Moe Friendly
ramblings and recipes about Paleo & Vegan food made without gluten, sugar, dairy, soy or corn... just *LOVE*
Monday, April 29, 2013
Why flatline when you can ride the waves?
With that said... it has been almost two months since my last post. I totally crapped out on Gabby, and Marie, gained a bunch of weight, hated myself, went on vacation, loved myself, had a birthday, possibly one of the most miserable days of my life, and decided the best thing to be able to fulfill my dream is put it on the back burner for now. That is some crazy shit and maybe one day i'll reflect on it all and actually write the posts that I probably should have written bout it all. Whateves.
Today I am starting a smoothie cleanse, and going to do Gabby again. I realized that I know I am an emotional eater but it is really a problem, more like an addiction. Since I got to my goal weight about 9 months ago, I think I gained about 2/3 of the weight back. That is a bummer. I fell off the work out/eat right/mentally take care of myself wagon when stress got to me. I know Moe... join the club! Getting back on that wagon has become more of an obsession then an act. I am obsessed about doing it... but I can't find the strength to actually do it.... so I eat more, don't exercise, and mentally I am kicking my own ass about it. I have been so hard on myself for falling off, and then that turns into a barrage of more negative self talk. That shit is so no bueno.
I have been "collecting" web sites and articles all about habits of successful people, and manifesting, and bla bla bla, and not practicing any of it... and hating on myself even more. As of today, aside from Gabby, I am taking a break from all of it. Maybe I am just too overwhelmed with one person saying "meditate every morning and heres why"... then finding another person saying "if meditation isn't ok for you then don't do it". WTF! So much for help! And then ultimately it all comes down to... once again... we all have to find what is right for us. The universe is perfect, we are perfect and we are right where we need to be. I don't know about you, but my first instinct after that realization is to go "well, why don't I just go fuck myself cuz that is no help." But sometimes, little Moe in the back of my brain who is fiercely trying to get out of the cage says "don't be silly... that just means you can do and be anything you want! Embrace it!"
I'm glad that little Moe is a fighter!
I would like to document my smoothie cleanse here, and post some recipes. Wish me luck!
Monday, March 4, 2013
I'm sharing my thoughts with everyone!
With that said, I signed up for Marie Forleo's B-School which is also exciting and scary. In doing the prep, I researched some companies already successful doing similar stuff to what I do. I found Emmy's Organics, and read Samantha's blog... spend over two hours, watched every video. They are so inspiring and so real. It is beautiful. Samantha has inspired me not only to share recipes with you, but to actually share everything going on in real life, and in my head about Moefriendly. Maybe this blog will keep me more grounded. I write in my notebook everything that goes on, and my thoughts and stuff but nothing sticks... I go from point A to point N in my head. Gabby says a lesson in the course is "Only infinite patience offers immediate results". Time to put this ADD to rest!
I have been in talks at work about creating a program where I work with my guys and sell Moefriendly. It would be great for them, the recipes are pretty simple and they will be accomplishing something great, helping to heal the world with yumminess! Meetings coming soon, keep your fingers crossed! I'm also looking up places on Staten Island where I can begin to sell Moefriendly, probably contact the Alice Austin House, the Greenmarket at the Mall, Enchanted Events, The Richmond County Fair. Where else do you know of?
In my blogging absence, I have been experimenting with a new ingredient- Irish Moss. It is seaweed, and it smells pretty gross. You clean it off... rinse away the sand and other random sea remnants, and soak it for at least 4 hours, rinsing and changing the soak water. Once it has gone from a cloudy white, light yellow color to almost clear, and gelish.. give it a few whirls in the food processor until its a uniform gel. The smell sort of goes away. Not going to lie... it lingers until you blend it with other ingredients. But once it is all blended, no icky sea smell! I made a Berry Tart with the Irish moss, that I wish I took pictures of! Chocolate crust, coconut filling, and berries on top! Super Yummy! My next creation was similar. Almond crust, coconut filling, and pineapple topping. I'm calling it Pina Colada Tart. The census at work is it might be one of my best recipes yet! Awesome!
At work I made with my guys a fudgey coconut berry bar. Super tasty too, and so easy to make!Our recipe is just one modification that you can make with this one by Natalia.
Fudgey Coconut Berry Bars
1/2 cup coconut nectar
1/2 cup coconut oil
1 cup cacao Powder
8oz coconut manna
2 cups chopped berries
Line an 8X8 baking pan with parchment paper
Mix half of the nectar, oil, and cacao in a large bowl.
Take the mixture, and cover the bottom of your pan. Put in refrigerator.
Heat up your coconut manna so that it is thick but manageable. Take chocolate out of fridge, pour coconut on top, and put pack in fridge
Mix the other half of your chocolate ingredients, the coconut nectar, oil, and cacao. Take bars out of fridge
Spread second chocolate layer on top, than evenly spread berries on top as well.
Put back in freezer for at least 15 minutes, or fridge until set.
*You could also make all of the chocolate at once, put half in pan, then coconut, then more chocolate, and your bars will have a more marbled look like ours did.
Thank you for reading. I hope you are enjoying the recipes!
Cheers!
Love *Moe*
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Lemon Curry Chicken with Cauliflower Rice
*Love Marissa*
Lemon Curry Chicken (Makes 4 servings)
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Paleo Pancakes
*Love Moe*
Paleo Pancakes
1/4 cup coconut milk
1/4 cup crunchy almond butter
1 large egg
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp coconut oil
Mix all ingredients well until you get a batter like consistency.
Grease pan, and drop 2 spoonfuls of batter per pancake into pan
When sides begin to bubble, flip
Top with whatever edible goodness you can think of, and enjoy!
Reboot!
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Sickened and Disgusted!
When a school lunch supplier repackaged moldy applesauce into canned goods and fruit cups, it drew a sharp warning from federal health regulators last month -- and general disgust from almost everyone else.
“I was appalled that there were actually human beings that were OK with this,” said Kantha Shelke, a food scientist and spokeswoman for the Institute of Food Technologists. “This is a case of unsafe food. They are trying to salvage that to make a buck.”
But even as Food and Drug Administration officials prepare to re-inspect Snokist Growers of Yakima, Wash., to ensure that the applesauce maker keeps toxin-tainted fruit off store shelves, federal officials and industry experts acknowledge that Snokist is not alone in “reworking” faulty food.
Turning imperfect, mislabeled or outright contaminated foods into edible -- and profitable -- goods is so common that virtually all producers do it, at least to some extent, sources say.
“Any food can be reconditioned,” said Jay Cole, a former federal inspector who now works as a senior consultant with The FDA Group, a firm that specializes in helping manufacturers comply with industry regulations.
“It’s how people do their business,” added Shelke, founder of Corvus Blue, a Chicago-based packaged goods consulting firm.
It may be something benign, such as misshapen pieces of pasta that are re-ground into semolina, or something unexpected, like a batch of mislabeled blueberry ice cream mixed in with chocolate to avoid waste.
It might be something unappetizing, such as insect parts sifted out of cocoa beans or live bugs irradiated -- and left behind -- in dried fruits like dates and figs.
Or it could be something alarming, such as the salmonella Tennessee bacteria detected last year in huge lots of hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or HVP, a flavor enhancer used in foods from gravy mix and snack foods to dairy products, spices and soups.
Some 177 products were recalled in 2010, but bulk HVP products from Basic Food Flavors Inc. of Las Vegas, Nev., were allowed to be reconditioned by heat-treating the foods to kill the salmonella, according to the FDA. The reprocessed foods were then distributed and sold.
“Some things can be adulterated and fixed, and you’re not throwing out food that would otherwise be OK,” Correll said.No question, FDA regulations do permit foods to be reconditioned, said William Correll, the agency’s acting director of compliance. That leeway can avoid both waste and expense, he explained.
That’s why chocolate ice cream becomes the catch-all when other flavors aren’t quite right, said Shelke. If a producer accidentally botches a batch of blueberry, small amounts of the mistaken treat can be mixed into future bins of chocolate, where the dark color and rich flavor mask any error.
The key, however, is that the process must render the food safe for consumption.
That’s why Snokist Growers drew such a strong warning. In the case of the moldy applesauce, there are a couple of problems, Correll said. Mold is tricky because when contamination is extensive, it’s not enough to simply remove the obviously tainted parts and then zap the food with heat.
Snokist officials claim that their heat process kills patulin, the most common toxin produced by mold in apples, and renders the food commercially sterile. But FDA officials counter that the firm’s thermal process is not adequate to ensure that other heat-stable mycotoxins are eradicated from the food.
“Mold is not an easily reconditionable product,” Correll said. “It’s not OK to take moldy tomatoes and make them into tomato paste.”
Not that some food firms don’t try. It’s no secret that the FDA allows certain levels of expected contaminants to remain in foods, simply because a zero-tolerance standard would be impossible to meet, officials said.
The agency’s “defect action levels” are used to define the point at which food becomes adulterated and subject to enforcement. Below that level, however, some unappetizing substances make it through.
The FDA allows, for instance, an average of 225 insect fragments or 4.5 rodent hairs per 8 ounces of macaroni or noodle products. An average of 20 or more maggots of any size is permitted per 3.5 ounces of drained canned mushrooms, or per half-ounce of dried mushrooms. When it comes to mold, an average count of 15 percent is OK for canned cranberry sauce.
“Dilution is not the solution,” he said.
Because such levels are permitted, some food producers propose to combine faulty and sound products to lower the overall level. An apple-juice maker might ask to mix juice with high counts of mold with a batch with low counts, for instance. But, Correll said, that’s not allowed.
Similarly, companies that propose to eliminate a serious contaminant without addressing the source are turned down. He recalled a seafood firm with faulty bathroom practices that led to canned crab contaminated with fecal E. coli bacteria. Heat-treating would have eradicated the bugs -- but not the problem, Correll said.
FDA officials couldn’t provide an estimate of the number of reconditioning requests received from food firms each year. But in 2009, the agency started a new Reportable Food Registry, which requires notification of hazards to human health. At least 2,240 reports were logged in the registry’s first year, including the salmonella-tainted vegetable protein.
“If food is adulterated in an unacceptable way, reconditioning won’t fix it,” he said. “You can’t cook the poop out of it.”
Many producers faced with faulty food simply want to minimize their losses without harming public health, said Peter Quinter and Jennifer Diaz, lawyers with the Florida firm Becker & Poliakoff, which represents importers of foreign food.
Such firms want to avoid having product refused, so they go to great expense to salvage products such as insect-infested rice for future consumption, Diaz said. Grain products can be sifted, re-inspected, repackaged – and sent on to grocery stores.
“Taking the ick factor away is that the product is no longer contaminated,” she added.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Food Labels are pretty Inaccurate. Just so you know, put down the "organic" cookies...
Ignore All Organic Labels, Except This One
By Dr. Mercola
Are the words written on food packaging honest?
Many corporations hire lawyers to carefully craft words that are just barely on the side of being legal. The Yahoo health site has collected eight common package proclamations that are red flags of "crafty" advertising.
These include:
Flavored: Both artificial and natural flavors are actually made in laboratories, and natural flavors are not necessarily healthier than artificial ones.
Pure: "100 percent pure" products such as orange juice can be doctored with flavor packs for aroma and taste.
Nectar: While 'nectar' may sound particularly wholesome, it's really just a fancy name for "not completely juice." These "diluted juice beverages" may contain more high fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners than fruit puree.
Fat free: Some cooking sprays are "fat free" only if they are sprayed for a fraction of a second to produce a microscopic "serving".
The Importance of Deciphering Food Labels
It's unfortunate, but reading food labels isn't as easy as you might think. In addition to determining what ingredients are in the food, you also need to have the foundational knowledge of how to decipher certain verbiage used to describe them. The words listed above are just a few of the words that can be used to mislead you.
Below, I'll review a few more label items that are often used in deceptive ways, or that may lead you to buy a product you'd otherwise avoid:
- Vitamin and mineral claims
- The "All Natural" label
- The "Organic" label
- Misleading nutritional facts
- Dangerous ingredients not required to be listed on any food label
Beware of Vitamin and Mineral Claims
In an effort to optimize your diet, you may reach for so-called fortified foods; products that proclaim to be more healthful due to their vitamin or mineral content. Unfortunately, foods fortified with "extra" nutrients are nearly always processed, and the nutrients added are typically synthetic; neither of which will promote your health.
Likewise, most commercial vitamin supplements are synthetic vitamins that have been robbed of all of the co-factors and accessory micronutrients that they naturally associated with. In turn, just like refined foods, they can create numerous problems and imbalances in your body if taken for long periods of time. They can also act more like drugs in your body. At the very least, they won't be as beneficial as high quality food and whole food-based supplements are.
When it comes to foods fortified with minerals, matters can get even worse. Be particularly wary of foods fortified with iron, such as many breakfast cereals, as some of these have been shown to contain actual iron filings, which is not the ideal way to supplement your body with iron.
What Does the "All Natural" Label Really Mean?
When it comes to processed food bearing this label, it means virtually nothing... This is because there's no standard definition for the term "all natural" when used on processed foods, which leaves it wide open for creative interpretation. The term is only regulated on meat and poultry, for which an item labeled "natural" may not contain any:
- Artificial flavors
- Colors
- Chemical preservatives
But in the processed food arena, a "natural" product can be virtually anything; it can be genetically modified, full of pesticides, made with corn syrup, additives, preservatives and artificial ingredients...
If You Want Organic, There's Only One Label that Can Assure it
Similar problems pester the organic label. There's really only one organic label out there that means anything as far as organic food is concerned, and that's the USDA Certified Organic label.
This seal, which is governed by the USDA's National Organic Program (NOP), is your BEST assurance of organic food quality. (As a side note, it's also the international gold standard for personal care products that contain organic agricultural ingredients, because the ingredients in USDA certified beauty products are certified organic for food, adhering to much stricter standards as they are intended specifically for human consumption.)
There are three "tiers" within the USDA organic label:
- Products labeled "100% Organic" must contain only organically produced materials
- Products labeled simply "Organic" must contain at least 95 percent organic ingredients
- The label "Made with organic ingredients" can contain anywhere between 70 to 95 percent organic ingredients
Farmers and growers of organic produce bearing the USDA seal have to meet the strictest standards of any organic label. USDA certified organic livestock must have access to the outdoors and cannot be given antibiotics or growth hormones. And in order to qualify as an organic crop, it must be grown and processed using organic farming methods that recycle resources and promote biodiversity.
For example, crops must be grown without:
- Synthetic pesticides
- Bioengineered genes
- Petroleum-based fertilizers
- Sewage sludge-based fertilizers
Organic products also cannot be irradiated, are not allowed to contain preservatives or flavor enhancing chemicals, nor can they contain traces of heavy metals or other contaminants in excess of tolerances set by the FDA. The pesticide residue level cannot be higher than 5 percent of the maximum EPA pesticide tolerance. (For the complete National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances under the USDA organic label, see this link.) So remember, if you see anything that says it's "organic," it must specify "USDA Certified Organic" to be meaningful.
What You Need to Know about Nutrition Labels
Other factors that can make labels less than helpful include the nutrition facts and the stated serving size.
It's important to understand that while the FDA does check food labels, they only check to see whether or not the Nutrition Facts panel is present. They rarely ever verify that the nutrition facts are true and accurate. Furthermore, the government allows foods to contain 20 percent more diet-damaging ingredients than the label lists before taking enforcement action. So while certainly a useful and important start, reading the Nutrition Facts panels on foods may not be as reliable an indicator of a food's nutrients as you may think.
The FDA also allows processed food manufacturers to use absurdly tiny serving sizes on their labels, which can lull you into a false sense of security when it comes to determining how much of each stated nutrient or toxin, like trans-fat, you're actually consuming. If the serving size is small enough then trans-fats can fall under the minimum requirement for labeling them, meaning they are left off the label entirely despite the fact they are present in the product. Needless to say, this tactic is intentionally employed, to make the product appear more healthful than it actually is
It is deceptive labeling tricks like these that can leave you eating things you would rather avoid.
Another example well worth mentioning here is the lack of any requirement to label genetically modified components in packaged foods, even though this is mandated law in the entire European Union. In the US, you simply will never know if GM foods are present in your processed food, but more than likely they are—especially if the product contains soy or corn, or any derivative thereof...
Fortunately, we now have a practical plan to end this disaster. By educating the public about the risks of GM foods through a massive education campaign, and launching a ballot initiative in California for 2012 that will require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods and food ingredients, the plan is to generate a tipping point of consumer rejection to make GMOs a thing of the past. To learn how you can be part of this important movement, please see The California Ballot Initiative: Taking Down Monsanto.
How to Choose High-Quality Foods for Yourself and Your Family
While reading labels on everything you buy is important, when it comes to food, you're far better off limiting or eliminating foods that require a listing of its ingredients in the first place. What are you left with? Fresh (preferably organic) WHOLE foods!
Remember, virtually ALL processed foods contain cheap, chemical-laden ingredients that will eventually take their toll on your health. By educating yourself on what 'healthy food' really is, and how not to be led astray by label claims that toe the line in terms of being truthful, you'll be well on your way toward a healthier you.