The Low Down

The human body is a metabolic marvel comprised of dozens of little systems connecting to create one complex system. Food is the fuel, the input, for the systems. Our metabolic machinery evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to function optimally on select fuels. These fuels were the original, Primal foods of the human organism. Over these hundreds of thousands of years our Big Game Hunting, small prey capturing, scavenging, foraging, gathering, opportunistic ancestors accumulated experience and wisdom about nourishing themselves. The learned to preserve and predigest foods to maximize the quality of their metabolic fuel. Eventually they learned to cook foods without destroying the important nourishing properties of the food, and then they learned to heal the human body with food. Only recently in the human evolutionary experience, have we abandoned all these hundreds of thousands of years of accumulated epicurean genius. Now we fuel our marvelous, complex metabolic machinery with crap invented to create profits for agribusiness. We have become dumb eaters. As we regain our eating intelligence it doesn't make sense to move back to the savannah and put out our fires or climb into our cave and pretend there is a glacier next door. It makes sense to fuel our bodies with all the primal human foodstuffs, prepared and preserved with accumulated ancestral wisdom and served up for the undeniable desires of the human taste buds. Primal, paleolithic food choices, handled according to ancient food ways resulting in outrageously good food.
PRIMAL. SMART. DELECTABLE.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Loquats and a Kid breakfast






I LOVE to try new fruits and vegetables and yesterday at the farmer's market I tried and purchased some loquats. These are members of the rosaceae family (see my post on Jan 22 about the importance of these seeds). According to the citrus man at the farmer's market, loquats don't last long once picked and the season is short too. Ahhhh, the hallmark of a real paleo fruit! They also require a little bit of effort and mess to eat. They are about 1 1/2" in diameter with a slightly fuzzy skin like a peach. The skin is flavorless, but a bit tough so some people slip it off although I ate it. The flesh tastes like ripe apricots and their is a giant cluster of seeds in the middle. I chewed up and swallowed a couple of the seeds which had the characteristic almond-like flavor of the cyanide-bearing rosaceae family. I overheard one lady at the farmer's market who characterized the typical American approach to food. The citrus man was incredibly kind and tolerant, but I had to restrain myself from giving her an impromptu lecture! He gave her a loquat to taste after showing her how to slip the skin off and expose the flesh and the seeds. She said it tasted good, but was too much work to bother with and she didn't purchase any. This lady looked like she spent more time getting dressed to go to the farmer's market than me and my kids put together. I can guarantee her car is very clean, she has a well maintained yard (probably done by a staff) and probably sets the table each evening for dinner with matching table ware, but she can't be bothered with a 45second process so that she can eat a sweet, juicy, local, fresh fruit. Get your priorities straight people!! Do you want the farmer to wash, peel, and separate your food for you? Do you want him to cut it up into bite size pieces? Maybe you want him to hand feed you and then clean up afterwards?

The kids got loquats, turkey kielbasa, half an egg, cherries and bananas with pumpkin seeds and coconut for breakfast.

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