Bone broth

Using bones to make broth is one of the eleven principles that the fabulous Dr. Weston Price discovered during his worldly travels studying the traditional diets of "primitive" people. It is an extremely cost-effective way of loading up on nutrients and healthy fats (especially if you're using bones and/or carcasses that you'd otherwise throw out), and makes soups, stews and kitchari taste amazing!!

How to roast garlic

I much prefer the mild, earthy flavor of roasted garlic to the overpowering bite of raw garlic, so I keep a bulb of roasted garlic in the fridge at all times to add to my cooking. This way there is also no need to tediously mince or crush garlic, and your fingers won't smell of garlic for days!

Roasting garlic is very, very simple. It does not need to involve olive oil, tin foil, or chopping of any kind. You don't even need to use a single dish or utensil!

Roasted Sesame Tahini

Tahini is another word for sesame seed butter. Any nut or seed can be made into butter if you process it for 5 mins or so in a food processor, but for some reason tahini got its own special name!

Making your own tahini will save you tons of money, plus you can make it with soaked sesame seeds and roast it just the way you like it. I always keep a bag of soaked and roasted sesame seeds handy in case I want to make tahini or tahini sauce. Do this if you aren't planning to use the tahini right away, since whole seeds keep longer than ground ones!

Ghee (clarified butter)

Ghee, or clarified butter, is pure butterfat, and the equivalent of edible liquid gold. It is delightfully sweet with just a hint of caramel flavor, and able to withstand much higher temperatures than butter without browning or burning.

That's not even the best part though!! Ghee is lactose-free and casein-free, while still retaining all the fabulous vitamins and nutritional properties of the butter it's made from. It's a dairy product that even those with dairy allergies can enjoy in limitless quantities!

Don't bother buying ghee from the store. It's a rip-off, especially considering the fact that homemade ghee tastes so much better and takes just minutes to make. All you need is a stick of unsalted butter, a pot, a spoon, and a jar or other glass container to keep it in!

Stainless steel cookware 101

Nonstick coatings on cookware are bad for your health and the environment. After just a little practice using stainless steel cookware, you will wonder why you ever needed non-stick cookware in the first place! In fact, things take much longer to caramelize in a non-stick pan.

Non-stick coatings and their fumes (some of which are proven carcinogens) will end up in your body if you cook with them - there is no question about it. Any substance that is repeatedly heated and cooled will break down. It's basic physics! And besides, a good quality set of stainless steel cookware will last you a lifetime. One little scratch with a metal utensil will remove the coating from a non-stick pan, and guess where it will end up? In your food!

Here I will show you how 3 essentials can be effortlessly made in stainless steel pans.

Soaking and sprouting grains, nuts, seeds and legumes

Why is soaking so important?

I can't explain it much better than one of my favorite nutrition books of all time, Nourishing Traditions:

"Modern farming techniques prevent [seeds] from germinating before they reach our tables. The process of germination not only produces vitamin C but also changes the composition of grain and seeds in numerous beneficial ways. Sprouting increases vitamin B content, especially B₂, B₅, and B₆. Carotene increases dramatically - sometimes eightfold. Even more important, sprouting neutralizes phytic acid, a substance present in the bran of all grains that inhibits absorption of calcium, magnesium, iron, copper, and zinc; sprouting also neutralizes enzyme inhibitors present in all seeds. These inhibitors can neutralize our own precious enzymes in the digestive tract. Complex sugars responsible for intestinal gas are broken down during sprouting, and a portion of the starch in grain is transformed into sugar. Sprouting inactivates aflatoxins, potent carcinogens found in grains. Finally, numerous enzymes that help digestion are produced during the germination process."

In other words, dormant seeds don't want to be digested!! They are holding onto their precious nutrients and doing whatever it takes to preserve themselves until the conditions are right for them to grow. They need to be germinated before they will release their nutrients and stop resisting our bodies' digestive enzymes. If you ever get stomachaches, I highly recommend you try soaking all seeds before eating them. It will definitely give you enormous relief!

Every isolated group of "primitive" people that Dr. Weston Price studied germinated all seeds before eating them.

How to start the germination process: soaking