Nourishing Tuesdays

Oh my goodness, I LOVE eating this way and at the same time it's so HARD to change over to it!!!!! Everything takes longer to prepare the old fashioned way and it's difficult to find all the ingredients that I need but I feel so fantastic most days it's worth it!

This week I added coconut oil to my diet. It's interesting stuff. It's solid at room temperature, has no real taste or smell. You can use it in EVERYTHING and it keeps you full forever. For weight loss, I have been taking 1-2 teaspoons of oil before every meal and I'm never hungry. A bowl of oatmeal with melted coconut oil mixed in eaten at 6am lasts me until 1-2 pm. A BOWL OF OATMEAL! And I feel great, tons of energy and I'm have pretty even moods. Not to mention I have PMS this week and it's the mildest case I've had in a long time.

Like I said above, this diet is complicated and labor intensive in the kitchen. I like cooking and sometimes I love cooking but sometimes I just want to relax and order pizza. It's hard to wean myself off convenience foods. It's hard to motivate myself to spend an hour cooking when I'd rather be doing something else......like blogging =}! Or when I'm tired. Another thing that makes it hard to slave over the stove is the kids don't love the food. They like it and they eat it but I have spoiled them with mac and cheese, hamburgers with white bread buns, pizza, chicken nuggets, etc for too long. With a new baby and moving twice in the past two years I was all about easy, fast dinners this is quite a change for them too. The boys complain about it a lot but the baby licks her plate clean! The boy's do eat it though so the food can't be that bad to them! I continue to see Monkey's moods more even. I haven't noticed a difference with Bear's autistic symptoms but at least I know he's getting nutritious food and that's good for everyone.

Here's my favorite recipe from Nourishing Traditions this week:

Chicken Curry

Meat from 2 cooked chickens, cut up
3 T. of clarified butter (you can buy it or do it yourself see at the bottom)
2 med onions chopped
2 T. turmeric
1 T ground fenugreek seeds (I couldn't find this at any store so I omitted it)
1 t. ground cumin
1/4 t. cayenne pepper
1/2 t. ground cloves
1 t. ground coriander
1T. ground cardamom
2-3 c. chicken stock
juice of 1-2 lemons
2 cloves garlic, peeled and mashed
1 can whole coconut milk
sea salt

Saute onions until soft in clarified butter. Add spices and saute, stirring for several minutes. Add chicken stock and lemon juice and bring to a boil. Stir in garlic, chicken and coconut milk. Simmer uncovered for about 15 minutes, stirring frequently, until sauce is reduced and thickened. Stir in chicken and season to taste. Serve with chopped green onion.

To clarify butter, put 1/2 lb of butter in the oven in an oven safe dish at 200 degrees for about 30 minutes. The white stuff on top is the milk solids, skim those off the top and keep the yellow butter oil.