Kale for breakfast?

If we are going to eat 9 cups of vegetables and fruits in a day, we are going to have to get started early. But do we really want kale for breakfast? Yes, we do. If it is in a frittata, it is very tasty and breakfast-y. You could use saved over kale and broccoli from the night before, but it does not take long to cook it from scratch in the morning.

Here’s the recipe:

Kale Broccoli Frittata                                       Serves 2

1T organic fat  (olive oil, butter, or rendered from bacon, pork, chicken)

2T chopped onion

4 cups kale, freshly washed and wet, torn in bite sized pieces

1 cup chopped broccoli

2 organic eggs, preferably pasture raised, lightly beaten

Sea salt

Freshly ground pepper

Ground allspice

2 oz grated organic sharp cheddar cheese, or cheese of your choice.

Heat an 8” skillet over medium heat until it feels quite warm when you hold your hand 2” over the surface. Preheat broiler. Add fat and swirl to coat pan. Add onions and sauté until transparent.  Add fresh kale and broccoli. Cover pan to allow vegetables to steam for 4 minutes. Meanwhile, beat the eggs and grate the cheese. 

Pour eggs evenly over vegetables, and sprinkle with seasonings. Sprinkle cheese evenly over all. Allow the eggs to cook for 3 minutes.  Place under broiler until cheese melts and browns to a light golden color.

Try this recipe. It might be one of your new favorite breakfast / brunch dishes. And your body will thank you.

An old, old adage truer today than ever: “You are what you eat”.

As Dr. Terry Wahls M.D. points out her first class of a 2 part series called “Food as Medicine”, you are not just you, but also the billions of microbes that live on all of your internal and external surfaces. So, your billions +1 community of self, are collectively what you choose to eat. Makes you feel powerful, doesn’t it. Your choices impact billions of lives.

It also points out again that fighting microbes is the wrong approach. Of course, we must be careful of cleanliness, but our goal must never be “zero tolerance” for microbes. The goal must be healthy balance. Keep your friendly microbes happy, and the unfriendly ones will not have much chance to give you trouble.

But, we do have troubles of many kinds. For Americans, cancer, obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, autoimmune diseases like Lupus and Fibromyalgia, Bipolar Disorder, Multiple Sclerosis, Crone’s Disease, ADD and ADHD, Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome seem to be on the upswing. Why? Dr. Wahls confirmed last night what I have been suspecting for quite a while. We are starving ourselves. Oh sure, our bellies are full. We eat plenty of carbs, fat, and protein. We may even take all of the RDA of vitamins and minerals, but there is for many of us that “x” factor, the little known and vitally important micro-nutrients of which our American diet is devoid.

So, if we are what we eat, we are mainly corn fed cattle. We follow the herd and blindly eat whatever the American commercial food industry throws into our trough. We drive thru, or if we grocery shop, we buy foods of which most contain corn components; corn fed meat, poultry and fish, fats, sweeteners, and/or starches derived from corn. We eat what is convenient. We are impressed when they engineer the food to be sugar free, fat free, shelf stable, microwavable, etc. If it has enough salt and fat, we think it tastes good. We are very fond of sweet and salty, not so fond of sour and bitter. We especially want our food to be sterile, so packaging has become important to us. Colorful boxes show tasty looking foods ready in a few seconds!

Yes, we are what we eat, and we are beginning to see the terrible price for our bad habits. With steady increases in the above mentioned diseases and disorders, and the huge increase in health care costs, it is high time we pay attention to what is going on and educate ourselves about nutrition. Now is the time for us to get serious about who we are and what we eat.