Salmon Croquettes: not your Mama’s salmon patties

One of the great benefits of eating well is making new, delicious meals. I never got anything like this from the McDonald’s drive-thru!

Salmon Croquettes
(based on a modified New Basics recipe from Ann Marie at Cheeseslave)

15 ounces wild Alaskan salmon (I used canned Bear and Wolf from Costco)
3/4 cups toasted bread crumbs (toast 4 slices frozen sprouted bread, pulse in food processor)
1/2 cup homemade mayonnaise (I used the recipe for mayonnaise in Nourishing Traditions – make it ahead of time to allow it to thicken)
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup minced yellow bell pepper (or celery)
1/4 cup minced red bell pepper 
1/4 cup fresh Italian parsley 
2 eggs
2 tsp grated lemon zest
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp organic Worcestershire sauce 
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup macadamia nut oil to start, more as needed
mayo to serve

1. Mince all the veggies together in a food processor.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine the salmon with 1/2 cup of the bread crumbs, along with all the other ingredients (except for the macadamia oil and the mayo to serve).
3. Shape into patties. Roll the patties in the rest of the breadcrumbs.
4. Heat 1/2 cup of macadamia oil in a cast iron or stainless steel skillet on medium heat. Cook the patties 3-4 minutes on each side, until brown and crispy.
5. Serve with mayonnaise

Serves 4. Serve with a big salad and a glass of wine.

Notes: If you use prepared bread crumbs, read the label to make sure it is just bread crumbs (e.g., no vegetable oil or other chemicals). Don’t be afraid to make real mayonnaise; throw out that stuff with soybean oil. A panini grill is a great way to heat the leftovers. Enjoy!

Think soy products are healthy? Think again.

I’ve eaten some soy products on purpose (edamame and a brief flirtation with soy milk), but I’m sure the vast majority of my past soy consumption was hidden (in chocolate … to just about everything processed). After reading about some of the dangers of soy in Nina Planck’s Real Food, I cleaned out my cupboards of all products with vegetable oil, including my former favorite salad dressing that contained soybean oil.

Acording to Kaayla T. Daniel, Ph.D., hundreds of epidemiological, clinical and laboratory studies link soy to: 

• Malnutrition
• Digestive distress
• Thyroid dysfunction
• Cognitive decline
• Reproductive disorders
• Infertility
• Birth defects
• Immune system breakdown
• Heart disease
• Cancer

“Second generation soy foods are manufactured using high heat and pressure, chemical solvents, acids and alkalis, extruders and other harsh tools that are very likely to contain or produce toxic or carcinogenic residues.”
— Kaayla T Daniel, author of The Whole Soy Story

Soy protein is a big staple of the vegan and vegetarian diet, in tofu and powder form just to name a couple of popular items. Interestingly, even some vegans are recognizing the dangers are soy, and bill themselves as soy-free.

Listen to the piece below for an audio interview with Sally Fallon about why soy is toxic.

What about Asians who eat soy, and seem to be healthier than we are? The soy they eat is fermented soy, as in soy sauce, which is not the toxic chemically-altered kind that’s in our American industrial food; they also eat smaller quantities of soy overall. Small quantities of the fermented products of soy sauce, miso and tempeh are fine for healthy people, especially if they have been slowly fermented over time, to maximize the reduction of toxins in soy.

For further information, check out this Soy Alert from the Weston A. Price Foundation. Be well!

27 March 2012 Update: Check out Food Renegade for more research on dangers of soy http://www.foodrenegade.com/dangers-of-soy/

Do the recent food recalls scare you? Not me.

Well maybe they do scare me, but not for reasons you might think. When I heard about the egg recall, I didn’t run to the fridge to see if my eggs were on the recall list; I buy my eggs from a local family farm. When I heard about the Walmart meat recall, I knew it did not affect me; I do not buy meat at Walmart, especially not nitrates/nitrites-laden deli meat.

So what’s scary about the recall to me? The probability that the government will react in a way that fails to address the real problem: industrial farming methods and manufacturing processes.

Michael Pollan is optimistic that this will be one of those “teachable moments” on the problems of the industrial food system and the need for reform. I really hope he’s right. Here’s what Pollan had to say on Anderson Cooper 360 last night, as interviewed by Dr. Sanjay Gupta:

There have not been the same sort of outbreaks with organic operations. However, organic egg operations are so tiny compared to conventional egg producers, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I eat eggs, and I buy them whenever I can at the farmers’ market. I know how those eggs are raised. They’re raised on grass. The animals live outdoors, in small flocks. They’re raised much the same as in the days before we had to worry about salmonella.

So what’s the big deal about industrial food? Most of it is not real food. Hear what Nina Planck has to say about industrial food.

And check out this article from the Agriculture Society that says, … if we changed our farming practices and methods back to the ways used by traditional farmers through the ages, we would heal the land, the creatures, and our bodies of many of the modern illnesses, problems, and scourges that plague our modern feedlots and factory farm environments.

It’s not a coincidence that you’re hearing more and more about salmonella outbreaks. They will continue to make headlines until this country gets its priorities straight about our food supply and the motivations behind the major players. Get educated about real food, eat real food and you’ll open up a whole new world to yourself. You can do it!

Update (8/25/10): The farms responsible for selling the eggs infected with salmonella continue to produce and sell their product while the FDA investigates. Millions of eggs per day are being cracked open and pasteurized (exposed to high temperatures for a period of time) to kill the salmonella. They are then being sold as liquid egg or added to other products. Pay attention! Industrial food suppliers are

Julia Ross says, “Junk moods come from junk foods.”

You’ve probably heard that nutrition plays an important role in how we feel, but have you taken it to heart? If you feel crummy, I’d guess that your diet probably includes:

1. Junk food (fast food, sugar, white flour, vegetable oil, processed food), or
2. Foods you think are healthy, but are not (low fat meats like skinless chicken breast, or worse … no meat, soy products, grains)

Watch this five-minute video from the CheeseSlave’s online cooking class on how plenty of protein and good fats can help you be well:

Give your brain the nutrients it needs, and you will feel well and be well. The nutrients your brain needs are the same that your whole body needs for optimal functioning. I was addicted to white flour and sugar for years. I have recently ditched junk food, and I feel better than I have in more than a decade! And I’m not being “good” or exercising an iron will, I am eating real, beautiful, delicious food that just happens to be exactly what my brain and body need. I really feel like a new person, and I hope the information I share will help you too.

To learn about real food, read Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck.

For more information about how food affects your mood, check out The Mood Cure (by Julia Ross).

Raw milk!

Until five weeks ago raw milk had never passed my lips, nor had it ever crossed my mind. Thanks to Nina Planck’s book Real Food: What to Eat and Why, it’s now a regular part of my daily diet, and I can’t imagine life without it. Raw milk is creamy, sweet, fresh, fat and an honest-to-goodness real whole food.

Besides the great taste, there are many nutritional benefits to drinking raw milk, including vitamins and more available calcium that are damaged if pasteurized. Milk is a whole food, complete with protein, fat and carbohydrates. What about people who say they are lactose intolerant? They can drink raw milk because it contains the lactase enzyme that’s necessary to digest the lactose (lactase is killed when pasteurized). Here’s Real Food author Nina Planck on dairy and eggs. Here’s Sally Fallon on real raw milk.

In some states it’s actually illegal to buy and sell raw milk. Really. You can buy cigarettes and all kinds of toxic substances masquerading as food, but not wholesome raw milk. That’s not the case in Texas; you just have to buy it from the farm. The weekly 40-mile round-trip trek to the Lucky Layla Farm Store at  Lavon Farms in Plano, where they sell milk from pastured champion Guernsey and Jersey cows, is a small price to pay.

Want to learn more about raw milk, including where you can get it? Visit A Campaign for Real Milk, a project of the Weston A. Price Foundation.