Health

A friend sent in a request for me to write something about my skincare regimen, so here goes. I've never denied that vanity has often been the impetus for me seeking out healthier alternatives in all things—the fact that they are actually more effective and make you feel better turns out to be a real bonus. I've posted a picture of myself so you can see that I have my fair share of wrinkles. (Full disclosure: It's been 9 months since I stopped getting the Botox injections that were first offered to me 10 years ago at my dermatologist's office in Los Angeles. Doctor: You have a little crease between your eyes. Have you thought about Botox? Me: Never heard of it—give it to me!! ) I'm pushing 50 and I have the usual issues with my face: sagging upper eyelids, enlarging pores, loss of elasticity and those little brown spots that seem to crop up overnight. This is what the cosmetics industry refers to as "mature skin." I have wrestled with the idea of getting my eyes done, and I still maintain that if I ever get a big turkey wattle, I will have it removed, but I don't want to struggle to look young. I want to be my truest, most authentic self, and feel good about it. (I'm even experimenting with letting my hair go grey, after coloring it every 3 weeks for years and years. It's going to be a rough transition, so wish me luck!)
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This is not about that traditional English dish of fried leftover vegetables. I'm actually referring to the lovely sounds that emerge from the jar when you make your own sauerkraut. More broadly, in fact, I want to tell you about the joys of lacto-fermentation. WTF?! you cry. What is she going on about now?! Yes, it's more of my kooky DIY. But you can't tell me that you don't love pickles. And this is one way to make them that doesn't require all that boiling and canning hassle. This is just you, your vegetables and some free-floating healthy bacteria! Lactobacilli are lurking everywhere, on the surface of all living things, especially anything growing on or near the ground. Put them to your own use and you've got all manner of delectable pickles like kimchi, sauerkraut and half-sour dills. Make no mistake: lacto-fermentation is not the same as pickling in a vinegar brine. I was amazed to see that my sauerkraut was simply salt, caraway seeds and cabbage; a dry mixture that, over a period of days, became juicy and sour and fragrant.
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I can't take credit for that: my friend Louise told me about a Rawesome food co-op in Venice, California, that sells raw milk—she's going there to stock up! I feel like the Pied Piper of natural dairy. Love it. I'm  jealous because they sell raw butter there. The farm I buy from doesn't separate the cream from the milk and I haven't quite figured out how to do that successfully. Every source says you just wait for it to rise to the top and skim it off, but that seems to leave me with something more like half-&-half. Any thoughts? Raw cheese, on the other hand, is pretty easy to find—as long as it's aged. I guess they figure any harmful bacteria will have died off, so by law raw milk cheeses have to be aged at least 60 days to be considered fit for human consumption. Whatever. You know I'll get my hands on some fresh raw milk cheese very soon. Thinking about making my own mozzarella. Yep, I'm a radical. (By the way, did I ever tell you that my father contracted bovine tuberculosis in Mexico when he was 19? Saved him from going into the service during WWII! Nowadays, even mom-&-pop farms do regular testing to make sure that doesn't happen.) So I did pick up some raw milk cheeses at Lucy's Whey in the Chelsea Market this week. I sampled them for lunch today and they were truly delicious. (I also picked up that lovely tray from Brooklyn Slate. Great packaging; would make a nice housegift for some cheese-loving host.)
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Meet Louise, an enormous black milk cow who'd just given birth to this still-trembling little calf on Saturday morning when we stopped by our small local farm to pick up some raw milk. They're kind enough to sell it to us right from the cow. Well, pretty much. It's legal in New York, but only if you buy it directly from the farm. (It's banned outright in New Jersey, and available at retail in Connecticut.) You'll need to bring your own container—I use big glass jugs. If this recent article in New York magazine is any indication, raw milk is gaining in popularity as people begin to understand more about its nutritional value and appreciate its wonderful taste. (Old-style delivery services will bring it right to your door!) My mother-in-law was absolutely horrified at the idea of us drinking raw milk, and that's a testament to how this country has been brainwashed into believing that industrialized food is cleaner and safer. But in fact, high-heat pasteurization and homogenization do a great disservice to the quality and value of the milk we drink. And most cases of salmonella associated with milk in the past decade have been from pasteurized products. Perhaps, like I did, you shun milk altogether? As recently as a couple of months ago, I was posting about all the alternatives—soy, almond, rice, hemp. Now that I've learned about how the high-heat and chemical extraction processes essentially damage these foods, I really can't recommend you consume any of them on a regular basis. I know, I know, the ground beneath us is always shifting. But I feel much more empowered now that I have begun to do my own research (forever indebted to Sally Fallon of Nourishing Traditions) and really understand the science behind my food choices. Don't despair, there's still plenty of good stuff to eat.

As I've mentioned before, ours is a gluten-free household. This does not mean we don't LOVE bread but G, my husband, was diagnosed as "gluten intolerant" a couple of years ago and tries his best to eat accordingly. (I support him in this, and feel it has done me a world of good as well.) Gluten is the gluey, stretchy stuff that gives products made from wheat, rye and barley their wonderfully meaty chew. Sadly, for celiacs and people with gluten intolerance, this is the same stuff that irritates the villi—microscopic finger-like projections that line the inner wall of the small intestine and aid in the absorption of food. In learning about this condition, I've come across a lot of information to indicate that refined highly processed flours are not so good for any of us. (I believe I already told you that my nutritionist, Sally Kravich, equates eating white flour with smearing your colon with that paste we used to make in elementary school.) The rise of inflammatory diseases like arthritis, colitis, IBS and even tooth decay is directly associated with the rise of agriculture and industry. Just try cutting out grains and starches from your diet for even 2 weeks to see how your aches and pains diminish. It's pretty amazing. But didn't our ancestors manage just fine eating grains, you ask? Actually, their approach to grains and baking was quite different from ours. Virtually all preindustrialized people soaked or fermented their grains before making them into porridge or bread or cake. Think how Indians ferment rice or lentils before making idlis and dosas; or how American pioneers made their breads and pancakes with sourdough starter. Way back when, instructions on the box of oatmeal even called for an overnight soak. Here's the science behind it (with thanks to Nourishing Traditions for breaking it down so intelligibly).
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There are a few more things I want to share with you before we move on from our discussion (my diatribe?) on fats. I didn't get a chance to write much about vegetable oils/fats and I really want to clear up a few misconceptions. I think we all started to get the message about margarine a few years back, and the idea that butter was better (something our tastebuds knew all along) slipped back into our consciousness. Let me quickly explain why. Remember polyunsaturated oils? The ones that are so potentially damaging to your health because they become oxidized or rancid when exposed to heat, oxygen or moisture and let loose a whole lot of marauding whoop-ass? (This is why you are told never to heat flax seed oil.) If not, review here. I forgot to tell you that this is why you should seek out cold-pressed or expeller-pressed oils if you are going to cook with any polyunsaturates. These are rendered in a heat-controlled environment. But it probably won't surprise you to hear that these phrases are bandied about rather liberally in this country and that chemicals often find their way into the mix. Spectrum is a good brand to seek out for their conscientious practices. This is yet another instance of how new technologies have rendered obsolete the old-fashioned, time-consuming yet much healthier ways of extracting nutrition from foods. Grinding things between two slow-moving stone presses turns out to be the way to go.
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At a photo shoot almost 20 years ago, a hairstylist (I think it might have been Sam McKnight) said something that I remember vividly to this day: Animal fats make me fat. At the time it struck me as rather profound. Of course, I thought, that makes perfect sense. But it really doesn't. I hope you'll stick with me as I take you through all the reasons why. If I’ve done it right, you will clutch butter, coconut oil and, yes, even lard to your bosom, and forever shun margarine and canola oil for their evil anti-nutrient ways. I’m very passionate about this subject but also a little afraid I’m going to come across like Tom Wilkinson in Michael Clayton, running around a parking lot, stark naked and raving about the injustices of big agri-business. There’s tons of relevant information on just this one topic of fats, and I so want to make it palatable for you. This will be the first in a series of posts on nutrition from a more macro perspective but don’t worry, I will always keep feeding you recipes for delicious, wonderful, flavorful treats, interspersed with this food for thought.
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Someone recently accused me of eating a lot of kale. They said it as though it were an accusation, like I needed to justify myself. I hereby declare myself a lover of kale. I freely admit that. (Proof positive is this post. And this one. And this one.  And this one.) The stuff is good. Tastes delicious, is very versatile and packs a wallop of nutrition. Do you read Goop? Gwyneth Paltrow's blog sort of irritates me. I can't really pinpoint why but I think it just might have something to do with her total and unmitigated sense of entitlement. Just because you can spend two hours a day working out with Tracy Anderson in your custom-built blonde wood yoga studio in back of your lovely house in East Hampton, Gwynnie, doesn't mean we can. Grrrr. Yet we can make her I-need-to-lose-5-pounds-quick-for-this-movie-premiere kale juice cocktail (with lemon juice and agave nectar). Or even better, we can use kale to whip up deliciously salty-crunchy chips that we can munch on to our heart's content without even missing those salt-&-vinegar kettle chips one iota. Perfect for getting into fighting shape. Beach weather is coming, hard as it may seem to believe when we're currently at 28 degrees upstate!! (All those new little green leaves? Drooping in the cold, poor darlings!) So you gotta eat your kale, bay-bee!
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Too intimidated/busy/shy/lazy to make your own pie crust? Think you'll just pick one up at the store or take a shortcut by buying one of those pre-made crusts? Think again. PRIORITIES, people. Have you ever read the ingredients on one of those pie crust packages? Blech. (If you absolutely have to use one, let it be the Keebler and not the Pillsbury; but neither will work for this recipe, thank god.) Let me lay something on you: polyunsaturated fats and hydrogenated fats are terrible for you. As in cellulite, saddle bags, Hadassah arms, heart attacks, strokes. I'll tell you more about that in an upcoming roundup on fats, but for now I want to give you my beloved and timeworn recipe for strawberry-rhubarb cobbler-ish. It just won an Editors' Pick on Food52; and so did my Cardamom-Saffron Lassi, a variation of the one I posted here!  
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Vermont Sweetwater Bottling Company, a small family-run business, has come out with its own unique soda that contains neither water nor sugar. Vermont Maple Seltzer is made from pure maple sap that is gently carbonated! They also make a sweeter, more mapley soda and some other fruit flavors, but it's really all about the Maple Seltzer. It's lightly sweet, with a barely perceptible hint of maple, and quite refreshing. Even my friend Matthew, who swears by his Coke, was rather intrigued. It's got about a third of the calories of that corporate cola and, with just 8 grams of natural sugar, has none of the high fructose corn syrup. I ordered a couple of cases online (the link is above) and they were just delivered today. I plan to keep icy cold bottles in the fridge all summer long. (I'm imagining some excellent bourbon cocktails topped off with this as well...)
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