Spicy Sunflower Seed Cake/Slice

I love experimenting with food and have been making cakes/slices with no flours/starches. Today I made this cake to take away for a weekend at Byron Bay where I'm spending four days in an Ennegram Retreat.

2 ½ cups       Sunflower seeds, soaked for 2 hours and wet
2 Tbsp           Coconut Oil melted
1 Tbsp           Butter melted into coconut oil
1/3 cup          Raw Honey or Kitul Syrup
4                   Free range eggs
1 tsp              Sea Salt
1 tsp              Cinnamon
½ tsp             Cloves
½ tsp             Nutmeg           
½ cup            Currants

Sesame seeds or dessicated coconut optional for topping

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Puree wet sunflower seeds in food processor until smooth.
Add all ingredients except the currants
Blend well.
Remove blade from food processor and fold in currants.
Pour into greased 30cm roll tin. Bake at 180 degrees C for 50-60 minutes.
Test with knife or toothpick inserted in the center.  If it comes out clean, it’s done.
Cool on rack and then slice into squares

Makes approximately 25 servings.

Sally Fallon on lacto-fermented foods

 

Sally Fallon author of "Nourishing Traditions" - the only recipe book you'll ever need.

Sally bases her recipes on REAL FOOD and the writings of Weston A Price who travelled the world and visited 14 traditional cultures to see what food they ate that allowed them to be caries free with broad jaws that allowed full growth of their teeth and jaws.

Coconut Yogurt

Coconut is such a delicious and healthy food. Just look at how easy it is to make this highly nutritious food. Coles actually sells young coconuts for $2.00. Keep on practicing opening them - it gets less difficult over time.

Raw Milk Black Market

What an interesting and accurate report on raw milk. Cleopatra's milk is great for bathing in..........

http://au.news.yahoo.com/video/queensland/watch/30255915

Vandana Shiva on the Problem with Genetically-Modified Seeds

Vandana Shiva speaking about our food supply, genetically modified seeds, interconnectedness. A lesson for all countries and cultures

Fresh Herbs at Markets

Had an interesting morning at Northey Street Organic Markets today. There are some lovely fresh vegies - greens in particular - that are produced by some Asian growers. They always have baskets of freshly picked herbs. I want to show you Milk Thistle (Silybum marianum)  which has been used for over 2,000 years as an herbal remedy for a variety of ailments, particularly liver, kidney, and gall bladder problems. Silymarin has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, and it may help the liver repair itself by growing new cells.

It's the Mother Herb of the Liver. You can see why it's named milk thistle as the plant is very milky looking.

A young Asian woman was choosing this herb along with Stinging Nettle as she was making juice for her mother who has gall bladder problems. What a simple and traditional way of making our own medicine.

Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica and the closely related Urtica urens) has a long medicinal history. In medieval Europe, it was used as a diuretic (to rid the body of excess water) and to treat joint pain.

Stinging nettle is used in many forms, including as teas, tinctures, fluid extracts, creams and soups.

 

The use of herbs is a time honoured approach to strengthening the body and treating disease. Herbs, however, can trigger side effects and can interact with other herbs, supplements, or medications. Do take care with herbs and do your research or find an expert who can advise.

This was a delicious salad mix, freshly picked in the early hours of this morning.

Future food to be made from chemicals, not real food ingredients says White House chef

I'm trying to keep this blog uniquely Australian but that's a little difficult these days with the internet. The following article on Frankenstein food is the very reason that I have a blog about REAL FOOD..........

 

White House chef says future food to be made from chemicals, not real food ingredients

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Every two years, a consortium of Europe's most active minds converges at the Euroscience Open Forum to discuss the latest advancements in scientific research and innovation. But this year's meeting, which was held in Dublin, Ireland, featured a disturbing workshop held by White House executive pastry chef Bill Yosses, who explained and demonstrated to audience members how the food of the future will not actually contain real food, but rather various combinations of lab-created chemicals that mimic food.

As reported on Six One News, a feature of RTE News in Ireland, Yosses and several other food experts showed a live audience how to create various foams, gels, solids, and other food-like textured substances out of chemicals that, when combined, resemble things like lemon souffle and chocolate pudding. These food scientists then shared samples of these laboratory creations with audience members, who were told that the imitation food products are the wave of the future.

"You take the (chemical) compounds and you make the dish," said Herve This of AgroParisTech, a science and research organization based in France, to RTE News in Ireland. "So you have no vegetables, no fruit, no meat, no fish, nothing except compounds. And you have to create a shape, a color, a taste, a freshness, a pungency, an astringency, everything," he added, likening traditional cooking methods such as "cracking eggs" and using real food ingredients to "living in the Middle Ages."

White House executive pastry chef Bill Yosses shares a similar sentiment, as he believes creating fake food out of chemicals will actually help improve the quality of cuisine and availability of food. He told Six One News that chefs can use the information he presented to gain a "(better) understanding of what they're doing and use that to improve the processes, to improve not only the flavor but the hygiene, the longevity, how to store things."

"All that comes about from understanding cooking on a really molecular level," he added, with sort of a twinkle in his eye. But when he was asked if these same chemical food experiments are used at the White House in meals served to the Obamas, Yosses laughed and said no, explaining that "the First Family is looking for traditional, sort of 'happy recipes' that people are familiar with."

You can watch the disturbing segment in its entirety at:
http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2012/0712/media-3342255.html

While intended to specifically showcase some of the more offbeat scientific developments circulating the "technosphere" today, the Euroscience Open Forum, including the troubling seminar on chemical-based "foods of the future," is actually a troubling foreshadowing of what may soon come for Americans. Some scientists are apparently of the strong persuasion that man-made food items are preferable to natural foods, and the former is what they hope the public will eventually accept.

The average person, in other words, will eventually be expected to happily eat green gelatin-like blobs made of chemical compounds, along with ambiguous cracker products that resemble "Soylent Green," while the White House and the world's other elites continue to eat wholesome, natural foods, including those hand-picked from Michelle Obama's organic garden.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2012/0712/media-3342255.html

http://www.medicaldaily.com

http://www.ndtv.com

http://www.naturalnews.com/036626_cooking_chemicals_ingredients.html