My Site Has Moved!!!

After much thought, I have moved changed my website name and moved my entire site over to RealFoodRN.com. I will continue to produce the same content and cover  the same topics. I just have a new look. Please stop over and check it out. Leave any feedback about what you think of the new site. Please!

• You can find my new site HERE
• Also, check out my Facebook site HERE

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Thanks for following my blog!

Kate

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Butter in my coffee

So the bio-hacking nerd in me is totally crushing on Dave Asprey’s amazing brain and all the info he puts out. Enter: Bulletproof Coffee. The man’s a genius. I had been hearing about how tasty butter and coconut oil are in your morning cup of Jo but oh wow…..it’s, it’s breathtaking!

To give you a visual, this is how I reacted when I had my first sip…

Video

Ingredients:

• Coffee
• Butter or coconut oil

Directions:

Brew up your coffee and pour into a blender, add as much butter or coconut oil as you like. I put in quite a bit. Blend until smooth, this gives it the great mouth-feel. Yeah, it’s good. To add some sweetness to it, throw in some chocolate flavored Stevia. I would have added it today, but I’m doing the 21 Day Sugar Detox (see sidebar). Next week, Stevia it is! Take that Starbucks!

Nourished Nuggets

We are having an Easter egg decorating extravaganza in our house lately. We have blown out eggs and drawn on them, hardboiled eggs and dyed them, and now we are trying out a method that takes a bit more time but is well worth the effort. Using onion skins creates the most beautiful patterns on the eggs. I have dyed hard-boiled eggs with onion skins before and absolutely hated cracking them and destroying the beautiful marbelized eggshell. So this year I blew out the contents of the eggs and dyed the shells. This way I can enjoy my eggs for years to come. Yes, I am an Easter nerd! Here is how to make them:

Materials:

• white eggs (you can either blow out the eggs out or boil them as is and get hard-boiled eggs out of the process)
• red onion skins (try to keep them as big as…

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For all of you Paleo people who eat as many eggs as we do….get this handy little tool so you can save the egg shells to decorate for Easter!

Nourished Nuggets

So, I picked up this handy little tool at a Ukrainian Egg decorating store about 5 years ago and we use it every year to blow out the eggs we decorate and hang on our egg-tree. This year our egg-tree is so full that we had to make egg holders for the leftover eggs. For anyone who has drilled holes in eggs and tried to blow out the contents with your mouth…and then experienced TMJ and ear pain (ouch!), this is the tool you have to pick up!

Here’s how it works…

• Use the “drilling” tool to drill a hole in the egg (I didn’t take a picture of that part but its on the package photo). Only drill one hole
• Use the “pumping” tool to pierce and blow out the egg contents through that hole. It basically creates a high pressure inside of the egg that forces the contents out…

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Nourished Nuggets

I am not a fan of fluoride and even the dentist doesn’t recommend brushing baby’s teeth with fluoridated toothpaste when they are very little. We don’t use fluoride at all in our house and we even make our own toothpaste. My 18 month old swallows everything so we decided that he needs his own toothpaste that is completely safe if swallowed, and yet effective against bacteria in his mouth. Coconut oilprevents tooth decay and is totally safe for baby. Tada, Andrew’s new “toothpaste” was born. We upcycled an old gum container to store his toothpaste in so it would fit nicely in our medicine cabinet. HERE is the brush we use.

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Make your own baby shampoo

My kids love to make messes and this leads to lots of baths! The challenge is getting them clean, while not letting them soak in a chemical soup. We have used every “natural baby shampoo” on the market, and most of them work great. Unfortunately, I’m not such a huge fan of their prices! I decided to make my own because it saves some cash and I know exactly what my kids are bathing in. Plus, it makes their baby skin even softer! Need I say more?!

Now when you read the ingredient list below you might think “Dr. Bronners? That stuff is like $18 a bottle!”  Have no fear, you only use 1 cup for each batch of shampoo…that means you can make 4 bottles of shampoo from one bottle of Dr. Bronners. These are big bottles of shampoo, and they last a long time. Coconut oil is cheap and the lavender oil is optional (and also cheap). Seriously healthy savings!

All of these items can be found at your local Co-op or Whole Foods. If you don’t live near one, you can find them online in the links I have provided below…

You will need:

• 1 cup Dr. Bronner’s soap (baby-mild)
• 1 cup coconut oil
• 1 cup water
• Lavender essential oil

Directions:
Mix everything together and put into a plastic container (no glass in the tub!). Shake it up. Done. We re-used an old Burt’s Bee’s baby shampoo container.
Note: Make sure to lather and rinse very well. I just lather, scrub and rinse right away. If not rinsed well enough, your kiddo will look like a greasy little monkey! But after soaking in that tub with the shampoo in the water, their skin is so soft!

Running in the snow! The health benefits of outdoor exercise

Minnesota is getting nailed with snow right now and I could not be happier for two reasons:

1) I don’t have to commute to work today

2) I absolutely love running in extreme weather conditions!

So with our current snowfall averaging 1″ per hour I hit the trails. Exercise in the outdoors is superior to hitting the old treadmill (aka cortisol inducer) for a number of reasons. Mark Sisson writes extensively about moving often and lifting heavy things and he is known for beach running while toting large objects (snow running feels very similar to sand running). Well, out there bounding through the snow banks, I felt a bit like Grok! I made sure to do a few sprints as well (like any good Paleo person would do!). Sprints are something that I have incorporated into my running and have seen great benefits. I have also minimized my long runs in an attempt to decrease my adrenal stress. But on a day like today I had to put in a longer run because the benefits outweighed the negative cortisol effect.

Here are some of the benefits of exercising outdoors:

• Natural terrain means more variability in the workout and muscles worked. For example, hills and uneven trails strengthen your ankles and work different muscle groups than just running on a flat treadmill would do.
• Increased Vitamin D production. Ten to 15 minutes of sunshine three times weekly is enough to produce the body’s requirement of vitamin D.
• Improved oxygenation. Running through the woods is like running in a giant oxygen tank. Breathe deeply and let your body soak it up!
• Some studies have found that people who exercise outdoors (as compared to indoor) have lower blood levels of cortisol.
• Exercising in nature improves mood and connects you to the earth. I know I get a huge mood lift after a run outside. The treadmill tends to depress me.

Check out how deep the snow was on the trails in my photo below. It’s still coming down….I might just have to go out for round 2 later on!

The Beginning

Hello and welcome to my blog. A little bit of background on me: I am a Registered Nurse who is struggling with what I do in my day-to-day of pushing pills and “fixing” people surgically who continue to dietarily re-offend their bodies. I love helping people, but I am conflicted as to how much help I am actually giving this grossly misinformed population we see in our hospital. Very little to no information is given on diet and preventative care. This has frustrated me for years and led me to develop a very strong passion for nutrition and all of the healing that stems from properly nourishing our bodies.

I went back to school for Holistic Nutrition, where I learned to counsel people on how to live a better life through good nutrition. This is what I truly love to do! Unfortunately right now my busy life cannot fit both jobs, and my nursing job pays the bills. I have two young children and my nursing job allows me to work two very long shifts per week and be home with my babies the remaining five days.

With every free moment I get I am in a book, on a blog, or listening to a podcast on nutrition. In the past year I have adopted the Paleo lifestyle and I am not looking back. Through my years of reading and schooling on nutrition, this diet really speaks the most to me and how we live our lives as a family. It just makes sense! So, here I sit, at my computer, starting my blog in the hopes of conjuring up some interest in Paleo for people with similar situations to myself…hoping to infiltrate “Modern Medicine” with the Paleo mindset. I’m launching out into the Paleosphere!