So, you guys check that out. Let's see. What are we going to talk about now? Okay, yeah. Just go a little bit into working around allergies a little bit more. That's really your speciality: creating recipes that work around allergies. You were talking about coconut cream, what other options do people have for working around allergies when they're making homemade frozen treats? Jessica: So, you can use pretty much any non-dairy milk. The problem is you're going to have a higher water content in there. You can't do coconut milk, because I know even some people in the autoimmune, the AIP niche, they can't tolerate coconut milk either. So you could use almond milk, rice milk, stuff like that… Cashew milk actually is a good option if you can tolerate cashews. It tends to get a little bit thicker and creamier than just an almond milk or a rice milk. You could sub whatever milk you want in there. Another thing that you could do… if you're doing the blender ice cream, it's a little harder than if you're doing the ice cream in the ice cream maker, but to up the fat level, if you're doing just a quick blender ice cream, you can melt a little bit of coconut oil. You could even use — I know this sounds really weird — but you could even use a macadamia nut oil, or an avocado oil, and just drizzle a little bit of liquid oil in there to up that fat content, help it to emulsify a lot better, it will be a little bit creamier. I know that sounds super weird. Wardee: No, I think it sounds great. Jessica: Adding coconut oil to smoothies and stuff is pretty common. It's really no different than doing that. You just want to make sure that you liquify it, and drizzle it in as it's running, or else you're going to end up with clumps of oil in there. Wardee: Gotcha. Jessica: I would say if you can't tolerate coconut milk, and you want to use a different kind of nut milk, I would say cashew milk would be my next favorite. It's going to be a little bit higher fat content, a little bit creamier than an almond or a rice or flax milk, or any of that. Wardee: I would add, from our years of being dairy-free, this was a long time ago and we would use homemade almond or hazulnut milk for ice cream, is… we would make it in the ice cream maker. If you're using a regular ice cream maker, and we would put it in the freezer, but I would time it so it would solidify for maybe an hour — I can't remember the exact time — but it wasn't like you made it and then eat it the next day. Then it would be ice hard. So you freeze it a little bit so it will harden up so you can scoop and such, but it's not going to develop as many ice crystals, and it's not going to be hard that you can't scoop at all. Timing can really help. Jessica: Excellent. That's a good tip. Wardee: Okay, good. Well, that was fantastic. We are at the point now where I want to unveil your book. First I want to let everyone know that Jessica has a brand new book. As I told you, she's the author of some great books, and my favorite is her DIY Herbal Coffee. And as I mentioned earlier, I actually have a link if you're interested in that: http://knowyourfoodpodcast.com/125 Definitely check that out. Her newest book is called The Splendid Scoop. It's diary-free desserts and other frozen treats. There's slushies and popsicles… Okay, I'm not going to say everything. I'm going to let Jessica do that. But I want to let you know that Jessica gave me permission to share a recipe from her book! The only place you can get it is traditionalcookingschool.com, or the book. I put that up this morning. You can get it at tradcookschool.com/darkchocolatecrunch, which, that will tell you what it is. It's a dark chocolate crunch yummy ice cream. I just put a link in the chat if you're with us on Blab. And, of course, if you're listening to this later, it will be in the shownotes: http://knowyourfoodpodcast.com/163. Go check out that recipe. Now, Jessica, why don't you tell us more about your Splendid Scoop book? Jessica: Sure. One thing about the allergens that I wanted to mention too, is that almost all of these recipes can easily be customized for the autoimmune protocol. If you've got people that are following AIP, any of the chocolate recipes, you can substitute carob for. And actually, I don't currently eat chocolate. It's a migraine trigger for me, so I use primarily carob for everything. I personally love the flavor of carob, and I've gotten so used to it, that I think my mind just automatically assumes that carob is now chocolate. It's been so long since I've actually had chocolate. But you can easily customize those recipes to suit whatever dietary needs you have, especially on the autoimmune protocol. The AIP is tough. I've done it twice, and it's really hard just because you have to eliminate so many foods. So, super customizable. It features my tips for homemade ice cream, and smoothie success. I do have smoothies, shakes, and slushes in there. And then, like I mentioned also, the instructions for how to make ice cream without an ice cream maker. You don't have to go out and invest in another piece of kitchen equipment. You can make it without an ice cream maker. Then we have eleven recipes in there ranging from ice creams to some shakes and slushes, and then we have a water-kefir, or kombucha, ice cream float, which I absolutely love. Wardee: Which I absolutely can't wait to try that. Kombucha float? Jessica: Anytime you drink water kefir or kombucha now, you're going to want to put ice cream in it. (Wardee and Jessica laugh) Wardee: No doubt. Actually, I'm afraid of getting hooked. Jessica: Yeah, me too. I've also got some resources for how to source real foods and ingredients, healthy ingredients, and things like that. Also, some additional resources for people who maybe want to do a little further reading about health and wellness, natural living, that kind of stuff. Extra curricular stuff, if they want to go further than just healthy treats. Wardee: Great. Jessica: Yeah! It's perfect time for summer. People are going to be having picnics, and barbecues and stuff, and they might want to have ice cream there. You could just whip up a batch of homemade ice cream, and impress your friends, they'll be like ‘oh, this is homemade? That's so awesome!' But you will know how easy it is to make it. Wardee: I just have to say, the book, like your other books, is beautifully laid out. I love the photos. And I love that you don't go — now this might sound bad but I don't mean it in a bad way because I really appreciate it — I love that your recipes are simply laid out. You don't go over the top with formatting or distraction. It's just the information with beautiful pictures, really easy to read and follow and find. Like all your recipes, they're wonderful. I love the book. It's great. Jessica: Thank you. Wardee: And I can't wait to try that kombucha float. So, everyone, you can check out Jessica's book at tradcookschool.com/splendidscoop Don't forget that the free recipe is up at tradcookschool.com/darkchocolatecrunch, which is the free recipe. And Jessica has gone out of her way to make these allergy-friendly, particularly dairy-free. For our family who is not dairy-free, I'm going to just step back and use our whole cream or whole milk. And you can choose whatever sweetener from coconut sugar to evaporated cane juice to stevia… Even like Jessica mentioned earlier, Starlene from GAPS Diet Journey is making them with honey. You have so much flexibility with the base and the sweeteners. If you can't do chocolate, you can do carob. If you can avoid certain fruits, or whatever… You have so many options there. I love that we've got simple recipes that are allergy-friendly and you can swap the ingredients, you can step back, and make them however you want them. Jessica has done a fantastic job. Jessica: Thank you. Yeah, you can, I'm glad you brought up the dairy thing. You can use your heavy cream, or whatever milk you want. And then, I also share just the standard basic vanilla ice cream recipe, so you can use that as your base, and then the sky is the limit. Enjoy the recipes that I've got in there, but if you've got a hankering for something that I don't have listed, you can start with that base, and you can start adding in all your flavoring or nuts or seeds or whatever else it is that you want to add in. So you have that base recipe that will serve you well for the rest of your life! Just use that, and create your own concoctions. Wardee: You are a girl after my own heart. I love formula recipes, I love them. They're more valuable than anything, because when you're looking like… ‘I want to make this,' and you come up with some flavor combination that nobody else has done, the first thing you have to find out is what's the general formula for just the base of this recipe. So I love that you put that together for us, thank you. Jessica: Sure. Thank you. Wardee: So, we have time now… We don't have a huge live audience, but we've got several special individuals here. So if you have questions, you can type -q, and then a space, and then enter your question, and then we'll be able to answer it. We have a couple minutes here to take questions before we wrap up. If you don't have any questions, I know that's because you're all running to tradcookschool.com/splendidscoop, as you should, to check out the book! By the way, it's very affordable; less than six dollars. It's an easy investment to make for summertime, for any family really to pick up and then just have those treats for you or your kiddos, so you avoid the crankiness of being too hot. Jessica: Yes! (Wardee and Jessica laugh) Wardee: Alright. Well, I don't see any questions coming in. So we will wrap up now. I just have a couple closing notes then. Shownotes are up for you guys if you're checking this out later at: knowourfoodpocast.com/163 Jessica's new book, The Splendid Scoop, is at: knowyourfoodpodcast.com/splendidscoop. And a free recipe for you is at: tradcookschool.com/darkchocolatecrunch. Jessica, do you have anything to add before we close? Jessica: I don't think so, I think we covered everything. Thank you for having me on your show again! It was fun. Wardee: Thank you! It was very fun. We did the new live thing, and so… If anyone here is listening on iTunes or the audio, you can go to the show notes and actually switch to the video. There are various forms there for you to check out. Alright. Well, take care everyone, God bless. Thank you Vicky and everyone who's been with us live! We'll catch you later. Bye-bye. ~~~~~ About The Book: The Splendid Scoop The Splendid Scoop and Other Frozen Treats contains 11 delicious and easy dairy-free recipes plus tips and tricks for homemade ice cream perfection… even if you don't have an ice cream maker! You will learn: Why making your own ice cream and frozen treats at home is better than buying them at the store (even the organic ones!). Tips and tricks for homemade ice cream success. How to make ice cream without an ice cream maker (it’s easier than you think!). Delicious dairy-free recipes the whole family will love (recipes are also gluten and free and can easily be adapted for the autoimmune protocol as well). Extensive resource suggestions for real food, wellness, and beyond. Here are the recipes: Creamy Vanilla Ice Cream Dark Chocolate Crunch Ice Cream Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Cherry Vanilla Ice Cream Bananas Foster Ice Cream Summer Berry “Ice Cream” Pie Frozen Hot Chocolate Lemon Banana Coconut Shake Strawberry Mint Watermelon Slush Red Raspberry Limeade Refreshing Water Kefir (or Kombucha) Ice Cream Float If you’re ready to beat the heat with some tasty treats, look no further than The Splendid Scoop! Links Mentioned The Splendid Scoop — Jessica's eBook Dark Chocolate Crunch Ice Cream — free recipe! Coconut sugar Evaporated cane juice Stevia DIY Herbal Coffee — Jessica's other eBook KYF #125 DIY Herbal Coffee — previous podcast with Jessica Vitamix Blendtec Coconut cream from Aroy-D Free Traditional Cooking Video Series iTunes I'm so grateful when you visit my show on iTunes and leave a rating and/or review! KnowYourFoodPodcast.com/iTunes This helps me make my podcast better and also helps others find it. Thank you! For past or current episodes, check out the Know Your Food with Wardee podcast archives. Anything to Add? I would love to hear from you! Do you have questions for me, or comments about anything shared in this episode? Like this podcast? Please help me reach others by using the share buttons at the top of this post. Thanks! The post Tips & Tricks For Homemade Ice Cream (KYF163) appeared first on Traditional Cooking School by GNOWFGLINS.