Reading the label

My first post mentioned that I wanted to eat more like the Nourishing Tradition way, often referred to by the letter "NT." This is in reference to the book Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon with Mary G. Enig, Ph.D. Most of my current knowledge of this way of eating actually comes from several other bloggers and the book Real Food by Nina Planck. The way Nourishing Traditions is written annoys me because most of the book is a cookbook with facts on the sidebars. So I am slowly reading it but since I can't systematically read through it like a regular book so I will never know if I read all of it!

NT has inspired me to eat more natural, real and organic than we currently do. To accomplish this project I have been slowly changing the ingredients I use in our cooking and reading labels to ensure there are no questionable ingredients. I am also reading labels to find raw milk cheese which is NT-preferred. Many European chesses are made with raw milk but can be fairly expense. I have found several so far but not with out lots of time spent reading cheese labels. Did you know cheddar cheese has coloring to make it yellow? I am buying white cheddar now which is pasteurized but has a reasonable price. This will be used for dishes that will be cooked and I will save the raw cheese for eating cold or slightly warm so that the enzymes will not be cooked to death.

My favorite raw milk cheese I have found is from http://www.belgioioso.com/. Their Asiago cheese is wonderful. I emailed the company to make sure pasteurized milk was not used. The label did not indicate pasteurized milk but I'm still a newbie and wanted double check. Their marketing assistant sent a nice reply to let me know that it was raw milk and which other cheeses were also from raw milk. The other cheese include: American Grana, Auribella, Kasseri, Parmesan, Vegetarian Parmesan, Pepato, Peperoncino, Sharp Provolone, Romano, and Toscanello. Mmmm, my heart beats for cheese.

Now that I have found my raw milk cheese on to the other labels I have been reading and questioning. Such as, did you know there is soy in canned tuna? Why? It's not like I'm not already paranoid about BHT from the can but they put soy in it too! Perhaps I will have to take a break from reading the labels until I find more sources of nourishing foods...

Blessed Time Beginning

Happy New Year's Day!

Well what little is left of it, anyway. One of my 2009 New Year's resolutions is to start blogging. Other resolutions which may be mentioned in this blog later include trying to eat more like the Nourishing Traditions' way, working on our house which was built in the 1940s, and living more naturally.

My title of Blessed Time came from a period in my life when I was single and had lots of free time. I was annoyed by the discontentment expressed by other single people I knew and fought against it in myself. Thus the idea of my single time being a blessing rather than a curse to be endured came to me and I wrote several short devotional type stories espousing the idea of enjoying the time God gives us whatever our circumstances may be. Although I am now married, I still must strive to be content and make good use of time the Lord has given me.

May we be blessed this year,
Marsha