When Hugo’s French family were staying with us in the Autumn they commented that if they stayed much longer their cholesterol was going to go through the roof. Too much cream and butter and cheese and pastry and eggs and and ice cream and pasta and cakes and cookies and so forth they thought. We do not eat enormous portions in the summer but we do eat these home grown home made rich foods daily. Three times daily actually.
I don’t know much about cholesterol as I have never had that test but I thought about this for a while.
It is true that in the summer we do eat a diet rich in animal fats. So why am I not carrying more weight. How come I am so ridiculously healthy.
I think I know why. I only eat like that in the high summer. I do not eat processed foods so I eat a seasonal diet. This is a more natural way of eating. Our bodies have not evolved fast enough to keep up with the changes in the modern diets. The continuous onslaught of processed fats and salts and sugars is not sustainable. So by keeping to a natural and seasonal diet the body does not panic and try to store so much for later.
In the summer I am milking the cow, and collecting heaps of eggs and using the milk and the eggs combined with the meat and vegetables I grow – I make piles of lovely food. And my team and I work really hard in the summer. We need the extra calories. We need to eat the food that is available. Summer is the time of plenty we need to eat that plenty up in preparation for the winter.
Now it is winter – I am not milking a cow with all the extra work that entails, so there is no rich creamy milk for butter and ice cream, and the chooks do not lay as well in the winter so I am not baking and the gardens are finished – I am not weeding and digging. So in the winter we eat lean meats and dark leafy greens from the glasshouse (and whatever is stored in the pantry). I seldom drink milk. Our portions are even smaller because I am only working a little bit hard. I don’t bake – I don’t even crave bread or honey. I am not as hungry. This is important too: when burning less calories we need less food.
So by eating seasonally, my rich diet is limited to only part of the year. Not all of the year. And what is available now is usually what my body needs now. The rich diet that scared the French family was only for a limited time. They should have stayed the whole year and gone through the lean months.
So I am thinking that rolling along with the seasons and allowing periods of change in our diets throughout the year is pretty good for the belly. Times of plenty and Times of Less. Good for the environment and good for the belly! I love that word ‘belly’.
I hope you have a lovely day.
Love celi
ps. This is just my diet. I don’t mean to sound preachy. I don’t force it on other members of my family. Our John eats whatever he wants whenever he wants to and joins me for my seasonal meals as well. So I do not mean to tell anyone how to be. We are all different.
The Kitchen's Garden 
91 responses to “Times of Plenty”
as you know I am quite heavy, hubby is not, but last year the doctors decided at my age and weight that I needed a total checkup, something to do with not needing a doctors for ten years makes them think that I was sick and did not know it.. after every test they could check me for.. they gave me a clean bill of health, the specialist said.. 20 year old runners want your blood sugar results, I just do not really understand, an I said.. I know you will not believe me but its the farm..
I truly believe that its the farm, as you know we grow and raise most of our own food
I absolutely agree – and thank you for going through all those tests to prove what I believe too – good clean food and good hard living makes for good clean blood and bodies. And also proves that the weight you are is the weight you should be. I am sure you fluctuate with the seasons too. You DO have to work harder to maintain that lovely rubenesque stature. But it is working. Your energy levels are high. And you are divinely healthy and proud of it – I hope you are proud of it! c
I think, because your foods aren’t processed, they contain all the necessary bacteria and enzymes to break all that “bad stuff” down. Although, I don’t really believe the “bad stuff” is all that bad. A seasonal diet definitely keeps you from consuming mass quantities of it all year long! It sounds wonderful, the way you eat. I can’t wait to be there myself.
This spring will be magnificent for you – are you going to do any brooder chickens for the freezer? If you make a big cage that you can drag about this is a great way to get your gardens cleared! How are your quails? I will pop over and have a look.. c
The quails are doing well! We’re still trying to figure out if one of them is a boy masquerading as a girl.
We are doing chickens for the freezer this spring! We’re going to build a chicken tractor and drag them around the yard to pasture them. I can’t wait to get it started!
YES – great – my chickens are the easiest meals I grow. You can get the chicks way before spring too. If you have a male quail you could incubate your eggs? Well done raising quails – they are known to be hard to raise.
We are definitely having some chicks shipped to us in February. I’m getting heritage breeds because they don’t have heart attacks from growing too fast and they pasture easier I’ve read.
If we do have a male quail I will definitely incubate more. I’m actually incubating 4 eggs right now to see if he is male (checking for development). I’m really hoping he is male!
That would be such a bonus – my brooders are always red runner or red ranger or something like that but I have also grown the cornish hens and have had no problems but you have to finish them on their end date, they do not do well when they get much older – do you have someone to process them for you?
We’re going to employ my Dad who is an avid hunter. He’s going to show us how to process and then we will continue to do it ourselves after we learn. It’s going to be quite an experience.
Good to be trained by someone who know what he is doing – you can make an assembly ,line!
Exactly!
I wish you were close by!
I have no idea how close you are to Michigan, but that’s where we are.
I couldn’t agree with you more. I have no farm to grow my own but I’ll do the next best thing I can. You keep “teaching” . It’s not preaching!
You do really well for the best you can!! c
Few people here work like you do. Mostly, they sit behind a desk, tempted by the snack machines, convenience stores on every corner, the donut peddler who visits to make a buck, etc. Not to mention high caloric, sugary coffee concoctions.
Those coffee concoctions terrify me – I am so grateful that I never developed a sweet tooth..
Sadly I live in the city with no chance of a garden so I eat processed probably 80% of my diet. One thing I never do is eat fast food. I buy Perdue chicken breasts and Laura’s beef –recently exposed as a lot less healthy than claimed. Ugh! I could scream. Farmers Markets come to the city in the summer though.
lets talk about supplying you with your meat – all you need is a freezer
seasonable is reasonable to me! I am not able to raise food as you do- but I shop at the Farmers market and so am able to eat seasonal foods.
Working hard in the summer deserves some butter etc- plus when you know where your food is coming from it’s logical to feel free to eat those
tasty delights with no twinge of guilt! Cheers!
Tasty delights with no twinge of guilt! I love that!! And seasonable is reasonable! perfect.. c
Margarine, as I understand it, is about one molecule away from plastic and they can keep it. The human is able to digest animal fats far better than the doctors would have you believe. Your body produces cholesterol anyway, even if you have only plant based foods. A cholesterol test only give a picture at that moment, just like your blood pressure, it changes during the day depending on what you’re doing, what you’re eating, etc. I think it’s far more important to avoid the chemicals that are added to almost everything and the hormones and antibiotics the animals are given which stay in the meat. You have to find what works for you. It would be wonderful if I had the room to grow a big vegetable patch and have chickens, maybe even a pig. There are some huge vegetable gardens in places in Chicago that used to be tenement houses, the neighborhood does the work and reaps the benefit of the fresh produce. Many of them grow organically too.
I think it is time for you and I to get together and work out how you can grow your own food down here.. if you have room for a freezer – you can grow your own pork and chickens and beef some years, here – then transfer them to your freezer. It is a relatively simple equation, with one or two trips down to pick up your meat. And one or two lunches along the way – . What do you think? c
I think it’s a great idea. And very much appreciated. I will email you as things are moving in unknown ways for me right now.
I couldn’t agree more, when my John was in hospital with his heart attack the dietitian came to visit, She was a bit taken aback when I asked her who on earth approved the food served to the patients – margarine, drinks with aspartame, toast made from squishy bread! All those chemicals cannot be good. I told her we ate ‘real’ food, pastured meats, free range chicken’s eggs, trying to avoid GMO food, seasonal or frozen veggies, cooking from scratch (using animal fats – gasp!) and she finally admitted that with his history he probably would’ve had heart issues a lot sooner on what passes for a conventional diet. We’re not saints, we still allow ourselves our little indulgences, life is too short to pass up the cookies! (Or Snickers bars – haha).
*huge smile* Oh dear! Being a doctor and a still studying nutritionist of nearly 30 years I better not buy into today’s fascinating comments at length! But fully agree with ‘seasonal’ and ‘local’! And nothing from the central isles of a supermarket!! Personally have a hugely varied diet: mostly Asian, Mediterranean islands and Middle Eastern-Australian ‘fusion’. Some African. All healthiest and most fun!! I am afraid fully agree with Hugo’s family: no cream whatsoever, no butter, ice cream, anything made with pastry: cakes, biscuits, no frying or deep-frying etc a’tall, a’tall, a’tall! No desire for any of that!! But do love my one glass of milk a day! Like locally sourced olive and grapeseed oils. Canola bad especially in the US which allows GM [officially forbidden in Oz, tho’ I would not swear on it 🙂 ! ] Any form of sugar much worse than fat, tho’ DO keep away from trans-fats and any form of margarine! Some cholesterol necessary for nerve activity etc [and cholesterol IS cholesterol!] but that ingested not so important: what the liver makes out of the fats you eat is the dangerous one!! I did not say it: but please look up ‘statins’ on the Net ere you swallow one tablet!!! Horse meat great, as is kangaroo in Australia. Absolutely adore black pudding [a ‘national’ food in my birth country] but NO way can it ever be healthy with all that fat in it 🙂 ! Personally also sin with liver and tripe and kidneys on occasion but . . . Celi – the amount of physical work you do keeping your weight down etc works in your favour and seemingly you very much watch your portion size [my downfall] . . . also your wine consumption is a hugely positive factor . . . . OK, sorry, Eha did end up being ‘preachy’ but this is my area and passion . . .
and I thank you! raising the wine glass!
I highly recommend watching ‘That Sugar Film’ to everyone. You will never look at eating the same way again – although it seems that most of the members of the Farmy Fellowship eat very good diets anyway! I guess that is what brings us all here – good, local, sustainable food and way of life. Thanks Celi!
C, why does everyone equate cholesterol to fat consumption……there is nothing wrong with good fats as part of a balanced diet. If you consume more food i.e. glucose for energy than your body can use you store the excess glucose as triacylglycerol which zips straight into your adipose tissues,(fat stores) for that rainy day when you may just need it or not as the case may be.
Came for a quick look rather late 🙂 ! I agree that good fats, for a variety of reasons, should still constitute about 25-30% of one’s daily diet: that basically omits saturated fats [no more than 10% of total suggested] and certainly the very dangerous trans- or hydrogenated fats. However cholesterol and fat consumption are very much related – as has been proven in many university studies, ingested cholesterol [eg that in a boiled or poached egg] forms a rather small proportion of the total cholesterol in the body compared to eating fats, as these are changed by the liver into excess cholesterol doing most of the harm. Reading the above it seems to me that many do not understand the bad v good cholesterol [ie LDL v HDL] importance . . . . personally I have a rather high 6+ reading but most of it is HDL virtually cancelling out the LDL present! Sugar is the dealbreaker . . . . and it is amazing to find all the places that turns up . . . . huge topic one as a layman can actually research pretty simply on sites such as ‘WebMD’.
We grew up with a farm diet and simple foods for a reason: budget and time. Fresh veggies when in season (canned or frozen for winter). We had good lean meats. Not a lot of heavy cream sauces. Rarely processed foods (expensive). Lots of milk, though. Varied food choices, moderation, little sweets/sugar and don’t eat after 7 PM. Lots of outdoor exercise/work. Similar to what you do now.
Astute to notice the seasonal influences. I’ve always gained weight July-Aug ( due to excessive heat and not able to do much outside without a swimming pool) and lost it during fall-winter. Whether it’s activity level or some ancient body recognition of the seasons, I don’t know. But I think you are right about this if people live a natural/non office box type life. (Office Florescent lights tend to tweak the body and confuse metabolisms).
People and their body needs do vary so much due to genetics/heredity (like region where from/family lived) and just chemical make-up. What works for one won’t work for all – and it changes with age. (People forget that last part) Best to listen to your body and not fret about the “trends” and tests.
Hope you are all snug and warm. We are worried about the dairy cows in the state that are struggling with excessive brutal cold…not really set up for that in this state.
I like that you share your views just because, when so much elsehwhere is say for pay, and fame and fortune the name of the game. Seasonal eating, home cooking, everything in moderation and plain commonsense is tried and true even if it doesn’t necessarily sell books, videos and TV advertising & rights.
Your not being preachy at all! Me well I love food .. Wish I was a tad more disciplined! 😃