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I truly believe that the entire structure of the way so many of us have come to consume food is quite pathological. On one hand, we eat non-foods with great frequency (anything that comes in a package, essentially), and on the other hand we are obsessive and anxious about health and wellness…ideas that we roll around in, in the abstract, to the detriment, I think, of the time we could be spending living, making art, making something.
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To be honest, I only speak from experience. I have spent so much time, concerned about food and consumption and organic vs. local, terroir, additives, etc.
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Now, I simply don’t buy anything in a package, I shop at the farmer’s market when I can, and I have trained myself out of my OCD, and I have banished food worry.
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Healthy food is important for my children. But what is much more important than the food itself, is for them to see, and to live with, a mother who never fusses about food, who never remarks or comments on her own weight or physical size (or appearance), who never comments on the weight or size of her kids, who never uses food as a reward or a punishment, who never exhorts her kids to finish their plates, or to eat food that doesn’t appeal to them.
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I have made a conscious decision to take myself and my kids out of the food fight.
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I have made a conscious decision to teach them, through my own approach, attitude and actions, that food is fuel, and that we are incredibly lucky to have even a little bit of choice when it comes to the foods that we eat.
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And while baking is not something I am particularly interested in engaging in too often, we do, once in a while, eat cake.
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We had visitors to our home and kiln a week or so ago, as we were preparing for the firing we are in the midst of, right now.
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I really didn’t have much going on in the way of fresh food, as it was near the end of our cooking week, and I have been making a valiant effort to drive into our nearest urban centre only once a week (which is trickier prior to the growing season).
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So I dug around in the freezer and cupboards and found some frozen grated zucchini that we had grown in the garden last year, and some coconut flour.
As I have mentioned before, we follow a mostly traditional paleo-type way of eating, and I have found that Lee’s auto-immune health issues have responded really well to this approach. We have all benefitted actually–but I am not rigid about it, and when we’re visiting other people’s homes, the kids are free to taste and try.
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I love recipe books, but I couldn’t imagine actually following one, and I suppose subconsciously I feel that to adhere to a recipe would be an affront to my private libertarian tendencies. Cooking is so much more fun for me when it’s impromptu, and as far as I’m concerned, cake will always be just fine as long as there is enough butter involved.
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This one ended up being a Zucchini ginger-bread cake, and it went something like this:
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6 cups of frozen shredded zucchini, drained of liquid.
about 1/2 cup of maple syrup from my beloved neighbours
4 bananas, mashed
a pinch or two of sea-salt
6 or 8 eggs
1 cup coconut flour
quite a lot of ginger, minced
a splash of vanilla
half of a leftover baked sweet potato
1 cup of creamy coconut milk
1/4 cup of coconut butter (I would have used dairy butter, but had run out)
1/2 cup organic blackstrap molasses
a couple of small teaspoons of baking soda
something else perhaps, I don’t remember.
Old sliced almonds which I figured would lose their somewhat musty taste after baking on top of our cake for a while (which they did!)
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Everyone pronounced it delicious, and Horus and Treva both ate several pieces, I’m sure because it was such an unexpected delight.
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I always bake these wacky cakes on a very low setting, for quite some time (250 or so, for about 3 hours sometimes). Just check relatively often. When using “alternative” flours (wheat-free baking), these cakes tend to be eggy, much more dense than a regular wheat-based cake, and somewhat prone to burning if baked at a higher setting.
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This would actually make a really lovely birthday cake. But of course, I can’t really guarantee that my pretend-recipe is fool-proof. As I said, if in doubt, add more butter, and maybe a splash more sweet. Good luck!