Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
When It Comes to Real Food, Simple and Traditional Tastes Best
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
A traditional winter stew of grassfed meat and organic vegetables tastes wonderful.
Many people believe that good cooking is a mystery, one that can only be solved by celebrity chefs using arcane ingredients and complex methods. These TV chefs often use new methods and combinations that have been invented by the chefs, who gets praised for their innovation. High-tech modern products like meat glue are often used by such chefs.
I believe that simple recipes, using real food such as grassfed meat and organic traditional vegetables, using traditional food combinations, and traditional methods, prepared by ordinary people, taste the best.
I believe that cooking should be easy, not complex and difficult.
I am inspired by the quality and benefits of grassfed meat and real food, with their wonderful natural flavors. I am inspired by the ingenious simplicity of traditional cooking, which often uses just a few ingredients, simply combined and prepared, to produce outstanding, healthy food. These flavor combinations became traditional because they are really good. Many of these traditions are being lost, and I am honored to help preserve some of them in my cookbooks.
I contend that the best grassfed meat and real food is simple, using traditional methods, traditional ingredients, and easy recipes. When you have great ingredients, their wonderful natural taste should come out.
With Real Food — Simple Is Better
When I wrote my two cookbooks, Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue, I had several goals. One of the most important was to make them simple, and easy to use. Another goal was to provide recipes that were absolutely delicious. A third goal was to create recipes that people would actually make.
These three goals are not contradictory, if you are using grassfed meat and real food. The quality of these foods from nature is so high that the food itself provides most of the flavor. In fact, I contend that grassfed meat and real food are the best when prepared simply with traditional methods and ingredients. You can have a wonderful dish with just a few ingredients, if they are of the highest quality, and carefully combined. When you use only a few ingredients, all are important and changing even one of them can have a dramatic effect on the taste of the dish.
Real food ingredients have so much natural flavor and goodness that they are at their best when made simply, so that their wonderful natural flavor can come out.
Then, there is the simple fact that complex recipes, with dozens of ingredients, and difficult, complex techniques, are much harder and take much more effort and time to make. Often complex recipes fail, for any of a number of reasons. Usually, complex recipes are read, admired, and never made.
I want my cooking to be easy and simple, and delicious. I wrote these books for the ordinary person, because I wanted them to have ways to cook tender grassfed meat that were not only delicious, but easy. I wanted my recipes to be used, and enjoyed.
I did not write these books for critical acclaim, but to help people make delicious grassfed meat, the easy way.
In fact, I admit it, I prefer to make easy meals! It is not only easier, it is more fun!
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
This Thanksgiving, Cook It Yourself
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
The centerpiece of the traditional Thanksgiving feast.
Thanksgiving gets a great deal of attention every year. For many, it is a time for families to see each other over a large traditional meal. Thanksgiving is the American feast. I like the idea of being thankful for the good things in my life. I happen to love the tradition, and to love eating the old favorites, prepared from real food. Yet I must confess something. I also love to cook the Thanksgiving feast.
Yes, it is a lot of work. Especially when you add the trimmings, such as homemade stuffing and real gravy, made with fresh broth and the magnificent turkey drippings. But to see the joy it brings to those who eat it-that is truly fulfilling. And chances are that your work will be very much appreciated.
And I want to confess something else. It is not that complicated. If you get real ingredients, even average cooking skills will result in a wonderful meal. I make a turkey, a stuffing, roast some vegetables in the pan with the turkey, roast some sweet potatoes on the side, make some simple boiled vegetables, and a wonderful gravy from the drippings. None of these items are difficult to prepare. It is just that there are a lot of them, and some are time consuming. The solution is planning and organization.
I plan the cooking of each dish, organize the ingredients, start early in the morning, and it always goes well. And the smell of the roasting turkey, lovingly basted with butter, is just magnificent.
Often, you can also get family members and friends to help with some of the tasks, and it can become a fun project, with a result that everyone will enjoy.
It has become common for supermarkets to offer people a full Thanksgiving meal, which just needs to be reheated, for a large amount of money. I am certain that no reheated meal from a store can possibly compete with a home cooked meal of real food. Food prepared for people you love or like, with love, has a special quality all its own.
After the feast, turkey leftovers are considered a problem by many people. Not me. Here is a link to a recipe for the turkey broth I make after every Thanksgiving, which uses those leftovers to create a wonderful traditional broth:
Turkey Broth from Leftovers — Paleo, Primal, and Delicious
Happy Thanksgiving! May you and yours eat well!
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday blog carnival.
Real Food Plus Real Sleep
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Cats know the value of sleep.
I have written so many times of the benefits of avoiding factory foods, and eating only real food. These benefits are real, and they have greatly improved my health and enabled me not to need medical care for over a decade. But I have come to realize something. Even though it is a lot of work and effort to just eat real food, it is not enough.
Our bodies need sleep to get the full benefits of the nutrients in the food. Our bodies use this time to rest and rejuvenate. And our bodies need enough sleep, something very few of us get these days.
It is somewhat hypocritical for me to advocate the benefits of getting enough sleep, because I usually do not get enough. To be honest, it is common for me to sleep for only four hours. But last night, for some reason, I did get enough sleep. I slept for over eight hours. And the benefits were so profound that I did some research. Now I have a new goal to go along with my good diet—getting enough sleep.
The Benefits of Sleep
There is a good reason for everything in nature. We sleep for a number of important purposes.
From a food perspective, sleep is absolutely vital to get the full benefit of real food. The natural functions of our bodies use the time we are asleep to repair and rejuvenate our bodies. This does not work well unless our bodies have all the nutrients we need to do this. A crucial reason to eat only real food, so we can get those nutrients. But we also need enough sleep so our natural functions can concentrate the energy of the body on repair and rejuvenation. If we are awake and engaging in work or other activities, our natural functions have far less energy available to them to do their work.
I thought I was healthy, but one night of getting enough sleep made me feel even better. Much better. And much more alert and productive.
I now realize that if I am going to enjoy the full benefits of the real food that I put so much effort into obtaining and cooking, I will also need to get enough sleep.
How Much Sleep?
Before the advent of electricity, most people would sleep during most or all of the hours of darkness, and wake early in the morning, often with the sun. Humans are made to be active during the day, and to sleep at night. Other animals sleep during most of the day and are active at night. This natural sleep pattern was followed for most of human history, though there were exceptions. While Dr. Weston A. Price did not write much about the sleep patterns of the healthy peoples he studied, the information we have on them indicates that they slept during the night and were active during the day. Most of them did not have electricity or artificial lighting. But now, technology and lighting have enabled humans to be active, alert, and productive at night, which is not ideal for us.
Albert Einstein, one of the brightest and most productive humans to ever live, slept ten hours a night, every night. He literally changed the world with research and analysis.
Sophia Loren, the actress, is in her mid-seventies. She is still amazingly beautiful, active, and attractive, with great skin and muscle tone. She goes to bed every night at eight p.m. and wakes up at five a.m., getting nine hours of sleep every night. While diet and exercise are also a vital part of how she stays so healthy, she considers this long sleep to be very important.
I believe that eight to ten hours of sleep are ideal for us, but most of us get so much less.
My Own Sleep Issue
Since I have adopted my real food diet, I have no trouble falling asleep. I can also decide the time I want to wake up, and I will wake at that time. In fact, I stopped setting an alarm clock, because I would always wake up just before the alarm rang.
The problem is that the day is much too short for me. I have many interests, and have often worked into the wee hours of the morning, engrossed in what I was learning or writing. One of my greatest joys is learning, and the more I learn, the more I want to learn. And there are the necessities of life, such as cooking, eating, socializing, and spending time with my family. I deliberately chose to sleep less so I would have more time to do the many things that need doing, and that I want to do.
Last night, I did not set a time to wake up. I was tired. I slept for eight hours. And felt so much better.
Now, I have decided to get those eight to ten hours of sleep, somehow. Now that I understand its importance, I will find a way to do it.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
How Real Food Really Heals
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
In our heavily medicated culture, we have been conditioned to believe that the way to get well is to have a doctor diagnose our illness, and prescribe a drug for it.
We then expect to take the drug, and get well. In many cases, we do not get well. The symptoms are relieved, and we get some immediate relief, but the underlying cause of the illness is not touched.
Many people who try to use food first for healing treat it like taking a drug. For example, people with a sore throat will take a honey vinegar drink, expecting it to act like a drug and provide immediate relief. Sometime it will, sometimes it will not. Sometimes the underlying condition will disappear. And sometimes it will not.
This is because the food we eat does not act like drugs. No food acts directly to cure an illness. Instead, the food provides various substances to our bodies. It is the natural functions of our bodies that use these substances to actually heal us.
So, if eating a particular real food does not help, it is likely that something else the body needs is missing.
Eating a diversified, wide ranging diet of real foods is our best chance of giving our bodies what they need to stay healthy. And, if we avoid chemicals that deceive our senses, like the flavor chemicals put in processed foods, our bodies may actually tell us what foods we need.
How Real Food Helps Us Heal
If you try to use food to help your body heal, eventually you will realize that some foods that help you one time, will not help the next. But some other foods may. This is because the content and chemistry of our bodies is constantly changing, and our natural functions have many different ways of resisting disease and healing us, only some of which are understood. From my own experience, and the reported experience of others that I know, and from the rare studies in this area, I believe that our bodies know how to heal most conditions. But they must have the right ingredients to perform these healings, which could also be viewed as “repair jobs.”
Some of these ingredients are produced by our bodies. But other ingredients can only be obtained from food. Our bodies also need the right substances from food to make the ingredients our bodies produce. The key is to eat the foods that our bodies need for our natural functions to work well.
So How Do We Know What Foods to Eat?
Our ancestral food traditions give us a lot of information. These traditions emphasize a huge variety of real foods, prepared and combined in many different ways.
But the best guide we have is the craving for a particular food. Our bodies know what foods we need to eat, and make us hungry for them. Our ancestors could trust these cravings. But most modern people cannot.
Factory food and chemicals deceive our natural sense of what is needed.
We cannot trust these cravings, if we eat processed food, or food with chemicals. That is because these foods have chemicals added to them that fool our bodies into believing that the food contains something it does not. Flavor enhancers do this, and chemicals that make people crave a certain factory food do this. Large amounts of refined sugar do this, as do chemical additives. It is like trying to see a path when you have been given hallucinogenic drugs.
The only way to get our cravings back on track is to eat only real food, with no added chemicals. Once we do this, our bodies can recover their natural abilities to know what to eat.
An Example
Some years ago, the skin on my fingertips was drying, peeling, and splitting. I ate a good diet, and I tried various natural remedies, but nothing helped. I did avoid all processed foods and foods with added chemicals .One day, I visited a wonderful organic farm, where the soil had never been sprayed with chemicals. Some apricots were for sale at that farm, and I felt an intense craving for them. I should mention that I never liked apricots. But I went with the feeling, and bought a large amount of these apricots. Once we got home, I began eating them in large quantities. They were delicious, and I loved eating them. They were gone in a few days, and so was my skin problem. It never returned.
Now, that was not just the apricots, but many of the other real foods I was eating at the time, combining to give the natural functions of my body the ingredients they needed to repair my body. But the apricots did provide the missing ingredient, whatever it was.
Now, I am not saying to stop using modern medicine. It can be very helpful, even lifesaving, especially in cases of trauma.
But I am saying that I have found that supporting the natural functions of my body with real food, avoiding all factory food, and listening to what my body wants has been very effective in keeping me healthy, and in healing conditions that the doctors could not help me with.
Disclaimer: Information found on the Tender Grassfed Meat site, including this article, is meant for educational and informational purposes only. Any statements or claims about the possible health benefits conferred by any foods or anything else have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. None of the content on the Tender Grassfed Meat site should be relied upon for any purpose, and nothing here is a substitute for a medical diagnosis or medical treatment.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
The Poor Man’s Caviar — A Potato Cooked in Embers
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
This humble potato could be turned into a gourmet delight by a lost traditional method.
Many years ago, I used to barbecue for my parents and my aunt and uncle, on summer weekends.
I used to make simple roasts on a Weber kettle, which turned out good, even back then.
My uncle by marriage was a very wealthy dentist. He had grown up so poor that he had often been hungry, and his stomach had actually shrunk from hunger. He could only eat small quantities at one time, and was always hungry. While he was wealthy, he was very frugal, to be polite. He was usually friendly, but sometimes he would get very upset for reasons that no one else understood.
One day, just after I finished cooking, and was about to put out the fire, he showed up with a potato clutched in his hand. He smiled and asked if he could use the fire. I was astonished, as my uncle had never been known to cook anything. I agreed, and watched with fascination, as he buried the potato in the burned down coals, carefully arranging each coal with the tongs as if he was painting a portrait. This procedure took a long time, until he was satisfied that the arrangement of the coals was perfect. “Don’t touch it!” He snarled, then walked off.
Sometime later, he dug the potato out of the coals, and put it on a plate. It was burned totally black. “Is he actually going to eat that?” I wondered.
Well, he did eat it, with nothing else. He broke the potato open, and slowly ate the inside of the potato, with an expression of pure bliss on his face. The rest of us watched in wonder, unable to understand why he was enjoying it so much.
Being curious, I asked him if I could have a taste. His face twisted in the instant fury that sometimes came over him — “Get your own potato!” he shrieked. I backed off.
The next weekend, I barbecued again, and he showed up with his potato again, after the cooking was over. He went through the same procedure, and blissfully ate the scorched potato as we quietly watched him. This happened week after week. I did not dare ask him for a taste.
His potato antics became a subject for family discussion. Everyone agreed that the potato must taste terrible. But why did he go to so much trouble, and why did he enjoy it so much?
One week, when he appeared to ask for permission to use the fire, I asked if he could make one for me. I braced for the explosion, but he smiled, and cheerfully agreed. He returned with another potato. When the potatoes were done, he placed my potato on a plate. It was burned black, as usual. The potato skin broke open at the touch of the fork. I tasted some of the inside, expecting it to taste burned and bad. I was wrong. It was wonderful, easily the best vegetable I had ever tasted. It was soft, hot, with a surprisingly complex and utterly delicious flavor, somewhat sweet and smoky. I began to eat it slowly, enjoying every bite.
I tried many times to make potatoes like that, but they were never anything special. Nothing like the masterpiece he made. He had a knack, or he knew something, a way of doing it, that he never shared.
I asked him a couple of times, but he would never answer.
There is so much traditional cooking knowledge that we have lost, countless treasures that used to be passed down from generation to generation. They are worth saving.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
The Hippocratic Alternative — Food
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Hippocrates, the great healer.
With the current controversy over medical insurance, our nation seems fixated on drugs and medical treatment as being the only way to maintain health. No doubt drugs and medical care can be necessary under certain circumstances, especially trauma.
But they are not the only way to stay healthy, under normal circumstances. The most famous and successful physician of ancient times, Hippocrates of Kos, had a very different approach.
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.â€
Modern Medicine
Modern medicine has a one-size-fits-all approach to disease. Every patient who is diagnosed with a particular disease is supposed to receive the same treatment. One size fits all. Often the same dose of drugs is prescribed with no regard for the body weight of the patient.
Usually, food is never even considered when treating illness. Drugs are the treatment of choice, though surgery is often used. The majority of treatments used for most illnesses are not even designed to cure the disease, but to help the patient “manage” the disease, by suppressing the symptoms. Many people have bad reactions to various drugs, called “side effects.” This can result in the prescription of yet another drug, which could have bad effects on the patient, which could lead to the prescription of yet another drug.
According to the Mayo clinic, and to CBS news, 70 percent of Americans take at least one prescription drug. And many of these people take several prescription drugs. This statistic does not even consider over the counter drugs, which are also widely used.
Yet this huge amount of drug use has not resulted in good health for the American population.
Let me make this clear. Modern medicine can achieve some amazing results, such as reattaching severed fingers and limbs, and saving the lives of those who have suffered trauma. Yet in many instances, it “manages” rather than cures.
Hippocratic Medicine
Hippocrates had a very different approach. Greek medicine of his time was far more advanced than most people realize, and did use drugs and surgery. Contemporary Greek writings show that Greek citizens led long lives, often recovered from serious wounds, and were expected to put on heavy armor and fight in brutal hand-to-hand combat when needed, even into their seventies. Great emphasis was placed on personal cleanliness, and Greek doctors were very skilled at disinfecting and treating battle wounds, and many other injuries. They had many medications, compounded from plants and other substances, and were skilled at performing many kinds of surgeries.
Hippocrates was the most successful doctor of his time, and became famous. He became so famous that he was asked to come to Athens to stop a plague that was killing many people while the city was under siege. Hippocrates cured the plague, and ended the epidemic, by, among other things, getting the people to boil their drinking water.
Yet Hippocrates believed in treating most illness with what he called “regimen,” using food, exercise, massage, sleep, and relaxation as the treatments of choice. Only if these methods failed, or if the patient was incapable of using them, would drugs be used. Surgery would be done only if there was no alternative. Each patient was considered to be a unique individual, and the treatment would be customized for the unique condition of each patient. Hippocrates had great success in using these methods.
Many Greek physicians resisted his methods, because, then, as now, it was much more profitable to use drugs and surgeries.
This led Hippocrates to create new moral standards for physicians, placing the welfare of the patient before the profit of the doctor. These standards were set forth in the oath he created for doctors, the famous Hippocratic Oath.
In the 1930s, Dr. Weston A. Price studied many peoples who were eating the traditional diets of their ancestors. In every case, these people had perfect teeth, and none of the chronic diseases that plague our culture. This research is direct proof of Hippocrates’ belief that food was the best way to prevent and treat many illnesses.
What We Can Learn from Hippocrates
Modern medicine is too focused on drugs, radiation, and surgery as the only way to treat illness. I believe we could greatly drive down the cost of medical care, and be a much healthier nation, if doctors were actually trained in the Hippocratic methods of healing, and were required to be just as familiar with the healing effects of real food as they are with drugs. In fact, our whole society needs to relearn and use the benefits of eating real food, rather than modern factory foods.
Many individuals have reported enjoying good health and curing all kinds of illness just by eating the right foods, and avoiding the wrong foods.
We can still use modern medical methods when needed, but I believe they would be needed far less often, if our population was well nourished, and if doctors used Hippocratic regimen as the treatment of choice (when possible).
We would also have more success if we abandoned the “one-size-fits-all” approach, and treated each patient as a unique individual.
Finally, we need to return to the moral standards set down by Hippocrates. The main motive of doctors should be to heal people, not to make money. People who are mainly concerned with making money should go elsewhere. People who truly want to heal should be the doctors. The welfare of the patient must come before the profit of the doctor.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
The Joy of Engaged Cooking, and Real Food
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Engaged cooking resulted in this wonderful, delicious grassfed pot roast.
Many view cooking as a boring chore, to be done as quickly as possible, with as little effort as possible. Others never cook, living on prepackaged meals, takeout, and restaurants. It has been reported that two-thirds of the American people do not even know how to cook.
I view cooking as an absolute necessity. Real food, the food of our ancestors, does not come in a plastic package you can nuke in a microwave. Sadly, real food rarely exists in restaurants, and when it does, it is extremely expensive.
So, if you are going to enjoy the vital benefits of real food, someone in your family is going to have to cook ,and it might as well be you. But I do not view cooking as a chore. Yes, it can be a lot of work, but it can also be an art form, one that brings health as well as joy, when done well. And the very act of doing it can be a lot of fun!
The key is to be engaged in your cooking.
Engaged Cooking
Some people just go through the motions when they cook, mechanically following the instructions in a recipe, just wanting to get it over with. This attitude leads to boredom, frustration, and usually results in a meal that is mediocre, or worse.
Not me. Every meal is an adventure, every time I cook it is different, and I have many rewarding experiences.
Here is why. Every food item is unique. I mean every single item of real food is somewhat different than any other. In other words, the T-bone steak I cook today is different from the one I cook in a week, even if it is from the same ranch, is cut the same way, and weighs the same. This uniqueness is true of every item of real food. No two grapes are exactly alike. every teaspoon of a particular spice tastes and behaves a bit different, even if it comes from the same bottle. Every individual onion has unique qualities, even from the onions that grew next to it and were harvested at the same time. The same is true of every individual bit of real food.
Nothing remains exactly the same, as change is the nature of life.
The same is true of the inanimate manufactured items we use in cooking. No stove cooks exactly the same, even if they come from the same manufacturing lot. Each oven has its own hot spots, and cooler spots. The size and shape of the oven also has an impact, as does the altitude. Burners, even on the same stove, vary in how much heat they give off, regardless of the setting. Every pan conducts heat a bit differently. No stove is perfectly level, and the tilt of the stove and oven also have an effect.
Climate, moisture, temperature in the kitchen, and other factors we are not aware of, change every time we cook.
This is true not only of appliances, but of barbecue fires. No two fires, even if made in the same barbecue, adjusted the same way, with the same fuel, will be alike, or will behave alike.
Everything matters, and everything is unique. And everything changes as time goes on.
What does this mean in cooking? To me, it means I pay attention to what actually happens when the cooking begins. Every cooking experience is unique. I pay attention to how the food is cooking, to how hot the oven or pan seem to be, to the smells of the cooking food. I make adjustments as I go, trusting my instincts. If something seems to be burning, or a sauce seems too thin, or the smell seems off, I take action. I make little adjustments, sometimes major ones. When you do this enough, there is a message in the sounds of the cooking, the smells, the look of roasting meat, the way the fat sizzles in a pan, that tells you things. This sense can only be developed by experience. But responding effectively to these messages is an art, and extremely enjoyable, exciting, even inspiring.
Now, this does not mean that I spend every moment a dish cooks staring at the dish, waiting for something to happen. For example, if I place a covered pot in a slow oven to cook for three hours, I will not stand by the oven for three hours. But I will peek into the pot once or twice, just too make sure that the simmering is taking place as it should. And I will come into the kitchen a couple of times, to make sure there are no smells or sounds that are out of place. And if all is going well, I know that I have done what I need to do, that meal, that time, that day.
The instructions in my cookbooks, Tender Grassfed Meat, and Tender Grassfed Barbecue, are as detailed as I can efficiently make them, and the recipes have been cooked by me multiple times, with success.
Yet even the most clear, detailed recipe is a road map. You still have to take the journey. If you follow the recipes, you can expect success. And, as you become an experienced cook, and begin to recognize things, you will begin to understand the magical messages of smells, cooking sounds, the look of the food, and you are in for a lot of enjoyment. And your food will get better and better.
Finally, cooking a great meal of real food is one of the best things you can do for your family, your friends, and yourself. The joy of a great meal brings happiness, and the nutrition provided by real food gives health.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Cooking—The Most Important Skill
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Click on this photo to see photos of home-cooked recipes from Tender Grassfed Meat.
Your first reaction to the title of this post might be, “What!? Cooking is important?”
That is typical of a culture that no longer values cooking, one of the oldest and most vital human skills. In fact, two-thirds of American adults know almost nothing about cooking, and never cook. To these folks, cooking means heating up an already prepared product in the microwave, or warming up takeout that has gotten cold.
Suppose you had the power to create an almost magical medicine that had no side effects, yet gave you strong bones, powerful muscles, strength, stamina, great vision and hearing, a happy optimistic viewpoint, a clear mind that can focus on anything, a great memory, an immune system so strong that you almost never get sick?
Suppose this power and this medicine brought great happiness and pleasure to all who used it?
Would you want this power?
Well, you can learn this power, and make that medicine.
The power is cooking, and the “medicine” is real food.
The Power of Real Food
Nothing affects the health of our bodies as much as the food we eat. Our bodies are made of the food we eat. Our bodies use the food we eat to repair themselves, to run the natural functions of the body, and to get energy. We need the right kinds of food, and enough of it. If people do not have enough food, they die. If people do not get enough good real food, their health deteriorates and they become vulnerable to all kinds of diseases.
Doctors and hospitals can be very good for traumatic injuries, and some very serious conditions, yet their drugs and surgeries and radiation cannot keep our bodies healthy.
Only food can do that.
Hippocrates, the most famous of doctors, said it best:
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy foodâ€
In ancient times, and actually until the twentieth century, most food was real, and grown and produced in accordance with the laws of nature. Countless generations of humans had eaten this kind of food, and our bodies adapted to using it. The main problem was getting enough of it, and obtaining certain foods that could be hard to get.
In modern America today, most of the food has been raised with chemicals, and has been altered. Fruits and vegetables are grown in poor soil with the use of chemical fertilizers. Produce has been altered to have a longer shelf life and better appearance, at the cost of taste and nutrition. Meat animals are fed substances unnatural to them, that cause the very composition of their fat and meat to change. Antibiotics, growth hormones, and other drugs are used to cause meat animals to grow faster.
Humans have never eaten this kind of modified food before the twentieth century.
Real food is the unmodified food of our ancestors, grown in good soil, or grazed on good grass, without the use of chemicals. It is what our bodies know how to process, and we thrive on it. But it is not enough to just buy real food. You have to know how to cook it.
The Magic of Cooking
The art of cooking transforms produce and meat into almost magical creations that give our bodies the nutrition they so desperately need, and create great pleasure for the people who eat a well cooked meal. You cannot get this kind of food in a can or microwavable container. You can almost never get it in a restaurant. But you can learn how to cook it. You can create the magical “medicine” advocated by Hippocrates, which can keep your body healthy and functioning perfectly.
Our ancestors knew this, and knew what foods to eat, and how to combine foods to sustain life and health. Much of this knowledge has been lost, yet much has been preserved. My major motive in writing my cookbooks, Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue, has been to rediscover and preserve some knowledge of how to cook grassfed meat, perhaps the oldest and most valued food of humanity. Learning how to cook and eat this meat and other real foods healed all the problems that modern medicine could not help me with.
I am an attorney, yet cooking real food is my most valuable skill, without a doubt.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday, and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Nourish the Terrain with Real Food
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
These pastured eggs with their deep orange yolks are a wonderful example of real food.
A debate between two nineteenth century French researchers ended up creating the core belief of the modern medical system.
Nearly everyone has heard of Louis Pasteur, but very few have heard of Claude Bernard.
Modern medicine is built on the germ theory proposed by Pasteur. Yet there is mounting evidence that Bernard, who had a different theory, was correct. In fact, Pasteur was reported to have blurted out the words “Bernard is right!” shortly before he died. The medical profession and mainstream scientific establishment claim that Pasteur never said this.
Why is the controversy still important? Because the modern medical system, built on the Pasteur theory of germs being the cause of most disease, fails many people. Some of those people who found no help from conventional medicine turned to the Bernard theory without even knowing it, and restored their health.
With one important addition—eating real food.
I am one of those people, and I know many others.
The Two Theories
Most people are familiar with the germ theory of disease advocated by Pasteur. This theory claims that most illness is caused by germs, tiny organisms like bacteria and viruses. Since these organisms are the cause of illness, the way to cure illness is to kill the germs. This can aggressively be done through medication, sanitation, radiation, and other methods outside the natural defenses of the body.
In fact, the symptoms of disease are attacked by outside interventions such as surgery, drugs, and radiation—all aimed at killing the organisms that are blamed for the disease. This approach, which is the cornerstone of modern medicine, often does great harm to the patient, and often fails to cure them.
It can work, but it is common for the symptoms to return at a later date.
Bernard believed that the most important part of defeating disease was what he called “the terrain.”
The terrain is the body of the patient, and the natural functions of that body. Bernard taught that the body is full of bacteria, which are benign and helpful if the body is working properly. But if the body becomes weakened, or injured, or malnourished, some of these bacteria change and become dangerous, causing disease.
To Pasteur, killing the pathogens through outside intervention was the way to heal. To Bernard, strengthening the “terrain,” the body, enabled the body to heal itself, creating a condition where the bad bacteria became benign and helpful again.
What We Know Now
We know that killing outside germs through basic hygiene helps prevent disease. Yet we also know that the body needs beneficial bacteria to live, and killing too many of these bacteria has bad effects on the body, and they are often replaced with harmful organisms.
We know that antibiotics and other aggressive medical interventions can relieve symptoms, but they usually fail to treat the cause of the symptoms, which often return at a later date.
Yet we also know that many people who have no medical intervention recover from every kind of illness, and often do not see the symptoms return.
My Experience, and the Role of Food
I have had many illnesses over most of my life. I have had a lot of medical treatment for various conditions. At first, the treatment relieved the symptoms. But my body became weaker from the prescription drugs and other treatments. After some time, the symptoms always returned, and I would need more treatment. Eventually, I reached a point where the medical interventions did not work.
What saved me was an unwitting turn toward Bernard’s theory. I strengthened my body by switching to real food, and avoiding toxins. The real food and grassfed meat gave my body the nutrition it needed to function properly. As my terrain became stronger and stronger, I became healthier and healthier. I have not needed any medical intervention in over ten years.
I do practice hygiene, which gives my body less to fight off, and I believe there is a proper place for medical intervention when it is truly needed. But the best path I have found for myself is to nourish my terrain by avoiding toxins, including dangerous bacteria, and eating real food only. That way, the natural functions of my body keep it healthy. Many of my friends in the real food movement have had a similar experience.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday and Real Food Wednesday blog carnivals.
Science Verifies Health Benefits of Traditional Food Combinations
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Traditional Chinese seasoning combination of garlic, ginger, and green onions.
In researching my upcoming book on traditional cooking, I was fascinated to see how many cultures ate particular food combinations. Certain foods and spices would always be eaten together. I saw this in the traditional cuisines of Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, Latin America, almost everywhere. Why were these foods always combined in a particular cuisine?
I did a bit of research and was delighted to find that science has verified the health benefits of some of these traditional food combinations.
Our ancestors were remarkably well informed about the foods they ate, even without science and research. They had their traditions, which represented the collected knowledge of their ancestors, passed down from father to son, from mother to daughter, over the centuries. Not all of these traditions have been verified, but some of them have been.
Some Verified Benefits of Traditional Food Combinations
Throughout traditional Europe, bread was always eaten with butter. In areas were butter was hard to get, bread was always eaten with some other fat. In many areas it was pork lard or pork fat, often spread on the bread while still raw. Bread was also fried in bacon grease. Olive oil was sometimes used, especially in Southern Italy. But some kind of fat, usually a lot of fat, was always spread on the bread.
Potatoes were also always eaten with fat, including butter, cheese, cream, lard, bacon, chicken fat, duck fat, beef tallow, lamb tallow, and other animal fats.
Bread and potatoes are very high in carbohydrates, and can cause glycemic effects that can harm the body.
Science has verified that fat slows the absorption of the sugar from carbohydrates. This can slow down and often prevent the harmful “sugar rush” effect of eating carbs and sugars. Thus the traditions of always eating these carb-heavy foods with fat had a definite health benefit.
Another example is the Chinese seasoning combination of garlic, ginger, and green onions, which is used in a huge number of traditional Chinese dishes. All of these vegetables have proven antibacterial and blood purifying effects, and ginger is known to help digestion. There was an old Chinese belief that ginger drove “the devils” out of the food. The numerous health benefits of garlic have been proven by science, as have the antibacterial effects of green onions. The combination of all three has not been tested, but I suspect that they are even more effective in combination.
Turmeric has proven antibacterial and anti-inflammatory qualities, and recent research has shown that it may help the natural processes of the body avoid Alzheimer’s disease. Even more recent research has shown that the helpful effect of turmeric is substantially increased when it is consumed with black pepper, which has a substance that works to increase the beneficial effects of curcumin (the active ingredient in turmeric).
Turmeric is a very common spice in India, being a component of almost every curry spice combination. Turmeric is nearly always combined with black pepper in these dishes.
India may have the lowest rate of Alzheimer’s disease in the developed world.
These are just a few of the traditional food combinations whose beneficial qualities have been verified by science. There are many others. There are other food combinations that have not been tested, but I suspect that they are very beneficial as well.
Hippocrates, the greatest of ancient physicians, said it best, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.â€
Words of wisdom.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday and Real Food Wednesday blog carnivals.
« Previous Page — Next Page »