Vicki worked many years as an executive in a corporate environment where she noticed several patterns in people’s lives creating physical and emotional imbalances. Vicki always had an interest and knowledge regarding alternative means of healing the body. She left the corporate environment and explored healing methods to assist people on a deeper level with life challenges. She became a LMT and embarked on a extensive study of healing modalities. Vicki has studied nationally with many leaders of the “healing” community and internationally the ancient healing techniques of Peru, which added another dimension to her work. She calls her work Energy Balancing Therapy aligning the body, heart, mind and spirit.

BS Psychology/Business Administration; NLP Hypnosis; Energy Medicine Practitioner; Life Coach; Cranial Sacral Practitioner; Shamanic Practitioner; Herbal Studies; Bach Flower Essences; Aroma Therapist.
Vicki Strom-Medley LMT #6830 Oregon. Reiki Master

Website: http://www.healingheartenergybalancing.com

Anne Dellenbaugh is a pathfinder. She found her own path through a terminal cancer diagnosis using yoga, Ayurveda and other alternative therapies. She is a spiritual counselor, Hatha Yoga instructor and an Ayurvedic practitioner. Anne also ran her own company guiding wilderness trips for women for 20 years. Anne brings to her classes and consultations great compassion and a desire to help each woman find her own path, and bring her own wisdom to a world in need of it!

Anne has relocated to Albuquerque, NM USA. To schedule a private appointment with Anne contact her at 207-751-4875 or agd(at)gwi(dot)net.

I am a bad little blogger. I’ve been cooking, but not writing. I mentioned in the last post that this is where I take out the red pen, and that’s what I’ve been doing.  So back to it, shall we?

Although simple, the creamed corn was my favorite thing so far. It was fresh and tasty. To me, it tasted like summer in the middle of winter, and that makes me very happy. It calls for firm tofu, which seems a little silly to me considering you are going to whisk it to make it soft. I asked CK about it and she said that is what she always has in the house. I also think that there was too much onion in it. Another thing to address: what is a “medium” onion anyway?

I found this pdf that has common equivalencies, and one medium onion is one cup chopped pieces. There, that’s a little more easily understood. This page would be a great thing to print out, laminate and put in your kitchen: www.cooksillustrated.com/…/COMMON%20EQUIVALENCIES.pdf

I also thought it needed pepper. When I added some it was amazing.

And, no, I did not cheat and use one of these. Hopefully the SOPA people will not come after me….

Oh wait. Wattie’s is British.

The next time I cooked it was a marathon, because the deadline to have this thing DONE keeps on creeping. Thus far I have made a tamale pie, cabbage rolls with sun-dried tomato sauce, baked beets, various salads and greens, and a couple other experiments.

I’ve become good friends with a banjo playing optimist that works with the co-op, and we’ve been trading ideas for this. Did you know that there is something called a Lion’s Head mushroom that tastes like lobster? I made a sushi roll with it, and I thought I was in Boston. Please do not cook yours with soy sauce like I did, it will taste like salty liver. Just keep it simple and use some unflavored oil to saute them first. Luckily, I know to split my batches for catastrophies like this.

Let’s do a little bit of math here:

Lion’s Mane Mushoom                +                  Sushi                            =                       Triple Love Points

Go ahead, give it a go!

This is the part where I start cooking and take out my red pen. CK’s cookbook gives you some recipes starting on page 137. Before then, you learn how to build a garden, make a shelf for sprouts to grow in your house, and more food chem than you’ve had since that the creepy guy that grew up to be a Chemistry teacher just so he could blow things up told you. I’ve come away from the intro educated and bought some books on Amazon about it. It does leave a couple questions in my mind, though. 136 pages of intro, and only 76 pages of actual recipes. What interests you more, ladies? The science or the food? Do you like having all the info at the front, or would you prefer some of that mixed in with the food? The book is a month’s worth of food for a transitional diet, and we can always give a daily topic. Oooh I like that idea. Feel free to disagree.

Let’s take a look at the very first day of Whole Woman food. We have Bean and Barley Stew, a salad, and creamed corn. Pshaw, you say, I can make soup, salad and corn for heaven’s sake. Yes, but can you make creamed corn with tofu sour cream you made yourself? have you ever put fresh dill in it? There you go. You can quit your foot stamping and I promise to put my stuck out tongue back in its place.

For each of these entries that are straight out of the book, I’ll do a couple things; transcribe the recipe, give you my notes and  I will rate it. After all that you’ll get my un-recipe, for better and for worse.

Hello, Ladies (and maybe a few gents)!

I hope you had a good holiday. Our household is a little pan-religious, so we’ve had a very busy week. First came the Hanukkah party as a nod to our roommate’s Cashew upbringing and recent foray into Judaism. A Cashew is someone of  Catholic and Jewish heritage, and describes parts of my family as well. It was a great time full of Latkes and plenty of wine. One guest even brought his own moonshine.

Is it any wonder that our holidays are confused as well? “Now, Johnny, what did I tell you about eating pork, eh?”

The Christians however, they love their holiday meat. Something about the sacrificial lamb and the fisherman embeds it into our culture and food personalities. I mentioned in an earlier post what Christmas was like with a Polish grandmother, so that was my cultural recollection of what holiday food was. The mixing of meats to the extreme. I personally never liked ham, so it wasn’t so hard to give it up this year. (Something about the smell of ham throws me off. No matter how much brown sugar, butter or pineapple you pile on it, I just could never do it.”What, Amy, no ham for you this year?” “No, Auntie, sorry, I don’t like it. It looks great, though.”) But smells like salted carcass.

“I’ll take a side of ham with my impending heart-attack, please.”

I have a very good friend, Ed, that is basically family in New Mexico, and since my fiancee, Ben, and I don’t have family here to celebrate with, we had him and his fiancee over for Christmas eve. Months ago when I first told him about this project and my new change in lifestyle he looked at me like the South Side Chicagoan that he is and said, “Uh-uh, girl. You ain’t no vegetarian. I know you. Do you know where we’re from?” That was the night I cooked a  beautiful roasted vegetable meal with 3 kinds of squash, 4 potato varieties, turnips, parsnips, rutabaga and onion, topped it with olive oil, garlic, and a fresh sprig of rosemary and he looked at me like a prisoner denied parole. He kept opening the oven looking for a turkey to magically appear. We had fresh bread and hummus with feta and goat cheese crumbles, and he was appreciative and complemented me, but I was laughing to myself because I could see the meat-hunger in his eyes. I wouldn’t be surprised if he got a cheeseburger on the way home.

This Christmas Eve when Ed came over, I had a holiday food block. This is the first holiday where I had to do the cooking and a non-related person had to eat it. What kind of holiday meal do I make without a 25 lb. bird in the center of it? I thought about Tofurkey, and then just saw Ed’s eyes in my head looking at me with desperation and disbelief. My solution to a vegetarian Christmas meal, a meal far outside my cultural DNA? An un-meal.

I believe the fancy people out there would call it heavy h’ourdurves, but to me it was the simplest way to fill my table with a bunch of unrelated items so no one would notice the lack of meat. I made sushi, because I’ve found over the last month that it is the easiest thing in the world to make, and I will never spend 15 dollars a roll at a restaurant ever again. I made a quiche with shallots, broccoli, fresh artichokes, onion, local cheese and mushrooms. I did pita slices with basil and roasted red pepper pestos, goat cheese, and other spreadable delights. I even got soy eggnog and it was delish. Add sparkling cider, champagne, dates and nuts in bowls to fill in the gaps and wha-la there you have a Christmas feast with no carcass.

A sampling of our Christmas conversation:

“Wow, Amy this looks really good.”

“Man, Amy this is great.”

Gee, thanks, guys. Guess what else? It’s all vegetarian.

Ed takes a deep breath and says, “I figured.”

Don’t worry about Ed. He made it through. He even had seconds of the quiche.

Growing up in the heartland of America, you might expect that it was easy to find a place where local farmers were able to sell produce at a fair price. Nope.

The thing about growing food for the whole country is that it has be mass produced, and while there were a smattering of locally owned grocery stores, you couldn’t find a co-op in the suburbs if you tried. The one thing we did have were farmers markets, and those were my haven. There’s just something special about still being able to taste the dirt in the tomato.

Albuquerque has a great co-op system, and a great farmer’s market circuit. On any given Saturday in the growing season, there are at least 6 markets all over the city. The one I go to is in a park, but there is even one in the bus depot in the business district. People here are pretty dedicated to the local movement, and it makes it easy. ABQ also has more mom and pop shops than any other town I’ve ever seen. My resolution for the new year is to only shop local, and to subscribe to the 100 mile rule. I already try to do this, but I am going to do it exclusively. Food is easy; that’s what the 100 mile rule is. There is a woman who wrote a book about a family experiment she did. For one year  she only ate the food and used products made and manufactured within 100 miles of her home. Where I will struggle is with things like house cleaner and hardware. I don’t like Walmart, but I don’t know of any local hardware store. I will have to find out.

So now back to the Co-op. I found that there is a branch of La Montanita, the local co-op, about 2 miles from my house. I just got a puppy last month, and he is 52 pounds of Lab energy. He chews like a squirrel and the only way to get him to not be destructive is to make him pass out. Thus began our walks to the co-op. I tie him outside, and besides the occasional crying little girl who thinks that I am abandoning him for good, it works out pretty well.

Produce:

Produce is set up the same in any indoor market, but what you may not get at your local Dominicks, Jewel, Alberstons, Kroger, Piggly-Wiggly or Woodman’s is the name of the farm and the face of the farmer that grew it. You also won’t get the local heirloom varieties. Your corporate grocer will probably carry bean sprouts, but were you aware of such vocabularic tongue pleasers such as fennelgeek? Not only is it fun to say, but is great for boosting the immune system, raising energy levels, and is used as a weight loss aid.

Let’s be frank. Your co-op may charge more for produce. Just remember that whatever you spend here will go back into your community and not into the pocket of some rich child-enslaving banana overlord in Columbia. If you own a buisness, the farmers you buy from could spend their income with you. If maybes and coulds don’t work for you, as a co-op member you get a check at the end of the year for a percentage of the company’s profits. Does your chain grocer do that? I don’t think so.

Fresh Baked Goods:

The hearth is the center of any traditional home. Nowadays, it’s like when you have a party, everyone always hangs out in the kitchen. Why even clean the living room?

I wish that I had the time to make a fresh loaf of bread everyday, but occasionally I do like to sleep. Second best option; local, organic loaves. I am betting that your local co-op makes the best crustiest bread you’ll ever have. Mine makes a Kalamata Olive that is salty and chewy and marvelous. My puppy likes it so much, he once stole it off the counter. We came home to find him sharing it with our roommate’s dog on her bed. They usually hate each other. Oh, how food brings us all together.

The Whole Woman diet is a vegetarian one. Foods lower on the food chain lead to a better shape of the gut for prolapse, and in general less toxins. Think about it this way: muscle retains the chemicals that the body was not strong enough to flush out through the waste systems. Do you know the worst thing that they put in cow feed is? Oh yes, you may already know that they put other cow parts in there with it, but it gets worse. Ever wonder what happens to your cat or dog when you have to put them down? Oh, no, you say, but oh yes. If you don’t make Fluffy or Rufus an urn or a headstone, his remains may end up in cattle feed. This probably happens more to shelter animals, but think about what euthanasia is. The chemical used stops their heart. When their bodies are being processed, this chemical does not burn away or dissolve. That burger may be tasty, but you are also eating trace amounts of a lethal drug.

When I found that out, I just said goodbye to beef. What is that little diatribe doing in the baked good section? Organic doesn’t necessarily mean vegetarian. Watch out for baked goods that may contain lard.

The Bins:

My favorite part of the whole co-op is the bins. Hundreds of beans, dried fruits, herbs, grains, teas, cereals and roots for your selection. If you’ve ever been to an old fashioned candy store, it’s like that with less chance of diabetes. Instead of rows of gobstoppers and licorice, you get kidney beans and orange lentils. I have found them to be just as beautiful and just as bright. You’d be amazed how much money you can save by buying your grain here, and not in packaging. Produce may be more expensive in a co-op, but this is where it makes it up. It excites me that I can get as much or as little of anything I like, and change it out next week. Wheat is great, but we are overdependent on it.  I already knew about quinoa, but did you know you can also get a red variety? Talk about putting beauty and color on a plate.

Millet is another grain that reminds me of bright yellow tapioca balls, and I have a whole canister of that, too.

After my first bin-binge, I found that I had a problem. Storage. Where do I put this stuff? My house has one of those great spinning corner cabinets, but after sweeping up a whole meal’s worth of lentils off the tile because the bag had tipped over, I had had enough. Christine’s kitchen (the real one, not the one in the Village) is a Ball Jar sanctuary, and most of it isn’t labeled. I don’t know how she does it. I had to cook for an event in her kitchen and i just opened everything and smelled it to find out what the herbs are. For the most part, grains don’t smell that much. Hopefully.

Considering that Ball Jars and I are not friends (I dropped one of CK’s on the sidewalk last week) I needed another option. You can’t just go to Target and get a canister that says “Rye Flour,” “Millet” or “Local Heirloom Bean.” The other thing that bothered me is that I might not have the same things all the time. I mentioned that I also work for Pier 1. I will try not to plug too much for them, but gosh did they come through for me this time. Right now on clearance there are these great canisters that have chalkboard fronts so I can write what it is and change it whenever I like. They are currently 50% off, so if you want one, go NOW. I bought 12.

I feel that things are now even because I tell women all about Whole Woman while I’m there, so I’ve just returned the love.

Speaking of love, I hope you all have a happy holiday.

I just got word that the fiancee fell on some ice after chasing after our dog. Maybe the pup wanted some of that bread, and was trying to get to the co-op. I’ll have to write more about this later. I’ll be cooking quite a bit this weekend from the text, so the next one is about the recipes.

I hope that I’ve shed some light on the co-op for you.

All the Joy,

Amy Donahue

I have spoken to many of you on the phone, and I know that we may have chatted a bit. It’s no secret that I am a talker, and it’s no secret that I don’t really have secrets either. Diet for the Whole Woman is meant to be a transition cookbook full of shopping lists, a month’s worth of meals, and “un-recipes.” Well, thank God for that. I am awful at actually following recipes; I am more of a “look at the texture and smell to see if that spice will fit” kinda gal. It is going to be hard for me to stick to Christine’s exact measurements, but that is going to be the starting point for a lot of women, and I will do my best to honor that. How will I know if the dish is good if I spin it completely?

Christine also states that the book is meant to get you to your local co-op or health foods store, and then let your instincts go. That is what an un-recipe is. So, each time I cook a dish from the text, I will also cook something in the Whole Woman Way.

 This is my local Co-op

Why Me?:

I mentioned that the book is a transitional text. One of the chapters deals with great foods to give your kids, another talks about how to get away your entire family from junk food. I don’t have kids, but I have a fiancee and he looooves his late night Taco Bell. Between my two jobs (Whole Woman and Pier 1) I work about 60-70 hours a week. It’s the week before Christmas I’ll let you guess where in the range that is I guess what I am saying is although I am not a soccer mom, I get what it is like to be busy. I get what is like to have a fiance that eats like crap and still loses weight anyway. I’m not bitter, really.

One of the very first objections people have about the Whole Woman diet (other than that their man is a “meat and potatoes guy”) is that they feel they don’t have time to cook fresh foods everyday. I am going to talk a little about that, too.

Another thing you might be thinking is: What does this girl know about all natural food? Well, not very much. I believe in local and I believe in hospitality. I love cooking and I am a little Hestia in my house, but when it comes to cooking like Christine, I am a novice. However, if I had to take a guess, that is where many of you are too. I thought that we could learn together.

Ch-ch-changes:

This is a life change; if left to my own unhealthy devices, my usual daily pattern would be some sort of sugary yet soy coffee on the way to work, lunch at a local cafe, and then there is either the 50% off Pizza Hut next to my Pier 1 as I run from job to job or the sushi place across the plaza. I figured that I was spending 30 dollars a day on food that filled me, but was not nurishing me. I am stressed, so I slam it down. I’ve gained some weight recently, and I’m sure my cruise-cruise lifestyle has everything to do with it.

Animal products:

When this book was originally written, Lanny and Christine were adamant vegans. As Christine (whom I will abbreviate as CK from here on out) hit menopause, she found that she just couldn’t do it. Her body needed the protein and energy from cheese and eggs, so they made the switch. This makes sense to me given the fact that in order to menstruate our bodies need at least 12% body fat. This 12% is a magical social number as well; Medically, anorexia starts at 12% body fat, and it is also the average percentage of fat carried by women shown on commercials on TV. The other thing that makes sense to me is, well, cheese is awesome. I know that my love for cheese stems from the bonding hormones still present in the cow’s milk that were meant for her calf, but I always feel that a meal is incomplete without it. Cheese has a from of morphine in it, so no wonder its so addicting. I’ve learned how to make it, and braiding still hot motzarella is my favorite stress reliever.

So, when experimenting with these once vegan recipes I will be adding cheese. CK on high wants to buy a cow for fresh, raw milk so I am in the clear. I would urge you to buy milk from local, organic, grass fed cows. Did you know that real milk from wandering bovines is almost yellow? It’s because grass has a protein that they can’t break down, and it comes out in their milk. Organic soy milk is also great, and when it comes to drinking that’s my choice. I had severe milk allergies as a child, and as an adult too much dairy leaves me with an earache. It starts to sound like I am listening to the inside of a conch shell, but it’s my ear draining.

 Fun side note: my parents thought that I was crazy as a small child because I would hit my head on the floor and on the kitchen cabinets. It turns out that my milk allergy was filling my ears with mucus and when you hit your head it makes your ear drums bounce, alleviating the pressure for a second. They put tubes in my ears, took away the milk, and wha-la no more self-harming toddler. My forehead is still rather flat, though….

Let’s talk about meat. The thing that your husband can’t live without. The easy hotdogs that you can pop in the mircowave for 30 seconds in the summer to feed 10 screaming kids at a pool party. Let’s talk about the fact that the average American dies with 10 pounds of undigested beef in their large intestine.

I grew up in Chicago. I know beef, I know steak. My fiancee, Ben, works at a steakhouse. Thanksgiving and Christmas with my Dad’s Polish mother was polish sausage with sourkraut, ham, AND then the turkey. Last year, my aunt served a surf and turf. Like a lot of people, sometimes a burger just looks good to me. For the longest time, I have had a menstruation ritual, where the first day of my period I allow myself a burger and a beer. But then I eat it, and I feel like I a swallowed a baseball and it is sitting in my stomach.

Even before Whole Woman, I was a vegetarian from age 13 to 18. I started because my parents took us to some off the beaten path animal rescue place where I saw a half butchered cow that they had “rescued” and kept alive. It was missing half a ribcage on one side or something horrific. I stopped being veggie when I went to live with Italian relatives in Rome. I would wake up, and they would ask what I wanted for dinner that night. Uncultured me said, “uhhhh, pasta?” It was a massive ordeal, and one day mia zia spent 9 hours in the kitchen with their maid cooking this meal of meat for me(with a personal side of pasta), and well, I broke. My momma raised me to appreciate such things.

I think that our bodies will always bring us back to what feels chemically right to us, and for my body it is a life without meat. I’ve done fish for a while as my only meat, but now I live in the desert and I just don’t see that happening. The cookbook gives a bunch of facts about the benefits of a meat-free lifestyle, and it just reinforces what I feel instinctively. Some more good reading on this is  “The Kind Diet.”

—-

I feel that since the cookbook is so adamant about a meat-free life that I am breaking some WW rules here, but I wanted to be honest with you. I bet that you probably like a chicken breast every once in a while, and I wanted to tell you that you are not alone. You are not alone with your prolapse and you are not alone in struggling with breaking your western diet. That’s why I am doing this edit, and not CK or her DH, Lanny. They are pros. I once had a joking conversation with Lanny about I hope no one aggravates their prolapse over Thanksgiving by lifting a 30 pound turkey, and his response was, “Well, just don’t have the turkey.” Oh, Lanny’s humor. Another reason to love my job.

Time to post and go on to my other job, but more background tomorrow. I promise I will get to the actual food soon.

Hello Whole Women,

Let me start by saying that I love my job. I know I post about this all the time on the forum, but it’s true. Before this assignment, I loved my job for a few, but important reasons:

1). I get to talk to strong, brave women from all over the world, sometimes by reminding them just how strong they are.

2). I get to make a difference in the lives of thousands

3). I have purple business cards (I am all about pretty things),

4). I get to make a difference in Women’s Healthcare, and

5). at times, I even get to bring my dog to work.

I’ve even accomplished one of my life goals where I have found a job that I can wear sandals to. This may seem like an odd requirement, but I hate socks. A workplace enviroment where one can wear sandals is down-to-earth, and it also means that I was not still working in the restaurant industry where OSHA ruled.  No more slinging beers for me, and here’s to actually using a couple of my college degrees.

That’s the kind of career this is, and believe it or not, I have found another reason to love working for this movement: I am cooking my way through Christine’s “Diet for the Whole Woman; a Manual to Creating Total Health”.

You ladies asked for it, you got it. I am going to have this thing done by Feburary, and printed and ready to go to sell at the conference in May. (As if you needed ANOTHER reason to go…)

I  would like to invite you to join me on my food journey as I cook my way though these meals, and what that means for my life and my family.

Please feel free to comment and ask questions. I had to edit this book, and that requires taking notes. What better way to do that then in a food blog? It’s notes I can take anywhere, and my handwriting is pretty atrocious. Well, it’s not that bad, but it’s like interpretive dance; irregular and up for discussion.

I look forward to sharing a little more of myself with you, and to hopefully meet some of you in the process. I want this to be a candid look at what it is like to transition from an American way of eating to a Whole Woman diet. Hopefully you will chuckle with me as I explore this. Welcome to my personal culinary sojourn.

All the Joy,

Amy

PS-  This is where I do my disclaimer and say I am still figuring this stuff out. If this was the movie “Julie and Julia” I am Julie and Christine is Julia. My personal journey with this book may not equal 100% Christine approved Whole Woman gospel. I will try to be clear about which is which. Let’s figure it out together, aye?

Dr. Pam Popper is a naturopath, an internationally recognized expert on nutrition and health, and the Executive Director of The Wellness Forum. The company offers educational programs designed to assist individuals in changing their health outcomes through improved diet and lifestyle habits; to assist employers in reducing the costs of health insurance and medical care for employees; and to educate health care professionals about how to use diet and lifestyle for preventing, reversing, and stopping the progression of degenerative disease.

Dr. Popper is the author of several books and several programs offered for continuing education credits for medical professionals. She is the Founder of The Wellness Forum Foundation, which offers programming in schools designed to improve children’s health through better nutrition.

Dr. Popper serves on the Physician’s Steering Committee for the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington D.C. Dr. Popper works for Whole Foods, one of the largest natural foods grocers in the world, as part of Rip Esslestyn’s team, charged with helping employees improve their health with plant-based nutrition and better lifestyle choices. Additionally, she is part of Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s teaching team at eCornell, teaching part of a certification course on plant-based nutrition. She is currently featured in two widely distributed documentaries, Processed People and Making a Killing and will be appearing in a full-length feature film called Forks Over Knives about diet and health, which will be in theaters in March 2011.

Dr. Popper is also a lobbyist and public policy expert, and continually works toward changing laws that interfere with patients’ right to choose their health provider and method of care. She has testified in front of legislative committees on numerous occasions, and has testified twice in front of the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.

Dr. Pam Popper is a straight-talking professional who is not afraid to criticize national health organizations, government agencies, medical professionals, pharmaceutical companies, agricultural organizations and manufacturing companies, many of whom have agendas and priorities that interfere with distributing truthful information and promoting public health.

Dr. Popper’s website is http://www.wellnessforum.com

Liz Koch is an international somatic educator & author with 30 years experience working with and specializing in the Psoas muscle. Educating both laypersons and professionals; Liz Koch is recognized by colleagues in the movement, wellness, and fitness professions as a connoisseur of the core muscle of the human body.

The author of The Psoas Book, Core Awareness: Enhancing Yoga, Pilate, Exercise & Dance (First Edition 2003), Unraveling Scoliosis CD, and Psoas & Back Pain CD, Liz is the founder of Core Awareness^™, a somatic approach to deepening the experience of the human core.  

Beginning with the core muscle, the Psoas, Core Awareness^™ focuses attention on developing awareness to sensation as a means of maturing and developing proprioception (responsible for skeletal alignment, balance, and orientation), personal integrity, and bio-intelligent coherency.

The National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork (NCBTMB) recognizes Liz Koch as an approved continuing education provider.   Her web site offers free podcasts, articles, videos, and workshop schedule.

Liz Koch’s web site, www.coreawareness.com.