Easy Chicken Parmesan

I’ve made this a few times now. It’s really easy and tasty too.

Ingredients:

2 pounds of organic boneless skinless chicken thighs

1 organic egg

1 cup grated organic Parmesan cheese

1 tablespoon of organic Italian seasoning (or just use any herbs you like to taste – basil, oregano, parsley, etc)

1 tsp organic minced garlic

1 cup organic pasta or tomato sauce

8 oz organic shredded mozzarella cheese

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400° and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Mix herbs and Parmesan in one bowl and mix egg in another bowl.

Dip chicken in the egg and then in the cheese, coating both sides. Place on baking sheet.

Bake for 30 minutes, and then put sauce and cheese on top. Bake another 15-20 minutes until chicken is 160° and cooked through.

We serve over veggies but you could serve over pasta or rice too.

Enjoy!

Please donate if you can –  here:

https://org2.salsalabs.com/o/6236/p/salsa/donation/common/public/?donate_page_KEY=3143

Excellent talk by Jeffrey Smith.

“• The biotech industry’s claim that genetically modified (GM) foods are safe is shattered in this groundbreaking lecture. Safety assessments on GM crops are not competent to identify the health problems and industry research is rigged to avoid finding problems. • This lecture is for anyone wanting to understand GM technology, to learn how to protect themselves, or to share their concerns with others. It is presented in the clear, accessible style that made Jeffrey Smith’s Seeds of Deception the world’s best-selling book on genetically engineered foods.”

Blueberry Ice Cream

Blueberry season is coming soon and as I have a bag still in the freezer from last year, I decided to make ice cream. It was really good!

3 cups organic blueberries (mine were frozen)

3/4 cup swerve, erythritol or organic sugar

1/4 cup water

2 Tbls. Organic lemon juice

2 tbls Organic vodka

¼ tsp xanthan gum

(the vodka and xanthan gum are optional but keep the ice cream from freezing too hard)

2 cups heavy cream

In heavy 2 qt. saucepan heat blueberries, water and sugar to boiling. Stir for 5 minutes and remove from heat. Add lemon juice and vodka chill until cold (or overnight). Add cream and xanthan gum, whisk, and place in ice cream maker.

It was really easy. It’s a rich and beautiful desert. Enjoy!

This is the first episode for this informative docuseries.  They do occasional replays for free and it’s really worth watching. Mom

Excellent documentary from Gary Null.

GMO’s in the News – January 2018

An important new book. Here’s part of an interview from GM Watch. Link to the rest below. Mom

What’s making our children sick? And what we can do about it

Published: 29 January 2018

In a new book, pediatrician Michelle Perro identifies industrially produced food – including GM foods and their associated pesticides – as a major culprit in the current health crisis

“I was shocked first by the fact that these findings were unreported and unknown among health practitioners. Second, I was shocked by the vehemence of the attacks on scientists whose work questions the safety or efficacy of GM foods and their associated pesticides (some of the scientists who led the studies I mention above are cases in point). Such attacks are not only ethically wrong, but discourage others from questioning the effects of industrial food on health.” – Paediatrician Michelle Perro, MD
—

What’s making our children sick? And what we can do about it

GMO Science, January 26, 2018

The California-based pediatrician Michelle Perro, MD has spent the past 20 years of her 37-year career treating children with complex health problems – and has earned a reputation for some remarkable successes. Together with medical anthropologist Vincanne Adams, PhD, she has written a book, What’s Making Our Children Sick? How Industrial Food Is Causing an Epidemic of Chronic Illness, and What Parents (and Doctors) Can Do About It. The book identifies industrially produced food – including genetically modified (GM) foods and their associated pesticides – as a major culprit in the current health crisis. It also recommends measures we can all take to restore our health and well-being.

GMOScience interviewed Dr. Perro about the new book and the discoveries she has made in her medical practice. An interview with Professor Adams will follow shortly.

Q: Why did you write this book?

I’ve always considered myself a ‘front-line’ doctor, whether attending in the Emergency Department or working in the clinic, with my focus on taking care of patients. Over the past two decades I’ve moved from the arena of acute care medicine into integrative medicine, with a personal story creating the impetus for the change. Many practitioners discover integrative care when their own children or they themselves fall out of the purview of conventional medicine. In my case, it was my son who fell ill. But more generally, over the past two decades I’ve observed a rapid decline in children’s health. Coupled with my becoming involved with work against spraying pesticides in California in 2006 and receiving a crash course introduction to genetically modified (GM) foods at that time, I recognized that what I was seeing in my patients correlated with the parallel introduction of GM food and increased pesticide usage in our food supply. Our children had become a science experiment and the results were not looking favorable for them.

I began working in an integrative clinic five years ago, caring for some of the most chronic, complex health challenges in children that I could ever imagine. The crux of the practice of holistic care is that it is individualized, and that requires taking a significant amount of time sorting out each patient’s history and working out a unique treatment plan. One day at the end of a busy clinic session, I came to the realization that there were a finite number of children that I could see in a day. And I became concerned regarding the multitude of children that I could not see, that didn’t have access to the type of practitioner that looked at toxic food and environmental poisons as being potential culprits in the decline of kids’ health. Nor did parents have the information on how to get the help their children needed. So I decided to write a book. I had a serendipitous encounter with Dr. Vincanne Adams, an extraordinary, brilliant medical anthropologist and author and together, we married the fields of clinical medicine and anthropology to create our book, What’s Making our Children Sick?

Clinicians look for patterns and I’ve seen so many children now with gut dysfunction that I can sort out the issues quickly. The most common disorders I see are related to gut function, specifically food allergies (along with other allergy-related diseases such as eczema and asthma), gastroesophageal reflux, chronic abdominal pain, constipation, and brain issues such as autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), learning challenges, behavioral and mood problems, and sleep disorders.

What people don’t often know is that the gut and brain health are inexorably linked. Unhappy gut, unhappy brain. Looking at some of the laboratory test results, common findings are food antibodies, including the life-threatening type (IgE antibodies), as well as IgG and IgA antibodies (which are often reported as ‘food intolerances’ but are indeed an immune reaction), low levels of digestive enzymes, and abnormal stool results. We also commonly find altered nutrient levels, heavy metal exposures, and chronic infections – but let’s stay focused on the gut.

We pediatricians deal with poop and pee most of our day. The majority of kids I see have abnormal findings in the poop. Often they have a low array of microbial diversity, early markers of inflammation (which can be a precursor to later autoimmune dysfunction), inadequate breakdown of fat and protein, and low levels of the important beneficial bacteria.

The bacterial composition of our gut (also known as the microbiome) is presently being actively researched and is at the forefront of medicine. It’s important for many of our body’s functions, including detoxification, production of vitamins and neurotransmitters, and helping the immune system work at its best (see our book for more information).

The key take-home point is that when patients change their diets to organic food, they get better. I’ve been asked by interviewers in the past to give examples of patients who got better by just switching to an organic diet and I’ve been unable to do that since I treat with many simultaneous therapies and often don’t know which one worked. (Remember, I’m not conducting a science experiment, but treating a patient!) My patients are also receiving herbs, supplements, and homeopathic remedies that I recommend, but what is remarkable is that family members who are not my patients also get significantly better, which I will discuss in the next section.

Q: Are there any stand-out cases that were especially important or educational for you?

One of my cases involved a severely autistic five-year old boy and his parents, from the Central Valley of California, a food-growing region that is heavily sprayed with pesticides. The dad had only 20% of his kidney function remaining, which is a very ominous situation that often leads to the need for dialysis. Several family members who are also neighbors residing in the same area were already receiving dialysis. The dad’s nephrologist (kidney doctor) thought it was some ‘genetic’ disease. I treated the child with supplements, herbs, and homeopathic remedies and he got markedly better over two years. However, the cornerstone of treatment was that the entire family switched to organic food. This was difficult for them because they lived in a heavily-sprayed area and shopped mostly in stores that didn’t stock organic food. Switching to organic food was also a stretch on their budget, but they stopped eating out and dad took his home-cooked, organic meals to work. The dad also decreased his intake of takeout and processed foods, but the majority of his dietary change was switching to an organic diet.

Over the next eight months, the dad’s kidney function returned to 80% normal. He was not my patient, in the sense that no other treatment was offered to him other than changing to an organic diet (which by definition is non-GMO).

When he went for his follow-up appointment with his nephrologist, she was shocked by the return to near-normal kidney function. When he explained how he did it, she stated that it was “impossible”. I was so profoundly affected by this patient and his family, as well as his physician’s response, that I felt compelled to tell their story in our book. I carry this story with me to share with others and show them that even the most serious illnesses can be reversed. It gives people hope.

Q: You’ve read a lot of research studies on the health effects of GMOs and pesticides. What links do you see, if any, between what’s occurring in your patients and what’s evident in the studies?

I’ve felt frustration over the past two decades over the lack of research on the effects of GM foods and their associated pesticides on human health. I’ve had to extrapolate data from rats, chickens and pigs to treat patients!

But several animal studies caused light bulbs to switch on in my head. The first was in 1999, when I viewed the histopathology slides of the work of Dr. Arpad Pusztai, a European scientist. His research examined rats fed GM potatoes compared to those fed non-GM potatoes.[1] (For more information on these studies, please see the book, GMO Myths and Truths, which holds a prominent place on my bookshelf.) When I saw the intestinal disruption of the villi in the rats (fingerlike projections in the gut lining responsible for nutrient absorption), it brought to mind the explosion of intestinal permeability that I was seeing in my child patients. This is not to say that we can extrapolate the findings of one study on one GM food to all GM foods: each GM crop is different and needs to be studied separately. But Pusztai’s study helped me get started on the scientific journey of learning more about the effects of these new foods on health.

The second ‘aha’ moment was viewing the gross pathology found in the study on pigs carried out by Dr. Judy Carman and Howard Vlieger.[2] The stomachs of pigs fed GM soy and corn, their typical diet, were compared to those fed non-GM soy and corn. The visual difference of the extensive inflammation in the GM-fed pigs compared to the normal stomachs of the non-GM fed pigs was shocking and supported my suspicion that many of the gut disorders I refer to above were being caused by GM foods and/or their associated pesticides.

I’ve questioned over the years whether the problems suffered by my patients are caused by the genetic modification process, the pesticides that the GM crops express or are grown with, or a combination of these factors. One of very few studies to address this question – Arpad Pusztai’s study on GM potatoes – found that the GM potatoes were unexpectedly toxic, but the non-GM potatoes spiked with the insecticide that the GM potatoes were engineered to express were not. This shows that something about the GM process made the potatoes toxic and that with this particular GM food, the problem was not with the insecticide engineered into them.

However, detailed testing of this type, which can identify which of several different components of a GM food is responsible for a certain effect, is not generally done with GM crops before they are commercialized. So we are still very much in the dark regarding the precise cause of those effects from a GM diet that have been found in animal studies.

Two further independent studies that helped improve and alter my practice were based on work led by Prof Gilles-Eric Seralini and some followup research led by Dr. Michael Antoniou, on rats fed GM corn. Prof Seralini’s team concluded that there were toxic effects to the liver and kidney of rats fed GM corn and an ultra-low dose of the glyphosate-based herbicide (Roundup) that it was engineered to be grown with, when tested separately and together.[3] So this research suggests that toxic effects were caused by both the genetic modification process and the Roundup herbicide.

Recent followup studies led by Dr. Antoniou used cutting-edge “molecular profiling” (transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) analytical techniques to examine tissues taken from the rats in the Séralini experiment.[4],[5] These studies showed that an ultra-low dose of Roundup fed over a long-term two-year period caused kidney and especially liver damage, resulting in Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD). NAFLD now affects 1 in 4 American adults and is also becoming a problem for children.

Read more here:   http://www.gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/18093-what-s-making-our-children-sick-and-what-we-can-do-about-it

Find the book at Amazon, here:  http://amzn.to/2BHmkWb

Smoked Salmon Spread

I was looking for something different to bring to our book club potluck and used this recipe. Some of the ingredients are from a few salmon roll recipes I have but I wanted to make a dip. It’s easy and really delicious. I brought cut up celery and some gluten free crackers to serve on the side. It was a hit!

Ingredients:

12 oz. of organic cream cheese, softened

8 oz. of wild smoked salmon

¼ cup organic red onion (save another small bit of red onion for garnish)

2 tlbs. chopped organic chives (also save some for garnish)

Directions:

Put red onion and chives in your food processer with the S blade and process until finely chopped. Add the cream cheese and process until smooth. Then add the salmon and process until incorporated.

Put into a serving bowl and garnish with finely chopped chives and red onion. Refrigerate until ready to serve. I served it with crudité sized celery and gluten free crackers. Enjoy!

Homemade Soaked/Dried Almond Flour

I use quite a bit of almond flour as we’re gluten free and as we try to use organic as much as possible, finding organic almond flour has been a bit of a challenge.

It’s more available now then it was in years past, but it’s expensive and it’s not soaked, which we prefer to do with our nuts. This helps reduce the phytates.

I went in on a buy of organic almonds direct from a local farm with some friends and wish I had known sooner how easy it is to make your own.

Soaking/Drying the Almonds:

I soak/dehydrate and make flour from about 5 pounds of almonds at a time. That is approximately one full gallon zip lock bag. Of course you can do less but this amount will fill a 9-tray Excalibur dehydrator so you’re using all the shelves.

For soaking I put four cups of almonds in a half gallon ball jar, add one tablespoon of Celtic or sea salt to each jar and fill with water. Give it all a stir and then cover the tops of the jars with a clean kitchen towel. I usually do this before breakfast.

Let soak for at least 8 hours and then pour the almonds in a colander and rinse with clean water. Once they’re all drained and washed, place them in a single layer in your dehydrator and turn it onto 115 – 125° degrees.

I usually do this around dinner time and leave them overnight. Check in the morning and they are done when the almost are totally dry and slightly crispy.

I turn off the dehydrator and leave them to cool for an hour or so.

To make the flour:

You need a Vitamix or other high-speed blender.

Do just 1 cup of almonds at a time or this won’t work..

Put one cup of almonds in your vitamix.

Put the lid on and put the tamper inside, just sitting on top of the almonds.

Turn the blender on full high for seven seconds.

That’s it! Take that flour out and continue in batches until all your almonds are ground. I store mine in the freezer in a gallon zip lock bag. Enjoy!

If you want to mail order some great organic almonds, almond butter or walnuts, I recommend:  http://heronfoxfarm.com/

Why you want to use only organic herbs and spices

I’ve been using organic herbs and spices since we primarily started eating organically. It’s been a huge health boon to our entire family.

Why is it so important to use organic herbs and spices?

Spicely Organics says,

“#1: No Pesticides

At the most basic level, spices and herbs come from plants. Spices, which are dried plant parts (bark, roots, fruits, etc.), and herbs, fresh or dried plant leaves, are highly concentrated and super-rich sources of healthy plant compounds. However, when potent toxic pesticides enter the mix, it becomes questionable as to whether your spices are more healthful or harmful.

#2: No Irradiation or Harmful Chemicals

All foodstuffs must undergo sanitation steps that eliminate deadly pathogens. Many conventional herbs and spices often undergo sterilization via irradiation, which preserves the food, but also creates carcinogenic by-products. An alternative technique commonly used requires the use of ethylene oxide, a toxic chemical that has been associated with central nervous system effects and cancer. Both processes are banned in several other countries.

Unlike the aforementioned methods, the third way to clean spices, via steam sterilization, is compliant with organic standards. Saturated steam, under high pressure, kills microorganisms without damaging the vital properties of the plant, like enzymes, polyphenols and antioxidants – and without the use of any harmful chemicals.

#3: No Fillers, GMOs or Chemical Additives

Finally, conventional spices often contain fillers, preservatives and artificial flavors to enhance flavor that may have been lost in the manufacturing process. You won’t have to worry about these questionable additives, nor genetic modification, with organic product.

Overall, I encourage you to understand as much about all of your food as possible, and, yes, that includes your turmeric and tarragon. Fill your cabinets with spices that promote health, rather than detract from it, and feel confident in everything you put in your body.”

The pesticides and irradiation are of particular concern to me.

I was recently introduced to Penzeys. They have some wonderful herb and spice blends and the company does a lot of community service. There are so many blends that I’d love to use but they’re not organic.

If you use organic herbs and spices and especially if you like Penzeys brand, take a minute and write to their owner, Bill and copy their help desk and ask them to please make their great blends in organic versions – if enough of us ask, hopefully they’ll listen and give us their wonderful blends in organic versions.

Bill.penzey@penzeys.com

helpdesk@penzeys.com

Here are some places I currently get my organic herbs and spices:

https://www.starwest-botanicals.com/

https://www.mountainroseherbs.com/

http://amzn.to/2x3COq1

Mom