Get answers to your questions about marriage, parenting and family life from experts and parents of 7 children!

Rachel Denning (00:10.83)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Extraordinary Family Life podcast. We are your host, Greg and Rachel Denning. And today, actually coming to you from Turkey. That's Turkey. We are in Turkey, the country Turkey. Which it's not really Turkey actually, because it is Turkey. It's not Turkey. And it's a beautiful, beautiful day after some very st -

stormy days. So we're just sitting here looking out over the balcony, blue skies and mountains and coastline. That's beautiful. Anyways, after the episode we did on health and wellness, we got lots, lots of questions, lots of follow -up. So thanks guys for the follow -up questions. Thanks for listening. Thanks for caring. And man, we got all kinds of stuff to hit today from.

from what about milk and dairy, lactose stuff. What if you're lactose intolerant? What kind of snacks do you eat? What do you buy specifically? What recipes do you use? Actually, I want to share... What about lactose intolerance? What about eating meat sparingly? What about food storage and storing grains? And what to store. And even I want to throw in a little bit of a like a little medical kit that everyone should have with medicines and supplements and vitamins. You can have and should...

I think every family should have with them all the time and it's been super helpful for us. So I'll share that too. What are some of the things that can go in there? But let's dive in. Let's just hit. Great. Where would you like to start? Lactose intolerance? Sure. Okay. So one of the first questions we got was like, cause we obviously talked a lot about milk, grass -fed milk and dairy products in the last episode that we did on this. And someone said, well, what if you're lactose intolerant? And first of all, of course we need to say, we're not lactose intolerant.

We are not doctors. We are not prescribing your health plan. We don't know you. We don't know about your health. We are not experts in your body. You are the expert of your body. So we're just simply sharing our experience and what has worked for us. We don't personally have lactose intolerance. We may have a child or two that has some lactose intolerance. And we have one daughter who's adopted who doesn't like milk at all. She just can't stand drinking milk.

Rachel Denning (02:29.775)
So as far as that goes, with the one son that we have who did have an issue with drinking milk,

We noticed over time, in fact, it was over a period of years, that he only had the problem when he drank, well, first we thought it was when he drank pasteurized milk, because we noticed the problem went away when we started buying raw milk while living in Europe. So we started getting raw milk from a dairy, and lo and behold, when he used to drink milk, he would get a runny nose all the time. Now he had no problem, that went away. So he was able to drink all the milk he wanted. And still does.

still does drink a lot of milk. But later we found out that it wasn't just the raw milk. The raw milk definitely helps and raw milk is great. But as long as he drinks whole milk, then he's fine. So it was actually the percentages of milk that was causing the problem. So as far as this goes, this question - And even the grass fed element too makes a big difference. Well, it does, absolutely. But I'm just trying to break this out in as many layers as possible. So as far as the lactose intolerance, I don't know about your specific lactose intolerance, but it is worth considering all these different -

layers of it. One of them could be maybe the problem is with drinking a percentage of milk instead of drinking whole milk because milk is meant to be drink drinking drunken drunk drink holy right the whole thing together because it has all of those things together that are supposed to be together and when you separate them out that can start to cause some problems. So that's one idea and then the other is like you were saying maybe you would be fine

with grass -fed milk, the toll, as opposed to drinking something that's pasteurized, homogenized, has RBST in it, all of those things. Maybe that's where part of the problem lies. So it's worth experimenting with some of those aspects. And then finally... This entire approach, everything that we've done and do and our whole health approach, it has to be holistic. It is the whole person...

Rachel Denning (04:37.935)
whole life. And you know in this philosophy that everything affects everything, really you start you start actually compounding problems against yourself when something's off in your body. So let's say for example you are drinking soda. That's just stuff is just like liquid poison.

and the soda is going to have a negative effect on your overall body. And so then the body is not functioning as it could and should. And so then maybe the body reacts negatively to something that otherwise it would have - Some other toxin. Yeah, some other, like otherwise it would have been fine, but it's not functioning in a whole healthy way because it's being slowly poisoned by something else. And so then it's responding to the milk in a way that it might not otherwise because of that - Exactly.

or some other thing. It's just like, well, it's this happens and this happens. So it has to be, I just can't emphasize this enough. It has to be a holistic approach. And I'm going to be like, when I say holistic, I mean holistic, all of it, including your emotions, because the studies are finding that if you get angry, it suppresses your immune system.

for anywhere between 40 minutes to two hours after being angry. So your emotions are affecting your health. And your digestion, of course. If you're upset all the, yes, and digestion. So if you're upset, really upset, and maybe chronically upset, you're upset a lot. And you might be like, eating well and trying to do all the health things, but you're emotionally just, you know, in...

I see this. A dumpster fire? You're a dumpster fire and you're all upset all the time. That's literally affecting digestion and your immune system and all stuff. Your ability to absorb nutrients. Right. All of that's being affected. And so it's a big deal. And the other side is like, maybe you don't sleep well.

Rachel Denning (06:47.085)
you're staying up late, you're sleeping in, you're tossing and turning, whatever, you don't have good evening habits or morning habits, that for sure is going to affect your overall health. And so things that you might say, well, it's just been like this, or it's been like this, or it's this way, it is like, well, maybe, maybe there's an element there of something else in your holistic approach to you and your wellbeing is,

is just having this little ripple effect or this cascade effect showing up in random ways. That's just one example. Yeah. So that's a good point because if you detoxify and you get clean, then you could start from scratch and say, oh.

Maybe I'm not lactose intolerant. It was something else that was causing that problem. So yeah, that's another way to look at it. Like corn products are just a waste and they're toxic. So then people react to them in crazy ways. So like you remove something like any kind of corn product from your life and then a lot of people found it like, wow, geez. Right. Everything. I feel better emotionally, physically, all this stuff just because I eliminated junk. Right.

So there was one other thing I wanted to mention about the lactose intolerance and that's some research we did many years ago, so again I'm not sure how updated this was, but our oldest daughter who was adopted, she was not breastfed.

and we did not want to give her formula, but we had read that giving babies milk when they were like cows milk when they were young could produce lactose intolerance. And we had read something about giving them goats milk instead because it had a different protein in there that didn't have the same reaction or cause. I don't know all the details, but I'm just saying I want to throw that out there. That's another thing. Like you could look into goats milk or other types in Mongolia. They drink mare's milk or there's camel's milk. That's a little.

Rachel Denning (08:44.175)
extreme but you know look at other types of milk as well because they were asking well what about a Substitute and honestly like I can't recommend anything else besides real milk I'm not gonna recommend almond milk or soy milk or Oat milk all of those things because they're just not the same now maybe coconut milk coconut milk might be a good option. That's fantastic. You know it's good and it's whole But if you are truly lactose intolerant if you do all those things in your experiment and you're still truly lactose intolerant

Well, I guess you just don't drink milk. You cut that out. Man, I feel very strongly about the whole soy milk, almond milk, oat milk.

It's just junk. It's not it is not good for you. In fact, I think I would even say it's toxic for you It's actually damaging for you as opposed to provide like any health benefits It might provide any nutrition. It might provide at all is so negligible that the toxic effects It's having it don't don't make it worth it. So just get rid of that Now the same person did say they can handle eating cheeses and yogurts and so they want to know specifically Where do we find them? Where do you get them? And and what I want to say?

I say here applies to everything, I think, because ultimately, we talked about it before, like there's levels here. And you have to try to aim for the highest level possible, but if it's not available, you have to then...

go for the next option. So it's not one or the other. It's not grass fed or nothing, right? It's levels. Like what's the next best option? So obviously if we're looking for milk or not, if we're looking for cheeses or yogurts, well yeah, we want to try and find grass fed cheeses and yogurts, but that's hard to find. Sometimes we do randomly find them. Those are especially hard to find. Yeah, they're especially hard to find. Especially if, you know, I've looked for grass fed sour cream and grass fed cream cheese.

Rachel Denning (10:39.055)
cheese. Like it's hard to find that. So then the next best option of course is to just get organic. Go for that. Or sometimes to make your own. You know there has been time periods when we've made our own. We made our own yogurt. We made our own mozzarella. We've made our own whatever fill in the blank. So that's another option too which is obviously more time consuming. But we look for the best and if you can't find it then we go for the next level below that. But then even if the organics

that's not available, like me, my opinion, my point of view at this point in my life, I will still buy cheese, milk, meat that's not organic as opposed to eating a salad or buying kale, right? For me, there's still more nutritional value that's there.

you know, as far as density of nutrition as opposed to eating a salad with a seed oil salad dressing on top of it. Like that doesn't even compare anymore. And I used to be the complete opposite. I'd be like, oh, you know, meat's not available. Great. I'll get a salad with a salad dressing. Now I know that that's one not, it's not giving me much nutrition because lettuce and salad and spinach and kale just don't have that much nutrition per bite. And if you were going to eat it, I've said this before, you should cook it and put a bunch of

of butter on it and then two if you're putting the salad dressing on it the salad dressing is basically sugar and seed oil which is toxic so it's just a toxic mess that's what a salad is it's a toxic mess so if I don't have like right here we're in Turkey we went shopping I'm pretty sure nothing we bought at the store was organic

But we bought it anyways because we'd rather eat the meat and milk and cheese than not. And what's interesting, again, this would take massive amounts of research and as often as we move from country to country to country, this is so challenging. But we do know that the practices in different countries vary drastically. And some of just a regular old cow,

Rachel Denning (12:55.855)
in some other country is going to be far, far more healthier than some cow on a feedlot that's just being stacked with drugs and steroids and grains and all kinds of garbage. Which, you know, we know for sure in Europe that's generally the case because there's a lot of the stuff they give to cows and everything else in our food is not even allowed. It's FDA approved in the United States, but it's considered cancer causing in Europe and it's not even allowed.

that's

That's one consolation we have while traveling is assuming that the standards are very different. This blows my mind. It blows my mind. The whole European Union says, no, these chemicals are super toxic. We know they're dangerous for health. They are forbidden on our continent. Yes. And yet that's normal. FDA approved in the United States. Not only is it okay, it's like the majority of practices, it's being used.

used like in a massive massive amount. It's insane to me. This is crazy. That's a whole other topic though. Okay, next question is asking about specifically, okay.

How do you find the stuff, which we kind of talked about, and then specifically what kind of snacks and what kind of recipes? But let's lean into finding stuff a little bit more. So obviously there's tons of resources online now, way, way, way more resources than ever before. Yes, if you're in the United States especially, I mean this is a plus. In the United States people are starting to become aware of this, they're realizing what we just mentioned about FDA and all this. And so there are farmers and there's organizations

Rachel Denning (14:45.664)
they're trying to change this. So when we lived in the United States, I would order a lot of meat online. There's Butcher Box is one of them. Of course, I can't think of the others at the moment. But there's going to be a bunch. Things like that. And you're going to be able to find like whatever you can organic fruits or bars even like.

Jerky, I mean you can you What we're saying is you could you have a resource now where they can ship and shipping is getting really affordable and really common and and you're gonna be able to find So many things even if you don't live in a place where it's not really available You're gonna be able to find so much online. Well, yeah, even on Amazon I would and you have to do your research you have to look But you know, I would find a lot of things on Amazon that would get like you'd mentioned specific grass -fed Jerky or grass -fed the meat sticks we would get I would

Yeah, we would buy grass -fed jerky at Costco. They would have it there.

and we would get grass -fed meat sticks. Oh, so this is a good, just because I thought of it, because I had a cousin once and she's like, why don't buy that grass -fed jerky at Costco because it has some sugar in it? And I remember thinking that at one point. But then I realized that the nutritional value I'm getting from eating jerky as a snack instead of eating, say, like goldfish, right? I don't want the sugar, so I'm gonna eat something else.

It's worth it in the end. Or, I'm going to be vegan, so I'm going to do spoonfuls of Nutella instead as a snack. Okay, but like if you're trying to cut out the sugar, I get that. But you're always going to have to be making compromises. And so in my mind, I've learned to weigh that a little. So if I'm getting some grass -fed jerky, especially if it's going to be a snack for my family, to me it's worth a little bit of sugar they put in it so that my kids are eating jerky that's nutritious and filling and

Rachel Denning (16:41.647)
nourishing their bodies as opposed to whatever, fill in the blank with some other snack, kale chips. There's no sugar but... What you're trying to lean into there is like it's not realistic or sustainable to seek perfection. We just got to seek high percentages. If we can get 80%, 90 % of the time eating quality food that's 80 to 90 % quality, that's sustainable.

You don't feel like you're going crazy and you only eat three things that you can only find in three places. And you don't happen to live near them. Exactly. You have to make these compromises, but you have to learn how to make the compromises that are working in your favor as opposed to working against you. And to not, and this is the problem that we see a lot of people make, to not use that way of thinking as an excuse. I was just going to go there. Cause some of you will hear that and be like, sweet! I'm getting the Oreos! Oreos! Yes! Right?

It's about making wise compromises. Because, you know, I'm doing 80 or 90 percent, I'm going to sit down and binge on this whole package of garbage. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We would never do that. We haven't done that in over two decades of being married, and we won't do it. We're just not going there. So don't use it as an excuse of like, well, most of the time we're good, so you just slam some kind of junk.

Now, that being said, I'm going to expand on this a little more because they said, you know, what's it like when you're eating when you're traveling versus when you're at home? And...

to be honest, when we're traveling, obviously our diet is less ideal than when we're at home because we have more control of it. I find the sources, they get delivered to my house, you know, all of these things. Like I know exactly where to find everything I want and need. Where when we're out traveling, very often, if the only thing, like the other day we were at the airport, we had, the breakfast at the hotel was...

Rachel Denning (18:44.333)
pitiful. How shall we say? Less than edible. Less than desirable. And so we hadn't eaten anything. We got to the airport. All of these things had gone wrong, including a passport being left at the hotel that had to be brought over. And then we got the baggage didn't get dropped off in time. And then we got in the wrong security line and all these things. And so we kept saying, we'll get something to eat when we get in through security. Well, when we got through security at this airport in Istanbul, there was nothing to eat. There was no food.

restaurants or anything like we thought and so the only option was some let's call them gas station sandwiches and that's what we ate that's not something we would ever choose any other time but because it was the only option we ate that.

along those lines back to making exceptions because we also believe in embracing the culture. Because one of the things we do like to do is despite our high standards for our own personal diet, we also don't do it in a way that becomes rude to other people or cultures. Right? So if we're at someone's house and they offer us something, we're not going to be like, no, we don't eat that. I'm sorry. Within limitations. We still have limitations where there's just certain things I will never put in my body and then I'll just...

I'll very tactfully get out of it. Right, but I'm saying - I don't want that to be like, well, if they offer it, I got to accept it. And you're like, nah, that violates your principles. But let me explain. I'm saying we would never be like, is that grass -fed beef? Yeah. Because I'm not eating it unless it is. That's the type of thing I'm talking about. It's not like we're going to be like, oh yeah, we'll have your Oreos. Right. Because, you know, and then what I guess I'm getting at is -

We also allowed our children to have some Turkish delight, right? We're in Turkey, we've got Turkish delight. But I also told them after we had it, because they're like, oh, can we get some more? I'm like, this was a couple of days later. I'm like, no, we're not going to be buying Turkish delight every single day just because we're in Turkey. We let you try it. It's not healthy, right? It's basically sugar. So we tried it. The cultural experience, it's over, it's done. We're not going to buy it every time we go to the store now.

Rachel Denning (20:59.119)
because we allowed that one exception. That's what I'm talking about. So you have to... And they ask for it every time we go to the store here. Yeah, they do. And we say no, because I explained, we let you try it, but we're not going to get Turgish Delight every time because it's not good for us. So we have to understand this about ourselves and not feel like we're stuck in one thing or the other. It's yes or no, it's this or this. It's no sugar or this. Like we have to learn to make these compromises, but in a wise way that's...

flexible and also in the long run sustainable and supporting our long -term health. Right. So if you're shooting for 90%, which is really great, that doesn't mean the 10 % is just anything. It's, it's still, I don't even know how to articulate this.

that 10 % of wiggle room is still has 90 % better than all the rest of the crap. So you have a wiggle room, but it's not anything goes 10%. It's still on that scale we talked about last time where you're still trying to be really healthy. Okay.

So then back to sourcing. We were just getting into like sourcing. But you're going to find stores all over the place. Definitely. Look around, pay attention. I would say definitely because one of the concerns is obviously cost. It's going to cost more and then things like going to a local farmer.

I suggest getting into that. If you have a local farmer that grows or raises all day long, good food, go there, get it. And yes, it can cost more, but I think it's worth it. Or it might cost less. I mean, if you got to take an hour drive out of town and buy half a beef and you have to go buy it in bulk, yeah. You have to go buy a deep freeze and go out, find some, just drive an hour in any direction and find a farmer and be like, hey, is this...

Rachel Denning (22:58.509)
Can I just get one of these right off the pasture here? It's supporting local community. It's supporting...

real food, food the way we want it done. So every, you know, we're voting with our dollars saying this is what we want. We want healthier food in the world. And there's a lot of, I've seen farms nowadays that will, you know, they have some sort of program where they can deliver it to your house even. They, you know, you buy half a cow, you own part of a cow so you can get raw milk. There's a lot of different options. So it does require you doing some research, but it is possible. It is a reality. And it is going to be more,

expensive. You guys have noticed that. So if you're trying to do anything grass -fed, it's more expensive. And Rachel and I were talking about this other day like, yeah, if you think it's expensive to eat healthy, you should try being sick. Right. That's expensive. Well, this is a very good point that a lot of people don't recognize because this is a whole other podcast we might do. We...

don't have any health insurance. We have not had any health insurance for 15 years or more. But where we spend our money instead is in our food. So we literally pay more for food, but in the end, I think we pay a lot less than we otherwise would in healthcare because we rarely go to the doctor.

We rarely have any health problems or issues. I mean, sometimes it's a cold or something like that. But overall, we're extremely healthy and I definitely attribute that to our diet. So we're investing. And the holistic thing I was talking about before. Exactly. Our entire lives are healthy. Right. And so that's where we're spending our money instead of I've heard of people spending thousand, three thousand dollars a month just on health insurance. And that's insane. We spend.

Rachel Denning (24:52.303)
and maybe $3 ,000 a month on our food. I'm trying to think now. On a cheap month. All right, so maybe we spend about $3 ,000 a month on our food or a little more. But to me, it's totally worth it because we're getting the nutritional and health value.

and we're not having to spend it in healthcare. Because we definitely don't spend anywhere close to that on healthcare. No, not at all. And I think we, did we mention this in another podcast? Like when we're traveling out and abroad, because people ask a lot and it's going to come up. So a little tangent here on healthcare. Like there's great hospitals, there's great public and private hospitals all over the world. Rachel had to have two minor surgeries while we're in Europe. While traveling. And we assumed it was going to be like steep. We're like, oh, this is going to break the bank. Well, we knew it would be cheaper than the states.

Which they had quoted me would be respectively one surgery was 2300 and the other was 2100 and we figured it's gonna be less than that but we didn't know how it went. So the one surgery I had was less than $400 and the other one was a hundred. It was a hundred bucks. And these are highly educated, highly skilled, like we were in nice towns or cities.

went to these doctors. The high end doctors. And it was like, wow, okay, this is amazing. So that's one reason we save a lot of health care is because it's a lot cheaper outside of the US. It's incredible. Okay, so. So you could literally take a trip to Poland, for example.

or Austria, we had one in Poland, one in Austria, and they were both so much cheaper. You could include a trip and get some work done. That's true. Dental or medical, it was incredible. Okay, let's keep going. But the point being, if you are concerned about the cost of eating better, you honestly need to weigh it against the current cost you're spending on healthcare.

Rachel Denning (26:49.197)
on all of the sicknesses and illnesses and diseases your family is dealing with because I'm telling you and this is research not just our own personal experience. This is backed up. If you get clean and you eat healthy you're reducing your...

sickness, health, illnesses, diseases by drastically, you're drastically reducing the likelihood of dealing with those things. Again though, we're not making this recommendation for you or your family. This is just how we do things. We're not doctors. Nor are we insurance, whatever. You got to do your thing. We're not anything legal, right? We're just sharing our experience and our research. We're just talking. Okay, so.

But, you know, I've been able to find grass -fed meat at most major grocery stores, including Walmart, and ironically Costco doesn't have it. How awesome is that? You can get massive amounts of grass -fed meat at Walmart. Right, but I've got tons of my grass -fed roasts and steaks from Walmart. And ground beef. Right. So I would get all of that.

But the other smaller grocery stores and stuff, you know where we were living in Georgia, it was Kroger and it was You know Publix things like that. They definitely have that in their sections. You know, they're they're trying to Meet the demands of the current consumer and this is a thing so you just kind of have to look for and we'll just throw this out there because you're people are asking there there's a lot of deception and They're gonna throw

all kinds of labels on there that aren't accurate. So look at the ingredients, look at the things, try to get as accurate as possible. It's sad to me that people will deceive, they'll throw at Costco, like there's all these keto, everything says keto on it, and you look at it and it's like sugar's the first ingredient. You know, like that's - Well, not exactly, because keto is not sure, but they'll put things in there that are more toxic than sugar. No, that's what I'm saying. So like - Oh, you've seen that? Yes.

Rachel Denning (28:50.831)
Yeah, so keto the whole idea of keto is no sugar So they're putting like it's supposed to be urethra tall or monk fruit or something doesn't spike it and I'm like Oh keto whatever and I look at it. I'm like, it's sugar like straight sugar I'm like that is just outright lie. They put keto on it counting that people go Oh, I want keto and they'll grab it without looking at the ingredients. Well, so yeah, because the question is how are you?

How do you know you're not just being fed lies on the packaging? Well, yeah, sometimes you are. And so this comes back to the approach we've taken for almost two decades, and that's reading the ingredients. So it takes a little more time. You do have to look at it and say, oh, it says keto, but what does it actually have in the ingredients? And you need to know what you're looking at and what you're reading. We're actually getting good now. At least I can decipher. Sugar in many, many languages. Yes, exactly. I know how it looks.

It looks like in Turkish now. Exactly. We've done so many languages in the last few weeks of looking at ingredients and you just start to decipher. Exactly. It's pretty awesome. So, and then the question is, well, what about when you're traveling? When we're traveling, I think when we're traveling it's basically that approach. We're not going to find perfection. We are reading the ingredients for sure. And then we're getting the stuff that has more of what we want, less of what we don't want.

But then it still comes down to the basics for us. We're still buying meat, mostly beef.

and then we're also buying eggs. We buy eggs, we eat so many eggs it's crazy. We eat a lot of eggs. And they're organic or free range. Yeah. And then we'll even test them. Like this time in Turkey there was four different brands of organic and we're like, okay, I want to see what these look like. So we bought one of each and then we brought them home and we cracked them all into a pan and the way you can tell if it's a really good healthy egg is that the yolk is very dark, almost orange. If it's light or like yellow, no good. So we looked at them all, looked at the

Rachel Denning (30:48.943)
all in the pan and we're like okay that one right there that's the best one so now that's the brand we're gonna buy while we're here in Turkey because it's got the darker yolks. Winner winner chicken dinner right there. We buy cheeses of course, milk, butter, yogurt.

Again, like big one with yogurt that I see all the time is most yogurts have stupid amounts of sugar. So we always buy sweet. Well, and then you even get a natural one. So this is where it's also deceptive. You'll have a whole row of natural yogurts, but it's natural with sugar. Yeah, exactly. So it's it's rare. I think there'll be one or two in the whole yogurt section that actually doesn't have sugar in it. So we always buy the one without the sugar and then we sweeten ourselves with real honey. Yep. Raw honey.

Honey we've been able to find all over the world, that's a good one. That's true. Honey is everywhere. So we, that's another thing, we eat a lot of honey. Should I go over a list of more of the things we eat right now? Sure. Maple syrup.

which we don't always find. Pure maple syrup. Pure maple syrup. And that's expensive. And it does not exist in Turkey. Right. We could not find it here in Turkey. They had something that was maple flavor, but that's confusing. Maple flavor is not the same as pure maple syrup. And we'll even say that. It'll say maple syrup or whatever. It's like only get the pure, pure stuff. Right. Whipped cream. We eat a lot of whipped cream. We love to put whipped cream in. You say a lot. It's here and there with certain things. I eat whipped cream every time I can.

because I love whipped cream. I put cream in my tea. And okay, let's clarify, because some of you will go and be like, oh, Rachel eats whipped cream, and so you'll both buy the canister with the spray, and you're like, pssh, yeah, and you're like, open up your mouth, and fill your mouth with whipped cream. That stuff is predominantly sugar. We buy whipping cream, cream for whipping, and then we make our own whipped cream that's usually unsweetened. Yep.

Rachel Denning (32:48.621)
in a blender. And then we'll put that on German pancakes. We make German pancakes. That's primarily eggs. It does have flour in it and milk, but it's milk. Again, percentages. It's mostly eggs, milk with flour. That's fine in our book. And we keep the flour to a minimum and we add way more eggs and milk. And then we do a lot of eggs in it and then we do whipped cream on it. We also do crepes with whipped cream. I put...

I guess not the whipped cream, I just put the cream into my honey. So every morning one of the very first things I do is I make myself a cup of tea. It's generally mint tea or a decaffeinated chai tea or...

Sometimes it doesn't even have a tea bag. It would be just honey, butter, and milk with hot water. And that's what I drink every morning. So I don't even usually eat breakfast until 10 or 11 because I have tea in the morning and that sustains me until later. But I'll put in say a tablespoon of butter. I fill it half full with hot water. I put my tea bag in. I let it steep. I add a small spoonful of honey and then I

fill the rest up with milk and that's I'm good to go.

That's something I drink every day. One of Greg's favorite snacks is frozen blueberries with milk. Now when we lived in Georgia, in the United States at Walmart, they had wild blueberries at Walmart that were naturally sweet. And so we didn't add any sweetener to that. And he would just put milk or half and half on them. But we have had some that are bitter, so you could mix in some honey to your... That's every once in a while. We were in some country, I'm like, yes, blueberries again.

Rachel Denning (34:31.311)
and man they were bad. It was so bitter. I was like, okay this one needs some honey. We also eat a lot of dark chocolate but of course we're getting generally around 70 to 80 percent. You'll sometimes go 90 percent and we're looking for sugar is at least the second or third ingredient and if it's organic better if it's another you know.

cane sugar or even better. We'll do dried fruit, although I like to be really careful with this because dried fruit can be like candy in that it can cause the same damage to your teeth. So I don't let my kids just have unlimited access to dry fruit because they'll eat it on stop and then get cavities. Well, and it really gets stuck in their teeth. And so you have those sugars and the food in there stuck in. Dried fruit is literally like a treat or a snack or candy for us. Just keep it to a minimum. But one thing we like we love to do is we put

butter inside of our dates so we eat dates filled with butter and that's really good because it's the sugar and the fats. And in Turkey we just found the

like organic dark apricots, dried apricots. The unsulfured apricots. Yeah, so if you are getting dried fruit. The orange ones are chemicalized. Right, if you're getting dried fruit, you want to try and get things that are unsulfured, which means they're not going to be the bright orange apricots. They're going to look darker and maybe they look more disgusting, but they're actually better because they have less, fewer chemicals. Same with like mango, dried mango and stuff like that. It should look like it's a piece of dried fruit. Dried out fruit.

You want it to look like that. I think one of the biggest problems is like we want our food to look so good, the fruit to look like it didn't grow in nature. And so then they're happy to oblige that and create these false realities of chemicals and food coloring and waxes and whatever else. Another thing I don't do a lot, but I want to do more of because I love the idea of it, is cooking your fruit in butter so you can cook your apples or cook like a compote almost.

Rachel Denning (36:35.119)
Cooked up apples or cooked up pears and you have it with butter or cinnamon. That's a good thing We've also made baked pears. This one our favorite so we make them at home You just cut the pears in half put them face down in the pan cover it with butter and cream and Cinnamon and bake it and bake it. It's amazing Charcuterie boards charcuterie boards are an amazing snack because you can throw it out there and it doesn't have to actually be a board you can just throw it out on the counter and but go ahead and get a board because it's awesome right and you

have all kinds of meats and this is you can get so creative with this because if you start looking there's a lot of different kinds of meats now you don't want the sandwich meat that's not filled with nitrates it's not good the better meats are the traditional meats that are smoked and cured and try to avoid the ones that have nitrate added as it's as an ingredient right but you know you can get

salamis and

prosciutto's and all that and then cheeses there's huge variety of cheeses mozzarella's and Gouda's and Havarti and like all kinds of different types of cheese and berries on there too so and then you put some berries on there and you put some olives on there there's so many different types of olives and lots of different types of pickles and so you just get all these different things and you throw them out there and you just snack from it and if you had that out regularly oh yeah and then you could if you wanted you could add cucumbers on there you know other fruits so there's a lot of grapes there's a lot of

variety that you can do with the Charcuterie board and you know.

Rachel Denning (38:10.573)
that gets really creative and fun. It was so cute the other day as Rachel was reading one of the questions. She's like, oh, they want someone to know what wanted to know what snacks we eat. And our little six year old was there standing by and you never know when the kids are paying attention listening. It was so adorable. She's like, oh, well, we eat mandarins and grapes and bananas and strawberries and blueberries and apples and oranges. And she just did that. That that that that it was so cute. She named all these things. I was like, that was adorable. She's sick.

and she can just pop them off like this the things we snack on. That's what we eat. So yeah, we definitely have a lot of fruit available for snacks and berries. We love berries. Strawberries. We just bought two cases of strawberries here in Turkey. Blueberries, blackberries, all of that. It's just so good and good for you. Then someone, you know, they were asking about recipes. Well, what recipes do you make? And actually on my, I have a different, not YouTube, Instagram.

Channel or feed that's just my name. It's Rachel dot E dot Denning and at some point I'm planning on Doing recipes. I'll hold your breath for this one It's my plan when we go to Portugal, that's what I want to do So if you want to if you want to see that from me go there to Rachel dot E dot Denning and leave a comment on what because I have already made a few I showed making Swedish meatballs I showed a kefir smoothie. That's another

thing we buy unsweetened kefir and then I make smoothies with them with just fruit frozen fruit and bananas for sweetening eggnog is another oh yes that's a great thing I'll talk about the eggnog in a second but so I have a few reels on there that I already I've made a chikuchuri board for the 4th of July that's on that channel so go leave a comment on one of those saying yeah I want to see more reels of recipes to make and that's something I want to start doing because

People are asking you, what do you make? What do you make at home? One of the things, like you said, is eggnog. So in the morning for breakfast, I'll make eggnog or chocolate milk, where it's basically the grass -fed milk. And then I'll actually make both. It's cacao. Because some of my kids like the eggnog. Again, people are going to be like, oh, they have chocolate milk. And you're going to go buy this chocolate syrup and squirt it in there. It's like, it's not that garbage. So the eggnog recipe is basically the...

Rachel Denning (40:39.629)
grass -fed milk and then I put in a lot of eggs, raw eggs because they're good, the pasture raised eggs.

That's what makes it eggnog, right? And I put it into the chocolate milk too. And then I add the cinnamon, vanilla, mix it up, and then I pour that out for, oh, I sweeten it with honey or maple syrup. And I pour that out for the kids that want the eggnog. Then I add the cacao powder, unsweetened cacao powder, to the mix, and then that makes the chocolate milk. And so I can do both. My kids love that. And it's nourishing because it has a lot of eggs in it, a lot of protein, so it's great.

you

Something else one thing you mentioned that you would make a roast almost every day, right? We're not traveling and we have a Insta pot. I love using my insta pot and I would literally make a roast almost every single day. So I would buy The grass -fed roast from Walmart and in the morning I just throw in the roast and then I there's endless options of things you can do with a roast you just eat it plain right, which if We're trying to be quick. That's what we do. We just eat the plain roast. It's so good or

I make enchiladas with it or we make sandwiches with it. Someone's asking, do you eat bread? Well yeah, we will eat bread and we'll eat tortillas but for us... Not very much though. Well, what I want to explain is I try to make it a accompaniment to something. It's not the main thing. It's not like we're just, we're eating the bread or we're eating this. It's meant to go with something else where the main part of the meal is the meat and you've got something, you know, the tortilla with it or something. And again, we have to keep...

Rachel Denning (42:16.591)
I keep reiterating this so that you don't go like, oh, bread's good, and then just go buy whatever bread, because it's not. Not all bread is created equal. So always look at the ingredients. Try to buy fresh, fresh baked bread. I never buy the sliced bread in a package. Like just regular old sandwich bread. I always buy the fresh bakery bread. So I go to the bakery section of the grocery store, and I get bread there. Sourdough is great. You know, sourdough is a great option. In fact, oh, when I was in the States,

I had a company called Wild Grain that would deliver sourdough bread to our house. That was awesome. But I personally eat very little bread. Right. And if I eat bread, it's an excuse for eating something else like butter or mascarpone or cream cheese. Bread's not...

the reason for the bread. Same with rice. If we have rice, it's like for me, it'll be a tiny bit of rice with the roast. Yeah, something like that. Exactly. So I'll do a roast almost every single day. If we don't do a roast, then we generally do a steak. So we're pretty much eating.

Rachel Denning (43:25.357)
red meat, at least one major meal per day. And then in the other meal, like breakfast, it's basically eggs. It's either eggs and eggnog or chocolate milk or it's scrambled eggs or it's a frittata or fill in the blank. So it...

When you're saying, well, what do I eat? The question is simple. Then it just remains the creativity of what to do with it. Because you can have, you can eat eggs. And there's so many examples online now. Yeah. And you can eat eggs every single day, but you just have to get creative in eating them different ways so it doesn't feel boring. You can eat steak or roast every single day. And if you get creative, it doesn't feel boring because it's new. One other thing I actually love is using French recipes and French cookbooks because French food is really,

traditional food. It's just normal food. It's roast, it's eggs, it's fruit. It's really farm food. Yeah, it's farm food but presented in so many varying options. Yeah, so many varying options that are incredible. Right, so get a French cookbook or something and start looking. In fact, we've done that. We have four or five of them. Julia Child's...

part of French cooking and I reference that a lot for coming up with a new recipe to eat the same thing in a different way. Okay, that's a lot. This is like a dump here of information but these are the questions that were being asked so we're trying to respond to them as fully as possible.

Rachel Denning (45:05.677)
There's a comment we get often of like, hey, I want to get my spouse on board or how do I get my kids on board? And there was another comment came through, like, I sure hope I can get my spouse on board. And I get that, it's challenging. Some people will be very stuck in their ways and they may not care. They love their Oreos. Yeah, they just love it the way they stop every day at the gas station and get a huge thing of soda. But just tactfully,

With diplomacy, just keep teaching the effects. We really have to get to a point where we deeply understand what it is and what it does. And for the most part, that will work. If you understand that soda is just liquid poisoning and it's just really, really garbage for your health.

then that starts hell, but then some people will be like, well, yeah, I know it's bad for me and I still consume it anyways. Now, to me, I don't get that. I don't understand that. But that gets to another fundamental level.

of you have to start attaching it to a deeper meaningful why of like, well, do you want to live a long, high quality life? Do you want to be there for your kids and your grandkids and your great grandkids? Do you want to enjoy longevity and an active life? You want to be able to really live? And I know people personally and well who...

life just kind of sucks. So they actually really don't care. They don't want to live long and healthy and well. They just want to put an end to it. And so they'll do that. So again, that's why this whole list again, matters so much. Like when you genuinely love life and you love your body because your body is your vehicle for life, then you want to take better care of it. And it affects.

Rachel Denning (46:54.029)
Everything, everything from the actual capacity of your brain, like how intelligent you can be and how thoughtful and clear decision making to sex and intimacy and libido to emotions. Big time, big time with emotions. Like a lot of what you're feeling emotionally is very food driven to energy and vitality to be.

you know, awake, energizing life for marriage and parenting. I mean, there's so much. So find that the reason, the meaning, your why, and then understand what it does and how it's affecting you, and then it's easier to make these better decisions. Well, and I would say in that holistic approach, in some ways and in some cases, one...

People don't eat healthy, this could be your spouse or children because they don't understand fully what's happening. I know that's where I was, especially when I was a teen, when I was a young adult. I didn't know, never thought about it. So they're ignorant.

Two, once you become cognizant and you still don't, it may just be a lack of knowing how to. Like, I don't know how to choose something different. I don't know how to prepare something different. But once you can overcome those... Or you have an idea that the alternative is like nasty, like, wait, I have to eat tofu? I'm out. Right, exactly. But once you overcome those, then three, the other option might be you just don't care. And for some...

this might be something to look into because if your spouse has heard it before and knows and gets it but still doesn't want to, maybe there's something else going on there. Maybe they don't care because maybe there's some deeper underlying issue that needs to be addressed or resolved that would make them want to care about living a longer and healthier life.

Rachel Denning (48:48.845)
Like you nagging less. Well, the other thing I thought of too is especially if you are, and this isn't always the case, but if you are a primary manager of the family.

Shopping and meal preparation. Well, you have a lot of control there You actually are the one making the buying this it maybe not all of them Maybe they still stop at the store and get their own stuff Okay, but if you're buying most of the groceries start buying better groceries and start preparing better meals and especially if they're delicious. Yes they might complain a little bit at first because they're not they're used to the Cocoa crispies or something right? But as long you know, that's why I do things like the chocolate milk and the eggnogs

because it's something they want but still good for them. And so it makes, and I'm like, you know, eat your frittata, maybe you don't want the frittata, eat it and you get your chocolate milk too, right? So you have more control and power over that than you realize if you put in the effort. I also know that if I'm not willing to put in the effort to shop well and cook well, and that doesn't mean I'm making three meals a day, that's not what that means.

that the whole family eats better. But if I get lazy about that and I'm like, I don't want to do that, well then we all suffer as a result, myself included. And in the long run that produces this fatalism of like, well we don't have any control, it's too much effort, we'll just eat whatever and then we'll get sick and die. Right? So you have to care about it enough that you're willing to put for the effort.

to make the changes. So fill your, and this came up with a client, I may have mentioned this before, where a client was like, he's like, oh, I keep eating candy bars. I'm like, where are you getting candy bars? He's like, from my office desk. I'm like, who put candy bars in your office desk? He's like, well, I get hungry at work and I just, I'm busy, so I just need to grab some. I'm like, why did you put candy bars in there instead of healthy things? And so we cleaned out his whole office desk and filled it. I've done this with multiple clients. Like fill your desk.

Rachel Denning (50:56.045)
with good things. And I have clients that are super, they're out there knocking doors, they're salesmen, whatever, coaching clients. And I'm like, they're like, ah, it's so hard to eat. I'm like, yeah, but with a little bit of preparation planning, it's worth it. Invest in a cooler that plugs into your car and keep healthy meals cooler. Invest in one of these heating lunchboxes that heats up your lunch so when you jump in and you're driving to your next appointment, you actually can eat a steak or.

whatever it is you want to get, right? You can do these things and provide these different snacks. We had one, somebody write in and say, well, you know, my son takes goldfish to basketball practice. Cause he wants calories. A calorie is not a calorie, people. Yeah. And, you know, the response was, well, why not send an orange or an apple? And yeah, the orange or the apple is better than the goldfish, obviously, but it's not nutrient dense. It doesn't have the sustaining power.

That a teenage boy needs when he's exerting. To a teenage boy, they might want an apple, but it's not going to sustain them. So what he's really looking for, I think, is more density and more, I would also say he's probably craving fats and salts, which is why he goes for that. So he needs something to replace that, like some jerky or a steak or, you know, you've got to get creative in different snacks you can have that have more dense nutrition.

you've made different power bars that are made from meat. And trying to think now off the top of my head if I had a son at basketball, but like I guess the jerky is the first one that comes to mind. Like I'd be getting that jerky and giving him those types of options of things to take. Because yeah, if you're like, hey son, you should take an apple instead. He's going to be like, what? What am I going to do with this apple? It's not going to sustain him, yeah. It's not going to be enough. OK.

I think that answered most of the questions. There was another one about grains versus meat and eating meat sparingly. I liked what you said about storing. I'm sure what you said with me before about storing because grains, they do, they last for 20 years. Someone was asking about food storage. Like if you're trying to store food, how do you store meats and milk?

Rachel Denning (53:12.173)
and all of that. And we've thought about that ourselves. So grains, they're certainly something that are valuable to store because if push comes to shove, worst case scenario, like I've told Greg, like if it's between eating, not eating and eating grains, yeah, I'm going to eat grains. Me too. I'm not going to die. Load them up. Right? So if you're in a survival type situation, great. Have some grains for food storage. Have ...

legumes, whatever else. Like, store that stuff. Well, and obviously soak them, like was mentioned. It makes them better, right? Soaking them overnight makes them better. But yeah, that's survival food. Right, so that's another thing, because the question also included...

talking about soaking grains, which makes them more, I think the word they use is bioavailable. So that is true. And in fact, in the nourishing traditions, there's a book called Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, I think, and then also I've read in the Dental Diet, if you're going to eat grains, you should be soaking them or fermenting them because it does, it actually gets rid of the phytic acid. That's why sourdough bread is better than normal bread, sourdough pancakes especially, or also,

It gets rid of the phytic acid and it does make it more absorbable by your body. So soaking is a great idea if you're eating grains. Now, that being said, if you're looking for pure nutritional value, you're gonna get more from a steak than you are from some grains. And then the other part of the question was like, well, grains are more abundant on the earth and cows are less abundant. Well,

That depends. I mean the only reason grains are more abundant on the earth nowadays is because of monoculture and fertilizer, which is extremely damaging to the planet. And to the actual food. And to the food itself. So, you know, human beings used to hunt animals and eat primarily animals. That's what sustained us. Now at some point we started becoming...

Rachel Denning (55:18.093)
farmers, we started growing grains because it became more predictable and sustainable. Instead of chasing animals around and trying to find where the herd moved, you could stay in one place, you could build a house, you could plant your wheat and you would have food to last all year, well, through the winter, you know? So it became a more predictable structure, but that doesn't mean that's how we started out and it doesn't mean that that's naturally more abundant than

the other course. Does that make sense? It just made me realize I want to have a small elk farm. I'm going to raise some beef, obviously. Some bison. And some bison. Yes. Yes. I'm getting the vision right now. Bison. I want a big bowl. I've always wanted a big bowl. I'm going to have some cattle. I'm going to have some bison. I'm going to have some elk. Yep. That's it.

This has been a random thought by Craig. Okay, so you hit the medical stuff at the end here? Yes, you want to hit your medical stuff. I just want to show this real quick. I'll just do it quickly.

I'll just do it really quickly. These are just some things I think everyone should have readily available. Because you never know when some little bug, something comes around that you're gonna need something. It's better to just have it handy and as part of your storage, I would have this. So some acetaminophen, which is basically like Tylenol, ibuprofen. This is over -the -counter stuff. Just have some of these things. Get an over -the -counter allergy, get an over -the -counter anti -diarrhea, get some wheat for our kids.

our little kids, the Children's Chewable Acetaminophen is really great. This is stuff we travel with. Yeah, we travel with this in a kit. We have a small kit, we have it divided into this.

Rachel Denning (57:10.477)
We carry activated charcoal. That stuff is awesome for any gut issues. We love garlic capsules and turmeric capsules. High quality vitamins D, C, and A. And again, make sure quality. They're selling, anything that's chewable is just mostly junk and sugar and garbage. You gotta look at the ingredients and look at the quality stuff. They're selling you all kinds of garbage that supposedly it's masquerading as a vitamin, which it's not.

There's hardly any vitamin in it. We also love grapefruit seed extract, which is really good for upset stomachs. And papaya seeds. And then we load up on vitamins at the first sign of any illness, right? And it really just hit that hard. Plus we do supplements for beef liver and other beef organs. You get again, grass -fed organic and take those supplements. You can get a lot of nutrition. Which we can buy at Walmart or on Amazon. Yep.

Yeah, so back to this idea really quick. So while we're traveling or anytime we're at home too at the first sign of any of us having sniffles, a headache, whatever, upset stomach, anything, any sign of any illness at all, we pound the vitamins. So right away I'm giving them tons of vitamin C, tons of vitamin D, tons of garlic because garlic is antibacterial.

Turmeric's great for anti -inflammatory. So I basically just flood their bodies with all of these vitamins and that either prevents it from happening or if they still get sick, it reduces the time they are sick. So that's an approach we take along with overall healthy eating.

That's our health care approach. Hope this is helpful. You guys remember it's a holistic approach. Just try to get every part of your whole life from being dialed in and you can enjoy a healthy, long life. Love you guys. Thanks for listening. Reach upward.