Digestive Wellness: Strengthen the Immune System and Prevent Disease Through Healthy Digestion, Fourth Edition (62 page)

Put all ingredients into a large pot. Bring to boil. Let simmer over low heat for several hours (4–24) or in a slow cooker on low. Remove bones and vegetables. Let sit until cool, then skim off fat.

This will keep about 5–6 days in your refrigerator. You can easily freeze this and use when you are ready for it.

Use as stock for soup.

Drink as a warm beverage.

Use as the cooking liquid for vegetables and grains.

Make gravy from the fats.

Magic Mineral Broth

Yield: 6 to 7 quarts

Inner Cook notes: If you don’t have time to make this from scratch, substitute Pacific or Imagine brand vegetable stock, add equal parts water, a piece of kombu, and one potato. Boil 20 minutes and strain.

In a 12-quart stockpot, combine all ingredients. Fill pot with water to two inches below rim, cover, and bring to a boil. Remove lid, decrease heat to low, and simmer a minimum of 2 hours. As the stock simmers some water will evaporate; add more if vegetables begin to peek out. Simmer until the full richness of the vegetables can be tasted. Strain stock using a large-mesh strainer. (Be sure to have a heat-resistant container underneath.)

Bring to room temperature before refrigerating or freezing.

Magic Mineral Broth can be frozen up to six months in a variety of airtight container sizes for every use.

Used with permission from Rebecca Katz. (2008) Recipe from
One Bite at a Time
by Rebecca Katz, founder of The Inner Cook. Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts Publishing.

Melody’s Dahl

This serves 4 hungry people.

Serve this dish with rice and steamed vegetables. Use chutney and/or cultured vegetables as a condiment.

1 cup red lentils (they are actually orange)

4 cups water

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon turmeric powder

1–3 teaspoons grated fresh ginger

2 tablespoons oil or butter or ghee or coconut oil

1 teaspoon powdered cumin

1 teaspoon powdered coriander

Wash red lentils and soak for 2–12 hours. Bring water and salt to a boil and add red lentils. Add turmeric powder and ginger. Turn down heat to a low simmer and cook about 30 minutes (or about an hour if you didn’t have time to soak the lentils first). Stir occasionally so that dahl doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot.

Just before serving, take a small frying pan and heat oil, butter, or ghee on medium to medium-low heat. When oil is hot, add cumin and coriander. Cook 1 minute and then add to the dahl. Stir the dahl. Cook a couple more minutes and serve with rice and steamed vegetables. It’s also delicious with a dab of chutney or cultured vegetables.

1.
Add marrow bones to soups and stews. The marrow will “melt” into the dish.

2.
Ask the butcher to cut the bones into two- to three-inch sections. Soak these in cold water for 12–24 hours. Change the water a few times to keep the pinkish color. Boil for 20 minutes. Scoop out the marrow with a spoon. You can sprinkle this with salt and eat it or use it in soup or as a garnish.

3.
Roasted marrow: Take two- to three-inch pieces of marrow bones. Place in an ovenproof frying pan or on a cookie sheet standing upright. Roast at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes. The marrow is ready when loose and giving. If you cook it for too long, it will simply melt away.

“The gut is a major potential portal of entry into the body for foreign antigens. Only its intact mucosal barrier protects the body from foreign antigen entry and systemic exposure.”

—Russell Jaffe, M.D.

Today one out of three people say that they have a food allergy or sensitivity and change their diet to reflect this. The average American eats about 2,000 pounds of food each year, compared to a teaspoon or two of pollen that we breath in annually. Remember that two-thirds of the immune system is in the gut. Food is the main reason why: our body is deciding if it’s friend or foe.

Our immune system was designed to fend off infection, so if you have reactions to food or the environment, it’s a signal that your body has become less tolerant. We must build tolerance so that we can live a normal and active life. Our tolerance of our foods and other environmental exposures is based on many factors, including genetics, age, gender, intestinal permeability (or increased permeability/leaky gut), infections, and balance of gut ecology as well as the type and dose of the particular substance or antigen. It’s our body’s way of defending itself and coming back into balance. This can be provoked by foods, molds, pollen, chemicals, metals, and nearly any other substance.

True food allergies—those that trigger IgE reactions—are rare, affecting only 0.3 to 7.5 percent of American children and 1 to 2 percent of adults. The foods that most often trigger true allergic reactions are eggs, cow’s milk, nuts, shellfish, soy, wheat,
and white fish. Allergy to peanuts has doubled within the past five years in children under the age of five. Peanut allergy can be so severe that a child may react if someone else recently ate peanuts or peanut butter in the room the child is in—that’s why peanuts are no longer served on many airplanes and why all nuts are not allowed in many schools. Physicians diagnose food allergies through the use of patch skin tests and RAST (radioallergosorbent test) blood testing, which are great for detecting food allergies but do not accurately determine food sensitivities. IgE antibodies attach to mast cells in mucous membranes and in connective tissues, stimulating the release of inflammatory cytokines and histamines. The resulting allergic response produces symptoms a few minutes to two hours after the food is eaten. Common symptoms include closing of the throat, fatigue, tearing, hives, itching, respiratory distress, watery or runny nose, skin rashes, itchy eyes or ears, and sometimes severe reactions of asthma and anaphylactic shock.