The Hemp Connection:
beans

Organic Bean Soup
Ingredients: 1 cup organic 13 bean soup mixture
2 cups organic chicken broth
4 carrots
4 celery sticks
2 cloves fresh garlic
½ sweet onion
3 Tblsp diced fresh parsley
2 Tblsp diced fresh dill
1 piece wild atlantic Kombu Kelp
Directions:Soak beans overnightThe next day, place beans in 2 cups chicken broth and bring to a boil, chop all the vegetables and herbs and add to the soup, can place kelp in whole or shred and place in before cookingCover and simmer for 2 hoursMakes 3-4 servings

Most people, by the time they find this blog, have been introduced to the idea that carbs are"bad".

I propose a new way of thinking.

Carbs, when eaten to satisfy insatiable carbohydrate cravings, are being used to feed a potentially destructive biochemical imbalance.

Carbs, when eaten as part of a balanced diet, and when chosen from unrefined foods that also provide fiber, vitamins, minerals, and anti-oxidants, can be incredibly important in overall health and recovery from PCOS.

By now this blog has quite a bit of information on what you can do to help your carbohydrate cravings. So today I wanted to talk about a carbohydrate that can be helpful to include.

Ezekiel bread gets its name from the fact that its ingredients are all mentioned in the Bible verse Ezekiel 4:9.

"But as for you, take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and spelt, put them in one vessel and make them into bread for yourself; you shall eat it according to the number of the days that you lie on your side, three hundred and ninety days."

The bread is supposedly nutritionally complete. I'm not so sure about that, but I do know because it contains bean flour it is much higher in protein than your average bread. And, Biblical scholar or not…it can be a great food to add to your diet so that sandwiches, a handy convenience food, don't have to be eliminated from your"things I can pack for lunch" list.

I like to call our PCOS diet an"aggressive Mediterranean" diet. And because this recipe originates from the Bible, it falls in that category.

These days, Ezekiel bread is pretty easily found in most healthy food stores. The folks at Food for Life have trademarked the name"Ezekiel 4:9", and they've ventured into other products such as pasta, that you may be interested in trying.

If you cannot find Ezekiel bread in your local store, I found the recipe online for you to make it yourself.

Turkey sandwich piled with veggies…here I come!

I'm not at all a fan of the Food Guide Pyramid or the new My Pyramid. I know too much about the politics of how each food got its position in the diagram. And I know that the concept is promoted by the Department of Agriculture, not the Department of Health and Human Services. So it's really about marketing commodities at least as much, if not more than, promoting healthy eating.

Last year at this time it occurred to me that eating patriotically (if you are a citizen of the United States, France, Chile, Czechoslovakia, and the United Kingdom, to name a few), is a fun way to think about what constitutes a healthy choice.

So I went to Google to see if there was anything under the term,"food flag". I found this:

Sausage and pasta were not really what I had in mind, so I scrolled further, and found this:

Absolutely not what I wanted to communicate!

So…I had a little fun and I made my own. I hope you like it!

I posted a bigger version on my website, feel free to use it as long as you keep the copyright notice intact in the lower righthand corner. You can find it at www.afterthediet.com/foodflag.htm.