I love the questions! (And I talk about this stuff because.. well, how do we get better at doing stuff that helps if we don't? I'd rather live in a world where more people knew more ways to do more of the stuff they love in ways that are good to their bodies and their minds...)
The up and down energy thing can also be a sign of adrenal fatigue (which is something that the mainstream med folks don't generally recognise until it's really dire). The solution (before it gets dire, anyway) is a) lots of rest and b) lots of really solid nutrition, though, so it's mostly stuff you can help at home.
On the up and down thyroid stuff: Rosemary is considered to be a thyroid balancer. You might try eating more of it/having a cup of rosemary tea every day, and see what you feel. (Don't go way overboard: try a cup every day, not have that be all you drink, of course.)
Infusions You need: - about an ounce of the herb per batch (which will make 3-4 cups of liquid which will last for 36-48 hours or so.
- A glass jar suitable to hold 4 cups of liquid (mason jars are classic, Ikea has some that will work, etc.) You really do want glass.
- Boiling water.
- A strainer that will catch herbs. (A wire mesh one. If you don't want to get a big one, cheesecloth in a colander can work. Straining through a tea-cup-size one is a pain in the neck in this use, but doable.)
Steps: - Rinse out your jar with the hottest water you can reasonably get from your tap. (Helps prevent the jar from cracking when you pour into it. Plus, y'know, clean jar.)
- Put an ounce of herb in the bottom. This comes out to roughly a cup for both nettle and oatstraw. You can eyeball, it's okay. If your jar holds 4 cups, you want to fill it about a quarter of the way up, or a little less.
- When your water is boiling, fill the jar with the water. Use a spoon or knife to make sure all of the herb gets damp (chances are, it'll rise to the top of the jar.)
- Seal the jar and let it sit for at least four hours. (You can do it at dinner, and stick it in the fridge overnight once the jar has cooled enough.)
- Later, strain it out, pressing the herbs and squeezing to make sure you get all the infusion out.
- Nettle infusion from fresh dried herbs turns a velvety green color. Older dried herbs that have started going a little stale goes more yellowish, and there's a definite taste difference. Oatstraw goes golden. (If you're gluten intolerant, or think you might be, nobody's quite sure if oatstraw affects gluten-intolerant folks: some people are fine with it, some people aren't.)
- I strain into a stainless steel mixing bowl (other metals might react with the herbs) and rinse the jar, then pour back in for storage. Both will keep about 36-48 hours, and the daily dose is 1-2 cups for each. I usually drink a cup, and more if it's still tasting really good.
- You can add a little honey or lemon if you like, but taste is a really powerful way to track whether it's the right thing for you right now, so I don't. (If it tastes good, I need more.) You can also put in a little peppermint or rosemary for flavor. Some people find a pinch of salt in the nettle tastes amazingly good.
- You can drink it cold, or you can add a little boiling water to it to reheat it (or heat it briefly on the stove.)
Extras of either make a good hair rinse, or added to the bath.
Diet If you poke around there are a bunch of books (and blogs) about real foods/nourishing foods/etc. diets. (And I can probably dig up a list at some point, though it might not be this week.)
To give an example, today and yesterday's meals have mostly been alternating chicken wild rice stew (basic recipe here: http://jenett.dreamwidth.org/497641.html though these days I usually use homemade stock and I'm inclined toward caramelised onions instead.) with periodic mashed potatoes with blue cheese. (Yum). Tonight, I will have the leftovers from that as mashed potato pancakes, and there should also be a green vegetable.
Anyway, the basic principle is that you eat stuff as close as possible to the food source it came from: my basic rule of thumb is "Could I make this from scratch myself if I wanted?" Bread without weird additives, yes. (and I do). Pasta, ditto, theoretically. Mass-produced potato chips? Not so much.
(I do make exceptions, especially for chocolate.)
I do most of my shopping at Trader Joe's and the rest at my local co-op. When the budget's tight, I focus on getting:
- Grass-fed beef (yes, pricier, but the nutritional value is hugely better. I mostly get ground, and make meatloaf in the slow cooker.)
- Eggs from happy free-range chickens (again, nutritional value hugely better.) This is the single cheapest high-nutrition food out there, I think.
- Chicken from happy free-range chickens (mine run $10 a 4-5 pound chicken or so, which gets me a bunch of meat + bones for stock later. Or I get 2 pounds of drumsticks, which run me about $6 for organic free-range chicken, and do stock from that.) Chicken stock (and beef stock, for that matter) is hugely nutritious.
- Organic milk - avoid the high heat pasteurised stuff, and I've seen a lot of notes suggesting non-homogenised is best if you can get it. (I can only get it at the co-op). Basically, I aim at milk that has an expiration date within the next 7-14 days (and 14 is pushing it), because all those treatments that push the expiration date out also remove nutrition.
- Grass-fed butter: my co-op carries this, Trader Joe's and a number of other places (including Costco, etc.) carry Kerrygold, which is imported Irish butter, but grass-fed and reasonably affordable. I go through a fair bit of butter.
I don't drink tons of milk: I use it a lot more for cooking (mashed potatoes, cheese and white sauces, etc). I go through a good bit more butter (on veggies, on popcorn popped in a stove-top popper.)
I eat bunches of cheese, which is my "I should eat something" snack, mostly really good cheddars (the current favorite is the English Coastal cheddar, but I often have goat chevre, blue cheese, or other variants in the house too.)
I shop weekly, but I'd guess I go through about the following every 2 weeks right now. - a pound of butter ($4-6) - 2 quarts of milk or so ($5ish) - 1-2 pounds ground beef ($10ish) - a whole chicken ($10-12) - 2 pounds of drumsticks ($6ish) - a pound of so of cheese - a dozen eggs - some amount of fish. (I am currently mostly alternating between Trader Joe's Mahi-Mahi burgers and their battered halibut because they are easy to cook.) - 1-2 pounds of mushrooms and/or organic cream of mushroom soup - A bag of onions - Some potatoes - variety of veggies (right now, mostly frozen: I'm partial to spinach, green beans, sweet potatoes, corn, carrots, and I'm all over tomatoes in the summer.) - organic popcorn
And then a mix of other stuff - prepared foods, grains, etc. based on budget and desire. I tend to go through massive batches of stuff - a few weeks ago, it was honey mustard chicken tenders (homemade...), sometimes it's cream of mushroom soup, sometimes it's greens. I pay attention to that.
I've found that I tend to eat a lot *less* of the higher quality meats and eggs and so on (and chocolate, for that matter.) And popcorn as a snack is very cheap and very filling ($1.20 a pound or so at the co-op.) I average about $70 a week when I don't go overboard with cheese or pre-prepped things, and I could cut that back a bit if I had to.
Recipes Slow Cooker Meatloaf
You need: - a loaf pan (if you've got a larger crockpot: mine is 5.5 quarts, and a pound loaf pan fits perfectly. In a smaller crockpot, you can just mound it on the bottom of the pot.)
- a slow cooker with a 'high' setting - 1-2 pounds ground beef - some cheese (cheddar is happy, blue cheese is good) - an egg or two - some bread crumbs - a bowl to mix the above in.
Take your bowl. Mix the ground beef, cheese, egg together thoroughly. Mix through the bread crumbs. Press into loaf pan. Stick loaf pan in the middle of crockpot, and cook for 4 hours on high. (Until the beef pulls away from the sides of the loaf pan.)
Chicken stock Roast a chicken
(Take chicken, removing bits of gizzards and such from the cavity. Dot with butter, sprinkle with herbs. Stick a quartered lemon in the cavity. Baste every 30-40 minutes, cooking for 2-2.5 hours at 350degrees or so, or until the drumstick wiggles easily in the socket when you try.) I put a big double handful of baby carrots in the pan on the last baste.)
Anyway, eat your chicken and remove the meat from the rest. Dump the chicken in the crockpot. Add a halved onion (if you leave the skin on, you get a better color), a couple of carrots, celery if you're like that, herbs, etc. A little salt doesn't hurt, but I usually add it when I'm actually cooking. Add a splash of vinegar to help draw the minerals from the bones. Fill with water to within an inch or two of the top of the crockpot.
Cook on low for 24-36 hours. (Or you can do it in a pot on the stove for 4-6 hours). Very rich, very flavorful, very yummy stock.
(If you do stock from drumsticks, same principle, though I start with those raw.)
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Date: 2010-12-06 10:30 pm (UTC)The up and down energy thing can also be a sign of adrenal fatigue (which is something that the mainstream med folks don't generally recognise until it's really dire). The solution (before it gets dire, anyway) is a) lots of rest and b) lots of really solid nutrition, though, so it's mostly stuff you can help at home.
On the up and down thyroid stuff: Rosemary is considered to be a thyroid balancer. You might try eating more of it/having a cup of rosemary tea every day, and see what you feel. (Don't go way overboard: try a cup every day, not have that be all you drink, of course.)
Infusions
You need:
- about an ounce of the herb per batch (which will make 3-4 cups of liquid which will last for 36-48 hours or so.
- A glass jar suitable to hold 4 cups of liquid (mason jars are classic, Ikea has some that will work, etc.) You really do want glass.
- Boiling water.
- A strainer that will catch herbs. (A wire mesh one. If you don't want to get a big one, cheesecloth in a colander can work. Straining through a tea-cup-size one is a pain in the neck in this use, but doable.)
Steps:
- Rinse out your jar with the hottest water you can reasonably get from your tap. (Helps prevent the jar from cracking when you pour into it. Plus, y'know, clean jar.)
- Put an ounce of herb in the bottom. This comes out to roughly a cup for both nettle and oatstraw. You can eyeball, it's okay. If your jar holds 4 cups, you want to fill it about a quarter of the way up, or a little less.
- When your water is boiling, fill the jar with the water. Use a spoon or knife to make sure all of the herb gets damp (chances are, it'll rise to the top of the jar.)
- Seal the jar and let it sit for at least four hours. (You can do it at dinner, and stick it in the fridge overnight once the jar has cooled enough.)
- Later, strain it out, pressing the herbs and squeezing to make sure you get all the infusion out.
- Nettle infusion from fresh dried herbs turns a velvety green color. Older dried herbs that have started going a little stale goes more yellowish, and there's a definite taste difference. Oatstraw goes golden. (If you're gluten intolerant, or think you might be, nobody's quite sure if oatstraw affects gluten-intolerant folks: some people are fine with it, some people aren't.)
- I strain into a stainless steel mixing bowl (other metals might react with the herbs) and rinse the jar, then pour back in for storage. Both will keep about 36-48 hours, and the daily dose is 1-2 cups for each. I usually drink a cup, and more if it's still tasting really good.
- You can add a little honey or lemon if you like, but taste is a really powerful way to track whether it's the right thing for you right now, so I don't. (If it tastes good, I need more.) You can also put in a little peppermint or rosemary for flavor. Some people find a pinch of salt in the nettle tastes amazingly good.
- You can drink it cold, or you can add a little boiling water to it to reheat it (or heat it briefly on the stove.)
Extras of either make a good hair rinse, or added to the bath.
Diet
If you poke around there are a bunch of books (and blogs) about real foods/nourishing foods/etc. diets. (And I can probably dig up a list at some point, though it might not be this week.)
To give an example, today and yesterday's meals have mostly been alternating chicken wild rice stew (basic recipe here: http://jenett.dreamwidth.org/497641.html though these days I usually use homemade stock and I'm inclined toward caramelised onions instead.) with periodic mashed potatoes with blue cheese. (Yum). Tonight, I will have the leftovers from that as mashed potato pancakes, and there should also be a green vegetable.
Anyway, the basic principle is that you eat stuff as close as possible to the food source it came from: my basic rule of thumb is "Could I make this from scratch myself if I wanted?" Bread without weird additives, yes. (and I do). Pasta, ditto, theoretically. Mass-produced potato chips? Not so much.
(I do make exceptions, especially for chocolate.)
I do most of my shopping at Trader Joe's and the rest at my local co-op. When the budget's tight, I focus on getting:
- Grass-fed beef (yes, pricier, but the nutritional value is hugely better. I mostly get ground, and make meatloaf in the slow cooker.)
- Eggs from happy free-range chickens (again, nutritional value hugely better.) This is the single cheapest high-nutrition food out there, I think.
- Chicken from happy free-range chickens (mine run $10 a 4-5 pound chicken or so, which gets me a bunch of meat + bones for stock later. Or I get 2 pounds of drumsticks, which run me about $6 for organic free-range chicken, and do stock from that.) Chicken stock (and beef stock, for that matter) is hugely nutritious.
- Organic milk - avoid the high heat pasteurised stuff, and I've seen a lot of notes suggesting non-homogenised is best if you can get it. (I can only get it at the co-op). Basically, I aim at milk that has an expiration date within the next 7-14 days (and 14 is pushing it), because all those treatments that push the expiration date out also remove nutrition.
- Grass-fed butter: my co-op carries this, Trader Joe's and a number of other places (including Costco, etc.) carry Kerrygold, which is imported Irish butter, but grass-fed and reasonably affordable. I go through a fair bit of butter.
I don't drink tons of milk: I use it a lot more for cooking (mashed potatoes, cheese and white sauces, etc). I go through a good bit more butter (on veggies, on popcorn popped in a stove-top popper.)
I eat bunches of cheese, which is my "I should eat something" snack, mostly really good cheddars (the current favorite is the English Coastal cheddar, but I often have goat chevre, blue cheese, or other variants in the house too.)
I shop weekly, but I'd guess I go through about the following every 2 weeks right now.
- a pound of butter ($4-6)
- 2 quarts of milk or so ($5ish)
- 1-2 pounds ground beef ($10ish)
- a whole chicken ($10-12)
- 2 pounds of drumsticks ($6ish)
- a pound of so of cheese
- a dozen eggs
- some amount of fish. (I am currently mostly alternating between Trader Joe's Mahi-Mahi burgers and their battered halibut because they are easy to cook.)
- 1-2 pounds of mushrooms and/or organic cream of mushroom soup
- A bag of onions
- Some potatoes
- variety of veggies (right now, mostly frozen: I'm partial to spinach, green beans, sweet potatoes, corn, carrots, and I'm all over tomatoes in the summer.)
- organic popcorn
And then a mix of other stuff - prepared foods, grains, etc. based on budget and desire. I tend to go through massive batches of stuff - a few weeks ago, it was honey mustard chicken tenders (homemade...), sometimes it's cream of mushroom soup, sometimes it's greens. I pay attention to that.
I've found that I tend to eat a lot *less* of the higher quality meats and eggs and so on (and chocolate, for that matter.) And popcorn as a snack is very cheap and very filling ($1.20 a pound or so at the co-op.) I average about $70 a week when I don't go overboard with cheese or pre-prepped things, and I could cut that back a bit if I had to.
Recipes
Slow Cooker Meatloaf
You need:
- a loaf pan (if you've got a larger crockpot: mine is 5.5 quarts, and a pound loaf pan fits perfectly. In a smaller crockpot, you can just mound it on the bottom of the pot.)
- a slow cooker with a 'high' setting
- 1-2 pounds ground beef
- some cheese (cheddar is happy, blue cheese is good)
- an egg or two
- some bread crumbs
- a bowl to mix the above in.
Take your bowl. Mix the ground beef, cheese, egg together thoroughly. Mix through the bread crumbs. Press into loaf pan. Stick loaf pan in the middle of crockpot, and cook for 4 hours on high. (Until the beef pulls away from the sides of the loaf pan.)
Chicken stock
Roast a chicken
(Take chicken, removing bits of gizzards and such from the cavity. Dot with butter, sprinkle with herbs. Stick a quartered lemon in the cavity. Baste every 30-40 minutes, cooking for 2-2.5 hours at 350degrees or so, or until the drumstick wiggles easily in the socket when you try.) I put a big double handful of baby carrots in the pan on the last baste.)
Anyway, eat your chicken and remove the meat from the rest. Dump the chicken in the crockpot. Add a halved onion (if you leave the skin on, you get a better color), a couple of carrots, celery if you're like that, herbs, etc. A little salt doesn't hurt, but I usually add it when I'm actually cooking. Add a splash of vinegar to help draw the minerals from the bones. Fill with water to within an inch or two of the top of the crockpot.
Cook on low for 24-36 hours. (Or you can do it in a pot on the stove for 4-6 hours). Very rich, very flavorful, very yummy stock.
(If you do stock from drumsticks, same principle, though I start with those raw.)