Slow Cooker Chicken Recipe & Money Saving Tip

Good Morning! I hope you all are having a nice weekend. It's a little dreary here in San Diego. I really hope the marine layer breaks up soon so we can enjoy a little sunshine!

Each week when Sunday rolls around, I start to think about my weekly meal plan. I really like simple. Time always seems to move a little faster during the week, especially the weeknight when all the 'to-do's' need to get accomplished in a relatively short amount of time. So I like to look for ways to cook less yet get more out of it. I really like to lean on my Crockpot when time is short because they generally require little work and have a nice payout.

Last week  I received a 6.5lb organic pastured chicken from one of my food clubs. This thing is like a little turkey! I am going to pop it in the crockpot today and we'll be able to enjoy the meat for most of the week. One trick I learned recently to stretch our meat a little bit longer is to shred it. I know it probably doesn't make sense as to why it would last longer, but it just does. I think if I were to cook up chicken breasts, my husband and I would generally eat more meat because they come in a set portion size. Whereas when the meat is shredded, that association is no longer there and we tend to grab enough meat to fit our appetite. Try it out, and you might be surprised. I'm always looking for ways to save a little money and this is actually a nice little compromise. Each day, I will usually add different spices or maybe a sauce to change up the flavors a bit.

Below is a recipe that I love from Everyday Paleo. It's a simple and delicious chicken recipe. The meat is so flavorful and tender when it's done. The great part is that there aren't any over powering flavors in the meat so that you can easily adapt it to different recipes on another day. Enjoy!!

Slow Cooker Chicken recipe by Everyday Paelo
http://everydaypaleo.com/scrumptious-slow-cooker-chicken/

2.5 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs

3 parsnips

3 carrots

4 celery stalks

1 red onion

10-12 whole garlic cloves

¼ cup coconut oil

1 cup chicken broth (preferably homemade)

1 tablespoon dried thyme

1 tablespoon rubbed sage

Sea salt and black pepper to taste

Cut the parsnips, carrots, celery, and onion into large chunks making sure that the carrots and parsnips are cut roughly the same size for even cooking.  Place the chicken in the crockpot and sprinkle with sea salt and black pepper.  On top of the chicken layer the onions and whole garlic cloves followed by the parsnips, carrots, and celery. In a glass measuring cup mix together the chicken broth, coconut oil, thyme and sage (it helps to melt the coconut oil first in the microwave).  Pour this mixture evenly over the chicken and veggies and cook on high for 5 hours or low for 7.

Do you have any favorite time-saver recipes?

Digestion Part 2

Happy Friday Everyone! I hope the week has been treating you well,  and I hope you found time to relax a little while enjoying your meals. This week has been pretty busy filled with all the usual tasks of everyday life - a little studying, working, and relaxing.

Today I'd like to expand on last weeks post and talk about the digestive process, start to finish as well as provide some strategies you can employ to support your digestion naturally. Here it goes..

Digestion Part 2

Digestion is a North to South process. It begins in the mind (as discussed last week). Once food is consumed, it works its way through various 'compartments' where food is broken down into nutrients and absorbed. Toxins are packaged for shipment out of the body, and wastes are then excreted. Sounds simple enough right? Well, let's break it down a little more...

There are 3 key players (organs) in the digestive game - Stomach, Pancreas, and Gallbladder. Each one plays a critical role in how our food is broken down so that it can be absorbed and assimilated into our bodies.

The stomach is the main holding tank, if your will, where the food is liquified and proteins are broken down. As you take your first bite, your stomach is releasing copious amounts of hydrochloric acid, hormones (gastrin), and enzymes, namely Pepsin (which digests proteins). As food is received by the stomach, it is met by a bath of hydrochloric acid where it starts to liquify. Pepsin begins to act on the proteins by breaking them down into smaller polypeptides and peptides (smaller strings of amino acids). The pH of the stomach is very acidic. It sits between a pH of 1.5-3 during digestion. This highly acidic environment serves several purposes:

1. Helps break the chemical bonds of food and turn it into a liquid form.
2. Activates pepsinogen (inactive form) into pepsin (active form). If pepsin were active in the stomach all the time without food, the stomach would start to catabolize itself (meaning you would die). It's very important that the acid levels remain below pH 3 because as the pH increases above this level, the ability to activate pepsin drops sharply - meaning you won't be able to breakdown proteins!
3. Disinfects the stomach and kills harmful pathogens before they can enter your bloodstream. (Yay for your immune system!)

Once this highly acidic liquified food, now referred to as Chyme, is ready, it is released into the small intestines for further breakdown.  As the chyme enters the small intestines, the pancreas is signaled to release bicarbonate to neutralize the acid level as well as pancreatic enzymes for further nutrient breakdown. At the same time, the gallbladder is signaled to release bile which will emulsify the fats into smaller fatty acids. The villi and microvilli of the intestinal walls begin to absorb the broken down nutrients into the bloodstream and the lymph system.

The chyme will continue its path down the small intestines and large intestines where more vitamins and minerals are extracted, water and some bile is recycled, and eventually formed into feces and excreted.

Whew, that was a mouthful (no pun intended).

So the above description is how digestion is SUPPOSED to work. Although, you can probably guess that's not quite how the story plays out for most of us. Because of the type of food we ingest, highly refined carbohydrates and poor quality fat or no-fat/low-fat, the stress that surounds our everyday lives, and the toxic load we put our poor liver through on a daily basis, it's safe to assume that most people have a digestive track that is out of balance. So what can you do to even things out a bit??? Below are a few easy strategies you can employ to support your digestive track start to finish.

1. CHEW YOUR FOOD! this is the single easiest change you can make that will have a huge impact on your digestion. Undigested food particles can cause trauma to the intestinal walls and can create a leaky gut situation (we'll save that for a later post).

2. Eat real whole food. Reducing or eliminating highly refined carbohydrates can have a positive impact on your stomachs ability to secrete hydrochloric acid which is needed for all the above mentioned reasons.

3. Eat high quality fat with every meal. You gallbladder will not work optimally if you don't consume fat. What happens instead is the bile can back up in the gallbladder. It can become viscous - eventually leading to it's inability to squeeze and release bile or it can lead to the formation of stones. The quality of fat you put in your body is just as important. If you eat trans fats, your liver will not be able to produce high quality bile and package toxins appropriately. This will increase your overall toxic load.

4. Eat plenty of fermented vegetables and consume fermented drinks! The beneficial bacteria in fermented foods nourished the healthy bacteria in your gut. These helpful little guys aid your body in breaking down and absorbing vitamins and minerals. They even produce vitamins themselves from wastes in the large intestine! These types of food include kimchee, beet kvass, and kombucha.

I hope this helps to shed some light on the various processes in the digestive tract. It's easy to not think about what happens next after we put the food in our mouth. Hopefully these tips will help you to bring a little more balance to your digestive tract.

Coming up next, I will be sharing  specific tonics you can make at home to help support digestion including the use of apple cider vinegar to stimulate hydrochloric acid secretion (YES, more HCL is a good thing!) and beet kvass to help you gallbladder. Stay tuned!

As always, please feel free to leave comments or provide any feedback! Thank you!

Digestion Part 1

Digestion.....it all begins in the mind...

We live in an 'on the go' culture. We are often rushing from one meeting to the next, checking email on the fly, running errands, squeezing in a workout, chores, etc. Our days are filled with an endless list of 'to-dos' that never seem to end. While meeting the demands of our day, we often inhale our food with little or no thought. This results in our food being mal-digested, and we can experience bloating, cramps, heartburn, headaches, mood swings, and the list goes on. We repeat this pattern day in and day out, and it isn't until a chronic or serious health condition sets in that we decide to re-evaluate our situation. It doesn't have to be like that!

Digestion is a parasympathetic process. This means that optimal digestion occurs when we are in a relaxed state. As we begin to think of or smell our food, the brain signals the salivary glands in the mouth to start secreting salivary amylase (an enzyme needed to breakdown carbohydrates). The brain also signals the stomach to start secreting hydrochloric acid, pepsin (enzyme for breaking down proteins) and several other digestive enzymes and hormones. The pancreas is also signaled to prepare for the release of insulin.  All of this occurs BEFORE we even take our first bite! 

Now imagine how most people eat most meals... scarfing food down before work/class/next appt, eating in the car while stuck in traffic, eating in front of the tv/computer/phone, and the list goes on. Hours later we end up with bloating, heartburn, headaches, mood swings, (insert your symptom here). We often put very little thought into the actual process of digesting our food.

Many of us eat our food in what is called a sympathetic state. This is basically the opposite of the relaxed, parasympathetic state. When we are in a sympathetic nervous system state, our body is preparing for 'fight-or-flight'. Gastric secretions are halted. Blood is shunted into the muscles; blood vessels constrict, airways dilate, and your body prepares to take on a life threatening or stressful situation. When we are eating on the go, inhaling our food, arguing at the dinner table, etc - we are putting our body in a stressful state and therefore impairing the digestion process. The result is poor digestion and usually some kind of gastrointestinal upset.  Never any fun. 

Fortunately, we can change this! By setting aside at least 30 minutes to eat meals, ensuring you are in a relaxed state, not eating in front of the tv/computer/at our desk, this can have a significant impact on the digestive process. I personally like to start each meal by taking a few deep breaths. This allows me to calm myself down, focus, and enjoy my food. It really helps me connect to my body. By taking a few deep breaths and being relaxed, this aids proper brain/gut communication so that my stomach is ready to receive and process the foods I'm about to eat. 

While the digestive process can be very complex, my goal is to break it down in small pieces so that readers can learn and incorporate strategies that might be helpful to improving their health. Stay tuned for my next post as I expand upon the digestive process and how important proper digestion is to the rest of your body. 

Do you have any strategies for eating in a relaxed state?