Wordless Wednesday: Berries and Boobies

Who let the toddler loose in the berry patch??

Mmmmmyummmyum

All those berries made me thirsty Mama

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Wild for wild food

Now that I not only have my own home to garden in, but we’ve also moved back to within driving distance of my family’s ‘cottage’, I’m full steam ahead on the wild food train!  Wooowooooo

I’ve always eaten a variety of wild foods from the aforementioned cottage.  Although, I should explain that the term cottage is used loosely.  What it is, in fact, is a 44-acre former gravel pit.  Heavily forested, but also containing 3 lakes covering about 10 of the 44 acres, and 3 powerless, waterless cabins.  In other words, heaven on earth.

The lakes have bass that are abundant and tasty.  The open gravel areas are usually a carpet of oregano and thyme with wild onions every now and then.  The roadsides are covered with raspberries, blackberries and wild grapes.  Go in a bit and you’ll usually find a highbush cranberry or two, some gooseberries and ramps.  By far the most coveted finds as a child were the spring fiddleheads and the fall puffball mushrooms.

This weekend, I went to a whole new level of wild with my food.  I ate a goose egg!  I wish I had taken my own picture, but the acquisition was sort of a surprise so you’ll have to look at this Googled picture.  One of the lakes I was mentioning has an island in the middle that’s been prime goose-nesting grounds for 30 years.  This year my Uncle ventured a peek inside the nest.

In case you’re curious, mama geese will continue to lay eggs until they get a brood of hatchlings, because nest predators are not uncommon.  So I haven’t ruined this whole generation!  But, it’s also important to keep in mind that the later the goslings hatch, the less time they have to mature before winter so there’s a limit to be respected.

I fried my egg overhard (I prefer my yolks yolky, but since I’ve never eaten a wild goose egg before and I’m nursing, I decided to err on the side of caution) and I have to say it was still very yummy.  Pretty much like a good farmer’s market chicken egg, only biiigger.  About 2-3 times the size.  The shell is a lot thicker too.  And others have said they found the yolk denser, but like I said, compared to a good pastured chicken egg, it’s pretty similar.

Nutritionally though, they’re apparently quite a bit denser.  Weight for weight, the goose egg has more selenium, potassium, calcium and magnesium.  It has twice the iron, twice the thiamin and FOUR times as much B12 and SEVEN times the Omega 3.  It’s ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 is about 1:1 whereas the chicken egg is about 1:15.*  Basically a multivitamin in a shell.

All in all, I’d say it was a very good long weekend.  And I even brought some ferns home so I can have fiddleheads in my backyard next year.

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*I do wonder if this data would differ for pastured eggs, from chickens allowed to forage for a biologically appropriate diet, but I couldn’t find any good info on that.

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/127/2

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/111/2

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Small Steps to a Cleaner Diet

Cleaning up your diet after years (or decades) of industrial, processed foods is a challenging endeavor.  It won’t happen overnight and sometimes you won’t know how to navigate your way.  These are five of the things I found really useful in getting started on this journey.

1. Switch your Salt. Table salt has nothing but sodium chloride and iodine.  It’s refined, gives no health benefits and even though it’s salt, it’s bland!!  Salt is supposed to contain a variety of minerals, many of which are important for health but are lacking in the Western Diet (zinc, iron or magnesium anyone?).  Switch to a raw sea salt and you’ll immediately notice a difference in the flavour of your food.

2. Give in to your weakness. I used to have a huge struggle with every winter grocery trip.  I wanted to eat good whole foods AND I wanted to eat local foods but, being Canadian, there’s only so much available in the winter.  And being a foodie, I can only take so many nights of turnips.  I found I was buying the “boring” winter vegetables but I’d put off including them in a meal until the end of the week, then I’d talk my husband into ordering pizza because “there’s nothing in the fridge.”  When I got pregnant with Little Man, I realized I had to put my own health first and the planet’s second.  And then I had an epiphany – in terms of environmental impact, I’m positive that it’s better to eat the completely unprocessed peruvian asparagus than to eat the frozen pizza filled with manufactured chemicals that’s still topped with Californian tomatoes, and Chinese pepperoni.  The moral of the story: buy and eat the real foods you want, when you want them.  Get used to real first.  You can tackle the rest later.

3. Make hay while the sun shines. When it’s asparagus season in Canada, I eat it DAILY!  Maybe even twice a day.  Even at the office though I knew the consequences for my next trip to the ladies room!  (Or is that TMI?!)  By filling up when it’s there, I’m less likely to miss it in November when the Peruvian stuff comes out, thus helping me with point #2.

4. Ditch the dressing.  A clean diet is sure to include a lot of green salads, so don’t go and ruin it by pouring xanthan gum, hydrolized soybean oil and diglycerides all over it.  It’s ridiculously easy to make your own salad dressing.  Here’s how: Olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, salt – all in proportions to taste (Jamie Oliver says 2 parts oil to 1 part acid… I prefer a 1:1 ratio).  Want some variety?  Switch the vinegar flavour.  Throw in some oregano.  Add a clove of garlic.  Or half a shallot.  Or mustard.  Or mustard AND garlic.  You’ll never think salad is boring again.

5. Chew the fat, literally. If you’ve tried to be healthy (or to diet) within an industrialized system, then you’re probably used to skimping on natural fats only to replace them with artificial flavour enhancers.  If you try to switch to a clean diet while keeping your industrialized ideas that chickens are walking breasts without skin or bones, you’ll be disappointed by a seemingly flavourless menu.  So while you get the hang of it, you should taste the flavour that nature has to offer.  Try a chicken thigh instead of a breast.  Switch up a fat level (or three) in your milk.  You might find that if you do, you won’t want the ketchup for your (homemade) nuggets or the sugar for your cereal.  And then you won’t be as tempted to go back to the corn-starched, salted, fake-fragranced products.  Trust me.

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These little changes really helped me to let go of some of my old food habits and to get the ball rolling.  They worked because they were EASY for me and I think that’s very important.  I firmly believe in starting with the little steps and building up when it comes to such a major undertaking.

I’d love to know how others tackle this task.  Where did you start?  What was the ‘low-hanging fruit’ in your processed diet?

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