Media Recognition to Michael Schmidt for Role in "Microbiome Revolution"; The Danger of Food Safety Fear Mongering
There is quite a remarkable article in the October issue of Readers Digest Canada, which credits Michael Schmidt's nearly twenty-year struggle on behalf of raw milk with helping usher in the new scientific fascination with the "microbiome."
In a ten-page spread, "Clean Freak", which focuses heavily on Schmidt's 2011 hunger strike as well as his court cases over the years, Schmidt makes the case that many here, like Dave Milano, Miguel, and Mark McAfee, have made here for years, most recently following my previous post. The Readers Digest article, unfortunately, is only available for those willing to pay $4.50 to access the entire October issue of Readers Digest. It's worth reading simply to get a view of the breadth of research going on in this arena, and to see how far the media have come in making the connection between raw milk, the microbiome, and pathogens.
Here are a few quotes:
"Schmidt argues, moreover, that we can't fully predict the consequences of wiping out the naturally occurring bacteria in milk, which have evolved alongside us for thousands of years...His master's degree in agriculture doesn't qualify him as a bacteria expert. Nonetheless, new research suggests his theories may be dead-on. Scientists are now focusing their attention on the 'microbiome'--the menagerie of microbes that reside inside, and on, our bodies. Research has already linked microbiome breakdowns to ailments as varied as mental illness, obesity and cancer. At the moment, the concept of the microbiome isn't taught with any depth in medical schools. In fact, Western medicine considers the relationship between bacteria and humans to be less a balancing act than a war."
Epidemiologist have begun "to explore the link between the explosion of auto-immune disorders in developed countries and our obsession with cleanliness. One U.S. study, published in 2007, found that kids who were exposed to animals and drank farm milk had lower rates of asthma and allergies than kids who mostly drank pasteurized milk and weren't raised on farms. Schmidt wonders how much longer we can afford to ignore such evidence...The fear of food poisoning, while justifiable, is short-sighted. Our concern, he argues, 'should be about laying a nutritional foundation in early childhood."
The article also describes the benefits of fermentation, quoting Sandor Katz, author of Wild Fermentation. It then states: "The theory behind Schmidt and Katz's ideas is simple: We aren't at war with bacteria--we are bacteria. Nearly 1,500 varieties inhabit our bodies, outnumbering our cells ten to one...we've discovered these micro-organisms help us digest nutrients, regulate perspiration, convert glucose to muscle, overrun pathogens and repair cells. Collectively, bacteria are our single most important--if unheralded--organ."
The article credits work from the International Milk Genomics Consortium at the University of California, Davis, (cited here recently) with "a surprising realization:...Breast milk's job, in other words, doesn't simply feed the baby; it educates its digestive system...They also found that, to date, there is only one industrially viable food source able to replicate many of breast milk's functions: bovine milk."
"Schmidt doesn't believe all milk should be sold unpasteurized...Schmidt argues that the milk from small-scale organic dairies, which usually maintain better conditions for cattle, doesn't need to be pasteurized to be safe. He claims that in 38 years as a dairy farmer, he's never had a problem with food-borne illness, and he points out that Canada is the only G8 country that doesn't allow citizens access to raw milk. France has twice the population of Canada and produces three times the amount of raw milk we do, but its last dairy-related listeriosis outbreak was in 1997 (ours was in 2008). In Italy, Poland, the U.K. and Germany, raw milk is even sold in vending machines. 'Canadians,' he says, 'ought to be given the choice."
Finally, this, according to Readers Digest: the number of academic papers and articles on beneficial bacteria was "well over 7,000" last year, versus a few hundred a year in the 1990s.
Almost as if on cue, a new article in America's mainstream media, from the Boston Globe. It begins: "Seven decades after penicillin revolutionized the treatment of infections by killing bacteria, medicine is poised for another revolution.
"The central idea: Many bacteria, rather than creating disease, actually protect against it. So, rather than indiscriminately killing all bacteria, a growing number of researchers say we should be taking an ecological approach — by supporting good bacteria, either in addition to, or instead of destroying the bad...
**
Even as the Microbiome Revolution takes hold in segments of the scientific community, you know there is going to be huge resistance to the threat it poses to the conventional wisdom--that we have a food safety crisis created by pathogens out of control...a crisis that can only be resolved via sterilization of our food production environment.
A recent enterprising article in Bloomberg Markets Magazine illustrates the problem via its headline: "Food Sickens Millions as Company-Paid Checks Find It Safe". The actual guts of the reporting done by the writers points up a serious problem among corporate food producers--that private auditors give passing grades to facilities and food that has proven to be tainted by pathogens.
But the article's authors, unfortunately, also rely heavily on data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to do their fear mongering that "food sickens millions..."
It's not really data, but wild estimates from the CDC that 48 million people are sickened, 128,000 hospitalized, and 3,000 die each year from food-borne illness. All indications are that it is a terribly inaccurate estimate, on the high side.
The actual figures from the CDC, based on reports from state public health departments, shows 22 deaths from foodborne illness in the most recent year for which data is available (2008).
Media people, though, are taken with the estimate of 3,000 deaths. Here is what one of the writers of the Bloomberg article told NPR: "I was surprised that there are 3,000 deaths a year in the United States from foodborne illness and I’m surprised the extent to which that is sort of acceptable...That’s as many people as were killed in the World Trade Center, but yet 3,000 is not something that gets a lot of attention unless you’re right in the middle of an outbreak.”
Now, why would the government insist on repeating wildly estimated data when the real data is easily obtainable on the number of deaths from foodborne illness? There is only one reason I can think of: to justify huge budget expenditures from Congress for the CDC and U.S. Food and Drug Administration. If you have 3,000 deaths and 48 million illnesses, you have a "crisis." And crises draw big $$$. If you have 100 or 200 deaths, well, that doesn't arouse the fear you need to get the $$$ you want.
This site's mission is to provide news and analysis about food rights and raw milk. Increasingly, our access to privately available food is under attack by government and industry forces that seek to impose their choices on us. The Complete Patient seeks to provide up-to-date information and encourage the development of community to maintain traditional food acquisition options.
David thank you for writing of this. It is the huge medical nutritional gorilla that is being ignored. Moms across America see it....raw milk dairymen see it....so many are being paid and bribed not to see it.
Our next health revolution will be the upheaval that is going to happen very soon....when the true raw milk facts, consumer testimonials, failing pasteurized markets all scream loud enough that this issue can no longer be ignored.
I am so proud of Mike. I quote him often.
Raw milk is love....and this is war!!
Our markets in CA are raging.....yet other commercial dairies would rather go BK than to join in the work of raw milk and feeding real raw milk to real families. It seems that there is an educational void in the raw milk market space. No farmers can imagine professionally producing raw milk and all that means.
David....thank you so much!!!!
David,
Could you look deeper into the CDC statistics and provide a more insightful critique of the estimates? Clearly, there is under reporting since its voluntary. Do you have a better approach? Or, is your point to say foodborne illness is exaggerated and prevention efforts should be ignored.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3375761/bin/09-1101p1-Techap...
"foodborne illness is exaggerated"
Certainly not. We can start with the epidemic of obesity, heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, and cancer your planned economy food system forces upon us. Also the exponential rise in food allergies which have been intentionally under-studied, but which are certainly caused by industrial contaminants including GMOs. From there we can go to the fact that all major pathogen outbreaks are occur among the big corporate purveyors and are caused by industrial practices. I'll add that, to whatever extent the food system is vulnerable to sabotage, this is 100% the result of its centralization. It's industrial food advocates who are intentionally rendering the food supply insecure.
Meanwhile any issues with real milk are comparative trivia, and for anyone to focus on them rather than the industrial system is facial proof of bad faith and automatically discredits one.
And as we see here, the evidence continues to pile up that whole food diets, starting with the local and seasonal, and from there to the full organic, are not just much better than the industrial diet, but actively good for health.
"prevention efforts should be ignored"
You mean like the legalization of subtherapeutic antibiotics, or the way GMOs were legalized without safety testing under the anti-scientific fundamentalist dogma of "substantial equivalence"?
Milky Way,
Great questions. I have looked closely at the estimates, and a number of things stand out. On the estimate of 48 million annual illnesses, the implication is that 48 million people are getting sick from the four major pathogens--salmonella, listeria, E.coli O157:H7, and campylobacter. Yet the CDC says in the fine print that "9.4 million illnesses (are) from known pathogens." What the CDC is saying is that an estimated 38.6 million illnesses come from unknown pathogens. And if you look further, you find that about half of the 9.4 million illnesses are from norovirus, which is often spread by food handlers who contaminate food in restaurants and hotels. So suddenly, we're looking at an estimated 5 million illnesses mostly from the known Big Four pathogens. That's a different sort of problem. Or rather, problems. One problem the CDC is suggesting is that it can't even tell you what most people are getting sick from, except they are pinning it on food. That means there is some pretty fundamental scientific work they need to get done, to identify all these "unknown" agents. And now, instead of one in six people getting sick each year from the known pathogens, it is one in 60 who are getting sick from the Big Four pathogens.
You say the data is by its nature incomplete because it is reported on a voluntary basis. But aren't physicians and hospitals required in all states required to report foodborne illnesses from known pathogens to local public health? CDC says it "collects data on foodborne disease outbreaks submitted from all states and territories through the Foodborne Disease Outbreak Surveillance System." If all known illnesses must be reported, isn't it possible we are finding out about more illnesses than is realized? Certainly on the deaths--CDC estimates 3,000 deaths each year, yet the reported data for 2008 shows 22 deaths--isn't it very likely that figure is ridiculously inflated?
The implications here are enormous. By using these wild estimates, CDC is suggesting that the real data can't be obtained...yet it can. Why the reluctance to obtain the real data? Second, if the problem isn't as widespread as suggested by the wild estimates, then the nature of the problem is different, and the solutions will be different. Take that Bloomberg report on faulty internal audits. The article suggests we need way more FDA inspectors, since we supposedly have such an out-of-control problem. But if the problem has been pretty much identified via the recalls and reported illnesses and deaths, maybe what we need is better oversight of the auditors. A few FDA people could be monitoring the auditors that are out there, making sure they are doing their job. Maybe 10 FDA people versus thousands being talked about. (I don't know the real numbers, just giving a sense of scale.)
There's more here if you explore the data, but you get the idea. Which is why I can only conclude the data is exaggerated for budgetary purposes--fear mongering makes for good media attention and is good for getting politicians to give you what you need.
" the data is exaggerated for budgetary purposes--fear mongering makes for good media attention and is good for getting politicians to give you what you need."
David, you hit the nail on the head!
“Balance is the key,” said Dr. Martin Floch, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine. “The internal environment is an ecology.” ...... from the Boston Globe article
What are the implications of this approach for those people like Milky Way who make a living identifying and tracking the "bad bugs" ? If the internal environment is an ecology,then context determines each microbe's role.Microbes are not disease causing,It is the balance that is important.
Miguel,
Its not an either/or, as you make it out to be. One can have the proper bacterial balance in the milk, while also practicing good hygiene and having low bacteria counts.
In fact, the practice of good hygiene is part of the process of creating the correct bacterial balance. When an organism like pseudomonas is dominant in the milk, it is BOTH an indicator of poor hygiene and the incorrect bacterial balance.
Bill,
Pseudomonas can be in the milk without causing disease or indicating poor hygiene as long as it is included in the long tail of diversity of the microbes in the milk.Of course the dominant bacteria in the milk should be the lactic acid bacteria.There definitely is a bacterial profile that indicates good cow health and good hygiene.I don't believe any of the commonly used tests test for the profile of bacteria in the milk.They test merely for the presence of certain bacteria.This tells us absolutely nothing about whether the detected bacteria is dominant or only present.Milk has an ecology of life just like any other habitat. For it to be healthy certain microbes must dominate and control the habitat while stability and balance are assured by a great diversity of microbes that are only present in very small numbers. These organisms are there because there is some byproduct of another organism that feeds them.Nothing is wasted .If you start eliminating microbes from that long tail of diversity in the profile,that niche will be filled by the increase of another one of the microbes in the tail.If you decrease the length of that tail too much you will have objectionable numbers of some of the microbes that should only occur in small numbers.
Every member of a stable system interacts with every other member of that system.Each organism performs more than one function in the system and each function is performed by more than one organism.
miguel
Miguel, this all sounds fuzzy and happy and permaculture-y, but it does me not one bit of good as a professional cheese maker trying to make a living with artisan raw milk cheese.
The policy I have to deal with, weather I like it or not, is zero-tolerance for listeria, which means impeccable hygiene on the part of myself and the farmers.
One in five listeria infections result in death (yes... 1 in 5, and yes DEATH). Although admittedly, the people who come down with listeria infections are typically those with comprimised immune systems (young children, pregnent women, cancer patients, the elderly, etc).
Regardless, as far as I can tell, the proper ecological niche of listeria is in the compost pile, NOT in milk or cheese. You may be correct about a small amount of pseudomonas, but I can tell you from experience that farms which do not properly clean their equipment are more prone to pseudomonas takeover of the milk. Pseudomonas fills a similair ecological niche as listeria, and is usually considered a precursor to listeria and campylobacter.
There is a simple way to ensure that the lactic acid bacteria are dominant in the milk -- add a starter culture. It doesn't even need to be a freeze-dried laboratory mono-culture. But you really need to add something that has been "proofed" as a viable lactic-acid culture.
I would like to live in a world where this was not the case, and I could rely entirely on the native bacteria in the milk. But such is not the world we live in, at least not in this day and age.
Bill,
How did we get to this world where everything is so out of balance that people are dying from food? Why zero tolerance? If you add your starter culture why would the listeria be a problem?
From an ecological point of view every organism in your compost pile is beneficial.They all are recycling organic matter into nutrients to feed and support new life. Spread the compost on the pasture and you have all of those organisms in the soil.The cow eats from the pasture plants and ends up with many of those organisms in it's gut. It's gut bacteria aren't just inside the cow.They are in it's breath,on it's skin and in a cloud of airborne bacteria surrounding the cow.Can we intervene at some point to select for only the organisms that we want in the milk? Can we eliminate some without affecting the system as a whole? Can we eliminate 10 or 20 organisms from the system without upsetting the balance that is important? Every organism interacts with every other organism in a system. Do we even know how to eliminate some organisms without sending the whole system out of balance?
In healthy soil there are natural processes that lead towards health or balance .If we are careful to not interfere with these processes from the soil to the milk, we should have a healthy ecosystem of organisms in the milk, a low bacteria count along with a healthy balanced community of micro organisms.
I appreciate that everyone is used to interfering with the natural world.In fact many people feel that it is necessary to interfere . I favor taking a long ,hard look at what is actually going on in the natural world before interfering in it. Will there be unexpected consequences from the interference? If you do not have the option to use milk that was produced under ideal conditions,then you are at a disadvantage.You need to repair the damage done by previous interventions. I really don't think any of us knows how to take milk with an out of balance community of micro organisms and bring it back into balance. It is a luxury to be in control of the whole process from soil to pasture to cow to milk to cheese,not because we are in control but because we can avoid interfering with natural processes.
miguel
Great post, Miguel! You bring to the forefront everything that Joel Salatin supports, teaches and advocates. Mother Nature truly knows how to do it!! We have no business interfering, when we do...bad things happens of which today we see the full effects of!
Miguel, I certainly agree with you that BALANCE is key. This is also the philosophy of any farmer who adheres to Midwestern Bio-Ag and Albrecht-school mineralization programs (programs which Joel Salatin seems rather dismissive of).
I also agree that we need to be very intentional about where we interfere in natural processes, but the way you talk about this makes it sound as if any interference is at best a neccessary evil. Perhaps you could clarify? In permaculture theory, Zone 5 is where humans do the least interference, and where we go to learn from natural processes.
Zone 1 where we do the most. A cheese cave & make room, and milking parlor would be in Zones 1 and 2, respectively. So, there SHOULD be a lot of interference, including scrupulous cleaning, and yes, some use of cleaning chemicals (hopefully bio-degradable ones) to prevent unwanted bacterial buildups on equipment that handles milk and cheese.
I do believe it is possible to produce raw milk cheese that is consistently free of pathogens, if rigerous hygiene practices are followed. I'm not convinced it is possible to do so with fluid raw drinking milk, at least not with our current level of scientific understanding. Nonetheless, I support the legalization of fluid raw milk as long as best hygiene practices are followed, and the farmer retains liability insurance and has a recall procedure.
The primary reason that listeria contaminates cheese is because of the processing and aging enviroment. As the cheese ages, the lactic-acid producing starter cultures die off, and a new class of organisms take over the surface of the cheese. These organisms are aerobic and consume lactic acid while breaking down milk proteins and fat, to produce flavor and aroma compounds. In the process, they raise the pH of the cheese, and create an enviroment that is potentially more hospitable to listeria than the cheese was when it was still young.
A cheese cave can be a perfect enviroment for listeria. Listeria likes moist, cool conditions, and is very salt tolerant. If strict hygiene measures are not taken to control the entry of listeria into the cave, it can proliferate in a cave enviroment. In soft-ripened cheeses (such as the type that I make) listeria can swim into the center of the cheese (since it is motile... look it up) setup residence, and proliferate to a deadly population as the cheese ages.
Listeria is not something to be messed around with, Miguel. I don't have any qualms about consuming a small amount of listeria myself, but I would be aghast at the idea of selling such a cheese to the general public.
It all comes down to assigning liability for foodborne illness. This is the capitalist free-market economy we live in, and I don't have much of a choice but to follow the rules. Yes, producers are the ones responsible for the safety of the food they sell, not consumers. Hopefully, someday, our level of scientific understanding will advance to the point where people no longer have to be paranoid about listeria, because we have found more holistic ways to deal with it. But in the meantime, we have to use the tools available to us.
Perhaps the problem here, Miguel, is that you don't have to worry about paying any bills, so you don't have to worry about selling anything to make money. If so, I envy your position. The world would be better off if we could abolish debt-slavery and the monetary imperatives of capitalism. But I don't see the raw milk movement moving us in that direction. If anything, these free-market zealots who dominate it are moving us in the opposite direction, towards more dependency on capital and private property.
Bill,
My favorite cheese is fresh soft-ripened Brie made with raw milk and ready to eat in 3 weeks. What kind of precautions do you recommend to make sure the cheese is safe to eat? Does the cheese show any sign of being dangerous like a funny smell,color or taste?
You are right about the problem(?) being that I don't worry about paying bills. Someone is always happy to pay them for me.
miguel
You have been saying this for years, Miguel. Thank you for being so patient. I should think it would be gratifying to see the "top scientists" finally coming around to your point of view.
The thing about change is that it shuffles the deck a bit. Status quo is what we humans cling to. In MW's case, she would be losing her eminence front by acknowledging that she was not only duped by the dogma, but has been actively promulgating it. A subtle shifting would have been a better career move, but in her mind, we're all just children that can't admit that food-borne illnesses exist, and so must be brought around to the higher common sense that she enjoys.
Being patient sucks....it wastes time. When I speak with my friends at UCLA carcer research center and at the UC Davis Milk Genome Consortium project...they do not want to wait. Waiting is the worst thing to do. It is killing Americans and making our current internal ecological disaster worse and worse. The crisis in auto-immune disease ( and most all other illnesses and disease as well ) is a direct result of the slash and burn of our internal rainforests. We have Gutted our GUT in America.
When the balance of bacteria is good in the GUT and you are feeding the GUT properly...all is healthy and all is well. This GUT feeding and seeding reaches far into the role of Human Genetic expression. Old news for the best scientists....yet this is the basis of the current revolution.
This is a fight for humanity and the next generation and we should not be patient. Evolutions of change...appear slow and appear to be evolutions. Evolutions are in fact....the culmination of a long series of hard fought changes. Lets fight the fight....and teach someone today.
Our local milk producer (the only one left to do "legal" business) has been shut down by our local USDuh. Campy they said, from a sample taken in early September but we just got word of this recall today (Oct. 17, 2012). Evidently the local producer was contacted on Tuesday. Clearly they (local USDuh nerds) don't understand campy and actually had the gall to say pasteurization was invented for a reason (!) in a less than brilliant statement to the press. How do these doods get their jobs anyhow?? He knew nothing of the statistics from the CDC concerning deaths attributed to milk - any milk - and he feigned non-understanding of the question about why things like sushi and tigermeat, etc., are allowed into the food supply legally even though they're sold in a raw state. Not. A. Clue.
They've been after our distributor for some time and now, after a long summer of drought, this will likely put them completely out of business because they have to dump their milk until a "clean" sample is found. They'll make no effort to do that quickly, believe me. This is so very sad for those of us who have, now, no alternatives.
I commented in the "reader comment" section at a local newspaper article, very nicely I might add, but they are refusing to post my comment. I suppose because I asked the question about sushi, for they had no other reason not to post it.
Also, several commenters here have referred to Miguel, but I can find no comment from anyone named Miguel. Is it just my computer?!
I'm fairly certain that "user2756" is miguel.
Also, in response to your first post, D. Smith, the difference between raw milk and sushi is two fold. First, you can rinse off sushi-grade raw fish, and you can't rinse off raw milk. Secondly, raw milk has a higher water activity (aW).
Just as raw fish traditionally undergoes a curing process in many fishing societies (think smoked salmon, lutefisk, etc.) so did raw milk undergo a lactic acid fermentation and curing process in most traditional dairying societies. I'm talking, of course, about cheese making, which when done properly with high quality raw milk, renders pathogens dead and extends the shelf-life of the milk.
Well, I can't see how rinsing off sushi would "take away" any risk factor involved. Sushi is classified as raw fish and around here it comes frozen, not cured or anything else from what I understand from my son. If it were cured, they'd call it cured sushi, wouldn't they? I must admit I don't know much about fish because I don't care for it.
I see your point about cheese, but I can't drink cheese, nor can I use it on my baked oatmeal! Well, I suppose I could but yuck. And what about those people who don't care for cheese?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sushi
Sushi is made and consumed with raw fish. Washing the fish, like washing produce, does NOT remove all pathogens.
D. tell me about your baked oatmeal, that sounds scrumptious! I love oatmeal, preferably the Scottish style, but I've never baked it.
@ Deborah Peterson: Yes, it's made with steel cut oats, but you have to plan ahead just a little because it has to soak overnight. I also soak pecans or walnuts overnight, too.
I originally found the recipe here: http://nourishedkitchen.com/baked-oatmeal/ Don't know if Jenny is still doing her newsletter or not because I was subscribed to get them but haven't received one now in some time. I thought maybe she took a break from it all, but not sure about that.
I have made a few changes, however, because the first few times I made it, it seemed so dry. So now I don't bake it as long, that's one change. Also, I switch dried fruits each time because I love dried currants, not too big on apricots - and it's all good, but can be made to your own liking, of course. I ordered some now-hard-to-find pure Grade B maple syrup from The Vermont Country Store and I like to put a dash of that on the oatmeal sometimes, but mostly just butter, a little fresh cream and a dash of either cinnamon, nutmeg or cardamom.
If you decide to try it, let me know what you think. Email me (if you didn't save my addy let me know and I fire it off to you again through David) and I'll give you the link to my forum and you can spend DAYS or WEEKS going through all the recipes I have posted there. =o)
Oh, I am so going to make this, it has all my favorite ingredients in it. I thought that I had saved your email address, but now I can't find it. Yes, I am very interested in checking out your forum, I'm always looking for new recipes. Go ahead & have David give you my email again. I'll let you know what I think of the recipe, I'm going to make it tomorrow to bake on Fri morning, can't wait. I am familiar with Jenny's Nourished Kitchen website & I do get the newsletter. The most recent one had a recipe for a Spicy Mustard Green pesto, sounds yummy! Let her know that you're not getting them, perhaps something is wrong. Funny that you mentioned Vermont Country Store, I brought some of their products back with me on my last trip to Boston!
@ Deborah: Oooh, and that Grade B syrup is wonderful for baking. I made some carnival squash with it recently and even my grandkids loved it - and they don't really like squash. Lots of butter, a dash of freshly ground allspice and a dash of black pepper and then a few strings of maple syrup run across the breadth of the squash. YUM! My grandson was just 2 in August and he says "nutritious delicious" !
Actually, the very first time I ever saw a recipe for baked oatmeal was in an old, old, old (did I say old?) Amish cookbook. The thing is falling apart at the seams and still I use it. Best recipe in there for Whole Wheat Bread that I've ever come across. We mostly eat sourdough breads now, but occasionally on a cold, blustery winter day I'll get a hankering for that W/W bread and get busy on it. Those Amish folks knew their food. But the original oatmeal recipe in there called for it to be sort of *steamed* because you put a pan of water in the oven with it. After I made Jenny's recipe the first time and it turned out as dry as a popcorn fart, I decided to do mine the Amish way - with a pan of water in the oven. Solved the problem of being dry and even though it increased the baking time by about 5-7 minutes it didn't detract from the taste or the texture from what I could tell.
Also, what the heck - just give me an email jingle here: rushmoregal53 at hotmail dot com and I'll fire off the link to the forum. Ya gotta keep in mind the forum ain't all recipes though. =8-) A few different categories of discussion information there, actually. Gotta be open-minded these days, just not so much the brain falls out, right?
I also have a very old Amish cookbook, it used to belong to my grandmother, I just need to remember where I have it! I have so many cookbooks that I need a separate library just for them alone! Lol! There is nothing better than homemade bread. I had always used a basic whole wheat bread recipe that came with my Bosch mixer & that is still taught at the Magic Mill store in Phoenix, AZ. That store used to be near my house when we lived in Phoenix & it's where I bought my first Bosch mixer & Magic Mill grain grinder. I used to take many of my eggs to them when my hens produced too many than we could consume & exchanged them for store credit. Another bread that I would make from time to time for a special treat was my great-great grandmother's bread called War Bread. It was a recipe that she made up when white flour was very scarse during WWI. It is so delicious & makes excellent toast, my girls when they were young loved that bread. When I bake my oatmeal tomorrow, I will do what you suggest & put a pan of water in my oven. I'm looking forward to your forum, it definitely sounds very interesting & yes, gotta protect the brain! Lol!
Oatmeal is my favorite breakfast food and although I have used steel cut oats when making bread I’ve never thought of using it in this way. I‘ll give it a try.
While at Cardiff University my father in law shared a room with a Scottish student who used to cook his oatmeal a week or so in advance and then store it in the bottom drawer of his dresser. He would then eat it on a daily basis.
My wife thought it was all rather disgusting, however I thought it rather amusing as well as fascinating so I tried it out. It is actually quite good, but rather then keep it in my dresser drawer, as this would not go well with my wife, I choose rather to keep in a pot.
Ken
@ Ken: Did this unrefridgerated oatmeal not go fuzzy on you, Ken?? Well, maybe even if it did it was still good for the gut, I suppose. I'm not big on fuzzy foods though.
It doesn’t get a chance to since it is usually gone in two days. if you leave the lid off however, it will dry out and prevent mold from growing on it. All one then needs to do is poor a little hot water on it in order to rehydrate it. I sometimes do that for lunch when I am in a hurry. I then add some maple syrup with some yogurt and or milk. Dried cranberries go well with it as well.
Ken
I can't wait to try it as well. Have long been looking for interesting way to combine oatmeal with eggs.
@ David: When I make this baked oatmeal in a smaller pan and it gets thicker, my DH cuts square of it in half and slides an egg fried in butter in between the layers, along with a hunk of cheese and calls it his McMuffin. Before he retired, he had all the guys down at the firehouse liking this stuff. If you're game, you can add even more egg to the equation . . .
Mmmm...thanks.
For a long time I couldn't find Scottish style oatmeal around here, but now my HFS carries it in stock, in bulk. Definitely not the same thing as rolled oats. More like stone ground because it's kinda powdery almost. I don't really know how to describe it. I think my curiosity about it is satisfied and once it's gone, I'll be heading back to the steel-cut oats. I much prefer that because it had more body.
I also purchased some farina from the HFS recently, with the beginning of the onset of colder weather (although today is 78 degrees here). I grew up with farina (cream of wheat) with a little brown sugar or maple syrup on it. My mom used to put nuts and raisins or berries in it sometimes and as a kid I hated that! As an adult, I love it. We always had just plain buttered toast with it, and I used to dip my toast into the cream of wheat and scoop it out - YUM!
I don't have an issue with most grains, although a lot of people are shying away from it these days, which is a true shame. I do better with sourdough breads, but I like whole grain breads, too.
This *(%)*&# format just drives me crazy. I was responding to a post by Deborah Peterson where she mentioned Scottish oatmeal. I hit "reply" under her post, and yet the thing ended up way down here in Timbuktu. Arg. It's happened a lot lately. Double Arg.
Yeah, D., I have been having the same problem with how things post when replying, don't know what is going on, but it happened to me quite a few times this past week. Anyways, got to view your forum & having a great time reading all the great stuff that is there, wonderful forum! About the Scottish oatmeal, I am wondering if your HFS may have mislabeled that oatmeal or may have ordered the wrong kind, but Scottish oatmeal should not be powdery at all. It is similar to steel cut oats, but is a bit smaller, it definitely looks like small grains & it is also known as 'pinhead' oatmeal as the little grains kind of looks like the tip of pins (needles). When cooked it is not mushy or soggy, it is heartier, chewy & have a wonderful nutty texture & taste. I wish I could post a pic here for you to see what it looks like. Bob's Red Mill carries Scottish Oatmeal, along with their steel cut & rolled oatmeal. I'll never forget the time when as a young girl I stayed over at a friend's house & was served oatmeal the next morning...took one look at it, thought it looked very strange & not like what I was used to. That was the first time that I ever encountered rolled oats oatmeal!! I was not too taken with it at all, too mushy & not very much flavor. Being a youngster, I had no idea that the oatmeal that we ate at home was very different from what most of our neighbors ate! By the way, made baked oatmeal yesterday (was absolutely yumo!), added some pumpkin, maple syrup (the Grade B dark), organic brown sugar, pecans & pumpkin pie spice to it...oh my, oh my, it not only tasted incredible, but also scented the house up wonderfully!! This is definitely a keeper!
You are correct that sushi is traditionally consumed fresh (not cured), presumably within a short time after the fish is harvested. I am a fan of sushi, actually.
But its important to point out that sushi-grade fish has higher hygiene standards than non-sushi-grade. Just as raw milk for raw consumption should have higher hygiene standards than raw milk for pasteurization. The fact that so many in this movement resist having any hygiene standards at all continues to perplex and upset me. It indicates to me an unwillingness of those producers to hold themselves to a higher standards than your average conventional dairy farm. As an artisan cheese maker in a state chalk full of commodity cheese makers, I certainly make a point of holding myself to higher standards than the average Wisconsin cheddar maker.
Its also worth pointing out that when you use raw milk in baked oatmeal, it is probably no longer raw when the baking is done (unless, I suppose, the center is al dente)
@ BillAnderson: Yes, I'm aware of what cooking/baking with raw milk is all about, but I was referring to putting raw milk on my oatmeal just before I eat it. The recipe, however, does call for milk during the baking time, as well. To me, raw milk = totally unheated milk.
I'm not going to get started again on how I think the standards should be the same for all raw milk no matter how it's to be used. Been there with that conversation already.
Indeed, all foods for consumption should have high standards for hygiene. All milk should have the same standards, just as all produce.
Ah yes, I see the name Miguel at the bottom of the post now. I usually start scrolling from the bottom up on this page, and I just hadn't gone up far enough I guess.
http://news.yahoo.com/cdc-says-deaths-rise-19-worsening-meningitis-outbr...
"The FDA is also under scrutiny. While it has limited authority to regulate pharmacies like NECC, it had flagged violations at the company as recently as 2006."
Just reinforces how worthless the fda is. I wonder if all those people can sue the fda for failure to do their jobs?
The FDA does not treat all of the letters in their namesake the same.....Food is not equal to Drugs. The FDA actually permits drugs with known side effects including DEATH to be sold. Then they have the gal to declare that the sick patient is the person that is responsible to appreciate and comprehend the side effects in 6 font micro print.
@ Mark:
Well said and exactly factual. The bigPhRma companies have no liability anymore, thus no responsibility. That belongs to the patient. In what world do these folks function?? This is one of the biggie reasons my husband decided to retire. He sees more future in alternatives, by far, than what we're going to be dealing with in allopathic medicine.
For crying out loud Bill, freedom and liberty are breaking out all over the place here and you are cozying up to the authoritarian concepters. You say bottom up, well that’s what you got going on here. You got your grass and grain and hay on the one hand, cows on the other hand, gutsy customers and gutsier farmers and maniacal, past-shackled MW-style lab-coats. The only science they’ll ever see triumph before a judge is the one in their withered but iron-fisted grip. The big-bet-riders at Monsanto et al are fighting like crazy to cover-up the monster downside to their calculations. The politicians’ heads are spinning and it’s anybody’s guess as to whether or not they’ll get their stalled bandwagons off the tracks before the mom-express comes barreling through to the future. The law? Well yes, the law. They’re in a quandary of their own making.
And then, thinking of Karl Marx:
The brilliant Russian, Sheymov, at the stage of his career where he had to give Political Theory Lectures, would not b.s. his way through the lectures as others advised him to do. His style was substance. So he studied. And studied. And concluded that Marxist Theory is a formula for government by thug. Then he defected. (Tower of Secrets, ISBN-13 978-1557507648, 1993)
And then, thinking of the nature of science:
It has been said by, I think it was, an historian of science, that as you study science through the ages and across cultures, that after much study you come to realize you are studying not so much science as the debris of science. Debris fields here. Debris fields there. Starts and dissolves. Until. Until the Judeo-Christian concepts appear: A reasonable creator and a created universe exhibiting reason, good reason. And the desire on the part of the creator that mankind honors the creator by studying to understand the creation. This led to lifetimes spent in careful study and to stability allowing such studious fruit to be disseminated. There are examples of this such as Brahe’s work being used by Kepler and Kepler’s work being used by Newton. In this light, I think that atheistic visions of science are debilitatingly myopic in two directions at once, the past and the future.
A good evening to all,
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
I'm not sure what you are talking about here Ingvar, but I do know that Judeo-Christians concepts are profoundly authoritarian. I know this from firsthand experience. I was raised a strict Roman Catholic and attended religious grade school, taught the "three R's" by nuns. And if the protestants who comment around here are any indicator, they aren't much better than the Catholics when it comes to their disdain of natural human behavior (calling it "vice").
Newtonian physics was debunked by Einstein's relativity, by the way, Ingvar. And need I remind you once again, that Einstein was a socialist.
http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism
Equality is the only true road to liberty and freedom for all. If we continue pursuing the road of right-wing "liberty" (that is to say, liberty for only those with property and privilege) then we are, in fact, pursuing a road to slavery for everyone else. I'll take the socialist road to liberty, thank you. FREEDOM FOR ALL, not just for the bourgeoisie.
Well Bill I am not a Protestant and although I was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition I shy away from anything religious including socialism. If anything I am inclined to think of myself a Christian Anarchist.
My belief is in Jesus Christ and the truth he professed that would set us free.
Like Albert Einstein, “I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.”
Ken
Christian Anarchist? Are you referring to the Dorthy Day Catholic Worker tradition? Because that is certainly a type of socialism.
http://www.catholicworker.org/index.cfm
And for the record, Anarchism is a type of socialism. This ultra-right-wing ideology that passes itself off as "libertarian" or "anarchist", but embraces free markets dogmas with a zeal that gives the World Bank, WTO and IMF a run for their money, is anything but true Anarchism. Americans are the only ones who don't seem to understand this concept. A true Anarchist rejects private property, because it is a form of authoritarianism and statism.
Bill. I’m not familiar with Dorothy Day. There are many anarchist schools of thought of which some I share.
Her is a thought to consider by a man who was influenced by Leo Tolstoy’s writings to adopt a non-violent resistant philosophy, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed”. Mahatma Gandhi
Tolstoy believed that a true Christian could find lasting happiness by striving for inner self-perfection through following the Great Commandment of loving one's neighbor and God rather than looking outward to the Church or state for guidance, which would suggest that Socialism is not to be confused with social justice.
Yes and I am aware that he opposed “private property”,
Ken
A bit off topic here, but I am begging for help with our upcoming vote on Prop 37 here in California (Labeling GMOs - The Right to Know). I am reaching out to all of our California posters here on this forum, as well as, those that live outside of California (yes, you truly can help with this!)...please review this link to see how you can help: http://www.organicconsumers.org/bytes/ob351.htm
As you can see, there are links for all the different ways that you can help, whether or not you live in California. We have many, many supporters outside of California, so please join us in making this a successful win! For my California forum participants....Vote Yes on Prop 37! For everyone else, please help in getting this information out to everyone else, especially to anyone you know that lives in California, be they relatives, friends, acquaintances, etc. We only have this one chance to do this...if not, then Monsanto, Cargill, Dow, etc will make sure that a proposition like this will never come to a ballot every again!!