Coconut Elvis Granola and Evil Canola Oil

You may already know this, but I am not a superfan of cereal.  Most of the time I feel like it is a little bit of a worthless thing, but that is because it is mainly marketed as something you eat for breakfast and it is (usually) loaded with sugar.  I am a strong advocate for eating something savory in the morning (after your 16 ounces of water, obviously) as it sets the tone for your palate for the rest of the day.

But.

Sometimes you hear something that just inspires you.  I used to eat cereal.  Growing up, that was breakfast.  If I was lucky, it was going to be Lucky Charms (with as many marshmallows as I could possibly get).  As I got a little older, I thought I would refine my tastes with muselix or granola.  You know how that is - it's the fight in your mouth.  The challenge of the hard clumps that cut the top of your mouth - really, I've heard it said that there's nothing like it to wake up to (except maybe a good set in the chlorine).

Because I never buy it, my children think that it is Christmas, their birthday, and Superbowl Sunday all in one if we have cereal in the house and they end up acting like they are some kind of deprived and starving animals and eat it for dessert and the $6 box is gone in a day and a half.  (Well, that was worth it.  Not.)

Today is some sort of snowpocalypse and everyone is out of their minds.  People aren't going to work; children aren't going to school.  Instead, they are playing video games, skiing, and going to trampoline parks. 

This was the day that the granola was destined to be made.

I had a recipe from a friend that was called "Elvis Granola".  Out of all of the people I know, this friend is the all-time world champion of granola eating, so I knew that it was going to be legit.  This "Elvis Granola" contained peanuts and chocolate, so even though it was basically dessert, I figured it was worth a try, even if that try was going to actually be dessert and not breakfast.

There was only one problem.

The original granola recipe called for canola oil.  Excuse me?  Canola oil?  No.  No way, José.  As if I would use poison in my recipe! 

What's my problem with canola oil?  Well, first of all, approximately 90% of canola oil is made from genetically modified ingredients and sprayed with Roundup (glyphosate - made by Monsanto).  Glyphosate is a known carcinogen.  That looks like a bunch of cancer all over the place.  I'll pass, thanks.

The other problem that I have with canola is that it is inherently modified.  Canola oil wasn't invented until the 1960s in Canada, and it was invented because of a demand for a cheap oil (olive oil had a price point that was too high for manufacturing of faster foods).  It was derived from the rapeseed plant (within the mustard family).  Using it as rapeseed oil without hybridization led to a host of issues mainly because of its toxic levels of erucic acid (which can also be found in other members of the Brassica family, but has high concentrations in rapeseed and canola), like blistered lungs and skin. 

Good news, though.  It is used to make paint because it will adhere to wet metal, which is great for ocean vessel applications.  Mmm, practical AND tasty.

By 1978, chemical companies figured out how to get the erucic acid levels lowered a bit so that we could escape the pesky business of lesions on lungs and other problems, and so they could market it to manufacturing as a cheap alternative. 

In 1995, the brilliant scientists found a way to inject the DNA with a bacteria so that it could be resistant to Roundup, making it possible for farmers to spray mass amounts of Roundup on their fields, killing all of the weeds, but the canola plant would survive.  Genius?  Yes.  Diabolical?  Probably.

Canola oil is highly processed and also very reactive to heat, light, and pressure, causing oxidation.  (That means rusting in your body.  That means premature aging and degenerative diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, dementia, and WRINKLES.)  When canola oil is heated, it produces high levels of butadiene, benzene, acrolein, formaldehyde and other related compounds.  Have you heard of any of those?  Yeah.  Poisonous carcinogens.  Awesome.

This study shows the unfortunate side effect of how canola oil decreased levels of vitamin E so drastically that some animals died.  (They supplemented vitamin E to see if and how that would help.)

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, I decided that I would sub out the toxin for coconut oil so that when my offspring saw homemade granola and decided to go on a wild binge, I wouldn't be contributing to their early deaths.

Here is what I did instead.

Coconut Elvis Granola

Preheat oven: 275 F.

 Mix these guys in a pan: 1/4 cup organic coconut oil, 1/3 cup maple syrup, 1/4-1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter,  1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon.  Stir.  Cook a few minutes until you think it isn't going to do anything different.

 While that is simmering, get a big huge bowl (Pyrex for vintage feels) and dump in: 4 cups organic oats, 1/4 cup ground flaxseed, 1/2 cup unsalted peanuts, 1/2 cup sunflower seeds.  Mix it all up.

Dump the warm liquid into the dry crunchy.  Mix all over until everything looks so happy.

Pour onto two stainless steel (seriously, do not give yourself Alzheimer's with the aluminum baking pans) baking sheets and spread out.

Bake for 20 minutes, rotate pans, bake for 20 more minutes.  You may need a little longer than that, but check it at the 40 minute mark.

Let it cool.  Add a bunch of non-soy dark chocolate chips.  I like Enjoy Life brand because they don't have any allergens.  This is how I made it the first time, but I would add shredded coconut to the final mix because dark chocolate and coconut are bae together.  It would benefit the overall flavor to double the peanut butter and make it 1/2 cup instead of a wimpy 1/4.

I did not eat this for breakfast, and I won't because I am an egg and toast kind of girl, but it is an amazing dessert.  I poured it over my organic, grass-fed, whole milk plain yogurt and ate it until I thought I might make myself throw up.  Moderation?  I doubt it.

If you try it, let me know how you like it.

Peace, love, and actual granola,
Ms. Daisy

 

 

Our Society is Clearly Doomed: kid's cell phones - porn and a brain tumor

I saw a link for an article about whether or not a parent was too harsh for putting their child's iphone behind a picture frame because of their bad grades (with the words, "In case of B, break glass" on it).  Questioning taking a phone away - a smart phone at that - for for grades (or any reason, for crying out loud) is the blaring neon sign that we, as a society, have supremely failed.  After I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt and smacked my forehead and slid it dramatically and forcefully down my own face, I thought about how we are pretty much not going to continue as a society after the next generation.  It's pretty much guaranteed.  And for so many reasons.

First of all, giving your (especially young) child a smart phone is questionable in the first place.  Yeah, I know.  It's common.  "Everybody" has one.  Well, when I don't even have a smart phone, I can tell you that no offspring of mine will be getting one unless they have a job and they are paying for it.  Your kid needs a cell phone?  (Do you know what "need" means?)  How is that even possible?  Because he is never around other people who have a phone and can't use theirs?  Or do you not trust him to memorize your phone number well enough and need to program it in with a picture of your face so they don't screw up? 

A smart phone comes with a free pass to all that is on the internet.  Really?  You don't care that your 12 year-old son has access to everything on the interwebs?  I know I sound like a crazy tyrant, but if my offsprings are going online, I am sitting next to them or within earshot/view of what they're doing.  Call me crazy, but I'm not a superfan of having a preteen porn addict in my house, or having potential human traffickers hook up with my kid.

Besides all this, I wouldn't want to subject a small person to the amount of radiation emitted by a smart phone into their brains on their ears, into their boy (or girl) parts by sitting on their lap all the time, or otherwise.  CNET has a ranking for the top 20 highest radiating phones - Motorola Droid Maxx is #1 (and Motorola has taken gold, silver, and bronze in this list).  Check it out here.  I chose my phone from the reverse list and then found it on ebay for about $20.  Brain cancer? No thanks, I'm good.  Even the National Cancer Institute (out of the NIH) will tell you that it's a horrible idea and that cell phones are great sources of getting yourself a big ol' blob of cancer.  In order to reduce the chance that you are going to have a giant brain tumor, the EWG suggests you hold it away from your head, talk on speaker, text instead of talk, don't put it in your pocket or under your pillow, and only use it when the signal is strong.  There are physical barrier devices that may be employed to reduce the amount of emf/radiation into your soft tissue, and you may want to check them out if you can't live without your smartphone.  

Taking away a luxury item (like a smart phone) is such a pathetic picture of a first world problem that the shame of it reverberates in my brain (kind of like the radiation).  Add it to the other problems we have, like "my wallet has so much money in it, it hurts my butt when I sit on it", and "I won a sales campaign at work and was awarded a day of golf with the director, but I already took that day off to play golf" or, "I have to take a crap, but my maid is cleaning the bathroom right now".  

So sad.  Big elephant tears of suffering.  

Get a FREAKIN' GRIP, people!  Hello?  This is reality calling, wakey wakey, eggs and bakey?  

Nah, whatever.  It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.  

Peace, love, and fail harder, 
Ms. Daisy

A change for the healthier...

Have you ever wondered what you'd do without your Pepsi (ask Jeff!)?  What do people use instead of Lysol toilet bowl cleaner, anyway?  What about GMO tortilla chips?  

Practically speaking, what does it look like to reduce chemicals and crazy crapola from your life?  Does it mean you have to suffer and not eat any good food anymore?  (Nope.)  Does it mean you are relegated to a life full of crunchy chia seeds in your kombucha?  (Maybe.  But probs not.)

Do you have to change?  You tell me.  Is it hard?  Well, that depends.  Is it hard for you to not want to die?  Take that answer and go with it.  It's up to you.  I really don't know your commitment level so I'm not going to tell you that giving up Heinz ketchup and Fritos is either impossible or easy, but I am here to give you some ideas and some places to start.

1.  Removing GMOs.  

Did you say, "What is a GMO?"  Well, my dearie, that would be a genetically modified organism.  Basically, a mutated genetic code.  Why would anyone even think of doing this?  Well, for example, with 90-something % of all corn and soy in the United States, genetic modification involves splicing in some genes of a bacteria or a virus so that when you spray it with Roundup (glyphosate - the thing causing autism and obesity and cancer), it won't die, but all of the weeds around it will.  This is a great (lazy) model for farming, unfortunately, the glyphosate leeches down into your groundwater and you kind of poison yourself, but hey, at least you didn't have to hand pick the weeds.  Am I right?  Eh?  Eh?!  TOTALLY WORTH IT!

As you introduce more genetically modified ingredients into your body, you become genetically modified.  What is a cell with a mutation called?  Oh yeah, that's right, cancer.  So, besides your poisoned water, you are also eating cancer.  Perhaps you don't care about that, but if you're going to have any children, they might just turn into mutants (hello Mom of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and sterilize them.  I wish I were joking.  Read the research right here.  It's another case of "we thought this was safe and now we are just kidding, it is "probably" cancerous, whoops!"  Yeah, that's not super cool.  

If you could start anywhere, start here.  Get rid of the GMOs out of your life.  If you're eating something with corn in it, you're probably eating cancer.  The same for soy.  How will you know if something is genetically modified?  You really don't, unless it has one of two labels on it: Non-GMO verified (with a lovely butterfly picture) or something labeled as organic (things labeled organic are inherently not allowed to include genetically modified ingredients).  Even then, sadly there has been cross contamination from the prolific amounts of toxins being spread all over this crazy world, but it is better to aim at a source that is trying to protect us from these toxins.  

2.  Read up on what you clean with.  

Where?  The EWG.  The EWG stands for the Environmental Working Group.  You can check their database for what ingredients are in your cleaning products (and even your cosmetics, sunscreen, etc!) and for how safe they are.  They will rate them for allergies/respiratory issues, cancer, reproductive/developmental toxicity, skin allergies, and safety within the environment.  Your home is your personal environment.  You and your family are the ones who are most affected by your indoor air quality.  You live in what could either be a safe haven or a toxic hell (not to put too fine a point on it...).  

You could browse through their products and wonder aloud why Dreft baby detergent is rated F with a high concern for developmental and reproductive toxicity (who cares about the NEXT generation, we're just going to make sales to this one and worry about it later!).  

Or maybe you could ask Whole Foods why they have some F rated products.  Do you kind of feel betrayed?  I am disturbed, to say the least.  At least with this product, you won't get cancer, you'll just be totally infertile (and so will your children!).  Great!  Bet that works great on stains!  Take a look at the database and see how your cleaners stack up and what they're adding to your personal environment (hopefully not respiratory issues, cancer, and infertility).  

You can look up products with an A rating (so you know you're getting something safe), or you could check out Ms. Daisy's Norwex page and get yourself some amazing microfiber cloths with silver (bacteria and junk can't live on silver and the cloths kill of germs by themselves as they dry!).  I wash my counters (kitchen cloth), toilet (Sanira system), windows (a wet enviro cloth and a dry window cloth), and everything else in my house with Norwex stuff.  I avoid the toxic fabric softeners by using their wool dryer balls and I love them.  If I didn't, I would tell you to avoid it like the bubonic (you know how I roll).  

3.  Everything else.  

Yeah, kind of a broad category, right?  There are so many things that you have around your house that you can easily use to make things you thought you would always have to depend on the store for.  

Like what?  Well, deodorant and lip balm (mine is on sale - $4/tube...message me if you want some, yes, I ship.).  Or tortillas.  Bread!  Did you know you could make apple cider vinegar and kombucha and kefir and yogurt?  What about dressings?  (Check Pinterest or just google some recipes.  It's that easy.)  What about using coconut oil in very creative ways (I am not going to directly tell you except to say it turns liquid above 76 degrees F and...this blog is rated PG, I'm just going to let you look it up yourself and whisper you won't have to walk in *that* aisle anymore at the grocery store with your children.  Ahem.  Oh.  And PLEASE get a separate jar for that one, ok?)?  What about growing your own herbal medicine?  (Not to change the subject or anything...)
 

Waaait, what kind of organic coconut oil?

Maybe taking this all in at the same time is kind of like drowning quickly in some reverse osmosis remineralized water or something, but maaaaybe something will strike a chord in you and you will use your creative energies for good and just pick one thing.  

One do-able thing.  You can do EEEET!  

Peace, love, and make change, 
Ms. Daisy

Don't be like so 1990! As if! Toxins that are like, so totally, like five minutes ago.

90's marketing. Still amazing 20 years later.

You remember 1990, right?  Yes, some of you were like 2 years old.  (That goes out to my seester and her peeps.)  But for the rest of us, we remember it like it was just yesterday.  We rocked the hair, the neon hypercolor t-shirts, pretended to know what Nirvana was saying, and belted out, "Noooothing compares, noTHING com-pares toyouuuuuu..." while wearing your Z Cavericci's.  Can I borrow your I.O.U. sweatshirt, BFF?  LYLAS!  You can use my slap bracelet.  Those were the days, eh?

Well, the world has changed quite a bit from those good ol' days.  No longer is it fashionable to wear clothing that shows off in gloriously wild different colors when you are sweating.  (No seriously, who THOUGHT of that?)

There are a few other bits that have tried to hold their grip in the realms of today, however, and they are naughty and don't belong here.

These belong to the dark side of 1990.  We are like so totally over them, as if.

However, although they may not be welcome, some of these may even be lurking in your home.  These are way worse than the pictures of your hair with two gallons of Aqua Net on it.

What, pray tell, may these be?

Let's start off with one that is a prevalent pestilence of today's world: the fad of anti-bacterialism, specifically in the form of anti-bacterial soap.

"Wha?!"  You say.  "A pestilence?  Surely you jest, dear Ms. Daisy!"

Oh, I wish, my darling, I wish.  But a pestilence I mean, nonetheless.  Maybe you're familiar with the active ingredient in anti-bac soaps - it's called triclosan.  If you've got a bottle in the house, check yours.  It is likely it's there.  Let me give you a heads up - this is NOT good - for you, your family, your friends, the earth, the animals...you're pretty much killing everyone and everything.  Great job.

Triclosan was marketed to be a murderous agent on the bad germs.  Right?  Isn't that what you thought?  (What else would I wash my hands with after touching uncoooked chicken?!)  When you go out and buy something that says "anti-bacterial", it is likely you're thinking, "Like oh my gosh! (Valley girl accent, please.)  I am so killing these yuckies!" 

Permit me my drama while I say that they are rather quite killing you.

Besides the whole gigantic thing about killing off your natural responders that are on your body to fight evil invaders in the first place (which is highly dangerous and comes with an entire host of issues), we've got a darker and even scarier side of it - new studies are showing that triclosan is something that mimics estrogen in the body.  This throws off your endocrine system (pituitary, ovaries, testes, thyroid, pancreas, hypothalamus gland, gastrointestinal tract, adrenals, pineal and parathyroid: a.k.a. stuff you don't want screwed up).  This leads to abnormal cell growths - ever heard of abnormal cell growth?  Maybe...um...tumors?

When this was studied at the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology, they found that this looked like an increase in breast cancer.  Breast cancer cells looooooooooooove triclosan.  They are sorority girls and triclosan is a frat party.  They think they're at the beach when they hang out with this stuff.  They thrive on it.  Oh!  And good news for the breast cancer cells - triclosan bioaccumulates.  Yep.  It goes in and stays.  Not good news for humans, however.  

There is another compound called octylphenol (the lesser known antibac ingredient) that is best friends with triclosan.  They work together and octylphenol increases the amount of cancer cells while triclosan gets them going.  Not the chicken soap you were looking for, I'd imagine.

In this study, triclosan was found to be in the urine of 75% of all those studied.  (According to sciencedaily.com)  This is so not cool, dude, not cool.

Do some further reading here:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/tx5000156

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140423102756.htm

Triclosan isn't just hiding in the antibacterial soap.  Nope, glory hallelujah, you can find it hanging out in your Colgate Total toothpaste.  What a relief.  I was wondering how I could directly put it into my mouth!  If you want to check out a longer (and more ridiculous) list of some products that contain triclosan, check it out here. 

What to do?  Personally, I avoid that stuff like the plague.  I use the soap that is made by Dr. Bronner.  There is a liquid variety if you are so inclined, and there is also the traditional bar types should that fancy strike you.  The liquid stuff is so concentrated that it may be diluted 50% with water.  I believe it is sold usually in one liter bottles (and it costs about $10 at Trader Joe's).  This means you can get about 2 liters of soap for ten bucks.  Yeah.  Cheaper and doesn't contain poison and cancer candy.  Double bonus.

Hang on, baby, I've almost made your dinner...

What else ought to be the passing fad, you ask?  Are you ready for this shocker?  Your microwave.  Think about it for two seconds.  You totally take for granted that you are heating up your food with RADIATION.  No glaring danger, eh?  Yes, it may be part of the social norm, but it doesn't mean 1) it ought to be and 2) that it is safe.  

Microwaving food heats up the food from the inside out - making those insides quake and shake with heat while other bits of it remain cold.  Have you ever experienced that?  You have to mix it up to warm it all?  You are already familiar with the warnings about heating up bottles in the microwave (hot spots, distorting the makeup of the milk on a cellular level) - you know, you may as well be punching your baby with a blowtorch?  

Dr. Hans Hertel explains it like this: "There is extensive scientific literature concerning the hazardous effects of direct microwave radiation of living systems...it is astonishing therefore to realize how little effort has been taken to replace this detrimental technique of microwave cooking with technology more in accordance with nature...of all the natural substances - which are polar - the oxygen of water molecules reacts most sensitively.  This is how microwave cooking heat is generated - friction from this violence in water molecules.  Structures of molecules are torn apart, molecules are forcefully deformed, called structural isomerism, and thus become impaired in quality.  This is contrary to conventional heating of food where heat transfers convectionally from without to within.  Cooking by microwaves begins within the cells and molecules where water is present and where the energy is transformed into frictional heat."  (quoted in Search for Health)  


Basically, you are living through a social experiment.  The microwave is the question, and you are the guinea pigger.  How does that wheel feel, Pikachu?  

What do you do?  How often and for what do you use your microwave?  Are you a person who just uses it to heat your coffee/tea for the fifteenth time (since you didn't get a chance to sit down and drink it all yet)?  Or do you defrost your meat in it?  Or do you cook your child's breakfast in it?  Or do you sleep in it?  Er, wait.  Maybe (hopefully) not that one.

I have a challenge for you.  Try just for this week to not use your microwave.  Put a big old sticky note on it to remind you.  Cold coffee?  Heat it up in a pot on the stove.  It takes about the same amount of time.  Need to defrost meat?  Plan ahead, sista!  Get that stuff out of the freezer the night before.  I think you'll find you appreciate the taste of things that are not cooked in a radiation box.

(Call me a foodie, I know!)

These two big pieces of our culture came into the norm in these United States and we adopted them without much thought.  We're smarter now and I'm encouraging you to think about what you're putting in and on your body.  Be aware, and do your due diligence.  

Would you give it a try?  Would you switch to a non-anti-bac soap?  Would you try to cast off the microwave for a week and see how it goes?  Maybe you'll find your new (yet extra vintage) ways are like so totally gnarly dude, that you won't like want to ever go like back.

Peace, love, and be radical,
Ms. Daisy