Tilt

Our Halloween Lunner is currently lacking photography to tell the story, but we will get them up shortly.

Set on the fabulous rooftop of our good friend and supporter Monica Björklund in West London, we had a great Sunday afternoon meal. We call this Lunner which is the time between Lunch and Dinner. In the States, depending on what we ate, we would still call this Brunch, but in the UK we had to come up with another word that would be appreciated by the patrons of the event.

Themed pumpkin style, we would call this a super sustainable meal – since some of the dishes played off the same ingredients and we removed waste from the pumpkin and made it into soup! We had a delicious pumpkin soup made from the inside of the pumpkins we carved and tiny orange pancakes made from a portion of the juice from baking the pumpkins.

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ON THE MENU (all recipes are always available, so send an email if you want one!)

We always try to incorporate a diverse menu of offerings and it is typically vegetarian at least since the majority of our friends & family try to eat a relatively healthy and animal-free diet.

• Apps – Fresh Salsa and Hummus with Crudites & Corn Chips: 1/2 R, V, GF, DF, WF, SF
• Main – Pumpkin & Root Veggie Soup (with Toasted Pumpkin Seeds and Kale Chips on Top): V, GF, DF, WF, SF, CF
• Main – Baby Orange Pancakes: R, V, GF, LDF, WF, SF, CF, SGF
• Main – Fresh Apple Salad with a Balsamic Dressing: R, V, GF, DF, WF, SF, CF, SGF
• Main – Freshly Baked Rosemary, Olive, Sun Dried Tomatoes and Feta Whole Wheat Bread: VEG, SF, CF, SGF
• Drinks – Green Tea Sparkling Tea: V, GF, DF, WF, SF, CF, SGF
• Drinks – Virgin Mulled Apple Cider: V, GF, DF, WF, SF, CF, SGF
• Dessert – Apple Cobbler: VEG, GF, LDF, WF, SF, CF, SGF
• After Dessert Drink – Local English Rose: V, GF, DF, WF, SF, CF, SGF

Key – R: Raw, V: Vegan (overrides VEG), VEG: Vegetarian, GF: Gluten Free, DF: Dairy Free, LDF: Lactose Dairy Free (only cheese, milk, butter products), WF: Wheat Free, SF: Soya Free, SGF: Sugar Free, CF: Corn Free

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The TILT group of friends in London is strong and it was hard to keep this to a small group (knowing that not everyone could fit on the roof!). Oddly enough, we just had two English folk join us. We represented the world – America (of course), India, Denmark, Sweden, Egypt, Russia and Israel.

We had a great time snacking and talking and then moved in for dinner and pumpkin carving later on in the evening. There were talks of yoga and definitely some acupressure was involved at one point.

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EPILEPSY AT FRIENDS & FAMILY

One of our good friends who came to visit had a minor seizure right after dinner. An avid athlete who does triathlons on a regular basis, bikes everywhere he goes, rarely drinks and eats as healthy as he can, this is a recent issue that he had been having. Just 6 weeks strong, this was the 4th episode and it was a minor one at that. He came to us not feeling very well to start and it turns out dinner might have been something to put him over the edge and trigger an episode.

After doing a few hours of research into this, we had to admit we were really disappointed with the information found online in terms of how diet and exercise could help. It looks like the less you do the better… so we are going to do a little trial on our own. Here is the recommended diet called Ketogenic which I completely disagree with, although there were positive results with Epileptic seizures, it looks like the repercussions were not any better.

This was interesting… perhaps he could be eating something causing the seizures? Maybe a food allergy?  The first step is going to be testing. What is interesting is it happened right after we gave him soup and because  sodium intake was one of the named catalysts. In our soup while we used an organic Bouillon, it is obviously high in sodium, even though its the good kind. We are going to also monitor his wheat, dairy, corn and soy intake. Those are four main causes of triggers and on Sunday we thought back to what he had eaten and it was a ton of wheat (in the bread), corn chips and then the soup which was probably very dehydrating.

This is another interesting article about coeliac and epilepsy. (The researcher is a veterinarian, but she does research on kids).

For reference, if you have a friend who goes through this in front of you, there are ways that you can help… with a little prep work. WATCH THIS

Stay tuned on this…

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For the past 5 years we have been lucky enough to help out with Mercersburg Summer – the summer program for my alma mater Mercersburg Academy in Mercersburg, PA. It is the creme de la creme camp. Beautiful and set in the country-side and hills of Pennsylvania bordering on Maryland, the kids that come to the camp get to experience a variety of indoor and outdoor activities. The camp caters to a variety of kids from all over the world with their diverse programs and it is a common issue that kids have food allergies.

As we well know, the youth food allergen culture is quickly on the rise. This is mostly due to issues with how our food is grown, the quantity of processed foods consumed, using GMO’s, pesticides and other tools which expedite  growing processes. We are demanding nature to speed up and it is having implications on our tolerance levels.

This year, fitting with the existing Mercersburg Summer brand, we opted to develop a clever and creative series of icons, lending themselves to communicating quickly and easily to the students and the staff, no matter what language is spoken. This will be up as a trial this year to test and see what might work with the students. If all goes well, we will potentially implement this next summer using a bracelet and Croc pin-type system which will make it fun and accessible for kids to wear. Should be a good test to see what works!

Over the past 30 years I have learned a lot about Allergies… or rather food related allergies. Did you know that a form of Asthma can be related to eating gluten? Did you know that skin disorders can be related to Phosphate and Soy? Did you know that Acid Reflux and physical exhaustion can be related to eating dairy products? The things that we ingest can sometimes be directly linked to what we eat.

While there are principles to eating, it is essential that you are in fact listening to yourself, your body and all the elements of yourself to test your own body on what works for it.

I have noticed recently when I have more than a few nuts the night before or the morning of a run, I have a hard time breathing. My inhale is rough and the exhale sounds like wheezing. Even in the same week I have tried this out to test myself by not eating them at all the day before and I run a clean 7.4 minute mile. The evening after my run, I had two handfuls of nuts (mix of tree nuts and peanuts) and the next morning I ran a wheezy 8.6 minute mile. I would say that this is a fluke, but numbers aside the results are relatively the same. I am my own allergen specialist in this sense because I choose to do things that make me feel good and right.

How do Allergies begin?

As taken from the FAAN (Food Allergy and Anaphalaxis Network) Food allergy occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks a food protein. This can manifest in several ways depending on your body and your other food sensitivities, intolerance or allergies. Ingestion of the offending food may trigger the sudden release of chemicals, including histamine, resulting in symptoms of an allergic reaction. The symptoms may be mild (rashes, hives, itching, swelling, etc.) or severe (trouble breathing, wheezing, loss of consciousness, etc.). A food allergy can be potentially fatal.

Your body goes through transition with age, but young children from the age of 5+ typically outgrow food intolerance or sensitives they had very early on. There is some debate in both the emerging markets and the Western world on whether introduction to items like peanuts in small doses from age 3 months and beyond does in fact help to lessen the % of allergy to these foods. Planeat.tv has an interesting case study in the film about a study in China on milk intolerance they discuss. Also Duke University Medical Center is focusing on Peanut allergies with children – most specifically understanding why children don’t get as many peanut allergies in India or countries with high-concentrations of peanuts in the diet.

What are the core allergens?

Eight foods account for 90 percent of all food-allergic reactions. They are milk, egg, peanut, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, and wheat. There are currently 14 main allergens that exist in the raw and processed food in our diet, 15 if you include MSG. In processed foods there are ways of masking the raw ingredients and you have to be careful to observe the label and label requirements in the country that you are in. There are also a host of other potential food-related allergens – the most interesting being latex (which can manifest in mangoes, bananas, avocados and potatoes).

• Glutinous Grains
• Crustaceans
• Molluscs
• Egg
• Fish
• Peanuts
• Soy
• Milk
• Nuts
• Celery
• Mustard
• Sesame Seed
• Sulphur Dioxide and Sulphate
• Lupin
• MSG (monosodium glutamate)

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Written by E. Rachael Baird

The truth about me and my journey through a food life.

Food. It is the love of my life and the bane of my existence in some ways. I was born pretty ‘special’ as one of the first babies of the year on January 1, 1981. I was immediately whisked off and dolloped with a knitted cap. I looked like a blue-cupie doll. At 3 months I decided to stop breast feeding and this is where my food journey really begins. My parents were always health conscious and for the majority of my life they have both have been in tip top shape, health and working order. They are both tremendously active and as a family we spent our weekends outside in parks, flying kites, hiking and kayaking. We are, by all intents and purposes, however, a very normal family – My mother had her bought of chubbiness for about 10 years and my brother was deemed ‘husky’ by his height to weight ratio, all normal occurrences from a family that lived 30% of their life in the Midwest, lived and breathed food.

My parents were creative foodies. They had orchestrated their own form of an alternative 70s diet long before I entered the scene; my mother practicing a form of vegetarianism as she lived on a Kibbutz in Israel and my father living off a self-medicated regiment of herbal plants and remedies. Both building a foundation independently before meeting in San Francisco at the height of the alternative food movement explosion. Every house we lived in had a massive food garden and as a family we spent our time together growing food, playing music, making art, cooking, sharing and sitting around the traditional American dinner table.

I was raised on a mostly macrobiotic and vegan diet until I was 5. There was a moment at a fabulously french 5-star dinner table in Rochester, NY with my father’s family where I was given a bone from a gigantic piece of meat to occupy myself with (basically it was the only way that they got me as a 1 year old to shut up). On the spot, my family coined the term ‘boney girl’ and has referred to me as such ever since. Because of this tremendously natural diet, I have struggled with integrating processed and unnatural foods into my diet. As a kid I remember going to friends houses and having hot dog octopus’ (you know where you slice the hot dog and the ends fry in the microwave?) and getting quite sick after. My dad’s sister is obsessed with meat (like the rest of America) and one time she forgot to tell me it was in a delicious bean dip she had made and I paid the price after. Because of the nervousness around me eating foods that I shouldn’t eat, my mom spent a lot of time preparing food for me to take with me wherever I went and the best part was getting her little heart-shaped notes in the lunch box. “I love you, Erin” or “Have a great day, sweetie” or “Do your best, Erie!” I can picture them now and have to smile at her wonderful mommy-ness.

I was allergic to citric acid first and foremost. This was discovered after eating strawberries when my mom and her friend Janet took all the kids Strawberry picking one hot summer day when I was 4. Michael was just 1 and I was a clever child, running all over the fields in search of more strawberries. They were plump and sweet and I devoured. It wasn’t until we had started driving home that I broke out in hives all over my body. ALLERGY 1: CITRIC ACID. Lucky for me, this means a lot of things – soda was always out of the question as was juices so I grew up loving water. [SIDE BAR – I remember doing a "Bill Nye the science guy" experiment with Michael and we had a great go of watching a penny's tarnish dissolve in minutes and rubber bands deplete in days in a vat of Coca Cola... makes you think.]

Did you know that you can be hospitalized via frozen peas? My favorite snack as a child…. and one time I got one stuck up my nose and my face turned blue from lack of oxygen. My mom couldn’t get it out and I guess she didn’t think to stick a hair dryer up there, so we went to the hospital. By the time I was 3 they knew me by name from incidents.

I was a relatively normal kid and had my bout of carnival foods and the like, but at the end of the day the detox was in the normality of my mothers everyday cooking. Fresh salads, occasional fish, lots of raw food, etc. While I have remained Vegan for most of my life, I did happily try other kinds of dining and a variety of foods to test my allergen abilities. She was brilliant at figuring out what I needed and my diet was always considered. Growing up in the summers in Canada we fell in love with Diana’s Sauce (a fabulous bbq sauce) and Michael and I went mad over Canadian Corn Pops (which in Canada are like round balls of fabulousness) and she would whip up a mean Pepsi Chicken during the summer. I tried everything to the point of discomfort and I wanted to understand what it was like to be ‘normal’ always as a kid.

When I was 5 we moved to Minneapolis and our house was built on a landfill. As a new construction, I saw them build the house, digging into the garbage and knowing we had created this as a human population. I had nightmares for two years, my dad calmly helping me to sleep every night by telling me to picture the back of my eye lids and the blackness of night. It was fear that kept me up at night and eventually we wrote a letter together to waste management to encourage them to do a recycling program. It changed my view of waste and food completely – what I felt was the world piling onto me, diminishing my ability to breath because I was overtaking with trash. In my mind then and still it was mostly food waste from packaging, McDonalds and the like, so naturally I have an opinion about it. The nightmare still plagues me and my response is the I still have the letter and the recycling program was implemented in the year we left Edina, Minn.

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