getting ready

This is the first day of Thin Crust Deep Dish's week of Sugar Freedom. It's an event that you can join, and we hope you will. We'll be posting our experiences and support here throughout the week, so check back daily to share how it's going for you so far.



Lots of people preparing to begin a week of Sugar Freedom would purge their cabinets of candies and sweets left over from the holidays, padlock the freezer containing their partner's favorite rich ice cream, and stock up on tasteless wheat crackers.

I dare you to make this week of Sugar Freedom different.

It's assumed that we're hooked on all the things that are bad for us, that without a nebulous quality called "self control", we would all snack endlessly on chocolate wafers and sugar-infused commercial chips. Are you sure that's true? Does salsa really taste better when it has sugar in it? I'd have to say no.

For me, sugar freedom isn't about deprivation. It's about finding the foods that are delicious, fresh and good for you. When you first start to think about going sugar-free, you might want to throw out your packaged cereals if they contain sugar and white flour. You might also leave them there, as I did. I wanted to maintain what I knew of myself: that I am in control of what I eat, and I'm certainly not going to force my friends and family to conform to my changed eating habits. Whatever your method for approaching your week of sugar freedom, here are some tools to prepare you for this week.

1. Fermented Things: They'll be your best friend while you're transitioning to Sugar Freedom. It increases the amount of beneficial bacteria in your gut, helping you to absorb the nutrients from the food you eat and therefore reducing sugar cravings, which are often just nutrient cravings in disguise. Sauerkraut is my favorite, and I eat it every day. You can make it yourself, or you can buy Bubbies brand. If you buy it, make sure you get it in the refrigerator section of the store. The unrefrigerated jars sitting on the shelves have been canned, killing the beneficial bacteria which is the whole point of sauerkraut anyway. You can also buy or make kimchi, which is similar to sauerkraut. You can add sauerkraut or kimchi to your diet by eating it as a side dish to your meals. I usually just snack on a small bowl on its own before dinner.

Other fermented things that will help out are miso (just make sure to add the miso after the water has stopped boiling; otherwise the boiling kills the beneficial bacteria) and kefir (I really love Nancy's brand). There are so many things you can ferment, and these just scratch the surface. If you want to find out more about fermented foods and beverages, check out Sandor Ellix Katz and his book, Wild Fermentation.

2. Non-Sugar Treats: It might sound far-fetched to you now, but many people who have quit sugar say they now enjoy sugarless treats more than what they used to eat before they quit. It's not a lie. Natural sweeteners generally have a less cloying, more subtle flavor than processed white sugar. There are tons of treats in which you can indulge that don't even have natural sugars in them. Here are some favorites:

• Good Earth Sweet & Spicy Herbal Tea: This is the beverage that makes my work day every day. It's a completely caffeine-free herbal tea that tastes incredibly sweet but contains no sugar. I've gotten several of my friends hooked on it for good reason. It's especially great if you have a late-night sugar craving but don't want to eat right before sleeping.
• Dried Fruits and Nuts: Raw cashews and almonds, dried figs, puckery raisins. Dried fruit is one of those simple pleasures. It's especially great if you eat it alongside some nuts or other fats like a great cheese to reduce the impact of the natural sugars.
• Dates: Yes, I know what you're thinking. Dates are fruits, Kylie. Gosh. But if most dried fruits are simple pleasures, then dates are lavish. I eat them on their own as special treats, but you can also use them in place of sweeteners in some recipes, such as homemade fruit and nut balls.
• Larabars: They come out of a package, and they're rather expensive, but they're just so good that I can't help but add them here. Larabars are delicious snack bars, each one made with a combination of nuts and fruit and generally only containing three ingredients. I'm pretty obsessed with the Key Lime Pie flavor. 

3. Delicious, Healthy Fats While you've stopped eating sugar, that doesn't mean that your food life should stop being rich and deeply rewarding. Eating satisfying fats is a huge part of making the transition to sugar freedom possible. Any chef can tell you that fats make things yummy. And they satiate you. Some of my favorites are cultured butter (which you can make or buy), ghee, olive oil, and lard. There are also great artisanal cheeses which I could go on about for pages. Lately I've been particularly impressed with artisanal American cheeses, which I find to be way under-appreciated. I'm deeply passionate about most everything from Cowgirl Creamery, especially their Purple Haze, and Nancy's Hudson Valley Camembert.

4. Practice, Not Perfect: One of my favorite things that yoga teachers tell us in class is this: "It's called yoga practice, not yoga perfect." The whole point of yoga isn't doing the poses perfectly, but the act of trying. I think this is a beautiful way to approach not just yoga, but also life. It applies to sugar freedom, too. This isn't about never eating sugar again, or even about staying completely sugar-free throughout this week. This is about trying, experimenting and seeing how you feel and what comes up for you when sugar goes away. It's an exercise in life rather than a restrictive rule. So remember that this week: This is sugar freedom practice, not sugar freedom perfect.


How are you preparing for the rest of your week of Sugar Freedom? How's the first day going for you? Please share your tips and questions here. And if you're not yet on the list of participants, just leave a comment. We'll happily add you.

-Kylie

spinning into butter

I grew up in a world awash with margarine. I remember dipping my knife into a beige tub of it straight from the refrigerator. With little resistance, I would scoop out a lump and slather it easily onto a whole wheat roll. It melted easily and soaked the bread with its oily yellowness. I didn't think a whole lot about it. It was the nineties, and my parents were into being healthy and exercising. Back then, margarine was part of that.

I can't quite pinpoint the moment my world shifted from margarine as health food to margarine as toxin. It could have been junior year of college when I read Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and tried to understand trans fats for the first time. Maybe it really sunk in when New York City's Board of Health became the first in the nation to ban the use of artificial trans fats (the kinds in margarine and other hydrogenated oils) at restaurants. I guess it doesn't really matter when it was, but sometime between Y2K and now, my world changed from one where my friends and family cooked and baked with margarine for "health" to one where they use butter without fail.

Still, the mistaken association between butter and health problems pervades television commercials and women's magazines. Multinational corporations continue to produce butter substitutes made with rancid oils, selling products which are actually far more damaging to our health than the lowest-nutrient butters on the market. Soy, corn and cotton can all be used to make the ingredients that comprise a butter substitute, and food-producing corporations have a glut of all three due to monocropping practices.

The thing is, people will only be swayed by marketing for so long. High quality pastured butters become available at more grocery stores every day, and many boutique food stores now regularly carry cultured butter like that of Vermont Butter and Cheese Company. Once you taste a good cultured butter slathered on fresh bread, you're transported to a world where butter has taste and where it needs some good sea salt, a world where have to ask yourself, "How was I passing this up?".

This post is in the spirit of putting a stop to the passing up of butter. That is my mission, and I hope you'll accept it. I wanted to make butter because I came across this article while internet browsing during lunch at work, and butter making sounded to me both daunting and delicious. Subsequent Googling yielded the unanimous bloggers' consensus that homemade butter is far superior to even that of Vermont Butter and Cheese. I had to know.

And so Mary and I made butter. We bought our cream and yogurt fresh from the farmers' market, we fermented overnight, we cooled the cream in the fridge. We shook a jar for half an hour until the butter separated from the buttermilk, and (Eureka!) we were victorious.

Everyone else on the interweb was right: It's easy to make butter. It tastes good. Oh, does it taste good. And it's good for you. Really, really good. As I understand it, butter made from the milk of cows that have been eating grass (or "pastured") in the fall and spring is high in both Vitamins A and D. It is high in both selenium and cholesterol, protecting against cancer and heart disease. If you have questions about  more of the specific health benefits of butter, check out this Weston A. Price Foundation article, "Why Butter Is Better". It will also answer some questions if you scratched your head when I said that cholesterol helps to protect against heart disease. Culturing the butter increases its enzyme content and makes it easier to digest. It also makes it taste even more incredible.



Cultured Butter
Adapted from The Atlantic


1 pint of heavy cream (not ultra-pasteurized; that won't become butter)
3 Tbs. plain yogurt with live cultures
A pinch or two of good sea salt to taste

*Note: Do not make butter on a hot day, as the butter will not separate from the buttermilk properly. I made it on a day that was about 70 degrees, and everything went fine, as I chilled the cream before shaking it.

Pour heavy cream into a mixing bowl and add the yogurt. Stir to mix, cover with a towel, and leave at room temperature for 12 to 24 hours, until the cream has thickened slightly and developed a slightly tangy taste.

Pour cream into a large jar with a lid that closes tightly, and place in the refrigerator for an hour or two. The cream should cool to between 60 and 66 degrees Fahrenheit. Once it has cooled, you can separate the butter from the buttermilk in one of three ways. You can pour it into a food processor and process it for 5 to 6 minutes until the butter separates from the buttermilk. The butter will look clumpy and yellow, and the buttermilk will be a translucent white. You can also mix it with a stand mixer. Just be sure to cover it well so the cream doesn't splash you and your entire kitchen. You can also do it the fun way and work up a sweat like I did. Shake it vigorously in a jar until it separates, about 30 minutes. I recommend finding yourself a shaking buddy and alternating every five minutes.

One the butter has separated from the buttermilk, strain the clump of butter in a colander and reserve the buttermilk for use in another recipe. Place the butter in a large bowl of ice water, and work to buttermilk out of it with your hands. The buttermilk will make the water cloudy. Strain the butter out of that and put it in a new bowl of ice water, repeating this squeezing process until the water stays clear, to to three times. Remove the butter and pat it gently with a towel to remove water droplets on its exterior. Work a couple of pinches of good salt into it with your hands (if you want salted butter). Transfer the butter to a ramekin or small bowl and cover tightly. It will keep for several weeks in the refrigerator, or several months in the freezer.

-Kylie