LOL well she is known to do that too…we call her “DustMeep” as her other name. Her brother was inside so they were elsewhere for all of this. They only got interested when the knife came out to split the spaghetti squash in half because they thought I must be cutting meat (they always get raw meat bits when we butcher or cook, and Smooshie usually has to be given the bum’s rush back outside because he doesn’t have any manners).
I am not much of a pastry baker myself, i make the odd pawpaw and banana bread, some sourdough pizza and normal sourdough loafs for my wife. I endeavored to learn how to make my own sourdough starter so we do not have to depend on factory/lab made GMO yeast and store-bought glyphosate laden bread.
I have tried doing this but sourdough starter is hard to do in a cold house in the winter, and I hate the cement it makes in the container when it needs cleaning. Canada is…less prone to GMO wheat. I know most farmers do not desiccate it either at ripening. we live in grainland and I grew up on the farm. My brother owns the family farm now too. He even ended up going with a non-roundup-ready canola because that stuff just wouldn’t produce for him. Anyhow, I’m not super worried about gluten issues and it’s easy enough to breed your own yeast if you really want to.
Well the farmers you are talking to are admirable, but I have a friend that runs Mass Spec equipment in a food quality lab, and he shows me the glyphosate readings for non-organic Canadian wheat products, they are high in 75% of the products.
Yes sourdough starter is breeding your own yeast. Pretty easy to work around the temperature issue if you use a microclimate in the house near a light, stove, fridge, etc
Also, Wheat is generally a nutritionally inferior, lower yielding and less resilient crop than Amaranth, which is why I grow my own and make my own flour with that to supplement the organic landrace wheat flour I buy from a local Amish lady. Do you grow any Amaranth? https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/amazing-amaranth
I tried amaranth but too much work to extract the seeds from the chaff. And it would take a HUGE area to keep us in any amount of flour! I have to pick my battles and that is unfortunately not one of them. I have harvested dock seed, roasted it and made a “flour” but it doesn’t replace 100% of any standard flour, it’s far too dry; it can be high in oxalates which can cause kidney issues, so must be used judiciously. There are no farmers nearby that plant heritage grains; I would have to go much further away and at quite an expense. To me, Canadian Red Spring Wheat is OK; it might have been hybridized, but it is still close to what my dad and grandparents grew, and as long as the farmer doesn’t spray anything during ripening (desiccants) there is very little likelihood of it having residues. I still can’t fathom why grains need desiccating; they ripen early enough to get them in the bin without, and if necessary, farmers have driers anyway!
I get about ten pounds of seed from each 5×20 raised bed I grow it in (when I grow it lazily and do not water). The traditional method of using wind or blowing on a flat container to separate seeds from chaff is inefficient. I experimented with modern materials and came up with this method for small - medium scale https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5Y8hIoNRRA
Amaranth seed can be used in much more versatile ways than wheat, it can be popped like corn, added to soups like quinoa, baked into bread or fed to live stock (studies show it increases chickens egg production).
When it comes to things like all the fear mongering about oxalates, taking a look at the historical dietary norms of ancient cultures which depended on staple crops with relatively high oxalic acid and lectin rich content can provide some much needed context, perspective and level headedness.
This is another instance where many books or quick online searches will give you totally fallacious colonial worldviews about these ancient food crops of prosperous indigenous peoples. The Inca, Maya and Hopi people grew Amaranth as a food crop for millennia, colonial propaganda would try to convince you they were just “primitives”, but you know better than that. Careful about internalizing colonial propaganda.
What I find is that many people who say things like "WATCH OUT FOR THIS ANTI-NUTRIENT!! ALL FOODS CONTAINING IT ARE DANGEROUS!!!" are either being given generalized and in complete data about that subject matter by some guru type person they follow, or they themselves are involved in aggressively advocating a specific type of diet (for what ever reason) and so they are making wide sweeping statements about foods that do not fall into their diet regiment as a sort of red herring tactic.
I am not saying that you are doing that, but I have come across dozens of people that were indeed doing that, and for the reasons I described. Thus, assessing each food, based on an understanding of one's own body and through asking the questions I listed above is what I suggest when dealing with such foods.
The fermentation and/or cooking part is key in the majority of the way we enjoy our amaranth (containing oxolates) and goji harvests (high in lectins). as the fermentation process neutralizes the anti-nutrients which are present in many legumes that can inhibit the absorption of calcium, iron, phosphorus, and zinc. Additionally, many forms of fermentation serve to increase the levels of B-vitamins in the resulting fermented food (as a metabolic byproduct of the Lactic Acid Bacteria that often play a key role in the process) so this also helps especially in a vegetarian diet. I feel that an even more important factor to consider is the quality and diversity of the gut microbiota in the person ingesting the foods with antinutrients such as lectins and/or oxalates and whether or not the material has been cooked or fermented.
Given one has a diverse range of gut bacteria (as any healthy human being should, but most in modern times do not thanks to widespread antibiotic/glyphosate store bought food contamination) eating a moderate amount of fresh foods with lectins and/or oxalates are not really that big of a deal as the bacteria that reside in the digestive tract of one with a healthy inner ecosystem can easily render the problematic qualities of such compounds inert. Fermentation is another process which serves that same purpose. Based on my experience, for those who have a healthy microbiome and/or those who are eating those foods in mostly either a cooked, fermented and/or sprouted format, such compounds (such as lectins and oxalates) are really not that big of a deal. For such humans (those that have a diverse gut ecosystem that is being regularly nourished) the (often over exaggerated and generalized) fear mongering related to things like lectins, phytates and oxalates is largely irrelevant and not applicable.
I can share pertinent research if your interested.
I’m curious what your cat’s doing this whole time? Mine would be all over that. There’d be little powdered paw prints all through the house.
LOL well she is known to do that too…we call her “DustMeep” as her other name. Her brother was inside so they were elsewhere for all of this. They only got interested when the knife came out to split the spaghetti squash in half because they thought I must be cutting meat (they always get raw meat bits when we butcher or cook, and Smooshie usually has to be given the bum’s rush back outside because he doesn’t have any manners).
Yep — I’m familiar with that “Knife Look”.
LOL Mine need to see (and sniff) what I’m actually working on to know it’s not meat. About 3 times.
Your baked creations look lovely.
I am not much of a pastry baker myself, i make the odd pawpaw and banana bread, some sourdough pizza and normal sourdough loafs for my wife. I endeavored to learn how to make my own sourdough starter so we do not have to depend on factory/lab made GMO yeast and store-bought glyphosate laden bread.
Here is the full recipe from my book, my gift to you https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/starting-your-own-sourdough-culture
I have tried doing this but sourdough starter is hard to do in a cold house in the winter, and I hate the cement it makes in the container when it needs cleaning. Canada is…less prone to GMO wheat. I know most farmers do not desiccate it either at ripening. we live in grainland and I grew up on the farm. My brother owns the family farm now too. He even ended up going with a non-roundup-ready canola because that stuff just wouldn’t produce for him. Anyhow, I’m not super worried about gluten issues and it’s easy enough to breed your own yeast if you really want to.
Well the farmers you are talking to are admirable, but I have a friend that runs Mass Spec equipment in a food quality lab, and he shows me the glyphosate readings for non-organic Canadian wheat products, they are high in 75% of the products.
Yes sourdough starter is breeding your own yeast. Pretty easy to work around the temperature issue if you use a microclimate in the house near a light, stove, fridge, etc
Also, Wheat is generally a nutritionally inferior, lower yielding and less resilient crop than Amaranth, which is why I grow my own and make my own flour with that to supplement the organic landrace wheat flour I buy from a local Amish lady. Do you grow any Amaranth? https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/amazing-amaranth
I tried amaranth but too much work to extract the seeds from the chaff. And it would take a HUGE area to keep us in any amount of flour! I have to pick my battles and that is unfortunately not one of them. I have harvested dock seed, roasted it and made a “flour” but it doesn’t replace 100% of any standard flour, it’s far too dry; it can be high in oxalates which can cause kidney issues, so must be used judiciously. There are no farmers nearby that plant heritage grains; I would have to go much further away and at quite an expense. To me, Canadian Red Spring Wheat is OK; it might have been hybridized, but it is still close to what my dad and grandparents grew, and as long as the farmer doesn’t spray anything during ripening (desiccants) there is very little likelihood of it having residues. I still can’t fathom why grains need desiccating; they ripen early enough to get them in the bin without, and if necessary, farmers have driers anyway!
I get about ten pounds of seed from each 5×20 raised bed I grow it in (when I grow it lazily and do not water). The traditional method of using wind or blowing on a flat container to separate seeds from chaff is inefficient. I experimented with modern materials and came up with this method for small - medium scale https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5Y8hIoNRRA
Amaranth seed can be used in much more versatile ways than wheat, it can be popped like corn, added to soups like quinoa, baked into bread or fed to live stock (studies show it increases chickens egg production).
When it comes to things like all the fear mongering about oxalates, taking a look at the historical dietary norms of ancient cultures which depended on staple crops with relatively high oxalic acid and lectin rich content can provide some much needed context, perspective and level headedness.
This is another instance where many books or quick online searches will give you totally fallacious colonial worldviews about these ancient food crops of prosperous indigenous peoples. The Inca, Maya and Hopi people grew Amaranth as a food crop for millennia, colonial propaganda would try to convince you they were just “primitives”, but you know better than that. Careful about internalizing colonial propaganda.
What I find is that many people who say things like "WATCH OUT FOR THIS ANTI-NUTRIENT!! ALL FOODS CONTAINING IT ARE DANGEROUS!!!" are either being given generalized and in complete data about that subject matter by some guru type person they follow, or they themselves are involved in aggressively advocating a specific type of diet (for what ever reason) and so they are making wide sweeping statements about foods that do not fall into their diet regiment as a sort of red herring tactic.
I am not saying that you are doing that, but I have come across dozens of people that were indeed doing that, and for the reasons I described. Thus, assessing each food, based on an understanding of one's own body and through asking the questions I listed above is what I suggest when dealing with such foods.
The fermentation and/or cooking part is key in the majority of the way we enjoy our amaranth (containing oxolates) and goji harvests (high in lectins). as the fermentation process neutralizes the anti-nutrients which are present in many legumes that can inhibit the absorption of calcium, iron, phosphorus, and zinc. Additionally, many forms of fermentation serve to increase the levels of B-vitamins in the resulting fermented food (as a metabolic byproduct of the Lactic Acid Bacteria that often play a key role in the process) so this also helps especially in a vegetarian diet. I feel that an even more important factor to consider is the quality and diversity of the gut microbiota in the person ingesting the foods with antinutrients such as lectins and/or oxalates and whether or not the material has been cooked or fermented.
Given one has a diverse range of gut bacteria (as any healthy human being should, but most in modern times do not thanks to widespread antibiotic/glyphosate store bought food contamination) eating a moderate amount of fresh foods with lectins and/or oxalates are not really that big of a deal as the bacteria that reside in the digestive tract of one with a healthy inner ecosystem can easily render the problematic qualities of such compounds inert. Fermentation is another process which serves that same purpose. Based on my experience, for those who have a healthy microbiome and/or those who are eating those foods in mostly either a cooked, fermented and/or sprouted format, such compounds (such as lectins and oxalates) are really not that big of a deal. For such humans (those that have a diverse gut ecosystem that is being regularly nourished) the (often over exaggerated and generalized) fear mongering related to things like lectins, phytates and oxalates is largely irrelevant and not applicable.
I can share pertinent research if your interested.
Lol I totally get it, we both have our first year herbalist diplomas. We thoroughly distrust "modern medicine".
cool cool, here is one of the ways i like to use not only my amaranth seeds, but also by purple amaranth leaves https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/garden-minestrone-soup