Carrots and Ginger: Fermentation Fun on Wahls Paleo Plus

Fermentation on the paleo plus diet is a huge part of the "plus" that follows paleo in its name. Of course you can buy this stuff at the Whole Foods and pay WAYYYY too much money for rotten food, or you can rot it your damn self. All it takes is about a week in a dark corner of the house.

First off it does take a week or more, so be prepared to make at least a weeks worth at a shot, and keep making it because once you run out it will be harder to get it rolling again. Why? Well, because we are busy, that's why. And it is a bit of work, its not hard, but it does make a mess and we have to be prepared to make it, AND clean it up. This wouldn't be so daunting if I had a garbage disposal, but I don't.

I have a food processor, I mentioned in my first post that you would benefit form having one of these, you can read that post here. I like to shred when I ferment and my food processor is the best thing I can think of to do that, I would like to invest in a lid with a larger shoot to shove my food into but at this point I am fine cutting my stuff smaller and with carrots and ginger I really don't have an issue fitting them into the standard shoot.

This recipe was brought to my attention by my friend "Bread Hurts My Head" who sent me this from Fermented Food Lab and it is amazing!!!

As you all know I am not one for measuring too closely and in this recipe I didn't change that, when it comes to fermenting I am really relaxed. Everyone I talk to tells me "you got to be careful", or "be sure it is all submerged", I say poppycock. I have been winging it for over a year and I have never had an issue. I have a very healthy gut, as far as I can tell, and I am as regular as I can imagine people get.

Having said that I am not endorsing winging your fermentation, I mean you need to be comfortable with what you do. I am comfortable with my way of doing things and you will have to find a way for you to find the same.

I began by shredding my ginger which, again, I did not measure, I just eyeballed it. It was eyeballed to be more than the 6 tsp which is what the recipe was asking for, I like a little heat. And, mind you, I knew the container I was going to use and after fermenting for a while I got a feel for how much of things I aught to be adding.

I took most of a 5lb bag of carrots, trimmed them and shredded them adding them to my Fido container mixing in a bit of salt and ginger while macerating it all with my hand. Not so surprisingly the carrots sweat and filled the container with liquid so I didn't have to add water at all, I usually add water to my sauerkraut but maybe not any longer after this experience.

Once the container was full I capped it and put it in my cabinet where I would burb it, or open it slightly every day just to let pressure out . Fido now has a lit you can add an airlock to and I would recommend this if I had tried it yet, but I haven't, but when I do I am willing to bet it works great.

Now my carrots were often found not submerged in liquid and I again had no problems with this, I even offered some to a friend so I was fairly confident with it but that doesn't mean you have to be, by all means be vigilante we are talking about bacteria and that is nothing to be messing around with.

The Tongue in My Mouth on Wahls Paleo Plus Diet - Fighting my MS

To start, there is a bit of an "Eeeew" factor when it come to eating tongue, and unless you have eaten it your whole life you will have to get over that a bit. The only way to do it is to dive right in. I would suggest go to a restaurant and get a tongue taco or something similar so as to get it as meat rather than as a whole tongue.

That Eeew mindset is because, I think, we have all bitten our tongues, and that we always have one in our mouths, well most of us do. We immediately think "Oh man, it is going to have a real tough outer skin that I will have to bite through and it is going to be strange." Not to worry folks, that is a total misconception of what tongue is. In all reality tongue is one of the most delectable, fatty and silky parts of a cow, or other animal, you could have. If you think a beef steak well prepared, I am talking medium rare with a deliciously seared outer layer, is the peak of what beef can do, let me tell you now you are WAY OFF.

Tongue is going to win you over. That is if you like meat and can get beyond the Eeeew factor that comes with eating tongue as an american who has probably never eaten it before. Cooking tongue is a bit of an ordeal, which is why I suggested getting it already prepared first. Handling a tongue, if you are not used to handling organ meats and dead animals, may be off-putting to some. Of course there are many of you who will get excited about handling a tongue and for those of you, this is something you can not screw up so dive right in if that is your fancy.

you will have to buy tongue whole

First off decide if you are going to brine or not. You can brine your tongue for 6 hours to 2 days in the refrigerator. Tongue doesn't keep well raw so buy it on the day you are going to deal with it. I should mention here that when you buy tongue you will be buying the whole tongue, there is no "Oh can I have a pound." That is another reason why it is best to get it at a restaurant first.

I did brine my tongue for a day

I seasoned my water for boiling

Boil for 50 min per pound

Now no matter if you brine it or not you are gong to boil the tongue for about 50 min per pound. I like to season my water and if you decide not to brine yours you are going to want to add additional salt to your water. Remember if you have a diet that doesn't have a lot of canned or frozen foods you probably don't have to worry about your salt intake as much as those who have a more traditional american diet. Once the tongue is boiled properly you are going to be able to peel the out skin off.  

you can see it peels very easily but only when it is HOT

 What happens seems to me to be that we create a huge blister on the tongue. We have to peel that outer layer off, that skin is that tough layer we all thought we would have to bite through, but we just toss it.

Be sure to peel that off while it is still hot, if it cools before you get that skin off it will be very difficult for you to peel so just get some tongs or something to help but get it off asap.

Now that you have a peeled tongue it is ready to be prepared for eating, like I said it is a bit of an ordeal to make one of these. I just cube the tongue and fry it up in my skillet with some fat. searing the outside of these makes a great addition to a salad similar to, but better than, pork belly. These are delicious little fatty bites that will be a welcomed addition to any Paleo or Wahls Paleo Plus diet. Deliciously fighting MS and probably cancer too.

The back very fatty part of the toung I pop in first and just eat it right out of the skillet

these bits are the tongue proper, they fry up to a crispy outer layer
very easily with high heat dropping them into a and hot fat 

Cooking Venison and Other Lean Game Meats: Wahls Paleo Plus

Bambi Bambi Bambi :)

So I have picked up archery since learning about my MS. My reasoning is simple, if diet is the most important thing then eating as pure and close to the source as possible is the best. This is my belief and if I stick to that belief I will benefit more than I would if I were to have a belief I did not hold fast to. The mind controls so much of how we process and access nutrients. If I were to believe, and I do, that McDonald's food is poisonous to a degree, then, no matter what I would consume from there would, in fact would actually be poisonous. If I believed it was good for me, I would benefit from it and it would be good for me to a degree. This has so much to do with everything, where your mind is will ultimately dictate what you are going to experience. Trust me, if I do not believe my diet will rid me of my MS, Cancer or any other malady, it won't, but that is not the fault of the diet. If I do not believe, then I will not stick close to the diet and I will tell myself it is the fault of the diet because it is easier to blame than it is to take responsibility.

Venison in Brine

Now back to the archery, I have not yet gone hunting for my own venison but that will come in the fall. Until then I get my venison from some very generous hunters I am familiar with. This is a gift and much better, both on my plate and in my body, than any other meat product I can think of. The issue with cooking venison is that it is so lean. Thinking back to the "Fat is Flavor" line when we have lean meats there is a battle between the heat and the meat. If you were to overcook venison and it dries out you have the "gamy" taste everyone complains about. Just like "rubbery" seafood, this is caused by overcooking. With Lean game, when the blood and fat evaporate completely out of the meat you are left with the elements that don't evaporate. That gamy taste is primarily the iron from the fat and blood. Since the blood and fat are gone when it is overcooked you are left with a tough and very metallic tasting cut, but that is not what venison is at all. is it a velvety flavorful distinct cut of meat that needs care while preparing.

I have a number of butterflied chops I will be preparing today. Because it is so lean I start with a brine this will help the meat retain moister without compromising the structure of the muscle, so as not to get it either mushy or tough. You can get mushy when using a marinade because the purpose of a marinade is to break down penetrate the meat slightly, usually only about 1/4 inch. Penetration with a saltwater brine is much better and doesn't leech any of the fat in the cuts.

As I do so often I will be cooking in cast iron, I like high heat and rapid movement. Turning the cuts ever 20 - 30 seconds allows the meat to cook from both sides rather than cooking one side then the other. The secret to a well cooked cut of venison is allowing it to "finish" off the heat. If you cook a lot you will know all about the fact that, when you remove something from the cooking source, the center of that which you removed, will continue to rise in temperature. When you have patience, and can become comfortable with removing your meat while it is still slightly more rare than you are looking for, you'll be able to get rich and juicy cuts every time. Venison is one meat that, if you cook it to medium rare, you'll end up with a well done cut by the time you eat it. That's going to give you a gamy taste that has no business on your plate.

done but not finished

here this is still rare and although I
would eat it I wouldn't serve it.

Now it is finished

Cooking Fish in a Salt Crust - Wahls Paleo Plus

Hello again, today we are going to talk about fish. I have always been daunted by fish. It is, I have found, easy to prepare but I never think of it first. Having grown up in the Midwest I ate chicken probably 4 nights a week, then pasta, pork and beef unless it was Lent then I ate fish once a week. It's a shame really that most of the fish I ate as a kid came as a stick and was categorized simply as "Fish."

Fish is one of those things, when you do not live near an ocean, that just doesn't get on the menu as often as pizza, pork chops, or spaghetti. Since my diagnosis I have eaten fish more. My first foray was something that was familiar, canned kipper and sardines, I get these when they are packed in olive oil only because they can use some seriously poor quality oils if you are not paying attention. Those are often a bit more fishy than I prefer so I went to the land of adventure and started to get a basic understanding of how to really prepare fish. It cooks real quick and can go really wrong when overdone. When it comes to seasoning salt, pepper, rosemary and lemons are very traditional, but I knew all this already. I could fry, poach it, grill it, and bake it, again nothing new. I ran across this Salt Crust baking and it intrigued me.

It takes a lot of salt to completely encase a whole fish but salt really isn't that expensive and it was going to be interesting either way. I started by mixing 2 cups of salt with 4 egg whites until all the salt was evenly coated and it made something like a gritty paste.

I am doing this with 2 whole Rainbow Trout and when dealing with whole fish you really want to scrape the scales as best you can. doing this is not hard but containing the scales is not easy. they will go all over and later tonight you might find a few scales on your thumb and they will be stuck there for you to peel off like a scab.

once the fish are clean and ready to for the oven you'll want to take a baking sheet and put a layer of salt down large enough to hold your fish. I am using a Pyrex dish and it was a mistake I could have used much less salt than I did and It was a bitch to get out.
\
I was preparing dinner with a Pisces so I arranged the fish accordingly, again I want to mention that this would have been easier had I just used a flat pan but this was fun and seemed appropriate at the time.



I then covered the Trout with salt, I ran out of the egg-white and salt mixture and just used salt which is a method I used to cook a fillet once, of course for that you will just cook the fillet on top ot the salt and not cover it. I thought it would be all the smae in the end but no it wasn't. Please if you want feel free to lay loose salt in as a base but do not do what I did and spread loose salt atop the fish, this was mistake 2 I made making this wonderful dish, it ultimately made removing the fish a terrible ordeal, add in the fact that I also didn't use  a flat sheet but a Pyrex and I was up shit creek when it was time to remove these. Either way I won't bore you with the details of my mishaps, just know that even if you make a mistake it'll be okay, its just cooking and you can do it.

Mussels Mmm Paleo Plus

I think mussels are a great seafood to eat, and if you live near saltwater they are probably in your diet already but for those of us that are landlocked it is not such a common thing. I live in Chicago which is right on Lake Michigan but that's not where I get my mussels. Mind you there are eatable freshwater mussels in Illinois' rivers and it is on my radar to find and harvest a few, but this post is about the mussels that are farmed as well as being so abundant in the worlds oceans.

Being in Chicago the mussels that I get are going to already be dead, this is not as desirable as the alternative, them being alive. The fact that they are dead already means we have lost freshness and we need to be real careful with cracked or broken shells. There is also a lot of writing about being a bit of a stickler when it comes to shells that are open also, and if I was worried about food borne illness I would. The fact is, because I am on the Wahls Paleo Plus diet, and eat a lot of lacto-fermented vegetables,  I don't feel like I am susceptible to a whole lot of food borne illness. If you are not as confident in your system you may want to toss cracked shells as well as the ones that are slightly ajar.

I go through them and clean them a bit, pulling their beards and rubbing off any barnacles under running water. This is the most time consuming part of the whole cooking process for these little buggers because once this is done all you have to do is bring a cup of water in a pot on the stove to a boil and dump them in.

The cup of boiling water will cook this whole batch, just cover and let them do what they will do, You are going to know when they are ready because they will open up, give them a little stirring after 8 or 10 minutes and see if any are still sealed shut, if not they are ready to eat. If you find one that won't open, take the hint and toss it, if it doesn't want to open we don't need to force it.

A lot of people think that seafood like this is rubbery, let me clarify that issue right off the bat. If you eat Clams, Mussels, Squid, Octopus, or any of those things that often get called "rubbery" when describing it, it was just overcooked. For some things, like octopus, it could also be under-cooked but that is a much rarer issue.

Mussels can be eaten pert near alone but you will want to supplement your meal with some veggies and a salad to keep your diet plan up and running. One of the best things about mussels is that it is communal, you start your meal with a few on your plate and end up just cracking them open after everything else has been eaten while just chatting at the table with all those loved ones you have decided to share this meal with. I had the pleasure of sharing it with a lovely women for New England who told me all about her experiences eating fresh mussels growing up.

Here is a pic of the dinner I shared. In the foreground you can see the cauliflower I fried in clarified butter, which, incidentally, I also used to dunk my mussels in. I can not find one "bad" thing in this dinner, maybe the fact that I can not eat it every night, but I wouldn't want to do that anyway because variety is the spice of life.

What are you making? Are you on a Paleo Plan? How can I be adding variety to my diet, I know I have plenty but I am always looking for more, send me suggestions and ideas, lets talk.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Chicken Legs - Wahls Paleo Plus

The esteemed Dr. Wahl talks about bone marrow and getting it into your diet regularly. Bone broth is a great way to add some serious collagen and more proteins to your diet. This is primarily spoken of in terms of beef bone marrow but I try to get marrow from anything I eat that has a bone.

Your Chicken legs are filled with marrow, and let me tell you, when those are cooked it is the easiest encased marrow to access. This is why all those stray dogs attack chicken bones, because many people have no idea how to eat them, and leave the most nutritious parts strewn on the ground.

Chicken Legs: Cooking and Eating

When it comes to chicken I always dread the length of time it takes to cook so lets talk a bit about why chicken takes so much longer to cook than beef. We have to cook it thoroughly primarily because of salmonella and the density of chicken. With beef the big issue E-coli which is found on the surface of the meat. This is why cooking ground steak thoroughly is important, ground meats are, by design, all surface area. So when we cook chicken we have to get the inside temperature to 165° which is a far cry from the 160° surface temp that beef needs to be at to be considered safe.

Chicken is not flavorless. There are a lot of things that "Taste like chicken" but if you had ever had schmaltz (Chicken Fat) you will know that not only does chicken have flavor, it is pretty amazing compared side by side with other meats. The issue is that we need to cook the damn thing thoroughly which means we lose all the flavor because the fats run out of the meat. If fat is flavor, and it is, the more you cook any meat the less flavor you are going to have because the more fats you will lose. So cooking chicken (and turkey) is an uphill battle. We have to try and keep as much of the fat as possible AND cook it thoroughly. luckily people have been cooking chicken for thousands of years and we have a few tricks the one I use is Brining, which is just soaking the Chicken in saltwater for a few hours before cooking.

Some people want to know they WHY? of things and for those of you that do I present a quote from Craig Goldwyn's Huffington Post article "Brining"

Meat proteins are complex, long and coiled. When sodium and chloride ions get into the muscles, the electrical charges mess with the proteins, especially myosin, so they can hold onto moisture more tenaciously. As a result, less is lost during cooking.

When my favorite food mag, Cook’s Illustrated did a test, they discovered that a chicken soaked in plain water and another soaked in a brine both gained about 6 percent by weight. When they cooked both ,as well as an unsoaked bird straight from the package, the chicken straight from the package lost 18 percent of its original weight, the chicken soaked in water lost 12 percent of its presoak weight, and the brined chicken lost only 7 percent of its presoaked weight. Add to that the 6 percent water gain in the brined bird, and you have a hen that is 11 percent more juicy than straight out of the package.

Best of all, according to research conducted by Dr. Greg Blonder forAmazingRibs.com, the brine and the moisture is concentrated near the surface. This counteracts one of the biggest problems of cooking. The meat on the surface is hotter and is almost always overcooked and dry by the time the center is properly cooked. The added moisture near the surface helps the area that needs the most help.

So, I hope that helps, all I know is that brining helps me keep fats in my birds and I like that, I think that is what Craig is saying here, if not my apologies.

So what all this is leading to is, not only do you have to cook chicken longer, if you want to do that well you are going to benefit from soaking it in a little salt water before hand. You do not need anything special, a lot of brines will have you adding sugar and all sort of craziness, again chicken is delicious just let it alone.

My brine is just Salt and Water, I take my largest pot put 3/4 Cup of salt in it and add water. So many of these brines got you heating the water, and that might be very helpful in areas with iffy tap water but I just add the water to my salt. It is simple and effective.

I swish the salt around so its not just a pile on the bottom of the pot and then add the chicken.

It is always best for me to plan chicken because I do not want it sitting in my refrigerator for too long and I have found that family packs of chicken legs are a lot less expensive than some breasts, I am lucky I like dark meat because breasts are just more expensive, and have less fat btw so lose/lose it seems, but to each their own. Oh, and brining will aid in your breast also, I just prefer dark meats with a bone, again this is about getting to that marrow.

After letting my legs sit in this brine for at least 4 hours I am ready to cook. You can roast these in any pyrex casserole pan easily, if you have something you like to roast in by all means roast away however you do. I use a cast iron dutch oven, I leave the skin on and do not cover my chicken. I love eating the toasted and crispy skin and I want the fat the sits right under the skin to run enough that I can use it to cook my vegetables in.

 

These are before and after shots, I could have cooked them a bit longer but the meat fell off the bone just fine and was very juicy, and please lets translate that to fatty. It is a shame that we change language so much so that we feel good about what we are doing or eating. The "Juicy-ness" of this chicken is the fat. Sure I soaked it in water and that water is now inside this bird helping the fat penetrate, and boy does it penetrate, look at this...

Here is my Chicken as I am eating it, you can see that deep down near the bone there is liquid fat, oh how juicy :)

Now this is part one of our meal because this whole post is about marrow, which is inside the bone, inside the meat of this chicken leg. If you are a cartilage eater this is going to be a simple addition to what you already do, if not, well this might be a bit more difficult for you.

Lets talk briefly about organic vs. conventional. If you are eating organic, that's great, I encourage it, but I would warn that the USDA  is probably not the best source to learning if something is really organic (I will post something about the USDA and food health one day). If, like me, you primarily eat conventional meats, you should know that is what is commonly know as a bad idea. First off there is no way that any conventional farms treat animals humanely. It is awful, there is no other way to describe it, and because we contribute to them by purchasing their food we are bad people. I am serious, there is no excuse, but I continue to do it. Eating the marrow of chickens whose lives were spent within that industry is probably, on the surface, another bad idea. There are lots of fatty toxins that are stored in the marrow and, having MS, it is probably best to avoid toxins like that. I elect to take the risk, mainly because I am on a diet that will, by design, detoxify. This by no means says it is "safe," it would be much better to only eat organic and if I were to do that I would only benefit more form everything in the bone marrow.



To access and eat the marrow we have to remove the cartilage caps and get to the fibrous ends of the leg. The shaft is going to still be pretty solid and now that it is cooked will splinter, which is why you never give dogs or cats cooked bones.

Now that you have removed the cartilage, which you can do by grabbing it with you molars and prying it off the cancellous, or spongy ends of the bone. That spongy bone, is full of bone marrow so will have a very fibrous texture. It is edible, and if you did brine your chicken this will be fatty and have a nice salty quality to it. Above you can see the bone after I have eaten the cancellous on the ends of the shaft.

Once the two ends are removed we can splinter the shaft to access the marrow, now this may not seem to be worth it for the amount of marrow you are going to get, but the nutrients in bone marrow, for me, far outweigh the work I put in to access the marrow.

Overview of nutrients found in marrow from NutritionData

Calorie Information

Amounts Per Selected Serving

%DV

Calories

206

(862 kJ)

10%

  From Carbohydrate

11.4

(47.7 kJ)

  From Fat

127

(532 kJ)

  From Protein

68.2

(286 kJ)

    

Carbohydrates

Amounts Per Selected Serving

%DV

Total Carbohydrate

1.3

g

0%

Dietary Fiber

0.1

g

0%

Starch

~0.0

g

Sugars

0.0

g

Fats & Fatty Acids

Amounts Per Selected Serving

%DV

Total Fat

14.1

g

22%

Saturated Fat

5.9

g

29%

Monounsaturated Fat

~1.1

g

Polyunsaturated Fat

~0.3

g

Total Omega-3 fatty acids

~6.8

mg

Total Omega-6 fatty acids

~282

mg

Learn more about these fatty acids
and their equivalent names

Protein & Amino Acids

Amounts Per Selected Serving

%DV

Protein

17.1

g

34%

Vitamins

Amounts Per Selected Serving

%DV

Vitamin A

~0.4

IU

~0%

Vitamin C

~1.2

mg

~2%

Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol)

~0.5

mg

~2%

Vitamin K

~0.3

mg

~0%

Thiamin

~0.0

mg

~1%

Riboflavin

~0.0

mg

~0%

Niacin

~0.0

mg

~0%

Vitamin B6

~0.0

mg

~2%

Folate

~0.1

mg

~0%

Vitamin B12

~0.0

mg

~0%

Pantothenic Acid

~0.0

mg

~0%

Choline

~0.9

mg

  

Minerals

Amounts Per Selected Serving

%DV

Calcium

~7.2

mg

~1%

Iron

2.0

mg

11%

Magnesium

~1.0

mg

~0%

Phosphorus

~6.1

mg

~1%

Potassium

~16.0

mg

~0%

Sodium

217

mg

9%

Zinc

~0.0

mg

~0%

Copper

~0.0

mg

~1%

Manganese

~0.1

mg

~3%

Selenium

~0.6

mg

~1%

Fluoride

~

Sterols

Amounts Per Selected Serving

%DV

Cholesterol

47.4

mg

16%

Phytosterols

~

Other

Amounts Per Selected Serving

%DV

Alcohol

~0.0

g

Water

~2.3

g

Ash

~0.1

g