G-day all! Happy to share a good news with all the mindfulness explorers... During this Friday we will have 24 hours of Free download on our Mindfulness books . Enjoy exploring and do leave a review if we managed to inspire you. <3

https://www.amazon.com/Nataša-Nuit-Pantović/e/B00TUA1528/

The Mindfulness Training Series of 9 fiction and non-fiction books by 7 authors focusing on spiritual growth, creativity and mindfulness. A series of many genre's, including poetry, personal development, historical fiction, the world of ''Alchemy of Love Mindfulness Training'' explores numerous self development themes.

The titles of the AoL Mindfulness Series include:

Art of 4 Elements: Discover Alchemy through Poetry, Spiritual Poetry Book, Alchemy of Love Mindfulness Training #1, Year: 2014, by Nataša Nuit Pantović, Jason Lu, Christine Cutajar, Jeni Caruana, Size: 266 pages. 10"x10". The spiritual poetry and art book with 120 poems written by Nuit. These acted as an inspiration for the work of 3 other artists. The book explores alchemy and 4 elements, 4 stages of life, 4 magic directions ISBN: 978-9995754006 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TSR97N2

A Guide to Mindful Eating with 45 Veggie Recipes, Alchemy of Love Mindfulness Training #2, Year: 2014, by Nataša Pantović Nuit and Mirjana Musulin, A collection of Mindful Eating Exercises and recipes that help the reader examine the eating habits and patterns within every day’s life. Vegetarian cooking book with mindfulness exercises. ISBN: 978-9995754068

Mindful Eating with Delicious Raw Vegan Recipes, Alchemy of Love Mindfulness Training #3, Year: 2015, by Nataša Pantović Nuit and Olivera Rosic, Size: 120 pages. 6"x9". Mindful Eating book is designed with the best Alchemy of Love Mindful Eating Exercises and a collection of Delicious Raw Vegan Recipes. Mindful Eating Exercises help with over-eating, eating too often, eating too little, eating junk food, food allergies, etc. Vegan cooking book. ISBN: 978-9995754020 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TSP0UL2

Mindful Being towards Mindful Living Course, Alchemy of Love Mindfulness Training #4, Year: 2015, by Nataša Pantović Nuit, Size: 192 pages. 8"x10". Mindful Being is a 12 Modules Course full of self-development and mindfulness exercises that combine meditation, mindful living exercises, soul’s diary, spiritual diary, relationship contracts, and many other daily spiritual transformation tools to help the reader live the highest potential. The Mindful Being examines: Nutrition, Core Beliefs, Emotions, Mind Power offering 100s of self-development tools to increase Mindfulness, Creative Thinking, Joy and Love. ISBN: 978-9995754037 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00U8N445Q

For the LOVERS of JUST Released (2016/2017) BOOKS this is our addition!

Conscious Parenting: Mindful Living Course for Parents by Nataša Pantović Nuit with a consultant Ivana Milosavljevic, Year: 2016, Size: 226 pages. 8"x10". Conscious Parenting Course is a Mindful Living Training designed for parents with mindfulness exercises and various creativity tools. Inspired by Waldorf educational model, Finland educational system with personal-development tools to look into parenting goals, dreams and priorities. ISBN: 978-9995754044

Chanting Mantas with Best Chords by Nataša Pantović Nuit, Alchemy of Love Mindfulness Training #6, Year: 2016, Size: 8"x10" 77 pages. This guide is a chanting mantras manual designed to help within the mantras meditation journey. With more than 50 mantras from all around the world, their spiritual meanings, lyrics and chords, it explores: Hindu Sacred Mantras; Buddhist Mantras; Sufi Chants; New-Consciousness Mantras in English. ISBN: 978-9995754150 At the moment AVAILABLE for FREE. Check Publisher's website

Conscious Creativity: Mindfulness Meditations by Nataša Pantović Nuit, Alchemy of Love Mindfulness Training #7, Year: 2017, Size: 96 pages, 6"x9". A collection of meditations, prayers and creativity exercises. It was during the Renaissance that creativity was first seen, not as a matter of divine inspiration, but as a gift of a great learned man to imitate God’s ability to create. Developing both Left and Right Brain could be essential for Creative Thinkers of our Future. To purify mind we start with the consciousness that the energy follows thoughts. Creativity Mindfulness Meditations explore prayers from around the world, meditation techniques, and mindfulness meditations. ISBN: 978-9995754112

Tree of Life with Spiritual Poetry by Nataša Pantović Nuit, Alchemy of Love Mindfulness Training #9, Year: 2017, Size: 266 pages. 6"x9". A true story novel. "My soul is the one of a nomad and I learn tremendously every time when in a different country. Travelling through Christian, Buddhist, Muslim or Hindu countries often as a single woman or without a lot of money helped me see that we are all One in our search for God, Oneness, Inspiration, Beauty, that we just call God different names. Once you hugged a 3,000 year-old Kaori tree, been chased by an elephant on your way through Savana, shared tea with Bedouins in Sahara, faced a lion walking with a Maori guide, prayed with Tibetan Buddhists, Hindu Priests, Portuguese Alchemists, within Orthodox Christian caves, you know that this amazing mix of cultures help us enter the space of New Consciousness." From an Interview What the Expert Say by Joyce with Nuit The book is a spiritual exploration of four elements, four directions, four stages of Life. ISBN: 978-9995754136 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06X1944WJ

A-Ma Alchemy of Love Spiritual Novel by Nataša Pantović Nuit, Year: 2017,Size: 244 pages 6"x9". A-Ma is a historical spiritual fiction book set in the 17th century Macao, China. The main protagonist is Ama, an African alchemist, Goddess, a guru, a lover, a story-teller that inspires and gathers artists, preachers, priests, philosophers from all around the world within the magic settings of her coffee house. ISBN-13: 978-9995754198 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06X6GQHTZ

Spiritual Symbols and their Meaning just released., AoL Mindfulness Book #8. To all Mindfulness and Alchemy Explorerswho see the beauty in every-day Nature & Universal sacred language of symbols and signs. We will not talk about spiritual symbols worshiped by major religions but about trees, numbers, spirals that we meet daily.

https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Symbols-Meanings-mindfulness-training-ebook/dp/B07H5S18F2/

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A book I can't recommend enough (though with some caveats) is Nourishing Traditions. It gives you something of a baseline to begin to understand some facts about what actually is good for you and gives you loads of ideas on how to eat in a healthy, economizing way (the author is pretty consistent about having uses for nearly everything you make -- and the byproducts). It's also kind of fun making some of the ingredients that get used in a plethora of dishes you'll make.

It also gives you the ability to start to parse some of the folk wisdom you've heard all your life -- stuff that a scientifically-minded peson (rather rightfully without any additional knowledge) dismisses as old, magical thinking. But stuff which upon examination sometimes makes enormous sense as "wisdom" received through generations and generations of iterative testing (and relatively stable environments conducive to -- say -- figuring out practical ways to get iodine into your diet when you live in a mountaineous region, far from the sea).

My main caveat about the book, though, is that she cites seemingly literally every study she can find that supports her basic premise (that you should eat "whole" foods prepared with specific care instructions and only from a certain class of foods). I think the premise is sound but that some of the studies she cites (and so some of her evidence) is not. The variable nature of statistical science (see regression toward the mean) assures us that some statistically significant results are aberations. In my mind, some of what she cites is certainly an aberation. Oh, and she's really, really excited about some stuff that science has seemingly proved to be total BS, by now (e.g. MSG as a neurotoxin).

Like I said, though: In my mind, her basic notion of what is healthy is right. And even when she's wrong ("MSG is neurotoxic"), she's often right (MSG is a good marker for heavily synthetic and unnutritious food, on an ingredient list)

A good companion to that is Mark's Daily Apple, which is a Primal/Paleo eating/lifestyle site, but which I think has a lot of worthwhile information whether or not you decide to go on a "Primal" diet. At the least, you'll begin to understand what actually is in some of the food you eat and be able to make more informed decisions about it.

This article about bread gives you some clues as to what you should be eating, as well, IMO.

I think ultimately that diet is something people simply have to spend time learning about in the modern world -- that in traditional societies, people (generally or often) lived in stable situations and could, through slight variation and trial and error, oftentimes chance upon some very health habits. We simply don't live in a place and time in which received knowledge is sufficient (or even easily passed on) and in which coherent rules of thumb fail can even emerge -- unless we understand some of the science (principles) behind them.

> You make me think of the French who are known for snacking all day on small portions of very rich foods, and somehow are not fat, instead are healthy.

Oh, and as another example of perhaps skewed cultural values, we in the West or America (or whatever it is) often think of skinniness as necessary and sufficient condition for considering someone healthy. What that is, though, is a rather superficial aspect of health and one whose sole focus on belies some rather backwards thinking. Here, we're more focused on tricking people into thinking we're healthy (on that visceral, biological level that judging people as attractive entails) than on actually being healthy. I think that being fit and reasonably not-too-fat are logical outcomes of living healthfully but that if your focus is on the outward manifestations of health rather than actually being healthy, you're doing it wrong.

Sorry. Wall o'text.

You're right I did :)
I'm going to address this in three parts: home cooking, time saving, and content of meals

In terms of home cooking, I am an ardent advocate of whole foods with little to no processing. You can nearly guarantee that the children will be eating pretty healthy. Check out [Brazil's new food guidelines] (https://ca.shine.yahoo.com/blogs/shine-on/brazil-food-guide-takes-practical-approach-fighting-obesity-152211906.html), which emphasize home cooking and eating together - you're halfway there!

Obviously, home cooking takes time, but nutrition is SUCH an important part of children's lives and habits for their future that I don't think you should compromise. Check out things like once a month cooking and google 'cooking in bulk' to save you time. Something like a vegetable heavy lasagne can meet all your nutritional requirements in one fell swoop. Other tricks, like a 'prep day', example 1 example 2, can also save you time and stress when you're with the kiddos. Great things to prepare ahead of time that last: spiced nuts, homemade gummies, jerky, or fruit leather. I loved the rice cooker idea above, and you can kill several birds with one stone and get a [6-in-1] (http://www.hippressurecooking.com/pressure-cooker-review-instant-pot-6-in-1-electric-very-good/) so that you can cook meat faster as well, and do some slow cooking (you can make a great beef vegetable barley soup, served with a slice of bread and milk, and you're done). Things like a bread maker are great fun at daycare - my kids used to help me make a cinnamon bread, and when they woke up from their nap the smell would permeate the daycare. It was so pleasant and homey. I also find that the more kids help in making things, the more willing they are to eat it.

I took this course last year and it changed the way I cook and ate. Its referred to as the traditional food movement and if you're interested, check out the [Weston A. Price foundation] (http://www.westonaprice.org/about-the-foundation/about-the-foundation) and [Sally Fallon's] (http://www.amazon.ca/Nourishing-Traditions-Challenges-Politically-Dictocrats/dp/0967089735) book for more info - SO COOL.

In terms of the content of your meals, walk the permitter of your grocery store. That's where you live; meat, cheese, produce, and whole grains. Grains, nuts and seeds are easier to digest and more nutritious when soaked/sprouted.

Hope some of this helps. I love talking about children's nutrition and how it impacts their lives and education. Sorry to get all carried away.

You're already doing frakenprey. ;) I think you meant to say whole prey, and no, I don't do that either.

The easiest thing you could do is stop grinding yourself and buy pre-mades; if you're on the east coast look into www.topqualitydogfood.com and see if you can make one of their distribution points each month. That gets pricy, though, which is why I do home prep.

Your best bang for your buck is to upgrade away from that Tasin, like I said in your other thread. A #12 or a #22 grinder is going to cut your grinding time by so much it's not even funny. You'll cry when you do your first grind because you wasted so much time with the Tasin (which I also started off with). They also have a larger throat than the Tasin, so you can drop in a whole leg quarter with no trimming. Necks are a friggen breeze. Fresh chicken backs squeeze in, but they fit.

I have four dogs, three Rhodesian Ridgebacks and one Canaan Dog. They vary from 13-38 ounces per day, per dog, so I'm going through about 250 pounds of food per month. I'm keenly interested in minimizing the amount of time I have to spend on food prep and storage. I thaw ground muscle meat (which comes in chubs like the ones your ground rabbit comes in) in a dish in my fridge. Raw meaty bones are ground straight into freezer tubs, and those get thawed in the fridge as well. Whole chunks of muscle meat get slapped on a cutting board and hacked to size before being thrown into a bowl.

I buy my RMBs by the case, rotating through chicken backs, chicken leg quarters, chicken thighs, duck necks, duck frames, pork neck bones, etc. Everything but the neck bones can go through the grinder. Don't bother making an all-in-one mix. Grind the RMBs (or feed in whole form if you're comfortable doing that), and bam, done. Scoop directly from tub to bowl.

Next, stop making the supplement slurry and just add supplements straight to the bowl. Personally I'd stop all that work you're doing with the capsules and the this and the that, and replace it with a daily vitamin blend and some fish oil caplets chucked straight into the bowl with muscle meat and organs. You can drop the taurine supplement because chicken, beef, and organ meats are naturally high in taurine already, but if you're really concerned, replace some of that beef trim with some straight beef heart and boom, you're covered. You don't need a glandular supplement (seriously, wat?). Swapping to a daily vitamin blend will simplify this for you greatly because it's a palatable powder that gets sprinkled on (or stirred into) the food.

Same deal with eggs: no need to grind up 8 dozen eggs at a time, just chuck one into a bowl every day. Done. (Shell or no shell is your choice; I feed RMBs so I don't need the extra calcium.)

Muscle meat: Learn to love meat chunks. I buy whole beef heart by the 60-pound case. Slap one of those on a cutting board, cut off big hunks, throw it into a bowl, and that will cover breakfast for the dogs for two days. Turkey hearts can be chucked whole into a bowl. Ground beef doesn't need more grinding. Pork hearts can be chucked whole into a bowl. Pork tenderloins can be sliced into hunks. Whatever I'm feeding as an RMB, I don't use as muscle meat (in other words, if I'm giving chicken backs as an RMB, all my other meats are anything BUT chicken), and I hit at least four different animals through a month (pork, chicken, turkey, duck, beef, venison when it's available, lamb are my mainstays).

My mornings I throw four bowls on the counter, chuck in some muscle meat, scoop some ground organs, drop in fish oil caplets, sprinkle on some vitamin powder, throw in an egg and a scoop of plain yogurt, and then it's off to the dogs. Start to finish takes me 2 or three minutes to weigh out everyone's bowl and then plunk it down in front of them. My evenings are even faster because it's just ground RMB scooped into a bowl.

Finally, I'd do some reading: https://www.amazon.com/Raw-Natural-Nutrition-Dogs-Revised-ebook/dp/B00Q1HZM6I/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= Extensively sourced and footnoted (extensively), includes information for home cooking for people who are uncomfortable with raw.

EDIT: After a bit of digging, here's a link to an article they should have linked to. Choice pullquotes from Pollan:

> “[The appreciation of cooking was] a bit of wisdom that some American feminists thoughtlessly trampled in their rush to get women out of the kitchen.”

> Yet there he is again, in the New York Times Magazine, dismissing “The Feminine Mystique” as “the book that taught millions of American women to regard housework, cooking included, as drudgery, indeed as a form of oppression.” In the same magazine story, Pollan scolds that “American women now allow corporations to cook for them” and rues the fact that women have lost the “moral obligation to cook” they felt during his 1960s childhood.

I don't know. I know he's getting lots of hate because he dared to speak out against feminism...yet I know people my age where the woman of the household just flat out refuses to do housework. Her turn to cook? It better be in a can, or there better be some cash for going to a restaurant. She not only won't cook, she can't cook, and won't learn anything about it, and God help you if you'd like for her to wash your clothes while she does hers. And sometimes we're talking about married couples.

Yes, I also know guys my age who just flat out demand that she do all the housework...I'm sure that works out great for them.

EDIT: A couple of choice edits from another graf:

> When much-lauded food writer Michael Ruhlman writes, “I know for a fact [emphasis added] that spending at least a few days a week preparing food with other people around, enjoying it together, is one of the best possible things in life to do, period. It’s part of what makes us human [emphasis added]. It makes us happy in ways that are deep and good for us,” he’s writing from the point of view of a food writer, someone who enjoys cooking and has freely chosen it as his vocation. That’s a privileged position, and a frankly absurd one. To borrow Ruhlman’s wording, I know for a fact that plenty of people don’t like to cook and it’s not because they haven’t been properly educated or had the “revelatory” experience of eating an exquisitely ripe peach or a simple-yet-perfect slice of sole meunière. I know for a fact that plenty of people aren’t even that interested in the experience of eating, and I bet you do too: the absentminded friend who has to be reminded to bolt down a granola bar before heading to her after-work Italian class; the picky-eater sibling who, though grown, still happily subsists on spaghetti and bananas and diced red peppers. The term “foodie” was originally invented to describe people who really enjoy eating and cooking, which suggests that others do not. Yet today everyone is meant to have a deep and abiding appreciation for and fascination with pure, wholesome, delicious, seasonal, regional food. The expectation that cooking should be fulfilling for everyone is insidious, especially for women. I happen to adore cooking and eating, and nothing is more fun for me than sharing a home-cooked bowl of pasta puttanesca and a loaf of crusty bread with friends. Yet, I know for a fact that others would much rather go kayaking or read magazines or write poems or play World of Warcraft or teach their dog sign language. And, unlike Ruhlman, I don’t suspect them of being less than human.

Because having the leisure time to go kayaking or teaching your dog sign language (seriously???!?) totally aren't privileged activities. And expecting people to enjoy cooking is insidious? Really? I'm thinking that when he said that, he may have been speaking, or at least thinking, about this book.

EDIT3: Here's a pullquote from an article entitled, "Michael Pollan Says Men Need to Get Back Into the Kitchen, Stat":

> "If we're going to rebuild a culture of cooking," Pollan says, "it can't mean returning women to the kitchen. We all need to go back to the kitchen." He continues:

> "First, we need to bring back home ec, but a gender-neutral home ec. We need public health ad campaigns promoting home cooking as the single best thing you can do for your family's health and well-being."

I'm guessing the feminist blogs just overlooked that one.

I have been getting really into cooking, and expanding my repertoire of recipes and specialties. I have always been skilled at cooking but I'm trying to amp up my abilities and start mastering more complex dishes. The Newlywed Cookbook should be in everyone's bookshelf. Truly, I have not made a bad recipe from this book. 10/10 would recommend!

I have also always been on the "alternative diet/food lifestyle" train, but my mother recommended "Nourishing Traditions" to me and reading it has been great! I am learning so much more about nutrition and ancestral cooking. I highly recommend it to anyone seeking to increase their level of natural, personal wellness, and anyone interested in bone broth, home fermentation, and the like. Even if you don't subscribe to everything she says, there is still so much to learn and take away from this book!

You're gonna love it. I've never tried the gizmo to which you link, but it looks interesting. I do my fermentations the easy way, with one of these crocks. I have never worried about an airlock (for this anyway, homebrew beer is another story...).

I would recommend two books to get you started. Between the two, they've probably got a recipe for everything fermented you could ever want. Wild Fermentation and Nourishing Traditions. My local library had the Nourishing Traditions one.

I've made a couple of batches of sauerkraut and a batch of kim-chi. The sauerkraut I am enjoying this week with home-corned beef. YUM! Here's my sauerkraut "recipe":

Chop/shred about 5 heads of cabbage. Discard cores, or put 'em in the crock to ferment with the rest, your choice. As you chop a cabbage, start putting it in the crock, with a little bit of salt. Once you get a decent amount of cabbage built up in the crock, start pounding it with a mallet or your hands. Keep adding cabbage and a bit of salt as you go. Feel free to add any spices you want- suggestions include dill seeds and/or caraway seeds. As you continue adding cabbage, salt, and pounding it, liquid will be released from the cabbage. Once you've got all the cabbage in the crock that you are going to add, weigh the cabbage down somehow to keep it below the level of the brine. You can do this with a plate, but I prefer a ziploc bag full of salt-water (the salt-water is in case it leaks into your sauerkraut). More liquid will be released for the first day or two as active fermentation begins, and your crock may overflow, so plan for that. Capture the overflow if possible, and add it back in to the crock (the volume will reduce as the cabbage ferments). Check it as often as you want, sample as you go. It's ready when it tastes like sauerkraut. In my last batch, 5 heads of cabbage were packed into a 1 gallon crock, final volume of sauerkraut was about 1/2 gallon. Enjoy!

There is no specific test that could be performed. However, you might consider a consult with a pediatric gastroenterologist with respect to a monitoring program. I would suggest that an annual fecal calprotectin test, in conjunction with ensuring vitamin D sufficiency, might go a long way towards early detection, and prevention (respectively).

Note that while the "standard" for vitamin D is 30 ng/mL, we really don't know what is required to prevent autoimmune disease. 30 is enough to stave off most of the bone and dental problems, but we're really not sure where it should be for optimal human health. However, I would opine that, for those at greater risk for Crohn's, something like 40-50 (and maybe even to 60) ng/mL might be better. Consult your pediatrician; however, if they give the standard line of 400 IU/day, beware: again, that's enough to prevent rickets, but we don't know about autoimmune disease.

Note that Crohn's and other autoimmune diseases are very rare in tropical and developing countries; there is a clear north-south gradient that is suggestive of vitamin D deficiency being a problem. Inasmuch as swimsuit-level irradiation from the sun provides about 1000 IU/minute, it seems likely that our equatorial brethren are getting much more than Europeans and Americans. (Also note that showering with soap and water may be removing vitamin D from the skin; dietary supplementation- preferably with liver, eggs, cod liver oil- may help.)

Lastly, eat fermented foods. I would strongly encourage reading Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Dr. Weston Price, as well as the WAP Foundation's Nourishing Traditions. I can't stress this enough: Nourishing Traditions will seem like the most flake-a-zoid thing you've ever read, but they're absolutely, bang-on correct.

Anyway- if I had kids, they'd be eating a lot of fermented foods (not soy), getting lots of sunlight, playing in the mud, and getting all the fat and protein I could stuff into them, without wheat and minimizing other grains.

Good luck.

Honestly, a lot of the popular foods you find in the stores and not really that good for your poochie. Our rotties are eating Fromm Salmon ala Veg because it contains Taurine. Stay away from peas, lentils, and other legumes or potatoes because it blocks Taurine absorption which can lead to a canine heart disease, known as dilated cardiomyopath (DCM). High levels of legumes or potatoes appear to be more common in diets labeled as “grain free". Here's the link to an FDA warning.

My wife has worked for a vet for 20 years and has spent a ton of time researching which food is best and right now that seems to be the Fromm. We're considering going to a raw diet soon because they love it and we can control exactly what they're eating. We want our babies to stay around for a long time and we've spoken to several breaders and owners to see what they're feeding them and many swear by the raw diet. We've had rotties for 20 years but have never had one make it to 10 years but some of our friends have had several that have made it to 13 & 14. A lot of the people we've talked to swear by the raw diet.

My wife knows the author of Raw and Natural Nutrition for Dogs, Lew Olson. You might be interested in getting this book and taking a look. Good luck.

I eat a combo of vegan/paleo. Why?
Paleo ppl know how to cook their meat in decently low calorie dishes
Vegan - man do they know how to make veggies! You don't really know how to cook veggies until you dig into these recipes.

• 1 Oh She Glows - Food genius! Best I've ever owned!
  

• 2 Against All Grain - Very solid, I love everything including the desserts
  

• 3 Thug Kitchen - Amazing flavor combinations and loved most everything I made, some things were more effort than they were worth. I found myself going to the grocery store a lot when I was cooking through this book. Avoided the desserts because of the use of all purpose flour, sugar etc. The baking seems more traditional.
  

• 4 Everyday Detox - Love the shakes and desserts, the cookie recipes are the best I've made, but the food falls flat. The combos don't knock my socks off.
  

• 5 Paleo Comfort Food - Found a few good things in here but lots of misses. Resorted to writing X's and check marks on the pages of things that were successful and not so successful.
  

  
  

This is a fascinating question that's beyond the expertise of, well, me, but I shan't let that stop me.

There are nutritional benefits to cooking. See e.g. How Cooking Made Us Human which argues compellingly that cooking was necessary for human development. Cooking neutralizes phytic acid and oxalic acid, both of which bind to iron/calcium in many vegetables and make them nutritionally unavailable. Ditto raw eggs--avidin in the egg binds to biotin (a b vitamin) and makes it unavailable; cooking makes it available.

Compare to vitamin c, and a number of other good things, that are unavailable after cooking but are before.

So will you lose vitamin content by cooking? Absolutely. Will you lose vitamin content by not cooking? Bet your bottom dollar you will. What to do? As the roughest of rough guidelines, my thinking is this: fruits are literally designed to be eaten, so eat them raw if you're after nutritional value. Some vegetables are not keen (in the evolutionary sense) on being eaten and have evolved to encourage people not to eat them, so cook them some and eat them raw some.

There is an excellent essay from J. Steingarten in The Man who Ate Everything on this topic if you'd like further reading.

Generally, cooked vegetables will be better for you, nutritionally, than no vegetables at all, so go to town.

Fantasy: The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner. The first book is good, but the second and third are fantastic.


Non-fiction: Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human by Richard Wrangham. Flat-out the most fascinating book I've ever read. About evolution and shit.

Literary Fiction: Orsinian Tales by Ursula K. Le Guin. The writing is so beautiful, moving, exquisite, all that good stuff. Le Guin's best work, imo.

Science Fiction: The High Crusade by Poul Anderson. Sooooo awesome. Has some elements of fantasy in it (the medieval part anyway.) Basically, knights vs. aliens.

Thank You for your response.

I picked up on the "best read as a young man" element. We'll try Kafka on The Shore at some point in the future. Ironically, the ability to 'write beauty' is part of what I felt was missing. I never saw any of the scenes he was creating. They seemed to lack dimension. The closest he's come so far was the night of Naoko or the moonlight shadows. There may be something to reading rather than listening in this book. Normally -for me- print or audio are equally effective but the narrator for Norwegian Wood is inept.

As for an example of an enticing narrative. Two recent works of excellence: "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet" and "The Gift Of Rain". Both offer insights into the human character with a Japanese perspective.

Thank you again for a wonderful response.

EDIT and PS: A review on Audible nailed it: "...this recording is awful. This recording severs all connection to the paragraph or chapter, where the real meaning of Murakami's text lies, and leaves you with broken sentences. Yaegashi's voice has a good tone, but his reading of a sentence is as a Jr. High schooler reading the text for the first time. The tone of each sentence is nearly identical, starting with a stark emphasis, following the same pitch arch to the end of the sentence, without emotion or connection to what was spoken before, or anticipating what comes next. The sentences are 'read' rather than performed, with very frequent awkward pauses that do not flow with the grammar. Seriously lacking in performative quality, like a student in a classroom assigned to cold reading a passage that they hadn't seen before.

The result leaves Murakami's language sounding shallow and inane, rather than simply unpretentious. After 10 minutes, you feel the pattern may be intentional. At 30 minutes, this predictable pattern looses all connection with craft, and grates on the ears, and one looks for the ice-pick to relieve the pain."

Cookie Crisps just have more air per serving than the Quaker Oatmeal Squares.

Any nutrition books with the words "Intro" and "Basic" will suffice. Here is an interesting read that's not only cheap but easy to follow.

I would suggest reading books like that from Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food, The Omnivore's Dilemma, Food Rules like hahaboohoo said) or watching his documentary Food Inc.. A few others worth reading are Marion Nestle's Food Politics and Marie-Monique Robin's The World According to Monsanto. An Associate Prof at Stanford University's Prevention Research Center, Christopher Gardner, PhD, found that students taking a "Food & Society" course (n=28) wound up eating better (more vegetables and less full-fat dairy was considered good) than students taking more biologically-related courses (n=72). From reading this insightful piece of research and books like In Defense of Food, I'd suggest being cognizant and learning more about the environmental & social impacts of food as a way to eat healthier rather than focusing on nutrients that reductionist science compels us to do.

I know very little about this guy, but the products look decent, TBH. Freeze dried is up there with raw for quality food, BUT... for a dog who already has kidney issues and is drinking excessively already, this is not a wise pick, unless you add water, which, at that point, defeats the purpose of purchasing this particular food. Raw would also, without a doubt, but much cheaper, not to mention better for your dog. Please see this excellent series on CRF in dogs, starting with the chapter: "A Diet Void of Water for CKF Patients Goes Against Every Principle In The Book."

For some extra guidance on raw feeding for dogs with your particular health issue, both Dr. Jean Dodds has a book called Canine Nutrigenomics (pp. 174-177), and Dr. Lew Olson's Raw and Natural Nutrition (ch. 25). Please also be aware that there's annoyingly regular mention of the things they're selling in these books; Dr. Dodd's has her Nutregenomic's testing, and Dr. Olson is selling supplements. Still, the info and guidance is good, just look past the sales.

If you're totally new to raw feeding, here's a huge list of resources (FB groups, books, etc.) with a LOT of info that should definitely be looked over. That site, Primal Pooch, also has an excellent raw food transition article, and PerfectlyRawsome.com provides terrific guidance for just about every meat and organ available, and what shouldn't be fed. The Raw Feeding Community, probably the biggest raw feeding group on FB, also has a great site. RFC also has a page on CRF, particularly as pertains to the myth that too much protein is bad for dogs with this condition (it's not true).

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet - David Mitchell

In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the most influential novelists in the world. He has twice been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The New York Times Book Review called him simply “a genius.” Now David Mitchell lends fresh credence to The Guardian’s claim that “each of his books seems entirely different from that which preceded it.” The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a stunning departure for this brilliant, restless, and wildly ambitious author, a giant leap forward by even his own high standards. A bold and epic novel of a rarely visited point in history, it is a work as exquisitely rendered as it is irresistibly readable.

The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost of the war-ravaged Dutch East Indies Company; and a de facto prison for the dozen foreigners permitted to live and work there. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland.

It is so sweet of you to try do this for her!

With the coconut and nut allergy you’re going to have to make the ice cream. You’ll need a small ice cream maker. I have this one and it works well for small batches.

Cuisinart ICE-21 1.5 Quart Frozen Yogurt-Ice Cream Maker (White) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003KYSLMW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_GDs4DbG40WRR3

You can make it out of any safe milk. Ripple milk is good, it’s made out of peas and it’s the closest to dairy milk. Just find instructions and substitute the safe milk for dairy milk.

It will probably take a few batches until you figure out one that tastes good.

After that, the candy shell. The recipes I have seen are all chocolate + coconut oil. You could try to substitute crisco, the organic vegan products like crisco, or even lard. Enjoy life makes allergy friendly dark chocolate chips you could use. I don’t know if any of these would work but you can try! If they don’t work you can always just have ice cream with chocolate sauce or chunks.

If you want a great book on allergy cooking check out this one.

The Allergy-Free Pantry: Make Your Own Staples, Snacks, and More Without Wheat, Gluten, Dairy, Eggs, Soy or Nuts https://www.amazon.com/dp/1615192085/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_WNs4DbNSA7B0S

Let us know how the ice cream (and hopefully Klondike bars) turns out!

Any of these books are great for beginners. I would recommend checking out these amazon links and skimming the reviews...

• Becoming Raw: The Essential Guide to Raw Vegan Diets by Brenda Davis
  
  
• Going Raw: Everything You Need to Start Your Own Raw Food Diet and Lifestyle Revolution at Home by Judita Wignall)
  
• Raw Food Made Easy For 1 or 2 People by Jennifer Cornbleet
  
• Ani's Raw Food Kitchen: Easy, Delectable Living Foods Recipes by Ani Phio
  
  Goneraw and Rawfoodtalk are good for recipes.
  
  EDIT: Broken links

After posting about Love Soup, I also found these which look great:

Vegetarian for a New Generation: Seasonal Vegetable Dishes for Vegetarians, Vegans, and the Rest of Us

https://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-New-Generation-Vegetable-Vegetarians/dp/1617690406/

Fresh Food Fast: Delicious, Seasonal Vegetarian Meals in Under an Hour

https://www.amazon.com/Fresh-Food-Fast-Delicious-Vegetarian/dp/0060515155

The First Mess Cookbook: Vibrant Plant-Based Recipes to Eat Well Through the Seasons

https://www.amazon.com/First-Mess-Cookbook-Vibrant-Plant-Based/dp/1583335900/

Good to hear that, C. Do you just want a bunch of references you can bury yourself in for the next few months, or do you also want some practical advice/shared experience that you can take on faith until you catch up with the theory, so you could start right away?

If the latter, it might help if you provide some specifics - what area you reside in, do you have a house or an apartment, how large is your family, are your kids picky eaters, would others in your family take you seriously, what do you eat, what you don't eat, any health issues you might want to share, etc. I will try to see what resources you might have available around you.

Also, for background - are you familiar with evolutionary considerations as far as nutrition is concerned? Why do you think the soils may be depleted, what do you think are the most nutritious parts of an animal?

This book is a must - not only does it have a lot of healthy recipies, it gives background on why certain methods of preparation must be used, the biochemistry of the processes, etc.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0967089735

May get those as well right away to qualify for free shipping.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1890612340
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0929173252

I am a bit pressed for time now - need to replace a family dog, not to mention general burden of large family. So I will likely write piece by piece and then we could put everything together.

1. yeah, no pass for you.
   
   
2. No, despite years of hunting and camping/hiking. What's your point?
   
   
3. Are you threatening me?
   
   
4. So again. Super special mystery monkey never, in the 38,000 years in which the tar pits trapped every other predator, not a single sasquatch was tempted. Okay, that seems likely.
   
   Let's see, to be smart, like us, a big brain is required. A big brain needs more energy than raw food can deliver so your super smart, super special mystery monkey has apparently learned how to cook it's food (https://www.amazon.ca/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465020410).
   
   Awesome, you don't have to search for tree structures anymore, just claim that firepits are proof of sasquatch BBQ's.

I think the best thing to do is to grab a cup of coffee to go and head to your local public library. Vegetarian cookbooks are usually around 641.563 if you're using the Dewey decimal system. Grab a bunch of cookbooks, take them to a table, and start looking through them. When I was starting out I preferred cookbooks that had a lot of photos, as I wasn't always sure what things were supposed to look like. Now that I'm a fairly confident cook I can usually read an ingredient list and set of instructions to know if a dish is something that would appeal to me. Stick a bunch of post-its on the recipes that interest you and sign out a handful of the best books!

There are cookbooks that focus particularly on high-protein vegetarian and vegan meals, but in general you just want to look for recipes with all of the high-protein ingredients you know and love.

Since we are all a little lazy... Here are links to all of the books in my stack:
Betty Goes Vegan (my mom got this one for my boyfriend - so not strictly mine - in hopes that he would cook for me. I am pressing the tofu right now at his request, so far so good)

Vegan Eats World

Eat Drink & Be Vegan

The 30 Minute Vegan

Thug Kitchen

The Lusty Vegan (my sister bought this one for me)

One-Dish Vegan

Fresh From the Vegan Slow Cooker

Vegan Brunch (second most used, the muffin recipes in here are crazy easy to customize)

Vegan Yum Yum

Twelve Months of Monastery Soups (not blatantly vegan, but almost entirely so)

The New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook (My most used, and longest owned, the best of all. All super simple ingredients, only non-vegan ingredient mentioned is honey on occasion)

I suggest you try going vegan. Try it for two weeks and see how you feel. If all is well, try again for another two weeks and keep going if you are finding yourself healthy. Keep re-assessing every month or so to see if your new diet is providing you health while also helping your conscience. You may have the type of digestive system that thrives on a plant-based diet.

One thing that the pro-vegan movement believes is that ALL digestive systems work the same. That you "just need to get used to it" (eating vegan). I'm not 100% up on the microbiome research, but I bet (if they haven't already) that they will start pointing out who is best suited to switch to vegan and who is best to stick to animal protein.

I've known lots of vegans who basically starved themselves over time. Their value system/ethics was so powerful, that they overrided their body's needs. And they were not absorbing/digesting the nutrition from their vegan diet enough to fully thrive. They got sick more easily, felt weak, tired all the time, lost unhealthy amounts of weight, etc. Not right away, mind you, but over the course of 5-20 years. Those who switched back to including some animal protein in their diet felt a renewal of vitality and gained a bit of weight.

I *do* believe that eating vegan is possible. I just think it takes a certain constitution for it to work. If people find out more about how their own particular digestive system works, they could make healthier decisions for themselves.

The issue of animal cruelty in our food system is a very real and valid one. If you decide to improve the quality and ethics of your meat, seek out a small farmer who raises, slaughters and butchers the animals ethically (yes, this is possible) and you will find a difference. One difference of course will be in the price, it will be much more expensive. As recent as 100 years ago, meat used to be very expensive. People tended to raise their own animals or simply didn't eat a lot of meat. It has become (through industrial farming practices) extremely cheap and sadly largely at the cost of the well-being of the animals involved. Don't eat this stuff if you can avoid it. To keep the cost down, simply eat less meat and supplement with plant protein (I suggest a "real food" like tempeh, which is not a frankenfood like much of the plant protein convenience foods.) I don't mean only eating 2-3oz of animal protein a day, but wolfing down an 18oz steak is generally way way overboard.

Perhaps 90% of animals products sold in grocery stores will then be off your menu, because they were derived from industrial-style farming/ranching, which tends to be where most of the cruelty happens. Meat labeled as "organic" or "pastured" is not perfect, but it does tend to provide better living conditions for the animals. Organic is a regulated word, so you're better off with that. Pastured can mean whatever what someone thinks it means -- however, if it truly is pastured, then it will be better meat than most organic. If you want some inspiration for why pastured meat is better, a popular book on the subject is, Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon.

As to methods, you could make a dirt cheap and foldable solar oven out of cardboard and aluminum foil and a plastic bag. I will fold up to flat so no space lost. (There are many other kinds, but it sounds like space is not your friend.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cooker

I also recently got this book of raw food recipes and it looks good. There are several I'm looking forward to trying out.
https://www.amazon.com/Uncook-Book-Essential-Guide-Lifestyle/dp/1401948901?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-osx-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1401948901

A "thermal cooker" is basically a vacuum insulated tub, like an oversized thermos, and can keep things cold or hot for many hours. I just got this one and it is just the right size for me. Could help you keep certain things cold for a while if needed (buy now and eat in 10 hours type of deal).
https://www.amazon.com/Stanley-Adventure-Vacuum-Crock-Stainless/dp/B00YPISUJQ/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1491363902&sr=8-15&keywords=thermal+cooker

It's not just to make sure the food is safe to eat, it also allows us to get more energy from the food. Cooked food gives much more energy than raw food, and so early humanoids that ate cooked foods wouldn't have to spend as much time eating. There's a hypothesis that cooking food is what caused our jaws and digestive systems to shrink, since we didn't have to expend as much energy digesting raw food, allowing us to devote more energy to a energy-devouring brain.

book on the subject

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-10/eating-cooked-food-made-us-human-study-finds

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121026-human-cooking-evolution-raw-food-health-science/

http://www.pnas.org/gca?allch=&submit=Go&gca=pnas%3B109%2F45%2F18571

Not offhand, that article came up pretty quickly on google. I have Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, and it gets preachy, but has a lot of good info about traditional methods of preparing food and why we should do it like that. You might also look at Botany of Desire and Omnivore's Dilemma, both by Michael Pollan.

ETA: over on the right in the posted article is a list of similar articles. I'm sure you could really go down the rabbit hole on PubMed.

I'm not sure if anyone's linked to it yet, but there are some fascinating answers to your question in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465020410/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374682314&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=how+cooking+allowed+us. Maybe not written on a five-year-old level, but if you want a college-level understanding, you might find it interesting :)

Mark Reinfeld is great - simple recipes - super delicious and quick to prepare. I have many of his cookbooks and I-shit-you-not that he's going to be teaching a 3-day cooking class at my house (DEN) in OTC

https://www.amazon.com/30-Minute-Vegan-Delicious-Healthy-Everyday/dp/0738213276/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1502293156&sr=8-2&keywords=mark+reinfeld

Check out this book. It is an amazing beginner's resource for anyone trying to improve their relationship to food and food sources/traditions. It is also a great portal to other tomes of information.

This is my favorite hypothesis.

Basically, cooking food enabled us to use the energy derived from our diets for larger brains. Most animals spend a significant portion of the energy they get from food on digesting that food. Cooking means that we don't have to do so and can use that energy elsewhere.

Hummingbirds are another example of a low digestive energy species. Instead of using that energy for their brains, they use it for flight - that's how they can hover and fly backwards.

The Expectant Father! Both my SO and I read this book, and I LOVED it more than most of the lady-focused ones.

And, Conscious Parenting. I grew up in a family that was similar to your SO's. This book was great for me.

Though I have not personally cooked from them, you might want to check out Quick Fix Vegan or the 30-Minute Vegan Books (1, 2, 3, 4), which are geared toward making food in 30 minutes or less.

My personal favorite book for when I'm looking for something easy and relatively fast is Appetite for Reduction. Though the title doesn't suggest it, the author notes that many of the recipes can be made in 30 minutes or less. It's a low-fat (not fat-free) cookbook, though, so that may not strike your/your SO's mom's fancy. Still, I've made lots of tasty things from it, and I'm not a dieter. It also has cute veggie illustrations.

I think any time a group of people are in the minority they can have a tendency to become rather cultish. I would point out a lot of the passion is probably based on people who have a lifetime of struggles with weight finally being able to get control of the issue. A lot of people here have gone through the recommendations for the Standard American Diet (SAD) only to find themselves made sick. When they realize a lot of the information they have been given is not true it can make them rather testy.

The Weston A Price foundation, headed by Sally Fallon has a some what different philosophy of eating. They do support eating whole grains but they are very specific that most grains need to be fermented before consuming. They are big on organ meats, butter, fatty meat, fatty fish, lacto-fermented vegetables, eggs, sprouted graines, cheese, raw milk, fermented cod liver oil etc. The organization is very much opposed to polyunsaturated vegetable oils, lean meats, unfermented soy, unfermented grains, pasteurized milk.

If you're interested in that view point as opposed to keto here is some more information....

Nourishing Traditions - Sally Fallon and Mary Enig PHD Nutritional Biochemistry

Nourishing Traditional Diets - Sally Fallon - 2hr presentation

Oiling of America - This is great information about the dangers of polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs)

Wise Traditions London 2010 - Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride - lots of information about the benefits of fermented foods

Dr Mary Enig On Saturated & Trans Fats

I'm fairly new to Reddit so I just found this post. I hope I'm not too late! I love the book RAWvolution by Matt Amsden. The pictures are beautiful and the recipes are absolutely amazing. I've not yet made something I haven't liked.

I have lots of other uncook books that I can recommend but they don't have any pictures.

Hope that helped!

Not exactly what you're looking for, but this book is getting some good reviews and might be of interest to you.

I've had great success with Peter Berley's Modern Vegetarian Kitchen

and the cookbook I originally started out with

Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

Googling Cafe Gratitude Nut Cheese got me this, their recipe for Brazil Nut Parmesan. And there's a book titled I Am Grateful: Recipes and Lifestyle of Cafe Gratitude by the restaurant cofounder Terces Engelhart.

I wonder if any of their nut cheeses are fermented like Artisan Vegan Cheese

There's a great book called Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham that's primarily about the hypothesis that it was our ability to cook food that drove our evolutionary development as early humans, not our hunting ability to eat additional meat. In addition to providing a compelling case for this, he also brings together a bunch of disparate studies to almost accidentally prove a side case: that calories in, calories out is only part of the equation. An important one, but not the only one.

One examples I remember clearly from the book were a standard experimental/control set of rats. They were given food which had the same calorie count, but one of them was hard pellets, and the other one was a "puffed" version of the food; think cold rice versus unsugared rice krispies. Both sets of rats finished all of the food, but the puffed food rats gained weight while the unpuffed did not.

Similarly, a dietary experiment that wanted to look at the effects of eating a raw food diet vs. a regular diet was attempted. The experimental and control groups were served the same food, including olive oil, spices, etc. but the control group's food was cooked, while the experimental group's food was unprepared. It was meant to take place over the course of a few months if memory serves (I haven't read the book in years), but had to be cut short after a matter of a few weeks as the raw food group lost more weight than was considered safe.

Our way of measuring the number of calories in food is grossly inadequate. And from the studies that have been performed, which unfortunately are few and far between as most food research is done by the companies that make the food, even when we measure the calories int he food, we're often not actually measuring how easily our body processes and stores those calories.

Calories in, calories out is a good place to start. But saying that's all there is to it is like answering the question "how do birds fly," with "by flapping their wings." It's accurate, but also insufficient, as it ignores their lighter bone structure, aerodynamic qualities, etc. And expecting someone to lose weight just by watching calories without also changing the types of food they eat is often about as useful as expecting someone to fly by strapping on ersatz wings and flapping their arms.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

The subjects got very ill when fat was removed from their diet.

This is a really interesting study. I love stuff like this that goes counter to modern diet orthodoxy. For a whole cookbook based on similar (but not as dramatic -- it has vegetables!) ideas, check out Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions.

Not vegetarian, but my fiancé is a raw vegan. So I eat meat every two weeks or so whenever I get over to a wings bar (which is sadly lessened these days now that hockey season is over). She's also gluten-free, btw.

Other than occasional wings, it's mostly uncooked veggies and nuts, often pureed into something stupidly delicious, but not overly satisfying (which just means I'm allowed to eat more!). The vegan dad has some great stuff, and it's generally pretty low on prep time, hence the dad thing. The Kitchn also has some banging stuff.
There's a cookbook called Rawsome that absolutely shines with it's combinations of nuts and veggies that actually make me not starving like an angry weasel, even after a 20 mile bike ride.

Don't just eat cheese and bread! There's so much more awesome shit out there. And my fiancé pretty much cried when I read your post, brother/sister. She's offered to cook for you, if you're anywhere near northern Colorado. Fuck, we'll send you shit or at the very least some good recipes if you'd like to PM me :D

Best of luck!

Yes! So many people get this confused. Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire. I had to read it for an evolutionary biology class and it was wonderful, if I remember correctly.

A very sketchy source. After all, our chimp cousins eat meat as well, and we have incisors, so it's reasonable to assume our common ancestors did.

Pre agriculture humans were scavengers that ate anything they could find. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've read studies that show that learning how to cook meat was critical in our development, because it allowed us to digest energy faster, so our brains could grow larger and we spent less time foraging, and could develop communities.

Edit: One source for what I mean: http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465020410/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350932227&sr=1-1&keywords=catching+fire+richard+wrangham

This is one of the major principles of the Weston A. Price Foundation. A good book to read on the subject is Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. We need good fat to build our brains. I'm afraid we've been sold a bunch of bullshit with our current food pyramid.

And BTW, heart disease was practically unheard of at the turn of the 20th century. Our modern diet - low fat, plenty of carbs, sugar-sugar-sugar - has created this beast.

https://www.amazon.ca/Raw-Natural-Nutrition-Dogs-Revised/dp/158394947X

This is my favorite :)

You're still misunderstanding evolution. Biologists don't consider animals in terms of "inferior" or "superior".

As for the laws of physics, organ systems require energy, and an organism has a total energy budget to run its systems based on the total energy it can consume. Brains are metabolically expensive, so evolving a large brain requires lots of energy. This energy cannot just come from eating more, however, because there is a practical threshold to how much energy an animal can actually extract from the environment: the more food an animal eats, the more energy it has to spend digesting that food; at a certain level it hits a plateau, and this plateau is below the level of energy it takes to run a human brain. Humans got around this by externalizing part of our digestive process, by cooking and processing food: instead of using our own energy to digest our food, we use external energy sources to digest part of it for us. This allowed us to reduce the energy budget of our digestive systems and divert that energy into running a brain larger than physically sustainable under natural conditions. Brain size in human ancestors was only moderately larger than chimpanzees before Homo erectus, but by the time controlled use of fire was habitual human brain size had doubled. Controlled use of fire is not an accepted or commonly reported bigfoot behaviour, and it is not consistent with them being so elusive since smoke would make them easier to find; without some mechanism to break this energy plateau it is not possible for bigfoots to feed an exceptionally expensive brain like humans have.

A seminal paper on the bioenergetics of brain evolution was Aiello and Wheeler's (1995)Expensive Tissue Hypothesis, which described the unique relationship between human brain and gut size, and Richard Wrangham has bud part of his career on the relationship between controlled use of fire and human brain evolution, including his 2010 book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human

I have Ani Phyo's Raw Food Kitchen. It's considered to be a beginner raw foodist's book. What I like about it is that most of the recipes use only a handful of ingredients. What I don't like about it is that some recipes call for hand to find ingredients and either have way too much salt or olive oil.

Nice list, but for the minimalist, I'd recommend Sally Fallon's Nourishing traditions. Its all I've ever used.

David Mitchell's new book The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is great - set on the tiny artificial island Dejima off the coast of Nagasaki, where Edo-era Japan traded with the Dutch in ~1750.

Sally Fallon's book Nourishing Traditions has a whole mess of recipes for things made with whey. Ricotta, buttermilk and adding it to soups have already been mentioned. I have found it makes wonderful live-culture beverages and tonics.
Beet kvass is one of my favorites.

have you read Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human?

I'm about halfway through right now. It's pretty interesting.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1615192085/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 is a cookbook that is amazing for people with food allergies. It's cheap, too.

If you are interested in this kind of thing, check out Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. It traces the evolution of gender roles, from early man until today. Very interesting stuff.

I was just reading about gelatin in Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats https://www.amazon.com/dp/0967089735/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_O7tmub0B55EPK

Thank you!

> Isn't it strange that we are the ones who are lucky enough to be in the world of technology?

Technology is 2 million years old: https://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465020410/

Here are the links:

Nourishing Traditions, and

the Weston A Price Foundation.

Price's book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, about his studies of the nutrition and health of various traditional cultures from around the world during the 1930s, is well worth a read.

Basically any vegetable can be fermented. Even garlic. Whether you like the taste is another matter of your own preference. But basically anything, if done correctly, can be fermented.

If you're looking for specific recipes, check out Katz's The Art of Fermentation and Fallon's Nourishing Traditions.

Are you allergic to mustard seed or vinegar? If it's the vinegar then you can probably make your own. As a replacement, have you tried horseradish?

There's a book called the Allergy-Free Pantry by Colette Marten that covers a lot of "making your own basics." My wife loves the book and if I could find our copy I'd check to see if mustard is included.

http://www.amazon.com/Allergy-Free-Pantry-Staples-Snacks-Without/dp/1615192085/

From the Amazon description:

... The Allergy-Free Pantry—with over 100 recipes free of gluten and the top eight allergens (milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, soy, wheat, fish, and shellfish), for:

• Basic staples (flour blends, non-dairy milks, egg replacers, Sandwich Bread, Biscuits, Strawberry Jam, Sunflower Seed Butter)
  
  
• Condiments and salad dressings (Flaxseed Mayonnaise, Ketchup, Ranch Dressing, Barbeque Sauce)
  
  
• Breakfast (Pancakes, Honey Blueberry Granola, Apple Oatmeal Scones)
  
  
• Crackers and cookies (Flax Crackers, Pita Chips, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Snickerdoodles)
  
  
• Pasta, pizza, and freezer meals (Spinach Pasta, Cheesy Sauce, Shepherd’s Pie, Meatloaf)
  
  
• Desserts (Brownie Bites, Chocolate Pudding, Raspberry Fruit Roll Ups, Caramel Sauce)
  

Vegan Fusion World Cuisine and The 30-Minute Vegan are highly recommended.

Being able to digest/handle rotten meat or raw low-nutrition plants (grass) takes special organs that require additional energy.

Inventing fire and cooking helped early hominids to simplify their digestive track since it now digests mostly cooked food.

The freed up energy used by our guts and redirected it to power the brain.

The brain in fact uses so much energy that one out of five meals eaten is used to just power the brain.

"Catching Fire" is a book on this.
http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465020410/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381948456&sr=8-1&keywords=cooking+human

Catching Fire explains why raw food diets don't work for humans.

read this book

We've evolved to eat cooked food - including meat.
Catching fire

Your wife has done research slanted toward what she already believes. Check out these books:

The Vegetarian Myth

Nourishing Traditions

Nourishing Traditions.

The Zeitgeist original movie (2007, all parts unless you already know intensive levels of how Xtianity is proven fake, as in actually and literally proven, that myths are re-used etc. If you know that already, then only parts two and three can show you... but part one may, in that case, be as proof that the creators are knowledgeable, as it was for me, but I did watch it in 2007, before we knew that research levels must be intense).

And also this book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0967089735

The relevant research is by Dr. Wrangham and associates and has been summarized in his book Catching Fire: how cooking made us human. I don't recall them specifying fish but just cooked food in general.