I finally did it. I pulled out Nourishing Traditions, found the raw milk yogurt recipe, and made it.

(This post is part of Healthy Home Economist’s Monday Mania.)

I hadn’t planned on it. We’d been going along, drinking raw milk kefir green smoothies for breakfast as part of our healthy diet regimen, with seeming contentment all around.

Then, suddenly Benjamin decided he didn’t like the smoothies. I started making his smoothie separately, with only a little kefir and mostly plain raw milk. He ate them much more readily, but inevitably would complain of a tummy ache a little while later.

I can’t say for sure without raw goat milk to compare, but I wonder if he is one of those (like me) who has a hard time digesting uncultured cow milk, even raw, and would do better with goat milk.

Anyway.

I had to do something. And I knew that yogurt is not as sour as kefir. What if I made his smoothies with yogurt instead? So I found the page with the homemade yogurt recipes and got going.

For some reason, I had it in my head that the process would take a lot longer, even though I knew that to prepare raw yogurt you only heated the milk to around 110 degrees F.

I don’t have a double boiler, so I used a waterless cookware pan. Since it has several layers, I figure there was less of a chance of the milk on the bottom of the pan getting overheated.

Before I knew it, the quart of milk was at 110. After removing two tablespoons of the warm milk, I let Benjamin stir in a tablespoon of Stonyfield Farm plain yogurt. Then, I poured it into a jar, and mixed in two more tablespoons of the prepared yogurt.

Incubating the milk was a no-brainer. Temperatures have soared as high as 108 here the past few weeks, so all I had to do was set the jar outside in a shady area (I figured to set a glass jar in the sun would cause a greenhouse effect that would overcook the mixture).

This was late morning. The yogurt was ready around supper time.

The verdict? Benjamin had a yogurt smoothie for breakfast the next morning. He sucked it down, and had no physical complaints.

Raw yogurt is easy to make (assuming you have a source of raw milk), full of probiotics, easier on the tastebuds than kefir, and a great way to pass a few minutes on a too-hot-to-go-outside day.

Need a resource to help you eat healthy, homemade food on the run? Be sure to check out my e-book, Weird Eating. You can download the table of contents and first several pages for free!

A truly healthy diet includes a good bit of raw food. And not just fruits and vegetables – raw cheese is a great source of protein and calcium, as well as healthy fats. It’s the perfect alternative for people who live in places where raw milk has been banned from public sale (and all my European readers give out a collective gasp!).

Raw milk cheese can be used just like any other cheese – on pizzas, as a stand-alone snack or grated on a lettuce salad – but why stop there? Following are five ways to use raw cheese that make snacks, lunches, dinners – even breakfasts! – a little more interesting.

1. Quesadillas

Start with a sprouted grain tortilla. Plop onto a large skillet and sprinkle with grated raw cheese and tomatoes (jalapenos, too, if you like that kick). Heat until the cheese is just melted. Cut into bite-sized pieces, or roll up and watch the gooey cheese drip down the other end as you eat.

2. Heirloom tomato-cheese sandwich

Sure, you could use a plain-old grocery store tomato. But believe me, that would not give you the same lip-smacking results. When they’re in season, budget for one of those sweet, juicy delights. Even better, learn how to grow your own.

Get out a couple slices of Ezekiel 4:9 or artisan bread, and slap on  couple slices of cheese with a slice or heirloom tomato. You may like it so much, that’s all you eat for a week!

3. Apple-cheese salad

Make a dressing with one part apple-cider vinegar, one part honey, two parts olive oil, and salt to taste. Arrange some spinach leaves on a plate. Throw on any diced organic apple of your choice along with a generous handful of grated raw cheddar cheese. Drizzle on dressing. Fantastic!

4. Yummy cooked greens

I call this “yummy” because it is one way to get your kids to think that such items as broccoli, kale and collards actually taste, well, yummy.

While your greens are cooking, grate some raw cheese. As soon as the greens are cooked down and just after you take them off the heat, throw in the cheese and mix thoroughly. Then add a generous squirt of ketchup and stir again. Another variation is to add some grated carrots to add not only nutrition, but a bit of a crunch and more sweetness.

5. Stone fruit and cheese

Everybody’s heard of apples and cheese, but many people have never considered munching it down with peaches, plums or other stone fruits. The salty-sourness of unpasteurized cheese is actually a delicious compliment to the sweetness of the stone fruits. Try it during the summer when such fruits are in season.

Raw cheese is more nutritious in many ways to cheese made with pasteurized milk. Make it raw, and make sure to try at least one of these wonderful flavor combinations!

Today I am participating in Real Food Wednesday courtesy of kellythekitchenkop.com.

When I recently heard that many people have trouble making their grass-fed beef recipes come out right, I didn’t get it. I have prepared grass-fed beef (a great part of a healthy diet)  numerous times and it also came out tender and scrumptious.

Come to find out that people were cooking their grass-fed beef on the grill or otherwise using high-heat cooking methods. Undoubtedly most of these people went back to buying conventional beef, instead of cooking “low-and-slow”, which is the proper way to deal with naturally-raised meat.

Which is what I did, before learning it was the right way to do it.

Going back to feedlot meat is definitely not the solution. Notwithstanding the cruel treatment of the animals, the meat is poisoned with not only the steroids and antibiotics regularly given to factory-farmed steer, but also sometimes with disease that the mistreatment and unnatural diet of the animals cause.

Not only that, but the nutritional content of conventional meat is notably inferior to that of grass-fed beef. It is much higher in fat and much lower in the vital omega-3 essential fatty acids, now believed to reduce inflammation, cancer risk and mental disorders.

Meat from grass-fed animals is also higher – by three to five times -  in conjugated linoleic acid, thought to be even more anti-cancer than the omega-3s. There is also two to four times as much vitamin E, and the list goes on.

So how do I make my grass-fed beef recipes turn out so good? Simple. I cook the meat in the crock pot.Here’s a basic recipe to start with:

The Lazy Chef’s Grass-Fed Pot Roast

Ingredients

• 4 pounds grass-fed chuck roast
• 1 large onion, peeled and sliced
• 4 or 5 garlic cloves
• Salt and pepper and/or whatever other seasoning you like to taste (for most herbs and spices, you will need more than you think!)

Place the meat in the Crockpot. Add the onions and garlic cloves. Put the cover on the Crockpot, make sure it’s plugged in (I know I’m not the only one who’s forgotten!), and turn it to low. Within eight hours you have a succulent dish you will be proud to serve to company.

If there’s room, you can add the traditional cut-up carrots and potatoes, too, if you want.

(I have many more ideas for preparing quick, healthy meals in my e-book Weird Eating: How to eat healthy, delicious food in 30 minutes per day or less.)

Banish the idea that grass-fed beef recipes are a mystery! Try this recipe, and you may never go back to conventionally raised meat again.

Time for a great cucumber recipe! If you’re like me, you believe that there’s no better way to pursue healthy living than to garden. So you’re either beginning to harvest the first cucumbers from your garden, or are looking forward to doing so in the next few weeks.

You may also be like me in that you don’t need any kind of recipe to enjoy your freshly-picked cukes. It’s treat enough to rub off the pricklies and and munch it down!

Even so, it is fun to mix sliced cucumber up with other in-season vegetables, plus it makes for a great side dish when summer company comes along. Besides, eventually you will be so overrun with cucumbers that you will want to figure out a way to make them a little less – shall we say – cucumbery?

To help you (and me!) appreciate this delicious garden crop all season long, here are three easy, cool and tasty cucumber recipes.

Cucumber, tomato and basil salad

Slice two or three small, or one large, cucumber. Slice or dice a ripe tomato. Cut up a few fresh basil leaves. Arrange on a plate and drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with a little salt, if you like. Can’t get any easier than that!

Easy Cold Cucumber Soup Recipe

• 3 medium cucumbers
• 3 cups chicken broth, preferably homemade
• 3 cups organic sour cream
• 3 tablespoons cider vinegar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 clove garlic, minced

Possible toppings:

• 2 medium tomatoes, chopped
• 3/4 cup sliced almonds, toasted
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions
• 1/2 cup minced fresh parsley

• 2 pounds cucumbers
• 1 small red onion
• 1 1/2 tablespoons salt
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar or sherry vinegar
• 1 teaspoon turbinado sugar or raw honey
• 2 teaspoons dried dill or 2 tablespoons fresh

Directions

It suddenly has become too hot to cook our usual Saturday morning pancakes, so this is what we had for breakfast this past Saturday:

Banana-cashew ice cream

Banana-cashew “ice cream”!

The one in the middle with the cacao nibs is mine. The ice cream by itself was way too sweet, so I needed to add some bitterness.

Benjamin didn’t seem to miss the pancakes at all.

Is it possible to eat healthy during the holidays? In this video, I show you one of many healthy Christmas recipes floating around the world – especially the raw food world.

Christmas cookie recipes don’t have to be filled with sugar and transfats. They can be completely free of the chemical additives that often increase cancer risk and cause behavior and emotional problems.

The recipe that I share is easy to make, delicious and nutritious. Just make sure you have some cookie cutters and a  high quality food processor on hand.

P.S. – If you want more recipes and ideas to to feed your family healthy food on a tight schedule, you need to check out my e-book Weird Eating.

Raw Chocolate-Mint Christmas Cookies

• 2 cups pitted dates
• 2 cups your favorite mix of nuts and/or seeds (preferably raw nuts that have been soaked and dehydrated)
• 1/2 cup raw chocolate powder (I use 1/2 cup raw cacoa nibs, ground up, which are a bit grainier but you can’t tell the difference in the end)
• one drop Be Young Peppermint Essential Oil (yes, the brand does matter!) OR 1/4- 1/2 tsp. peppermint extract

Grind up nuts to crumb consistency in food processor (be careful – some nuts and seeds will quickly turn oily if you don’t pay attention). Add the remaining ingredients and process until everything is well combined.

Spread the mixture out onto either a greased/oiled Teflex dehydrator sheet (if you have an Excalibur Food Dehydrator) or a greased cookie sheet. Dehydrate at 150 degrees F for one to two hours, or put in refrigerator to dry out a bit overnight. (If you skip this step, the dough may be too sticky for cutting out cookie shapes.)

Cut cookies into desired shapes. If you want them crisp, dehydrate for several hours more. Then store in sealed container in refrigerator, and enjoy thoroughly and often!

Healthy Christmas recipes abound, even Christmas cookie recipes. Do a little digging, and your holidays can be the healthiest they’ve ever been..with no compromise to taste!

Remember to check out Weird Eating. You can download the first few pages for FREE.

A homemade tahini recipe is not at all complicated, and an inexpensive option of a healthy diet. Just put some sesame seeds in a high-quality food processor, whirl it until smooth and spreadable, and voila! It’s as easy as that.

Or, is it?

Well, it could be. If you like the bitter taste of store-bought tahini. But I don’t. Until a couple years ago, I could only eat a little bit of tahini at a time, preferably with something sweet like fruit.

Then I learned about the importance of soaking nuts and seeds before eating them. Like grains, nuts and seeds contain a chemical called phytic acid. If left to its own devices, it will bind certain minerals to itself during the digestive process, preventing the minerals from being absorbed by the body.

In other words, phytates can cause mineral deficiency. Since mineral deficiency leads to illness and disease, this is not good.

Soaking nuts and seeds, however, neutralizes the phytates. Some say that the soaking process also makes them easier to digest, which is, in my experience, true. And when you soak walnuts and sesame seeds, the bitter taste disappears.

But not many people get excited about soggy nuts and seeds, and you can’t make nut or seed butter from them.

So, here’s my

Homemade Tahini Recipe

• about 4 cups sesame seeds, either unhulled or hulled
• Purified water

Soak the seeds in a large bowl in purified water for 8 to 12 hours. Spread the seeds on dehydrator trays. Put trays in food dehydrator, and dehydrate for one hour at the highest temperature. Then turn temperature down to about 105-110 degrees. Dehydrate for another 24-36 hours.

Place seeds inside food processor. Process until you have a spreadable texture. Enjoy your sweet tahini!

NOTE: I dehydrate the seeds in this way in order to not kill the enzymes. I also stop the food processor and test the temperature of the mixture once in a while. If it’s getting very warm, I leave them alone to cool down for a while, then finish the processing a couple hours later. This also is to keep the enzymes in tact. (This step is not necessary for hulled seeds, as they have already been heated high enough to kill enzymes. I always use hulled seeds.)

How’s this for a healthy diet? The other day, we had ice cream for breakfast.

Seriously.

Of course, it wasn’t the run-of-the-mill grocery store frozen sugar-laden stuff. It was raw ice cream, made from young coconuts. I based it on the recipe in Natalia Rose’s book, The Raw Food Detox Diet, but decided to modify it.

The original recipe calls for three young coconuts, maple syrup, vanilla and ice. The first time I made it, I followed the recipe verbatim, and my then 2-year-old son Benjamin went wild with a sugar high.

Grade B maple syrup, however nutritious it may be, still has a very high glycemic level.

The next several times, I used agave nectar instead of the syrup. No Benjamin bouncing off the walls, but agave nectar is still a processed food and how truly low-glycemic it is can be debated.

So as I pondered whether to serve raw ice cream for breakfast this past Saturday morning, I wondered why I didn’t just substitute frozen fruit for the sweetener and ice.

That is exactly what I did, and we were in healthy ice cream heaven the morning we ate it! The original recipe is delicious, but this one – in my humble opinion – is even better. Dare you to try it…and eat it for breakfast!

Raw Coconut Ice Cream

• Meat from 3 young coconuts
• 1 cup coconut water
• 1/4 cup cashews, optional
• 2 frozen bananas, sliced
• 1 cup frozen grapes

Put the coconut, water, cashews, and grapes in your Vita-Mix. Blend thoroughly. Add a few banana slices at a time while blending on medium. You will probably need to push them down with the pusher, and move the variable speed knob from low to high several times to get the blades to catch all the banana slices.

Divide among three bowls and enjoy! (It turns out like a very soft soft-serve ice cream, or super thick smoothie.)

Go wild with this recipe – try berries instead of grapes, or add some organic raw chocolate powder, for example. Try it, and tell me how you liked it in the comments below.

Need ideas on how to prepare healthy, homemade food despite a busy schedule? Don’t miss my e-book, Weird Eating. You can download the first few pages for FREE.

Dessert? A part of a healthy diet?! Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as healthy dessert recipes. Following are several summer dessert recipes that not only taste great, but are packed with nutrition and help cool you off!

Meal Replacement Shake Smoothie

Serves one.

• 1 scoop meal replacement shake powder
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup frozen bananas, berries, or a combination

Place the powder and water in your Vita-Mix. Add half of the frozen fruit and blend on medium-high. Add the rest of the fruit, one chunk at a time, until the mixture is smooth. Alternatively, you can use fresh fruit plus however much ice you need to get the desired thickness and texture.

The Be Young Meal Replacements are the healthiest on the market, as they are made from whey from grass-fed cows plus dehydrated fruits and vegetables to add a spectrum of naturally occurring vitamins and minerals. They provide a vegan version as well, made of white rice powder – much tastier than the brown rice powders found in health food stores.

Brownies and ice cream: the raw version

For the brownies, process one cup dates, one cup walnuts and one fourth cup organic raw chocolate powder in your food processor. Press into 8X8 inch pan, refrigerate for thirty minutes, then cut into squares.

Vanilla ice cream (from The Raw Food Detox Diet by Natalia Rose)

• Meat of 3 young coconuts
• 1 tablespoon alcohol-free vanilla extract, or vanilla beans
• 1/2 cup pure maple syrup or raw agave nectar
• 4 cups ice cubes (about 14 cubes)

Place the coconut meat, vanilla, sweetener, and one cup of ice in your Vita-Mix. Add the remaining ice cubes as long as the mixture is flowing and blending well. You may have to run it two or three times to use up most of the ice. You need not use all the ice, just enough to make the mixture thick. You may also wish to use a little coconut water to facilitate blending.

Divide ice cream among two or three people, and give them each a brownie. Or two.

Peaches and cream

Serves 2.

• 4 small or two large peaches
• 1 cup cream, preferably raw, at least organic

Cut up peaches and divide into two bowls. Pour cream over. If you must sweeten it, use raw honey, as it contains trace minerals and enzymes. Raw honey is also antibiotic.

Grape Kefir Smoothie

Serves 2.

• 2 cups plain kefir or yogurt
• 2 cups grapes

Blend kefir/yogurt and grapes in your Vita-Mix. Pour into glasses and enjoy!

The best kefir is homemade with raw cow or goat milk and your own kefir grains, which you can buy from The Kefir Lady. If your state is unenlightened and forbids the sale of raw milk, make your own kefir/yogurt from pasteurized milk BUT NEVER USE ULTRAPASTEURIZED MILK. Or, simply buy organic kefir or yogurt from the store.

Feel free to share any of your favorite healthy summer dessert recipes in the comments.   And don’t miss my e-book for busy people: Weird Eating: How to eat healthy, homemade food in 30 minutes per day. You can download the first few pages for FREE.

Should eggs be included as part of a healthy diet? The nutrients in eggs are varied and plentiful. That combined with their low cost should make them a winner with frugal cooks around the globe.

However, during the past couple of decades, the greatness of eggs has been clouded. Mainly, it was because of the misinformation that dietary cholesterol leads to high blood cholesterol (which is totally wrong), and that therefore high-cholesterol eggs (specifically the yolks) must be avoided at all costs.

Brown egg

My eggy experience

Personally, I have had a love-hate relationship with eggs. When I was a kid, I loved them sunny-side up and runny yolk with toast. I loved them even more for making French toast. When I went off to college, the cafeteria served only scrambled eggs–which I didn’t particularly like–so cold cereal and milk became my breakfast staple.

Right before I got pregnant, I got turned on to putting raw egg yolks in my morning smoothie. Then I got pregnant, and my midwife cautioned me against that habit in case of nasty bacteria.

Frightened by the whole “pregnant women must force themselves to shove unnatural amounts of protein down their throat” doctrine, I tried eating fried eggs during my first trimester.

The keyword here is “tried.” No matter how wonderful their nutritional value. Seventy percent of the time just looking at them made me lose my appetite, and when I forced myself to eat them I often became miserably  nauseated afterward.

Nutrients in eggs

Lately, I’ve fallen back in love with eggs. Well, with the yolks, anyway. Egg whites–raw or cooked–don’t agree with me for whatever reason.

Why the turn around? For one, I couldn’t get away from the egg’s nutritional value. The nutrients in egg yolks alone include:

• vitamin E,
• vitamin A,
• vitamin D,
• DHA (an omega-3 fatty acid necessary for brain and eye function),
• iron,
• biotin (a B vitamin necessary for fatty acid synthesis and blood sugar regulation),
• a small amount of calcium and
• several other trace minerals.

I’ve been putting raw yolks from organically fed, cage-free chickens in our morning smoothies for some time. Recently, I began to wonder why I couldn’t put eggs back in the dinner menu rotation. Our food bill had gotten noticeably higher since Benjamin started eating three meals per day, and I was looking for somewhere to cut back.

Since my husband enjoys scrambled eggs, he didn’t mind that idea one bit. The only problem was, I wanted them raw. For several weeks, I walked around mulling over an idea I had.

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Need ideas on how to provide healthy, homemade food on a tight schedule? Look no further than my incredible, edible e-book Weird Eating.

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But it was kind of strange. And I wasn’t sure if it would taste all that good. Finally, I decided to go ahead and try it. Here’s the recipe I came up with:

Egg yolk dressing

• 3 egg yolks
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• squirt of ketchup
• salt and other herbs and spices to taste

Gently blend all together, pour over a large lettuce salad, and dig in.

Yes, this does taste good! Of course, I cook Jerry’s eggs. And Benjamin is easy: all I have to do is plop a couple of egg yolks in a dish, and he eats them up with a spoon like other kids eat ice cream. (Okay, maybe not that enthusiastically, but he does like them.)

Whether you want to preserve the enzymes and all the nutrients in eggs by eating them raw, or whether you don’t tolerate cooked eggs well, this recipe may help you out. You can always begin by using only one or two yolks to make sure that you enjoy the yolk-y flavor.