White Chocolate Coconut Almond Fat Bombs
September 28th, 2017
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Author: 
White Chocolate Coconut Almond Fat Bombs
I’ve been low carb/ gluten free for over six years now and I am recently trying to up my healthy fats. Fat bombs are a great way to do that and they’re very satisfying as well. This is a mix of a few recipes I found and it’s really good. Once they’re solid and cut in pieces you can store them in the fridge or even in the freezer for when you really need a snack.
Ingredients
1/2 cup organic cocoa/cacao butter, finely chopped and melted
1 cup organic roasted almond butter
1 cup coconut butter (also called coconut manna – not oil)
1 cup organic coconut oil, firm*
1/2 cup organic full fat coconut milk
1/2 cup sweetener of choice – I use Swerve
1/4 cup organic ghee
1 tbsp organic vanilla extract
2 tsp organic chai spice (recipe below)
1/4 tsp celtic sea salt
1/4 cup organic pistachios, chopped (or any other nut for topping)
Instructions
Use a 9” silicone pan or grease and line a 9” square baking pan with parchment paper, leaving a little bit hanging on either side for easy unmolding. Set aside.
Melt the cacao butter in a small saucepan set over low heat or in the microwave, stirring. Set aside.
Chop the nuts and set aside.
Add all the ingredients, except for cocoa/cacao butter and shelled pistachios, to a large mixing bowl. Mix with a stand mixer or hand mixer, starting on low speed and progressively moving to high until all the ingredients are well combined.
Pour the melted cocoa/cacao butter right into the almond mixture and resume mixing on low speed until everything is mixed together.
Transfer to prepared pan, spread as evenly as possible and sprinkle with chopped pistachios.
Refrigerate until completely set, at least 4 hours but preferably overnight.
Cut into small squares and enjoy! Store in the fridge or freezer.
I didn’t have Chai spice so I made my own, using this recipe.
Homemade Chai Spice
Ingredients
- 3 tsp organic ground ginger
- 2 tsp organic ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp organic ground cloves
- 1 tsp organic ground nutmeg
- 1 tsp organic ground cardamom
Instructions
- Mix all ingredients together in a small bowl and store in a small jar or spice jar.
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Gluten Free Cheesecake Bars
Cheesecake Crumb Bars
This is adapted from a recipe from Carolyn Ketchum. She has a great blog, All Day I dream about Food and a new cookbook coming out, link below. I’ve switched up the recipe a bit and it’s easy to make and delicious as well.
Ingredients:
Crumb crust:
1 ¼ cups organic Almond Flour
½ pecans chopped
½ cup Non-GMO Erythritol, Swerve or Organic Sugar
1 tsp organic cinnamon
¼ tsp Celtic or Sea Salt
½ organic butter, melted
Filling:
12 oz organic Cream Cheese, Softened
¼ cup organic sour cream
2 large eggs, pastured and organic
½ cup Non-GMO Erythritol, Swerve or Organic Sugar
½ tsp organic vanilla extract (we have a great recipe on site)
Crust/Topping:
In a medium bowl, mix together almond flour, pecans, ½ cup sweetener, cinnamon and salt. Then mix in melted butter until it looks like course crumbs.
Press half of the crumbs into a 8×8 greased pan. Bake at 325° degrees F for 10 minutes. Take out of the oven (leave the oven on for the rest)
Filling:
In a food processer or mixer (I use my food processor with the S blade) process cream cheese until smooth. Add sour cream and process again. Then add eggs, process again. Finally add ½ cup sweetener of choice and vanilla extract. Process until everything is combined.
Pour filling over crumb crush and sprinkle the remaining crumb mixture over the top. Bake at 325° degrees for 35-40 minutes until filling is set and the top is lightly browned. Cool and then refrigerate until cooled completely. Enjoy!
Click the image below for Carolyn’s Book:
Great Info from Jeffrey Smith
Monsanto’s Army of Online Bullies
by Jeffrey Smith
There are hundreds, possibly thousands of them—paid to bully, shame, and endlessly argue with anyone posting a comment deriding GMOs or pesticides. And when a high-profile person stands up to Monsanto’s technology, watch out. The trolls swarm in and gang up.
Take Marion Nestle, for example. When a GMO propaganda film called Food Evolution purposely quoted her out of context, she demanded that her 10-second clip be removed. Nestle’s blog was then ambushed with 870 comments by Monsanto’s minions, forcing her to block all comments from her site, Food Politics.
The presence of a troll army was revealed during the on-going lawsuit against Monsanto over the cancer-causing properties of their herbicide Roundup. The lawyers wrote:
“Monsanto even started the aptly-named “Let Nothing Go” program to leave nothing, not even Facebook comments, unanswered; through a series of third parties, it employs individuals who appear to have no connection to the industry, who in turn post positive comments on news articles and Facebook posts, defending Monsanto, its chemicals, and GMOs.”
Scientists Attacked
The legal brief also points out that, “Monsanto quietly funnels money to ‘think tanks’ such as the ‘Genetic Literacy Project’ and the ‘American Council on Science and Health,’ organizations intended to shame scientists . . .”
As a frequent target of these groups, I know well their unethical bullying tactics. And so too do the scientists who discover evidence that GMOs are harmful.
World renowned biologist Arpad Pusztai, for example, was pummeled by the biotech machinery when he accidentally discovered that GMOs caused massive damage to rats in just 10 days. In the late 1990s. he led a team that was designing test protocols to be used by European authorities to evaluate GMO safety. His research, however, revealed that the generic process of creating a GMO caused dangerous and unpredictable side-effects that might already be eroding the health of consumers. Because his shocking discovery could have destroyed the entire GMO industry, they came after Pusztai with far more than just a shaming campaign. Within days, his employer of 35 years terminated his contract. Pusztai’s 20-member team was dismantled. He was silenced with threats of a lawsuit. And the biotech industry and pro-GMO UK government unleashed a campaign to destroy his reputation.
Although Pusztai was the first scientist to undergo this type of industry battering, many others have since been targeted. One told me that these types of attacks have deterred hundreds of other scientists from doing research on GMOs.
The online bullies have a similar intimidating effect. Their well-chosen words are sharp and condescending, designed to scare away others from making comments—lest they become the next target.
The folks at the International Fitness Profesionals Association learned this the hard way. After posting what they considered to be a balanced article on GMOs, a troll got wind of it, posted a negative comment on the Pro-GMO FB site “We Love GMOs and Vaccines,” and asked his comrades to also make comments. The trolls swarmed.
They not only challenged the GMO article, they attacked the integrity and reputation of the organization. And of course, the trolls avoided commenting on details about GMOs, since they would quickly lose that argument with anyone familiar with the science. Facts are not their strong point. They prey on emotions.
Standing up to the Bully
Bullying and shaming can traumatize. In schools, online, at work, they have damaged and destroyed lives. It works. That’s why the biotech industry uses them.
Before discussing what to do, the first step is how to feel. The answer: INVINCIBLE!
After reporting for years about Monsanto’s strong-arm tactics, I finally became their target about eight years ago. Rather than feeling hurt or depressed, I felt uplifted. I viewed their baseless attacks as a badge of honor. I was now such a threat to their business dealings around the world, they invested a significant amount of money trying to distort my work and discredit me.
I considered whether I should spend time countering their spin to set the record straight, but soon realized that it was a black hole that would suck up my life. After all, why would I want to write posts to correct the views of the handful of people who wander onto their site, when I could reach millions of others with real information.
And so I smile, shake my head, and don’t even bother to read their posts about me. We’re winning the battle against GMOs and soon these bounty hunters will be hired by the next toxic industry.
That’s right, I said we are TOTALLY WINNING. Mainstream food companies in the US are falling over themselves to remove genetically engineered ingredients in order to boast a Non-GMO label. With 57% of surveyed Americans saying that they are concerned about the health impacts of GMOs, we are now the majority. We have the average American on the right side of this issue.
And that’s why Monsanto has unleashed its online army. It’s a last-ditch attempt to turn the tide.
So, if you get a troll on your case or see one doing their dark dance on someone else’s post, feel GREAT! Let it remind you that our collective work sharing the truth about GMO dangers has been so successful, we are seeing the dying embers of a desperate and failing industry.
And have absolutely no anxiety or concern about any details of their accusations. They will portray themselves as mainstream, pretending to have logic and science on their side. They will appear absolutely sure of themselves. And their colleagues will give them support.
It’s their game. It’s just a game. It means nothing. And by the way, we have become the mainstream in this argument (finally).
So What Do We Do? Strike Back!
Arguing with a professional GMO huckster is hopeless. Forget about it. (Or as my NY colleagues say: fugedabowdit.)
If you are in charge of the website or account, just delete their comments. Don’t waste the time or damage the emotions of your readers. Replace their mindless ramble with a statement like:
We just found a Monsanto troll! That’s right. Monsanto hired and trained an online army to attack anyone who dares to reveal the dangers of GMOs and pesticides like Roundup. Their campaign is called “Let Nothing Go.” So we deleted a post that had all the markings of a troll: It was emotionally bullying or shaming. It used talking points made popular by Monsanto’s PR companies, including myths like GMOs feed the world, increase yield, reduce pesticide use, or are proven safe. And it was clearly uninformed. So it was either posted by a paid troll, or worse yet, some poor person who actually believes and emulates them. Read more about the GMO trolls and GMO dangers in general.
If you can’t delete the offending post, here’s a similar type of statement you can post in response:
Looks like we’ve found a Monsanto troll! If you haven’t heard, Monsanto hired and trained an online army to attack anyone who dares to reveal the problems with GMOs and pesticides like Roundup. Their campaign is called “Let Nothing Go.” You can decide for yourself if this is one of Monsanto’s minions. The tone of the trolls are typically emotionally bullying or shaming. They claim the high ground, pretending that science is on their side. They often roll out one of the many talking point myths made popular by Monsanto’s PR companies, pretending that GMOs feed the world, increase yield, reduce pesticide use, and are proven safe, etc. And they are clearly uninformed. So either this is a troll, or worse yet, some poor person who actually believes and emulates them. Read more about the GMO trolls and GMO dangers in general.
If they engage you in an online argument (and if they’re a troll, they or their friends will) you can ignore the baseless claims and just use the opportunity to post links to one of the many informative articles that shreds Monsanto’s myths. Find lots of stuff to post at ResponsibleTechnology.org or on our Facebook page. Please subscribe to our newsletter and like our page so we can get you more ammunition—and stories of success.
This is a time to celebrate our victories, but we can’t let up. Let’s nail the coffin shut on this dangerous and irresponsible use of genetic engineering and protect future generations. With life itself at stake, we can withstand the buzzing of a few online gnats.
Safe eating and posting.
Jeffrey Smith
The Corporation
This is part one, but you can watch it all, in chapters on YouTube and it’s worth seeing. Relates to the GMO issue as well.
Mom
Seeds of Death Documentary
This is a few years old but really worth watching and you can watch the complete movie for free here or on YouTube. Mom
Great American Farm Tour
I’ve been watching the great YouTube videos from Justin Rhodes and family. They are traveling around the country visiting farms and gardens all over the country. You will learn a lot and be entertained as well. Enjoy!
The Legacy of Monsanto’s PCBs: Oozing Pus, Birth Defects and Immune Problems
The Legacy of Monsanto’s PCBs: Oozing Pus, Birth Defects and Immune Problems
New Bedford Harbor, Massachusetts, pictured on November 25, 2006. In 1983, New Bedford Harbor was declared a Superfund site, heavily contaminated with PCBs. (Photo: Jack Letourneau / Flickr)
The people of New Bedford, Massachusetts, have always been tough. When New Bedford was the whaling capital of the world, seven men would hop into a 25-foot rowboat to chase — and harpoon up close — furious 50-foot whales weighing 85 tons. After petroleum replaced whale oil around 1900, New Bedford workers then kept 70 textile mills humming day and night. After textiles moved away, from the 1940s onward New Bedford supplied the world with electric gear. But when those factories began to close in the 1960s, they left behind some awful secrets — 572 chemically poisoned plots of land within the city’s 24 square miles, including land where unsuspecting townspeople built two public schools. In the early 1980s, local people learned that their prized harbor — all 18,000 acres of it, including its bounty of fish and lobsters — had been rendered dangerously toxic by factory wastes. In 1983, New Bedford Harbor, the mouth of the Acushnet River, was declared a Superfund site, heavily contaminated with PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls). This small city reeled. To many, the combination of unemployment and toxic waste seemed insurmountable.
PCBs are a family of 209 industrial poisons known to harm humans at extremely low levels of exposure. PCBs cause cancer, diabetes, birth defects, liver disease and high blood pressure — and they disrupt the nervous, hormonal and immune systems, giving rise to a broad array of other problems. A few of the 209 PCBs are thought to pose a toxic threat even more potent than dioxin.
About 60,000 of New Bedford’s 95,000 residents live in “environmental justice neighborhoods as defined in Massachusetts law, based on percent of people who have low income or identify as minority or lack proficiency in English. But, like residents of decades past, they have proven themselves tough. To face down the menace of PCBs, grassroots groups sprang up, determined to force a complete cleanup of their poisoned city, 55 miles below Boston on the South Coast. The Hands Across the River Coalition (HARC) got on the case first, assisted by the Roxbury-based Toxics Action Center. They were joined by CLEAN (Citizens Leading Environmental Action Network) and the Buzzards Bay Coalition. To this day, HARC’s leader, Karen Vilandry, is a relentless watchdog, calling out corruption, mismanagement and bad decisions, naming names fearlessly.
Now President Trump has once again shown local people the government can’t be trusted to keep its word. Less than a month into his presidency, Trump proposed severely cutting the national budget for toxic cleanups — doing so at the very moment when a new study has revealed that PCBs wafting off New Bedford Harbor have penetrated homes and offices in nearby towns.
Harbor PCBs Are Contaminating Local Air
PCBs rising off the 28-square-mile surface of New Bedford Harbor have been measured in neighboring towns by a team of researchers from the University of Iowa and Boston University. This is the first study to find PCBs from a body of water measurable at high concentrations in nearby air. Until now, health authorities had assumed that PCBs in lake and river sediments could only harm people who ate contaminated fish. As recently as 2014, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told residents of New Bedford, Dartmouth, Fairhaven, North Fairhaven and Acushnet that “inhalation of air” near New Bedford Harbor was not a significant risk. Now that conclusion must be reconsidered.
The Harbor cleanup has been going on for 35 years. Since 2004, continuous dredging has removed 25,000 to 30,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediments each year. All told, 1.7 million cubic yards of toxic sediment are scheduled to be dredged up and dumped somewhere. At the present rate, full cleanup will take many more decades. The EPA has earmarked funds to accelerate the Harbor cleanup, but Trump’s budget cuts could wreck that plan.
Most of the world’s PCBs were manufactured by Monsanto, the St. Louis chemical giant, starting in 1935. PCBs conduct heat but not electricity, and they do not readily break down — so they made an ideal insulator for electric gear. They were also used in lubricants, paints, carbonless carbon paper, hydraulic fluid, window caulking, lamp ballasts, plastics and wire coatings, among many other products.
The first sign of toxicity from PCBs was a painful, disfiguring acne afflicting PCB workers — inflamed pimples and blackheads oozing pus. At a meeting in 1937, F.R. Kaimer, assistant manager of General Electric’s Wireworks at York, Pennsylvania, described GE’s experience coating wire with PCBs:
We had in the neighborhood of 50 to 60 men afflicted with various degrees of this acne about which you all know. Eight or ten of them were very severely afflicted — horrible specimens as far as their skin condition was concerned. We had 50 other men in very bad condition as far as the acne was concerned.
He went on:
The first reaction that several of our executives had was to throw it out — get it out of our plant. They didn’t want anything like that for treating wire. But that was easily said but not so easily done. We might just as well have thrown our business to the four winds and said, “We’ll close up,” because there was no substitute and there is none today in spite of all the efforts we have made through our own research laboratories to find one.
So in 1937, GE and Monsanto made a business decision to continue manufacturing PCBs they knew were highly toxic.
General Electric went on to dump many tons of waste PCBs into both the Hudson and Housatonic Rivers. Today, both rivers remain contaminated along their entire lengths — the Housatonic from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 150 miles down to Stratford, Connecticut; and the Hudson from Fort Edward, New York, to Manhattan, 200 miles downstream. Like Monsanto, GE has aggressively evaded responsibility. In 1970, Monsanto issued a famously false statement saying, “It has been implied that polychlorinated biphenyls are ‘highly toxic’ chemicals. This is not true…. PCBs are not hazardous when properly handled and used.”
Between 1929 and 1989, world production of PCBs totaled 3.3 billion pounds, most of which is still “out there” somewhere. In 1966, Swedish researchers were alarmed to discover PCBs accumulating in wild fish, and slowly the scientific community realized that PCBs had escaped and were spreading everywhere, harming fish, birds and mammals, including humans.
By the early 1990s in the US, women’s breast milk contained about one part per million of PCBs, so a suckling infant was receiving a dose of PCBs about five times the “allowable daily intake” set for adults by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
PCBs Disrupt Hormones and the Immune System
In addition to many other biological effects, PCBs suppress the immune and hormone systems, which then may allow the development of many unrelated diseases. Studies show that mothers who have eaten PCB-contaminated fish have given birth to babies with small heads, poor memories and slow reaction times to stimuli.
Hormones are chemical messengers that travel through the bloodstream in extremely low levels (parts per trillion), turning on and off bodily processes. Hormones control human development and behavior, starting in the womb. Industrial chemicals that mimic hormones can turn on or off biological processes unexpectedly. In fish, PCBs are known to turn males into females.
After 13 years of alarming scientific discoveries about PCBs poisoning wildlife and humans, the US finally banned PCBs in 1979. But by then, PCBs had become what the EPA now calls “the most widespread pollutant on the planet,” measurable in nearly everyone, including newborn babies.
PCBs can be chemically detoxified, and the EPA itself has described these alternatives. Chemical detox offers a permanent solution to the PCB problem, but it’s more expensive than burying PCBs in the ground, so the EPA has chosen to bury New Bedford’s PCBs.
EPA plans to dump 300,000 cubic yards of toxic sediments into a “CAD cell” — a “confined aquatic disposal” cell, which is nothing more than a large underwater hole dug into the bottom of the Harbor (the Acushnet River) — to be filled with toxic sediment, then “capped” with clean sediment. The Army Corp of Engineers has announced a separate plan to widen the ship channel into New Bedford, dumping an additional 751,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment into a separate CAD cell in the Harbor bottom. Fans of CAD cells say it will “permanently” hold its toxic load. But anyone familiar with geologic history knows this may not be true. Sooner or later, weather and geologic processes can scour the river bottom, releasing the CAD cell’s PCBs to the ocean downstream.
The remainder of New Bedford’s toxic sediments are being shipped 800 miles by rail to Belleville, Michigan, a town of 4,000 people 29 miles southwest of Detroit. There, the PCBs are being buried in a licensed hazardous waste landfill 2,000 feet from the edge of the Huron River, which flows into Lake Erie.
Eventually, the landfill in Belleville will very likely leak its contents into the local environment, as all landfills tend to do. As the EPA said in a Federal Register notice in 1981:
There is good theoretical and empirical evidence that the hazardous constituents which are placed in land disposal facilities very likely will migrate from the facility into the broader environment. This may occur several years, even many decades, after placement of the waste in the facility, but data and scientific prediction indicate that, in most cases, even with the application of best available land disposal technology, it will occur eventually.
Defenders of toxic burial say that authorities like the EPA will monitor dumps like Belleville and the New Bedford CAD cell for the duration of the hazard. But PCBs buried in dark, airless tombs will remain toxic, so they will have to be monitored “in perpetuity.” Humans have no experience doing anything “in perpetuity.”
Short-Term Remedies May Not Work in the Long Term
The EPA’s chosen remedy for New Bedford’s PCBs may not even serve its main purpose of protecting local people from exposure to potent poisons. “They keep calling it a cleanup,” said Karen Vilandry of Hands Across the River. “It’s not a cleanup because the EPA, even after their 300,000 cubic yards and after their dredging, is still going to leave 50 parts per million of PCB sediments behind. Other places in the country it’s one part per million. So why is it they’re leaving 50 parts per million here? Oh, because it’s New Bedford — an environmental justice community, so we’re a dumping ground. It’s still going to affect the fish; humans are still going to be eating the fish — where’s the cleanup?”
Vilandry makes a valid point: At other PCB sites — the Fox River in Wisconsin, the St. Lawrence in New York and the Housatonic — the EPA’s cleanup goal has been one part per million of residual PCBs, not 50 ppm.
As for CAD cells and licensed landfills, in the long run, humans will tend to forget where they buried their toxic wastes as more pressing problems demand attention. Unless PCBs are chemically destroyed, eventually most of them will very likely escape into the environment and slowly move into the ocean, either carried on air, or attached to soil particles moved by water. There, they will decimate marine mammal populations.
Marine mammals are freakishly sensitive to PCBs for two reasons. First, whales, dolphins, porpoises, sea lions, seals, sea otters and polar bears lack the genes needed to detoxify and eliminate PCBs. As a result, PCBs accumulate in their bodies, producing a toxic concentration that is up to 10 million times higher than the PCBs found at the bottom of the ocean food chain. Second, the reproductive system of marine mammals is a prime target for PCB toxicity. For example, a 1970 study of seals in the Baltic Sea revealed that 80 percent of females were sterile, poisoned by eating PCB-laden fish, and in Norway, polar bears have experienced unprecedented changes to their genitalia.
In the late 1980s, scientists calculated that about 20 percent of all the world’s PCBs had already reached the ocean. In 1988, Canadian geneticist Joseph Cummins calculated that if another 15 percent of the world’s PCBs made it into the ocean, widespread reproductive failure would spell extinction for all marine mammals. Dr. Cummins suggested in 1988 — and again in 1998 — that Monsanto should be required to buy back and chemically detoxify all the PCBs that are now stored (temporarily) in leaky machines and burial sites around the world. It’s still a good idea.
From: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40223-the-legacy-of-monsanto-s-pcbs-oozing-pus-birth-defects-and-immune-problems
Peter Montague
Peter Montague is a historian and journalist whose work has appeared in Counterpunch, Huffington Post, the Nation and many other publications. He has co-authored two books on toxic heavy metals.
Sweet and Spicy Nuts
Sweet and Spicy Nuts
I started making these around the holidays. I tried a number of recipes and tweaked them a bit to come up with this. I store them in canning jars, on the counter and they are usually gone within a week. Everyone loves them.
Ingredients:
1 tsp. organic cinnamon
1 tsp. organic cardamom
1 tsp. organic allspice
1 tsp. Celtic or sea salt
½ tsp organic curry powder
1/8 tsp . organic cayenne pepper
1/3 cup swerve (or erythritol or organic sugar)
2 organic pastured egg whites
4 cups organic mixed nuts (I’ve been using a mix of almonds, walnuts and pecans)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 250°
In a large bowl, mix all the nuts and spices together.
In another bowl, whisk the egg whites until frothy and foamy. I use a stainless steel bowl.
Pour the egg whites over the nut mixture and mix until combined.
Spread the nuts out on a baking sheet.
Bake 30 minutes – then removed from oven and mix it all up again – then put back in the oven for another 30 minutes – 1 hour total baking time.
Cool and store in jars – enjoy!
Why It’s Imperative to Avoid GMOs And Roundup
Wonderful, informative lecture by Jeffrey Smith.