Solgar got back to me in a timely fashion to my request for information regarding their use – if any – of GMO's in the production of their Brewer's Yeast Powder.  (I am just late in posting the reply here…)

They claim that they do not use any GMO's in their products, which is very good, I just don't find it as re-assuring that they have not been able to label their products as such.  I hope they get the proper labeling authority soon and when they do I will consider purchasing their products again.  Thank you Solgar!

If you just bought a brand new car, and its owner's manual instructed you to use premium gas, you wouldn't just put any old brand of generic non-premium gas into your gas tank right?  If your car sustained some damages, you wouldn't get a replacement part from a rusted out hurricane Sandy flooded car, right? So then my question is, why do so many people eat at crappy lunch places?  Why do so many people fill their bodies, which, as machines, are the equivalent of a Rolls Royce, with GMO/chemical laded CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) food?
  See this link for more on what a CAFO is: http://www.epa.gov/region7/water/cafo/.

In case you are following the Would John Eat It Diet, here is a list of approved places to eat lunch in midtown Manhattan that will help you avoid as much as possible the aforementioned "crappy foods" and ingredients such as GMO's.  Of course, there is no substitute for bringing lunch from home, but sometimes you are in a rush or just don't feel like preparing something yourself.  On such days, I recommend eating at one of the locations mentioned below:

• Dig Inn Seasonal Market (formerly "The Pump")

• Free Foods NYC

• Organic Avenue

• Westerly Natural Market

Dig Inn Seasonal Market (formerly "The Pump")

www.DigInn.com

Dig Inn is up there as one of my favorite places to have lunch whenever I forget to pack one from home.  As a supporter of local farms, Dig Inn fits the bill as one of the few lunch places that you will not see a SYSCO or a Jane's Quality Natural Truck parked outside delivering "Food Products."

They try to keep it as local as possible, including a list of what farms some of their veggies come from. They are very honest and open with regards to every single one of their ingredients. It is also called a Seasonal Market for a reason, their menu changes every so often because different veggies are available at different times of the year! Wow! What an innovation! See their excellent blog (http://blog.diginn.com/) for both a source of nutrition and diet information as well as the latest information regarding their food farm sources and and upcoming changes to their menu.

In general Digg Inn has good sources of high quality food, so check them out, it is hard to get something that is bad for you from here. In fact, I once brought a friend of mine there and half way through his meal he stops eating and says "This is disgusting." And I respond like a mother to a child saying "Eat your vegetables or no dessert!" The food has no sugar or added sodium to make it taste good, if you are used to eating fast food you will not like this food, but once you get used to it, you will wonder how did you ever eat so unhealthy before…

The closest location to me is on 55th street between 5th and 6th avenues, it has very limited seating so get there before 12 otherwise you will be forced to wait outside in the cold. This place is literally becoming like the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld where upon entering you have to select a cardboard plate filled with the base veggie of your choice and you have to be ready to tell the person behind the counter exactly what else you want.

They are all pretty nice and polite and don't get mad at me when I say "I'll have that purple thing over there in the middle." My advice is to avoid the rice base, choose spinach or mixed greens, and I say spinach because most people are iron deficient, especially women of child-bearing age. Then get either the tofu, meatballs or beef. Yeah, good chicken is hard to come by, especially for a restaurant that goes through so much of it… And avoid the sauces and salad dressing if you really want to be healthy, although their sauces do not taste like a lot of sugar or an alternative sweetener has been added to make it taste the way it does.

As for their tzatziki? Not as good as mine… but hey, what are you going to do? I don't have enough to go around!

Oh… and before I forget, you must try their Serious Green juice. A perfect blend of many green vegetables, in a non-pasteurized form, so that means it has to be fresh and it has to be local…

Beware: When you first start eating here you will not like the taste, especially the taste of the Serious Green juice, but to me, their food tastes great and their Serious Green juice tastes like ice cream. How things have changed… So give them a try, and you won't be let down, trust me!

 Free Foods NYC

45th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues

www.FreeFoodsNYC.com

I found out about this place from a little blue book called "Clean Plates" which is a pretty handy guide to restaurants throughout Manhattan that pass a semi-organic test. Free Foods has a nice buffet and many decent sandwiches. I avoid the sandwiches because I try to follow the Paleo diet theory of avoiding grains. Their buffet does have some nice options however, but I avoid the nut-heavy and grain heavy items, as well as any chicken or salmon options. As you know, I avoid chicken from restaurants like the plague, except for one noted exception: Butcher Bar in Astoria. Too bad you can't go there during your lunch break, but more on that in another article, we are talking about midtown right?

So Free Foods also has a nice juice bar and nothing beats their "Bloody Marry" juice which consists of Beets, Apple, Lemon, Celery and Cayenne.

Overall this is a good place, and I once brought another friend here who cringed at the prices… But hey, I'll pay this premium any day to avoid Monsanto and SYSCO food. Want to see a picture of what a "free-range" chicken looks like? Head over to peta.org… here is a direct link:

http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/chicken-industry.aspx

In a picture worth a thousand words, that is why I avoid eating chicken unless I know for a fact what farm it came from and I have seen a picture of that farm as well as the Google Satellite imagery to make sure that it is not a CAFO or CAFO-like operation. That's Consolidated Animal Feeding Operation, a synonym for corporate profits and dividends that are taxed at a much, much lower rate than you are… Think Romney on the right, Warren Buffet on the left, that's right, that's how they make their millions of dollars of money each year and pay so little in taxes… from CAFOs.

Also, remember, think about the children!!! Children in our public schools are fed this crap meat almost every single day! So are you still against school vouchers and other freedoms? PETA convinced me otherwise.

Advice:

Get one of their veggies shakes, don't buy their overpriced Kambucha, bring that from home and try the salad bar. Remember avoid grains, nuts and meat – that includes salmon – from this place.

Pret a Manger

Locations all over midtown, too many to list.

http://www.pret.com/us/

Slowly losing favor in my eyes… No grain-free options.  No quinoa free food.  Their egg yolks are as yellow as a politician… I only buy iced coffee from this place, as their milk is from Organic Valley, which is a quasi-organic milk producer than only Pasteurizes their milk at normal pasteurization temperatures.  By the way, it is said that Louis Pasteur said on his death bed that it is not the germ, but the soil, meaning it doesn't matter what temperature the milk was pasteurized to, what matters is the quality of the soil where it came from – meaning what did those cows eat? So I am removing cow's milk and coffee from Pret a Manger from my list of places to eat at and visit from the "Would John Eat It" Diet.  Don't go to Pret a Manger anymore, just get their coffee while you transition to the better low-acid coffee from Organic Avenue.

Organic Avenue

http://www.organicavenue.com

A vegan's dream. Worthy of a 5th avenue storefront. They sure as hell can afford it… This place is the best for finding healthy, raw, unpasteurized foods. Very paleo friendly, has a variety of raw, unpasteurized juices. Every time I come here I end up spending at least 20$. You know what? At 21 work days per month, that is $420 dollars per month. you know how much your average health insurance plan costs? Much more than that. Why don't we stop requiring people to buy an Obamacare plan and send them to Organic Avenue instead, the food in here will keep you much healthier than any pharmaceutical drug or surgery or anything else that your doctor will do to you.

The current location that I frequent is a "Pop-Up" location which is going to be there temproraily until June 1st, after which another "Pop-Up" location will open up somewhere nearby. The location of this "Pop-Up" is on Broadway between 53rd and 54th Streets, actually it is right next door to the Late Show with David Letterman, I wonder what he has to say about this place?

For Oragnic Avenue, try their Mushroom Wrap, it is my favorite item, must be due to all the shitake mushrooms in it. All of their chocolate desserts are also great, but don't be fooled, they still contain sweeteners, although good ones like Agave and Coconut Sugar. So buy a green juice on Monday, a red juice on Tuesday, a green on Wednesday and so on. Nature made it so that foods of different colors have different nutrients, and you need them all.

Try their Cafe Latte, it is a good way to transition out of drinking coffee in the first place.

Beware however, that many of their pre-packaged health products can also be purcashed at nearby Westerly Natural Market on 8th avenue for much less. But what are you going to do? Take a day off to go to Westerly Natural Market to save 1.50$ on a "Rawnola" bar?

Westerly Natural Market

913 8th Avenue (between 53rd and 54th Streets)

www.westerlynaturalmarket.com

A few blocks away from Organic Avenue is the organic market for the commoner. A place where one does not have to be a member of the 1% or the "rich people who make 100 thousand dollars per year but can't afford a home in New York City people" to be able to eat healthy, clean, organic, non-GMO and real food. Interesting to note that they deliver via UPS. I have never ordered for delivery from them, as I am a walker and prefer to get someplace that nature intended for me to.

You will find everything in this supermarket, from Avalon Organics Shampoo, to Alba Botanica Hair Gel and Cream (my favorites) as well as rawnola bars and a hidden juice bar in the back.

I tend to buy Cod-Liver oil capsules from here and Vitamin D supplements which are really important in the winter. During the warmer months, there is a farmers market nearby on 57th and 9th that has some pretty good produce from Orange County (that's Orange County, New York State, not LA!). I once had a headhunter call me up for a programming gig in Orange County and I got all excited and emailing them back only to find out that they were referring to Los Angeles…

Advice:

Stop in the back right to the juice bar, get a nice juice then walk around the refrigeradors in the back pick up some Kombucha and a vegan ethiopian dish. Then stop in an aisle with tea and pick some weird flavor up, grab some sea vegetables and store them at your desk at work. Then have fun with the rawnola bars and other similar products.

Very easy to spend $50 in this place… you have been warned!

So stop eating at those delis and food carts that are all the rage, look for food with quality ingredients.  Explore the ingredients that you eat and don't put water in your gas tank!

So I was reading the label of my Solgar Brewer's Yeast this morning to find out how much iron it has. To my joy I saw that it has 33% of the Recommended Daily Allowance of Iron in just two tablespoons!  Now, the RDA is different for adults, children, males and females.  Where a woman of chlid-bearing age requires much more iron than an adult male.  Growing children also require much more.  Nevertheless, the package stated that two tablespoons contain 5.6mg of Iron, I am supposed to get 8mg of Iron per day.  This specific brand of Brewer's Yeast that I normally purchase from the health store is made by Solgar, in Leonia, New Jersey.  That is actually pretty close to New York City! Talk about local?  Here is a picture:

The reason it is called "Brewer's Yeast" is that it is normally created as a by-product of the beer-brewing process, which results in a very bitter tasting product.  Solgar, however generates its' yeast powder from beet molasses, and this is my cause for concern.  If you are familiar with something called GMOs, otherwise known as Genetically Modified Organisms, you would know that most Corn, Beets, and Cotton created in the United States is GMO.  Since the label does not claim to be free of GMOs or to be organic, well, guess what, we now have a problem.  There is a good chance that the beet molasses used by Solgar to create this Yeast Power is GMO.

So I headed over to the Solgar website at http://www.solgar.com and did not see any mention of Organic or non-GMO in their Yeast products.  What I did find however, was a "Contact Us" page.  I sent them an email inquiring about the organic/GMO status of their products today, I am sure they will get back to me soon.

Although their product is likely GMO, I do not suggest that you stop taking Brewer's Yeast as a morning supplement because although GMO products have been linked to cancer and many other health issues, it still is a very nutritious product and I suggest you contact Solgar and ask them to remove any GMO ingredients from their food while you search for a viable alternative brand of Brewer's Yeast to purchase.

Their email is here:

productinformation@solgar.com

I suggest you send them an email asking for them to respond to whether or not they use GMOs in their products.  This link will create a new email in your default mail program containing the message body filled with the text below: 

productinformation@solgar.com

​

So I was reading, or rather listening to an article on Natural News about fingernail health and after hearing about something called “ridges” on one’s nails, I decided to take a look at my nails and I saw that I have vertical ridges on my nails!  Although these ridges are very small and hard to see unless you look very closely, I got a little upset thinking that I might be anemic.  So I went and read about the symptons and one of them was fatigue, which can lead to one feeling depressed!  So we have a little bit of a chicken and egg complex here… I was sad because I found out I am iron deficient, and one of the symptons of iron deficiency is a form of depression…

So anyway, I decided that I should take the necessary precautions and advise my readers how they can avoid getting an iron deficiency, which according to the Natural News article is a possible cause for anemia, which is a cause for ridges in ones nails.

The culprit: Tea drinking

Drinking too much tea, which is what I have been doing since the summer of 2012 is the culprit for decreasing your body’s iron absorption, which in turn leads to anemia, which leads to ridges in one’s nails.  This however only applies to non-HEME sources of iron, which means if you eat very little or no meat and drink a lot of tea you are risking low iron levels in your body.  So the advice I found on the internet is a bunch of lists of foods high in iron, and the advice was to not to drink tea right before, during or after a meal.  The tannins in the tea bind to the iron and prevent your body from absorbing the iron.  There are many ways to still drink tea, even herbal tea and to avoid these poor effects, but the best advice was to:

• avoid tea with meals
• add milk or lemon to your tea
• get Vitamin C with your iron
• get your iron from meat sources.

See this article on VeeTea.com for more information on how to deal with drinking tea and iron absorption:

http://www.veetea.com/site/articles/tea-and-iron

How I “listen” to natural news everyday:

I purchased a license to the IVONA Text-to-Speech Software (http://www.ivona.com) for around 79 US Dollars.  All you need is one voice, I got Salli, she sounds pretty good.  So I get an email each morning from Natural News and I simply select all the text, copy it and paste it into a large document in my IVONA Reader, then I simply press play and start my work!

See this article on natural news to learn more about fingernail health:

Fingernail health is an indicator of overall health and wellness – http://www.naturalnews.com/007750.html

It is the morning of January 2nd, 2013, and I woke up bright and early to go to work.  I still felt bloated and full from all the conventional foods that I consumed during the holiday season and decided to officially “weigh myself in” to see where I stand.  I weighed 210 pounds, with my height of 5 feet and 11 inches that brought my Body Mass Index (BMI) to 29.3, which according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention makes me “Overweight”, with a real close margin to “Obese”.  I will have to agree with the CDC here and say that yes, I am indeed overweight.  Regardless of how much muscle mass I may have, or how thick my bones are, I still am overweight and I am going to “practice what I preach” and will post my updates here following this new diet that I am creating, which shall be called “The Would John Eat It Diet”.

It must be noted that having a 6-pack in your abdominal area like those from the movie 300 is not healthy, nor is it intrinsically attractive to the opposite sex.  Your body is supposed to have some fat reserves that can help you get through a period of starvation, and having 6-pack abs means that once you skip a meal your body starts burning muscle, as opposed to fat.  As long as the amount of fat you have does not decrease your agility and stamina, it is okay, plus it helps keep you warm during the cold winter months… There is an article on this somewhere on naturalnews.com, but I don’t have the time to look it up right now.

So, for 2013 I will be regularly weighing myself using multiple scales, noting the time and location of each scale and will be posting the results here.  I will also keep a detailed “diet” log where I write down to the bet of my abilities everything that I eat.  Hopefully this will provide some usefulness of the efficacy of my own diet that can help you and others see its effectiveness.

Anyway, my diet guidelines are as follows:

• • Avoid Coffee
    • If you have any, get an iced coffee from Pret a Manger.  No Starbucks, no Dunkin’ Donuts.  Oh, and did I mention no sugar or sugar substitutes?  Only some half and half.  Yes, you heard me right, half and half is preferred, not skim milk, not soy milk.  Whole milk is okay.  Soy milk, by the way, often contains sugar!  And the soy milk at Pret a Manger contains sugar… so drinking soy milk instead of whole milk leads to your consumption of sugar without even realizing it.
  • Drink tea
    • When sitting at your desk at work, use a tea steeper to brew loose tea throughout your work day.  Never use sugar, never add milk, just straight water.  I am lucky that my workplace has a Poland Spring water cooler that produces warm water suitable for my tea steeper.
    • I purchased my tea steeper from Teavana.  It fits only one cup of water, which is good because it results in my taking many trips to the pantry for refills.  Here is a link to my specific tea-steeper:
      https://www.republicoftea.com/travel-mugs/c/94/?
    • I like a brand of loose tea called “The Tealogist” (see http://www.thetealogist.com). You can find that at upscale tea shops and health food stores.  You can purchase any loose tea you want, I tend to avoid the naturally caffeinated ones and the non-organic brands.
  • Eat raw, unfiltered honey
    • If you are drinking tea and want to add some “sweetness” to it, or if you are sick, buy raw, organic and unfiltered honey.  I like to get my honey from farmers markets, which means it is hard to find in cold weather.  So in the winter, go to an expensive supermarket and get yourself “raw” organic honey.  Sorry, only expensive supermarkets carry this because the “poor” are not entitled to organic food.  Write your senator and ask them to lower taxes on the poor to allow them to deduct organic food expenses… yeah, not happening, Big Agra won’t let it.
  • No grains
    • I like the paleo diet theory of avoiding any and all grains.  Of course the anti-nutrients in grains are mostly diminished if you properly prepare those grains (and legumes) in the proper method.  However, I have to analyze each grain and legume to make sure that it is properly prepared before adding it back to my diet.  So the paleo diet is for cavemen, but if you eat grains, you are a little bit more modern right?  Maybe this diet should be called the “Bronze-Age” Diet, or how about the “Minoan Diet”?
    • Avoiding grains means no bread, no whole wheat bread, no rye bread no bread of any kind.  The theory goes however, that rye bread and other types of “fermented” breads such as sourdough should be better for your health, because the souring aka fermenting process used to create these breads breaks down enough phytic acid making the effects of these anti-nutrients negligible on your body.  The only problem is that these breads are no longer lovingly made by a housewife, which probably did soak them for the right amount of time to break down the phytic acid, but instead they are made by a factory that is “farmer-owned” which has been optimized to produce as much sourdough bread in as little time as possible and to make sure that the FDA allows them to call it sourdough bread.
    • No corn, no potatoes.  Yes, I too was saddened when I found out that corn is a grain… Especially after I found an organic farm that produces non-GMO corn that tasted so good raw.  Also, you want to avoid corn at all costs because 99% of it is GMO and you don’t want to eat GMO products, especially if you are a female because they have been linked to many cancers and infertility that specifically target females.
  • No sugar
    • This should go without saying, you are not supposed to eat the amounts of sugar that we do in any of the civilized world.  From a creationist standpoint, our bodies weren’t “made that way”, and from an evolutionary standpoint, our bodies have not had enough time to “evolve to handle sugar” ever since we started consuming it 10,000 years ago.  So there you have it, no sugar, no sugar substitutes, no agave, no stevia you name it.  Just avoid it and all of a sudden you will start tasting the actual food you are eating, and not the sugar or sweetener that was added to it.  Ever have an actual carob? Or have you ever chewed on an actual sugar cane stalk?  They taste nothing like the products we derive from them.  And remember, we removed the fiber from your sugar products, they were meant to be eaten along with their fiber.
  • No chicken
    • Free Range, organic, all-natural, cold chilled are all words used by lawyers after successfully lobbying to make the FDA not regulate these words to mean anything that they are supposed to mean.  Free range chickens are as free range as a lady receiving counseling on how to raise children at Planned Parenthood.
    • Believe it, no chicken in this country is clean.  No chicken was raised in the outdoors, roaming free, eating small rocks and pebbles, flowers… etc.  Even chickens that are fed a “vegetarian diet” are fed a diet consisting mostly of grains.  Even if those grains are organic, chickens aren’t supposed to be eating them.  No animal eats grains, not even cows.  So eating that chicken will not only not help you lose weight, it will not taste good, will be dry and you will have to add a lot of sauce or some other kind of condiment to it in order to eat it aka make it palatable.
  • No meat during the week
    • I sometimes cheat and have meat on a friday, but my typical routine is to go to Whole Foods on saturday morning and find some nice cuts of beef or lamb that have been rated with a Whole Foods Animal Welfare Rating of 4 or 5.  Then along with some local and organic garlic, onions and mushrooms  I sautee them and make a nice simple stew.  The goal is to buy so little meat that I eat it all in one sitting without having to save any for a later day. If you do go to Whole Foods, notice that none of the chicken in poultry section has an Animal Welfare Rating that is greater than 2.  A grade of 2 means it is basically veal.  So either stop eating chicken or start eating veal.
  • Eat sashimi, not sushi
    • Sushi contains white rice.  Lots of it.  White rice is empty of nutrients and full of phytic acid and other anti-nutrients.  Sashimi served in a restaurant has to be “sushi” grade, which although I haven’t researched yet, is I am sure much better than your “frozen foods grade fish”, which probably means the fish can be frozen for 6 months and then it can be sold in your local market…etc
    • Sashimi also is typically served as a dinner dish in a Japanese restaurant containing a nice selection of various fishes.  This is good because each fish contains a lot of nutrients that the others do not.  Skip the salad, which has some sweet dressing, and ask for a Japanese Clear Soup instead of the usual Miso Soup.

I once asked someone if they liked how the “free range” turkey they purchased for Thanksgiving tasted and if it was worth the “extra” money they paid for it.  They told me that it cost $20 and that is wasn’t worth the extra money and that the whole “organic” thing is just a fraud.  So I asked for clarification on what exactly they purchased and they told me “the turkey said it was natural and free range”.

I got news for you buddy.  Natural means that they didn’t inject the turkey with any colors to make it look more appealing to you, and free range means that they got rid of the cages and made a hole in the wall so that the turkey can have “access to the outdoors.”  The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), regulates the use of this term “Free Range” for poulty in the United States and defines it as follows:

“Producers must demonstrate to the Agency that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside.”

As for the word “Natural”? Are you expecting anything better? Here is the actual definition “NATURAL”:

“A product containing no artificial ingredient or added color and is only minimally processed. Minimal processing means that the product was processed in a manner that does not fundamentally alter the product. The label must include a statement explaining the meaning of the term natural (such as “no artificial ingredients; minimally processed”).”

So there you have it, if you want something that is really organic, you have to make sure that your food has as many of these organic-oriented phrases as possible.  If you don’t, well, remember, you are what you eat, and if the animal you are eating was raised in filth, the quality of its meat shall be filth, and then you will become sick! So eat right!

Before I forget, I was recently given an article to read from the Wall Street Journal titled “A Reality Check for Organic Food Dreamers”.  I read the article (link below), and noticed that the author argued against the labeling of “genetically modified” foods and said that instead of avoiding such products we should be applauding them.  He brings up many arguments, however, he leaves out a lot of pertinent information… i.e. he says that industrial farming produces more crops per acre than traditional organic farming.  Does he mention what happens to all the extra waste that is created? Normally a plot of land can handle a certain amount of waste naturally, but a “modern” farm cannot, and has to have its waste thrown into places like rivers… creating a problem for someone that is further down the river…  Anyway, check out this article and remember its author John R. Block, used to be the secretary of the Department of Argiculture from 1981 to 1985 and is a senior policy adviser at OFW Law in Washington DC.  OFW Law, has its website here: http://www.ofwlaw.com and appears to be a big law firm that helps large companies pass legislation to have words like “Free Range” mean what they currently mean.

If you really want to know what GMO and other “factory-farming” methods have given us, google the words “North Carolina CAFO”.  Notice that the acronym CAFO stands for “Consolidated Animal Feeding Operation”.  John R. Block, as per his biography (http://www.ofwlaw.com/CM/SPA/JohnBlock.asp) built a large and successful hog operation in his home state of Illinois.  Hmmm… I wonder what that means? Anyway, knowledge is power, so read about Hog Operations and draw your own conclusions as to whether or not GMO deserves applaud or abandonment.

Listen to the first 30 seconds… of this (John R. Block’s weekly radio address of Food Waste):

http://www.ofwlaw.com/CM/Audio/FoodWaste.mp3

Sources:

So, Talitha of Edgwick Farms tells me that they stop milking the goat’s in the end of October to allow them to “dry off” before they start “kidding”, which in farmer-speak means let the goats have children and leave them alone while they nurse them after birth.  I guess this is the exact opposite of what happens on a regular CAFO (Consolidated Animal Feeding Operation) where once a farm animal is born it is immediately separated form its mother, denying it its mothers milk and placed into confinement so that its muscles do not grow and the meat is extra soft, which is sold at a premium price and is known as “veal”.  Of course, veal are raised in horrible situations, but if you think about it, all animals raised in CAFO’s are raised in a horrible environment that is a step away from veal, whereas a veal lives in a 2×2 cell, the rest of the animals live in a 4×4 cell… so if you don’t eat veal because it is “cruel”, well, then you should consider not eating any factory-farmed meat because that is also “cruel”.

So this morning I made my last trip until January 2013 to Edgwick farm with my father, who used to work in area power plants while a Mechanical Engineer for General Electric. It brought back memories for him and I finally got to show him where I get my milk from and what a real farm looks like.  Of course, being born and raised on the Greek Island of Crete, he already knew what a real farm looks like, but I just thought it would be a good refresher for him to see a real american farm.

Now, the question is, what do I do with the 3 gallons of Goat’s milk that I have in my refrigerator knowing that the next time I will get some will be in late January?  Well, I guess that is what makes something special, knowing that you only get it for a limited amount of time, and not to have it available every single day.  I have some rennet which I purchased from the New England Cheese Making Company (www.cheesemaking.com) along with some cultures for creating Chevre.  Now I know that cheese making is an art, and the most important part of that art is using quality ingredients.  So right away I have a huge edge against every single professional cheesemaker out there… and I have non-GMO rennet which is made by the New England Cheese Making Company itself, so that is yet another huge edge against every single professional cheese company out there.  So I guess I will try making some Chevre with a half a gallon, and I might as well try making the Greek cheese called “mizithra” with another half gallon.  Then I can use another half gallon for yogurt and retain the rest for drinking.

Now, for the past couple of days I have had a sour stomach, this sour stomach was brought on from a series of unfortunate meals.  On Tuesday I had some candy bars along with a gin martini and some beer.  On Wednesday they served us factory-farmed cheese burgers and gmo-potato french fries during a “celebratory” lunch at work. On thursday I met a friend for lunch at a diner where I had a bison burger with fries… and finally, on Friday my new manager took my team out for lunch to some Japanese place for some “menchanko”.  So… the balance between good and bad bacteria in my intestines have been disrupted by all of the antibiotics that the meat I ate was laced with, and the result is a bit of pain in my gut and some acid-reflux.  Now, here is the magical part.  I know that acid reflux is caused by an imbalance of good and bad bacteria in your intestines and stomach, and I knew that once I would drink some raw goat’s milk everything would be okay.

On the day that I got my milk I came home really tired and was faced with the option of (a) go directly to sleep, or (b) drink a glass of raw goat’s milk and then go to sleep.  I chose option a, and after about 45 minutes of not being able to sleep, I went for option b and slowly but surely, my acid reflux and any gut pains went away… I hope that one little glass has provided me with enough good bacteria to last until January 2013!

If you are still a skeptic, I will say this, you must try raw milk sometime!  Head over to www.realmilk.com and see if there is any farm near you.

p.s. I hear that they milk cows throughout the winter, so my next stop is the Stap Family Dairy Farm in Pine Bush, New York, which is another farm that has a permit to sell Raw milk in the State of New York.  It will take me an extra 30 minutes to get there and I am sure it will be worth the drive.  Until then you can find Edgwick Farm at the New Amsterdam Green Market in Lower Manhattan.  Might I say, try their Cheddar Cheese!