Raleigh's CCW recommends the American Menu Mailer: Cooking Traditional Foods Made EASY!

The CTF Experience

Menu Mailers are a great idea when it comes to a time pressed lifestyle. They combine menu planning, grocery shopping lists, and preparation schedules all in to one mail based system allowing you to focus on life, eat well, and not stress about it. However, most menu mailers only contain main dish recipes, but no side dishes. They also often incorporate processed foods, refined sugars and grains that aren't neccesarily the best for your health. But there is a better solution...

The CTF menu mailer is based on traditional foods so you know it's healthy. It contains recipes for side dishes for variety and has the option for every meal to be gluten and/or casein free, so those with food allergies or who are new to having to cook for someone with allergies do not have to convert the recipe. In addition it contains suggestions for gluten and casein free brands on each shopping list to assist those new to allergy cooking. The menu author is an experienced cook and baker in both gluten-containing and gluten-free foods.

Grains and meats are rotated on the Menu Mailer on a three or four day schedule. They try to avoid having the same vegetable more than twice a week, and use a wide variety of in-season produce.

Upon subscription, you will gain access via the forum to a complete listing of pantry staples and information on helpful kitchen equipment to assist you in getting started.

The doctors at CCW subscribe to this mailer, and love its convenience, taste, and healthy quality. We recommend that anyone new to the whole foods lifestyle check it out!

What are Traditional Foods?

Traditional Foods are foods consumed in the way our ancestors ate them. The basis of Traditional Foods is that the food you consume be as nutrient dense and nourishing as possible. Traditional Food goes beyond just avoiding packaged and processed foods. It is about choosing the best food options available for your budget & location and consuming it in a way that allows your body to extract the maximum nutrition from that item.

The Traditional Foods Philosophy of "Cooking Traditional Foods" (CTF)

We espouse a particular viewpoint of traditional foods based from the book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Dr. Weston A Price combined with a modern understanding of gut health and physiology... The tenets of traditional foods as viewed by CTF are:

Health:

• Avoid your food allergens if you have them. If you have gut problems that do not improve after going on a TF diet, you likely still have an allergen in your diet standing in the way of healing.
• Dental decay is a symptom of a diet deficient in trace minerals and fat-soluble vitamins.
• Take the steps necessary to heal your gut if you have gut damage from food allergens, antibiotics, vaccination, poor lifestyle, medications and the like.
• Consuming the wrong fats and refined carbs along with too many calories have resulted in many modern diseases that did not plague our ancestors. Returning to their diet can relieve or completely eliminate symptoms of those diseases.
• Remove and replace as many chemicals and contaminants from your environment as possible as your budget allows. Examples would be switching to more natural or homemade cleaners and body care, using organic pest solutions instead of industrial ones in your garden or removing the mercury fillings from your mouth if you are having health symptoms from them.

Foods:

• Food is your best medicine and the biggest tool in your arsenal to heal health problems. However, no one food or combination of foods will solve all of your health problems or un-do all of the damage you’ve done to your health.
• No food is healthy, no matter how nutrient dense it is, if you are allergic to it. The damage from the reaction to the allergy greatly dwarfs any benefit you get from consuming that food.
• There is no one food-stuff that all people must consume and there are no magic bullets to obtain perfect health for everyone. Each person has different body chemistry.
• Consider consuming superfoods like Cod Liver Oil and Butter Oil to help you obtain the needed nutrient levels of fat-soluble Vitamins A (retinol), D3 and K2 since they are deficient in even the best modern diets.
• Wild-caught or grass-fed is superior to feed-lot animals. If they are not in your budget or unavailable, organic is good. If it is not in your budget, consume the best quality you can find and afford.
• You are better off consuming conventional meats and produce in a traditional foods form from the local mega-mart than you are to continue eating a processed diet. Do baby steps and don’t go into debt to change your diet.
• Consume meats with the skin and fat where possible.
• Consume organ meats where possible. ‘Hide’ them in the meals if necessary to help yourself become accustomed to their presence.
• Cook from scratch. As your cooking skills advance, learn to make your own ‘ingredients’ like ketchup and mayonnaise.
• Consume organic and raw dairy products from 100% grass-fed animals if you can locate them and they are within your budget. If not, find the best quality you can afford.
• Consume free-range eggs.
• Use only traditionally available fats such as butter and coconut oil and avoid new vegetable fats like soy and canola oil.
• Consume as wide of a variety of vegetables and fruits in season that you can, and use lacto-fermented vegetables as a condiment to help improve digestion and contribute probiotics to your system. Hide the vegetables in meals if necessary.
• Soak or ferment all grains, nuts and seeds to remove phytic acid and make the minerals in the food more bioavailable.
• Consume the ratio of proteins, fats and carbohydrates that make you feel best. Some people of certain heritages or with certain health conditions feel better on more or less amounts of carbs, fat or protein than others. There is no magic ratio for all people at all stages of health. Flex with it as when your health changes, those ratios might change as well.
• Introduce solids to your children in a way to minimize the potential for food allergens, especially if the child has any gut damage; a family history of gut problems, digestive or skin diseases; has received any antibiotics or vaccinations; or were born by C-section.
• Breastmilk is the ultimate traditional food and children were designed to nurse for at least two to three years. Homemade raw milk cow’s formula is superior to commercially available formula if you must supplement and donor breast milk is not available.
• Sustainability of your lifestyle is important. Consider getting a couple of chickens for your backyard, rabbits in a hutch or a garden going in your yard. Don’t be afraid to grow your own vegetables, fruit, milk, meat or eggs, even if you need to do it in an innovative or unconventional way.

Below are some of the resources that CTF provides to make the menu mailer system even easier to follow and learn

Kitchen basics Many people new to NT are also new to cooking. So in an effort to answer some of the questions she gets often about cooking basics, Kerry Ann decided to add a page of basic cooking directions. She adds more to this page as more people ask basic cooking questions. If there's something you'd like to see written up here, please e-mail her at suggestions@cookingTF.com.

Gluten Free Help

How to Convert your own recipes into traditional food diet guidelines.

Feeding Children with Traditional Foods....snacks and more

This is a summer menu mailer to give you an idea of what the menu mailer is like.
To sign up for the full mailer, go here

Raleigh's CCW recommends the American Menu Mailer: Cooking Traditional Foods Made EASY!