Sally Fallon Wrecked My Kitchen. . .

. . . or How One Pregnant Woman, Left With Only One Cookbook in the World, Has Been Seized By Nourishing Traditions Fever. . .

the experiments

My counters are wrecked.  My fridge is bursting.  My freezer is dangerous to open.  My pantry is full of mysterious jars of foreign grains and legumes with names like Adzuki or Cranberry.  What has happened to me?

Well, first we decided to sell our house to make the big trip up yonder so that Mr. Flavius can continue his education.  Second, we decided that the best way to do that is to pack away any unnecessary items and de-clutter everywhere possible.  For a month and a half the Motherworks-Flavius joint was The Most Extreme De-clutterers: Home Edition.  We might have warranted our own show.  At one point, I began texting Mr. Flavius from underneath an enormous pile of girl-garbage because I could no longer muster the energy to raise my voice to call down the stairs.  Heaven help me, it was tiresome work.

But here we are many moons past that tumultuous time and here we sit with a perfectly staged home (with six lovely, but wild children in it day-to-day, I might add) and we have not shown the house once.  My dear Mr. Flavius and the Realtor say, "it's the market."  Maybe.  I think we've entered the Divine Silence.  At any rate, we'll keep praying, cause that's what we can do.

All this means, that my garden plots were plowed under and allowed to grow. . . grass [shudder].  Do you know how hard it is to clear bermuda?  I just about died of sunstroke getting it done and now I blithely turn a blind eye to the yard and say, ''pretty grass" whenever I accidentally look that way, so as not to indulge the bile that is want to rise to the surface when I think about all those impossible stylons weaving their way through MY SOIL that I so lovingly and painfully suffered over to cultivate.

Among the many boxes stowed away in anticipation of the move, that has not come, are all my cookbooks;    all except one:  Nourishing Traditions.  Mr. Flavius gave me this gift for Mother's Day.  I opened it once, saw the recipe for Brain Omelet and promptly shut the book.  Never to opened again, not until the great book austerity project of 2010 began, that is.

It really is an innocuous looking book with its soothing azure tones and golden hues.  Inside is a totally different matter all together.  Sally Fallon has packed this book with tons of information, helpful hints, healthful recipes, and a mind blowing bibliography.  As far as the diet is concerned it as if they took the best parts of Atkins, Macrobiotics, Raw Food, and Whole Foods diets and mashed them up in a fantastic plan for wellness.

Since we started this new way of looking at our food, I have: started eating meat again, made beef and chicken stock, tried liver (and lived.  Actually,  I'll try to make it again), ate tempeh, made Quark, made, whole milk ricotta, made whole milk buttermilk, purchased and am cultivating Kefir grains, started a Kombucha colony, made two different types of pineapple vinegar, fermented brown rice milk, made sweet cream butter, cultured cream, have used whey everyday, began sourdough starter, started ginger beer bug, I am currently fermenting orangina, and I started a Raw Milk Co-op for my area.

This has been a lot of fun, a bit tiring, but a lot of fun.  The kids are responding well to the changes in the menu.  I'm trying to work out fasting days and regular days.  I can already feel St. Philip's Fast marching hard upon us despite it only being the middle of October and it's still a little more than a month away.  Every night brings round the new chores: tend the kefir, feed the sourdough, add more ginger and sugar to the bug, and soak grains for the next morning's breakfast.

I've purchased starter for mozzarella and I plan to make that just as soon as I make another run for milk.  My counters are totally cluttered with experiments.  The dog is happily muching on marrow bones leftover from stock making.  D. my non-eater loves the new natural peanut butter I purchased.  Great!  They all loved the gingerbread recipe.  Fantastic!  They rave over the bread and the fresh butter.  Wonderful.  Perhaps, best of all they've quit asking for fast food, sodas, and junk in general.  Now that does not mean they wouldn't go wild for m&ms or a Happy Meal.  What it means is that it is not on their radar at the moment.  This makes me pretty proud.  I have felt empowered to explain how sugar is not really a food, that their school serves up kid pleasing junk that will never fill them up or make them healthy, and to say, "eat an apple," when asked for dessert and they are listening.  All-in-all, this has been a great start.  I hope to share more with you as time goes on.