(Photo from Ann Marie @ cheeseslave.com)
Today has been another full day of information, conversations and product sampling and buying! My suitcase is going to be crammed by the time I’m done!
Here’s a sampling of what I’ve been trying. Zukay (check them out on my Sponsor page) was selling a new product -not yet released- of lacto-fermented (raw) vegetable juices. I LOVED them. One was a ginger beet lacto-fermented juice and I told him that I could easily imagine drinking it every morning! It was very refreshing. Wilderness Family Naturals had a new salt that I bought. It’s a black sea salt. Interesting, I had listened to Dr. Williams yesterday and she has recommended taking organic sulfur as it’s a very important element in our diet that we are often too low on. This new salt that they are carrying happens to be high in sulfur, a whole foods source of sulfur! So exciting. I love how when you are at an event like this there is a lot of connecting the dots. One person talks about an important aspect of health, and you have a conversation with someone who directs you to a source for it, or in my case, I find a source right in the Sponsors! It’s great. I also bought my first bag of their coconut milk powder. I was concerned with the fact that it was spray dried because when you do that with milk, it oxidizes the cholesterol which is very bad for you. That’s why I don’t recommend dry milk powder (including infant formula) if you can at all avoid it. So I was worried about the coconut milk. I talked to the owners, however, and because coconut milk has hardly any protein and the fats are so stable they assured me that it shouldn’t be an issue. They also gave me a sample, which was really what won me over. You know how powdered milk just really doesn’t taste right? It’s just yucky in my opinion. But this coconut milk powder is delicious and you can eat it right off of a spoon with pleasure (it may be my meal on the way home on the plane!). I also met a great lady who does classes teaching you how to harvest your own seaweed close to my area. Can you
imagine?
I wasn’t able to spend as much time in the seminars (though I will be listening to them later and blogging about it), but I was able to go on the session by Kaayla Daniel on Sacred Foods for Fertility. I missed the first part and had to slip back to our booth about ten minutes early, but what I heard was intriguing, helpful, and amusing. You read and hear a lot of people talk about how a vegetarian or vegan diet is best for your sex life and for fertility, but that’s not true today nor was it historically accurate. In fact, she discussed how religions or health nuts who believe that a sex drive was bad/wrong for you used a vegetarian diet to suppress it. I want to do a whole blog post about that topic, so stay tuned.
So what to eat? Traditional fertility food includes things like oysters (very high in zinc which men must have), organ meats, pastured butter, fish eggs, duck eggs, chicken eggs, any eggs, among many other things. And even, *gasp*, what she modestly labeled as the “naughty” parts of the animal (Yes, I think you can guess what she was referring too). I know that’s a shocking idea for a lot of us, and thankfully not absolutely necessary for good fertility. But many,many cultures do eat all animal part- yes all parts. We are a little silly with our chicken breasts and ground beef and steak limitations. If you want a real cultural shock, go to a good local Asian market. You will find everything for sell there-all parts of the animal.
I am looking forward to listening to the entire session soon.
Later, I was able to listen to just a very short amount of Sally Fallon’s talk on sacred foods. Here she explained a little more of the science on why these foods are so good for you and why it’s important to get them pastured. What I heard was very informative and interesting.
Finally, the keynote speaker tonight was David Gumpert who wrote the book, the Raw Milk Revolution and blogs here. Here he really tried to help the audience understand the so called “mind of the enemies”. How are they viewing things? Let me tell you, it wasn’t encouraging. If you want any of your food to be raw including almonds, milk, vegetables, etc, all of those foods are viewed as being potentially dangerous unless something is done to “sterilize” it. After giving us helpful information on how to understand where the other side was coming from, he then gave five points on how we can help. 1-Keep shining the light of exposure-inform people 2-Fight back with videos, blogs, facebooks. 3-Support organizations that fight back (like the Weston Price Foundation) 4 Milk Producers should be sticklers for safety and put a premium on safety. 5-Finally buy raw milk creating a market for it.
I still don’t tolerate raw milk that well because I do have a bit of a dairy intolerance. But I fully support farmers and customers having full rights to their own life style decisions, including raw milk. Making an informed decision is what matters to me.
Yet another eventful day! Looking forward to another one tomorrow.
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Kimi~
Thanks so much for keeping us up to date on what is happening at the Conference. I have a hard time following all the twitter chatter so this was much more helpful to me.
I love your blog!!
We love the WFN coconut milk powder. We bought the huge bag of it :). It’s so nice to have a version that is free of the canned-milk BPA. It is also handy to stir into curries without the added water.
Sounds like y’all had a great time and I really wish I could have been there to meet everyone!
Shannon – can you tell us how much milk coconut powder yields? We are looking at the 1lb bag. Thanks!
Your excitement jumps off the page – um, computer! Looking forward to learning a lot from you as you gather all of this wonderful information and sharing it.
Bless your hearts, all of you – Kimi, AnnMarie and Kelly! I’m enjoying all of the tweets, blog posts, pictures, etc.
This is so interesting to me, and you do a great job portraying what you’re learning. Thank you!
thanks for sharing all this information — wish I could have been there! I’ve heard Sally Fallon speak a few years back at a WAPF event.
The conference sounds great! I am excited to know there is someone harvesting seaweed in our area…care to share who/what/when/how?
Hi Katie!
I think she had a website. I will dig through my papers and find it and post it here for you. 🙂
I think you’re talking about Linda Conroy from Moonwise Herbs
http://www.moonwiseherbs.com/seaweed.htm
She also teaches cheesemaking and various other classes around the topics of wild foods and herbalism.
I hung out and talked with her for a while. She is AWESOME! Wonderful energy — I loved her!!
Wow thanks so much for asking that question and leading me to Linda’s website. I just read on her site that she is holding a winter solstice wild foods dinner on Dec 20 in Wisconsin… and I’m considering going to WI that day to attend Max Kane’s raw milk rally the next day on the 21st. Since I would be going anyway, I would LOVE to attend that dinner!
BTW Kimi how do you do these nested comments? Is this a plug-in? I love it — so cool.
Hi Kimi,
I have been following your blog for about a month and experimented with my first soaked flour recipe yesterday (your delectable “Gingerbread Muffins”). I enjoy receiving your regular emails and have found your site useful in my self-directed health studies.
I live in New Zealand (where “Lord of the Rings” was filmed) and I buy raw goat’s milk regularly. I recently was diagnosed as being lactose intolerant. However, I drink raw goat’s milk daily and have not noticed any ill effects from it. If I did that with patuerised, homogenised cow’s milk I would have stomach cramps and diarrhoea.
God bless you richly,
Kedesh
P.S. You are blessed to be part of such an incredibly influential family! I follow therebelution.com, have read Joshua Harris’ books on dating vs. courtship, have read “Do Hard Things”, and listen to Greg’s tapes that my Mum purchased before I was born (21 years ago!) and online messages. I’m a born again Christian and have been home schooled by whole life.
Thanks for the sweet note!
Oh my gosh, I am so jealous. I would have a blast checking out all of those nourishing foods. I feel like a dork at home when I get so excited about this stuff, but it sounds like I’d fit right in there. 🙂
Thanks so, so much for keeping us updated! It’s almost as good as being there. (Okay, not really, but it helps!)
You should come next year and we can try them together!
Hi there! I have tried the Coconut milk powder from Wilderness Naturals and noticed it has maltodextrin and sodium casenate or something. I was worried about those additives. Did they say anything about them? I have not called them directly yet. I know I should, thought I would start here, since I am here anyway 🙂
Hi Jerian Pahs,
All coconut milks that I know of have some type of additive to prevent the oil from separating. In this case, it is a very small amount of maltodextrin which is dairy derived. Most people can handle it just fine who have a dairy issue, but it could bother some. I think that this is probably a safe product since it’s not canned. 🙂
You are correct about the maltadextrose, it is the one additive that you cannot take out of coconut milk powder, otherwise it never turns to powder. Unfortunately most brands contain a range of other additives, especially sodium caseinate which is put in to make the coconut milk ‘creamier’. Kind of defeats the purpose if you are looking for a milk free alternative though.
If you are in New Zealand you can buy a sodium caseinate version through Natural Abundance. The link will give you some more details about the product http://www.naturalabundance.co.nz/Coconut_and_palm_products/coconut-milk-powder
I *love* the coconut milk powder. I don’t know if this is reassuring to you, but on the GAPS diet the only kind of coconut milk that is on the acceptable list is the dried coconut milk and the fresh – the canned stuff is to be avoided.
When it comes to consuming coconut milk when it is to be one of the main flavors (as a beverage, dessert, yogurt, etc) I’ve found that I much prefer the flavor of the powder. The canned varieties have a far different flavor.