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Copyright © 2010 Eighty Percent Raw, LLC
BIO
Ela Harrison Gordon is a Classical scholar, linguist and poet who has chosen to devote her life to healing and spiritual growth. She has worked as a raw food chef, beekeeper and farmer as well asa translator, writer and editor. Of English and Israeli heritage and raised in London, she has lived inthe USA since 2000 and has explored cultivated and wild land whilst living in California,
Hawaii and now Alaska.She regards her body's intolerance of grains and most modern foods, as well as her journey back
from near-death from anorexia, as blessings that have led her to a greater reverence for the body and its place in our
spiritual development, a more holistic understanding of health, and a deep interest in nutrition both of person and of planet. These blessings first led her to raw foods in 2003, and she is excited to share the breadth of what she has learned from pursuing the lifestyle in a variety of climates whilst integrating with local customs and growth patterns.
ARTICLE ARCHIVE
Explaining our Origins and Telling Stories At first glance, the task of identifying the human ancestral diet is like that of identifying a child's father. You make your best guess, you believe the most plausible story, you tell the story yourself.
Peanuts - they're not a nut and, like money, they don't grow on trees. Native to the Americas, they were introduced to North America from Africa via the slave trade. Metaphorical expressions like 'working for peanuts' and 'the peanut gallery' attest to their long and venerable history as a cheap
Why Cleanse Your Liver in the Springtime? - It seems that everyone is talking about liver cleansing at the moment. Of course, the concept of 'spring cleaning' is firmly ensconced in our consciousness and language. But why cleanse the liver in particular?
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Viktoras Kulvinskas is known as the 'Father of Raw Foods.' He has touched millions of people, over more than
AUGUST 2010 MID-MONTH SUPPLEMENTAL ARTICLE
HOW TO PREPARE YOUR BROCCOLI AND CAULIFLOWER
And properly prepared, they are also delicious, especially when freshly harvested from your own garden.
I'll talk more about what's so special about crucifers in my September article for Eighty Percent Raw, but today I want to offer a few tips for preparing them to best enjoy them and reap their benefits.
Crucifers have tough cell walls made of cellulose, the insoluble fiber of which is indigestible for humans. Whilst eating broccoli and cauliflower right out of the garden is a lovely ideal, sometimes, for some people, it can cause painful gas and other digestive discomfort. Herbivorous animals ferment the cellulose in their stomachs, and when we make sauerkraut or kim-chee, we are essentially mimicking that process. Krauting uses a lactic-acid-bacteria fermentation to break down the tough cell walls and as a bonus, infuse the veggies with beneficial bacteria whilst leaving their minerals and vitamins intact and more readily accessible. Krauting is so easy! Basically, you just pound up the veggies to release their juices, ensure that they are covered in liquid (so top up with water if necessary), and leave to kraut in a dark place, topped with a cheesecloth or other permeable covering. How long you need to leave it depends on the warmth and humidity - when I lived in Hawaii, where it was warm and humid, you could have good kraut ready within three days! Up here in Alaska, I reckon on at least a week or two in summertime. Some people recommend adding whey, or some liquid from a previous batch of sauerkraut, to get things started. I find the liquid from the previous batch especially helpful. I also find it helpful to add some sea salt - it helps to release the juices and retards the 'wrong kind' of bacteria. To ensure the right kind of bacteria, I often open up an acidophilus capsule and sprinkle the contents into the kraut when I'm first getting it started. And of course, you can add all the herbs, spices, garlic, cayenne pepper, sea veggies, whatever delights you!
Krauting is a transformative process, and one that requires some preparation and planning. But what if you want to eat some of your broccoli and cauliflower today? Steaming is a good option that preserves the vast majority of the nutrients, even the vitamins. If you steam them in boiling water for just three minutes or so, the cellulose is tenderized and they become easy to eat, whilst remaining firm and crunchy. You can also drink the water they were steamed in, into which some vitamins may have leached. But please, don't boil them to colorless death!
What if you want to eat them raw? I have found that chopping them and marinating for several hours in a mixture of apple cider vinegar/olive oil/sea salt is a wonderful way to render them both digestible and delicious. The salt and vinegar work on the cellulose, breaking it down to something more digestible for us, and the oil coats the veggies and retards the tendency to oxidize once they've been chopped up. For four cups of chopped broccoli and/or cauliflower, you can use 3-4 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil (hempseed oil works well too), and a generous sprinkling of sea salt (1/2 to 1 teaspoon). I often marinate them like this at lunchtime, and then by dinnertime they are tender and ready to eat, either just as they are, or sprinkled with spirulina/chlorella, nutritional yeast if you like that, or dipped in a pate or hummus. Or you can drain the marinade and make your favorite sauce or dressing to pour over them. Mock cheese sauces and curry sauces work particularly well for these.
In my personal experience, marinating them like this actually works better for my digestion (in terms of minimizing gas/discomfort) even than steaming them. It's not quite the instant gratification of a 3-minute steaming, but it isn't the weeks of anticipating kraut either!
To your happy harvesting health! Enjoy!
Up here in Alaska, August is full-on harvest time for gardeners. With our cool climate and short growing season, we do especially well with cole crops, also known as crucifers - kale, collards, broccoli, cauliflower, all of which can maximize the growth opportunity provided by the almost constant daylight between June and August. These vegetables are all wonderfully nutritious: the beneficial compounds they contain are only just beginning to be quantified, identified and recognized, but everybody's grandmother knew that they were 'good for you.'
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