Good health is not just about lack of disease, it’s about creating lack of vitality and vigor and learning how to feel empowered!
As a health coach, I will help you find your own “best” diet and understand how what you eat affects your energy level, weight, skin, hormonal balance, mental health, risk for disease and your overall attitude!
Contact me for a free 45-minute health consultation! Call 603-380-1080 or email me at tracey@traceymillerwellness.com.
Luke Mahoney
If you’ve been to any of the local farmers’ markets, you’ll know you’ve found Brookford Farm when you see the table with the longest queue. Folks line up with coolers, crates and containers for their organic raw milk, cheese, meat, vegetables and locally grown and baked bread.
I decided to skip the lines and go straight to the source and take a tour of their new farm in Canterbury. My daughter and Romeo Danais from General Butler Farm joined me.
Brookford moved to Canterbury last spring, but luckily for their loyal customers, they’re still delivering their wholesome food to the seacoast on Thursday afternoons in Exeter. (3-6pm in Exeter, 9 Newfields Road) They also deliver to local restaurants (Blue Moon Evolution, Black Trumpet,and Moxy to name a few).
With the support of Gary & Meg Hirshberg (Gary is Chairman of Stonyfield Farm) and the NH Community Loan Fund, Luke and his wife Caterina bought the 613-acre sod farm, which they and their 15-member staff, maintain integrating the biodynamic farming practices they learned on farms in Russia and Germany.
They grow their own heirloom wheat and rye, and grind their own flour. Luke’s cousin Damon ferments the flour with a sourdough culture and bakes it in their own wood fired brick oven! (The cinnamon rolls are outrageous!)
They offer a variety of community supported agriculture (CSA) shares and their store is open from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm. They’re located north of Concord, just a few minutes off 93N.
The farm is home to 40 milking cows, and 1000 new chickens which arrived just a few minutes before we did via the U.S. Postal System. They also raise pastured pigs and cattle.
We were fortunate enough to see the chickens welcomed to their new toasty home, watch the cows get milked and also see Dane fire up the brick oven for the next day’s bread. All in a day’s work.
I found this recipe on Food52 a few weeks ago and loved it! The anchovies offer a nice punch. The dressing is similar to a Caesar Salad, but without the raw egg. The only thing I would do differently here is double the dressing…the kale really soaks it up. It holds up in the frig for 2-3 days.
Ingredients:
In a mortar and pestle, mash the garlic and anchovy with a pinch of salt to a paste. Blend in the juice from half a Meyer lemon. Then beat in the olive oil. It should semi-emulsify; don’t worry if it doesn’t.Here are a few of my other favorite kale recipes: Kale Saute, and Kale and Sausage Soup.
It’s not always easy to make the right choice, pick the healthy food over the convenient food, or resist cravings. Sometimes it’s just because it’s there, or you’re just plain running out of ideas of what to eat.
To help you take better care of YOU, Kath Gallant and I, my partner in the Food and Health Forum, put together a month of menu plans with recipes for breakfast, lunch dinner, snacks as part of our 30-Day Wellness Challenge. It’s a whole cookbook of recipes from the Blue Moon Evolution, Tracey Miller and our favorite chefs.
Good, clean, fun…with food, for you. 30 days, with more than 30 ways to improve your health!
When you register you also be entered to win one of two gift baskets of wellness treats to nourish yourself with yoga, massage, spa treatments and more! See all the raffle prizes below! Thank you to our wellness community who wants to support you through your 30-day challenge!
So, for only $60, this is what we’ll send you when you sign up for the 30-Day Wellness Challenge:
You will also receive discounts on Blue Moon Evolution Smoothies and we invite you to two community exercise events. Click here to see more details.
This is not a “diet” just a great way to “clean up” you up and help you feel great. It starts April 30th so register now and take the plunge!
All these materials will be sent to you electronically several days before the event starts so you have time to plan. We’ll be the guide you be the conductor!
If you want to get some ideas for spring greens and how to really cleanse your system, join us for our “Spring Greens Cleanse” class on April 30th. Click here for more details.
Sign up for both the wellness challenge and the class for only $95.
Raffle Prizes
$50 Gift Certificate from Blue Moon Evolution
Free 60-Minute Massage from Peg Gaillard
Free 60-Minute Traditional Thai Massage from Anne Perry
4 Passes for Infrared “Healing Heat” Spa at Good Karma Cafe
5 Free Yoga Classes and a free t-shirt at Seacoast Power Yoga
Free Month Pass at Zev Yoga for You and Friend
Free Month Pass at Thrive Women’s Health Club for You and a Friend
3 Free PMX Lunch Passes with Personal Fitness Trainer Luke Gullick
Three Free Passes to Food and Health Forum Cooking & Wellness Classes
Free Health Consultation and Pantry Cleanse from Tracey Miller
Free 1.5 Hour “EFT” Session with Licensed Family Therapist Julie Farrell
More to come so keep an eye out!
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I had a client who said she didn’t have a lot of time to make changes to her diet, she really just wanted “one thing she could do” to improve her health. She wanted a quick fix.
Well, there surely are a lot of quick fixes out there. Diet plans, protein-packed smoothies, prepared “100 calorie” meals, expensive supplements, and even prescription pills to help you do everything from lose weight, to lower your cholesterol, thin your blood, or relieve your depression. Food companies and pharmaceutical companies are great at making you believe that their product will “cure” everything that ails you or make you the most popular person in the room.
The problem is that these temporary solutions, along with new year’s resolutions, aren’t want your body is looking and craving for. You’ve got to tune in to the right station and listen to your body talk.
Your sixth sense
When you start listening to your bodies’ signals – it will tell you what you need. What’s missing from our modern day diet is intuition. A sixth sense of what is good for your body and what’s not. Your body sends subtle signals every day, you’ve just got to pay attention.
If you’re fatigued during the day, your body is telling you something. If you wake up with achy joints, maybe something’s wrong that an Advil won’t fix. If you’re not sleeping well, what’s keeping you awake? What is your indigestion trying to tell you? Maybe you’re eating when you’re stressed or your body isn’t getting what it needs.
Taking an antacid to get rid of heartburn after a meal, isn’t listening to your body. Heartburn is your body’s way of telling you not to ever eat that food again, or maybe not to eat when you’re stressed out.
Don’t ignore your bodies signals. Disease doesn’t just happen overnight. You don’t just wake up one day with cancer, or an overactive thyroid, or kidney disease. Your body tells you in subtle ways and what you eat day in and day out, is just information.
Trust your gut
There is no “quick fix” and if that’s what someone is selling you, tell them you ain’t buying. You know what you need. You just need to stop, get quiet and listen.
Build your knowledge of what your body needs and strengthen the connection between what you eat, how it makes you feel. Get healthy before you get sick. Contact me if you’re looking to change your life and not just your diet: tracey@traceymillerwellness.com
I’m excited to be getting in on the good karma at Zev Yoga! My new office space is at 175 Water Street in Exeter, NH. I’ll be hosting a several new events there in addition to all the cooking and wellness classes and dinner seminars with the Food and Health Forum that I created with Kath Gallant at the Blue Moon Evolution.
Classes at Zev include:
Nourishing Women’s Retreat: April 13, 1:30 – 3:30 with one of my favorite health practitioners Lesley Cambell.
Lunch Lifts -to jump start your day!
Tuesday, April 16: The Power of Greens: Join Tracey to find out ways to incorporate spring greens like chard, kale and dandelion greens into your diet including, smoothies, snacks and more. Features demo and taste tests!
Tuesday, April 30: Worrying About Your Weight? Find out how and why our bodies gain weight and how you can stop gaining it (and lose it). Tracey give you some simple tips for losing weight and quick and easy menu plans to help you get on track.
Tuesday, May 14: Sugar Blues: Do you have a sweet tooth? Crave sweets all the time? Sugar is a powerful drug that affects your digestion, your brain, and your risk for disease. Find out how to break your “sugar” habit, and get some recipes for food that satisfies, but doesn’t harm your body.
Tuesday, May 28: How to Sprout Sprouts! I will show you how to grow sprouts including wheat grass, pea sprouts and other microgreens! These foods are the most nutrient-dense foods you can eat. They improve digestion, detoxify your blood and are rich with nutrients and minerals!
Register at Zev Yoga at 175 Water Street or walk ins welcome. The fee is $12.
I love all food, but it doesn’t all love me. Unfortunately this one food happens to be everywhere and in just about everything we eat! It’s not just wheat, but the protein in wheat, barley and rye – gluten.
Many people don’t associate low-grade chronic health conditions with a specific food, but the problem is that a sensitivity to gluten is insidious. Its sinister symptoms like headaches, brain fog, constipation, joint pain, and even depression, don’t appear immediately after you eat it so it’s hard to pin point their cause. Some research shows that up to 50 percent of the population may have a sensitivity to gluten!
If you have been diagnosed with celiac disease, or you just feel better off of gluten, you know what I’m talking about. If not, you may want to take a 7-day elimination challenge to find out if your body is happier without it. All you need to do is avoid gluten for at least a week, then add it back into your diet and see how you feel over the next few days.
If you’re adjusting to a gluten free diet, or exploring one, join Kath Gallant, owner of the Blue Moon Evolution, and I for a cooking and wellness class on March 4th from 7 pm to 9 pm to unravel all the health issues around gluten and learn how to enjoy a hassle-free gluten-free diet.
You’ll learn:
We’ll also give you the low-down on the industrial wheat that has been perfected over the last few decades that is great for making bread, but not so great for our belly.
This class is hosted by the Food and Health Forum, a eating, cooking and learning adventure to help revolutionize our food system from the ground up. We want to inspire and educate communities, get folks into the kitchen, and help reestablish the link between what we eat, where our food comes from, and how it affects our health and our environment. The class fee is $45. The Blue Moon Evolution is located at 8 Clifford Street.
For more events and how to register go to www.foodandhealthforum.com.
We savored some navy bean soup this week that my husband made in preparation of the storm. The recipe is from my first “family” cookbook published in 1991 as a Christmas gift. “Tried and True” family recipes was a limited edition with a small print run of about 12 copies.
Many of the recipes are from my family’s head chef, my father (Bob, Billy or Ozzie), depending on who you are. His recipes always need a little interpretation and are not for the faint at heart as he makes a lot of assumptions on measurements and ingredients so you sometimes have to fill in the blanks. He is definitely a cook that does not measure. The good thing is he can almost always be reached for clarification.
This cookbook is crude, hand bound with way too many typos because I pulled an all nighter at my office (on a boat in the Boston Harbor) to get it done. It doesn’t even have page numbers, but for 20 years I’ve used it and the recipes are precious. My dad was the illustrator for the very limited black and white artwork.
“Tried and True,” is filled with family recipes like “Nancy’s Tuna Fish Casserole” which I must confess I never liked, or Roberto’s (Tomato) Sauces with Vermicelli (with 7 variations), the ”No You Can’t Have My Recipe, Butterhorn Biscuits” which my step sister finally handed over after years of secrecy, my mom’s chocolate chip cookie recipe given to me by my Aunt June, and even my grandma’s Brussels Sprout recipe which my Aunt Terrie contributed that ends with, “best when thrown out.” (My grandma always overcooked them.)
Here is my father’s recipe for what he calls:
Senate Bean Soup
(This gives the senate it what it run on!) (hot air)
Ingredients:
1 cup mashed potatoes (My dad uses this at the end to thicken the recipe (we don’t always do this, but it does make it really smooth.)
(Notes: Carrots were not listed, but I’m pretty sure my dad always adds them and so do we.)Directions:
1. Bring beans to a boil for two minutes and let stand for 1-2 hours. (Better yet, soak beans over night and simmer for about an hour.)
2. Add chicken stock and ham bone (to the beans). Simmer 1 1/2 hours.
3. Add remaining ingredients. Simmer 30 minutes (or longer to make it thicker and to let the beans break down .)
4. You can add the mash potatoes here if you want to thicken them.
5. Serve with a splash of sherry. (very optional – we never do!)
(If you have any questions, you can call me dad….)
A final touch:
Okay, I don’t add sugar to anything, but my husband’s family sprinkles a little sugar on their bean soup and I must admit, it really finishes if off!)
I’m really excited to hear from our next speaker, Barton Seaver, at our dinner seminar n February 11th at the Blue Moon Evolution. Barton is the new Director of the Healthy and Sustainable Food Program at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard’s School of Public Health. I spoke with Barton and he’s got a really great unique perspective as a chef, author and environmentalist about our food choices and how they impact human health and the environment. He’s fresh from the nation’s capitol and will be moving up to Boston on February 1st so we’re excited to welcome him to New Hampshire and hear what he’s got to say.
As a chef and environmentalist, Seaver believes that truly recognizing the process of food production and consumption can drastically improve the environment. He was named a National Geographic Fellow for his tireless work and initiatives to preserve depleted seafood specimens by suggesting substitutes.
As a Fellow with the Explorer Program at the National Geographic Society, Barton has used his position to explore the confluence of human and ecological health. Barton has traveled the globe and gained deep insight into the human and economic systems that govern our relationship with nature. A main focus of his work as been in helping to develop the Seafood Decision Guide, a decision tool which helps to inform consumers by consolidating sustainability, mercury, and Omega-3 data in one convenient location.
For more details about the Food and Health Forum or to register for the dinner seminar go to www.foodandhealthforum.com. See you at the Moon!
I’m excited about our new “community wellness” series with the Food and Health Forum. We’ve got something for everyone this year and will be offering both cooking and wellness classes and dinner seminars. Kath and I hope to see you there!
Tracey and her daughter making raw chocolate smoothies! Photo by Emma Pearson
This article was written by Emma Pearson and featured in the Foster’s Daily Democrat on Sunday, November 4.
We moms do not have “time” in our schedules to not feel well. There is laundry to wash, meals to make, work, kids to chauffeur and much more! Just the thought of being sick raises our blood pressure. Thankfully there are things we can do to stay healthy and calm during cold season.
Power up your immune system:
Like all parts of the body, your immune system needs fuel to run on. There are several easy ways to boost your immunity.
“Eating well is one of the best ways to stay healthy,” says Tracey Miller, who specializes in helping families to eat healthily and is the founder of Tracey Miller Wellness and the Food and Health Forum. “Avoid processed foods, stay away from immunity suppressing sugar, bump up your fruit and vegetable consumption and keep hydrated with water and herbal teas.”
Miller also suggests incorporating immunity boosting ingredients into meals such as garlic, ginger, specialty mushrooms, nuts, sea vegetables and seeds like chia, which helps you remain hydrated and provides prolonged energy.
Vitamin C is a well known immunity booster. Even if you regularly consume vitamin C rich foods, it’s still a good idea to take a vitamin C supplement in order to ensure you get at least 1,000 mg per day. Rebecca Petee of the Herbal Path Natural Pharmacy also recommends taking vitamin D3, a probiotic, omega-3 and Ashwagandha, which provides adrenal support, pills every day. If this seems too daunting, consider taking a high quality whole food multi-vitamin. It won’t provide as many benefits, but will certainly help.
For the full article, click here.
The scariest thing about Halloween isn’t the costumes. It’s the sugar! Americans will spend nearly $2 billion on candy this year according to Nielsen Research — that’s 598 million pounds of candy! Halloween favorites like candy bars, candy corn and Tootsie Rolls taste great to kids, and sure it’s fun to enjoy a little, but over doing doesn’t do them any good.
Sugar suppresses their immune systems, promotes inflammation, can cause weight gain and can lead to diabetes. Moms and dads can offer candy alternatives and other special treats and events that make the night festive, but take candy off center stage. See my article on Seacoastonline for some ideas! Click here.
Free Spring Harvest E-Cookbook!
