I have been talking with Diane a lot about traditional New England Saturday night supper of beans and franks. And also, summer time bean and frank bake in the church basement. Of course the traditional doesn't work so well for us.....but...Ms. Magician has collaborated for the whole meal here.

Diane’s New England Style Baked Beans

I am a bit of a throw it together kinda cook and go by eye more often than I measure, so this is a collaboration for an actual recipe. :)

2 cans of pinto beans, with the juice.
A few slices of bacon, cut into small pieces
1/4 cup apple butter
1 TBS grainy brown mustard or to taste
1/2 of an onion

And from Kathleen:

Here is what I did.
I put 2 cans of pinto beans in the crock pot.
I sauteed the bacon and one half of a vadalia onion in some olive oil. I mixed the apple butter into the beans and added the mustard.
I added the bacon and onion to the beans when they were not quite crisp. I cooked it for about 4 hours in the crock pot.

And it was incredibly good.

Kathleen

Boston Brown Bread

Ok.... drum roll please (smile). I think I have perfected my version of Boston Brown Bread to be eaten with New England style baked beans and hotdogs. We had a traditional Maine, Saturday night bean supper tonight. I used Diane's recipes for the baked beans and coleslaw and adapted the brown bread recipe from the New Laurel's Kitchen cookbook. Here is the recipe:

1/2 c. brown rice flour
1/2 c. buckwheat flour
2 tsp. Rumford baking powder (make sure it's fresh)
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 c. apple butter (no sugar added)
1 egg
1/4 c. vegetable oil
1 c. buttermilk

Mix dry ingredients together in bowl. In separate bowl, mix wet ingredients. Grease and flour two small (14.5 oz.) aluminum cans. Use cans that do not have a seam because they can leach lead. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Divide batter into the two cans, filling them about 3/4 full. Cover each can with greased aluminum foil and tie with twine. Place the cans in a deep pan on top of a layer of old jar lids. (I used my crock pot.) Add boiling water until about half way up the cans. Cover the pot and simmer for 1 1/4 hours. Remove cans and check to see if the bread is done cooking. Allow to cool in the cans on a wire rack for at least an hour. Use a knife to loosen the bread and remove from cans.

I made the brown bread earlier in the day, so it had cooled by the time we were ready to eat. I sliced the brown bread about 1/2 inch thick and toasted it in the toaster, then spread it with butter. It was moist and delicious. The flavor and texture was very close to the original that I remember. The next time I make it, I will try using less apple butter and see what effect that has. I would love to have others try this and give feedback.

Alison G.

This is the coleslaw that Mel and I made for everyone at the Maine Meditation Seminar. We made a gigantic batch of it in a freezing cold garage in winter coats,
during a snowstorm. But no, it was not uphill both ways. LOLOL. Honestly, we were having a wonderful time. The elements are no concern for Step 7'ers playing together!

Traditional Coleslaw

1 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1.5 teaspoons celery salt, or to taste
6 cups shredded cabbage
1 cup grated carrots
1 medium granny smith apple, grated with skin

Combine mayo, vinegar and celery salt together then add to cabbage, carrots and apple. Mix well and refrigerate several hours to let flavor develop.

Jim used celery seed in place of celery salt when he made this for us at the Leadership BBQ at Kathleen's during Ranch 2008. It was excellent!

Radiant Recovery Cookbook

Naomi's Nutritious and Delicious Cookbook

Sheila's Kitchen Recipes

I have recently hired someone to help me out in the store. He is learning how to do fulfillment. This is giving me some free time to be thinking about how we can best serve you. I want to take some time to do a tune up for all of you who have subscriptions. If you can call me at 505-345-3737 or email me, I can give you an up-to-date tuneup. Let's see if we can save you some money, and let's explore if I have all your correct info. You may not know of some of the new ideas we have. I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Please send questions and suggestions. I love hearing from you and truly want to help you do your program better.

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** Our Online Groups **

In the Radiant Fitness group we talk about how doing the food can support our fitness program and vice versa. Some favorite topics are what to eat when doing intensive exercise when all that's out there commercially are sugar filled products. We also talk about what to eat before and after morning workouts, and what to do for those folks whose training program requires a twice a day workout. We just had a great thread on the necessity of sports drinks and how doing the food is better.

We have runners (I've done two marathons myself), walkers, bikers, dancers, aerobicizers, yogis, and many more types of exercise enthusiasts on the list. One of the neat things I see on the list is people who are recovering from exercise addiction who are learning how to work exercise back in their life in a healthy way. If any of this fits you, well, come on over and join in

Or come to the group page to find the one that will best support your program: http://www.radiantrecovery.com/list_serves.htm

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** Bridging for Athletes **

Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D.

The concept behind “Bridging” was explained to me by Kathleen DesMaisons. I have taken that concept, synthesized it with some of the work of Scott Sonnon, and theorized further based on the experiences of others in the community, as well as my own experiences. You might say it took a village to write this article LOL!

If you are a sugar-sensitive athlete looking to continue your endurance training while maintaining your food program and all that it entails, “bridging” just may be the answer you have been looking for. Bridging is a method of planning training that enables you to make wise choices while keeping your food program and beta endorphin levels steady.

Why should sugar-sensitive athletes worry about their beta endorphin levels? Simply put, huge amounts of exercise release huge amounts of beta endorphin. For endurance athletes, this means a beta endorphin crash 3-4 days after a BE spike, cravings, and a cycle of spikes and crashes. Not only will this adversely affect your training, but it will, more importantly, sabotage your food program.

Heather Butler was the first member of the Radiant Recovery Community to discover that beta endorphin crashes could be different for athletes, particularly endurance athletes. As the first member of our community to run a marathon sugars free, Heather realized that she was experiencing beta endorphin crashes three days after hard training sessions (the spiking event), rather than the four days reported by all other members of the community for emotional or other physical spikes. Considering that athletes train every day, this news meant that sugar-sensitive athletes could expect an unending cycle of spikes and crashes. This would, of course, make it impossible to maintain or find a steady state and would really put a crimp in one’s training program.

Kathleen told me when I was training for my first cross-country ski marathon (sugars free!) that baths and candles and all of the soft BE raisers we incorporate into our programs would not touch the BE spikes that I was creating during my running and skiing sessions. Rather, she said that I would need to deal with those spikes through the training itself, using a concept she called “bridging.” Essentially bridging is a series of gradually decreasing BE-evoking training sessions that bridge down from the spiking event to the expected crash/low BE day. For instance, say that my hardest day of a training cycle is a ten mile run, which might evoke a BE spike of 8 on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the highest. The day after the hard session, I should plan for a session that would evoke a 6-7, the next day a 5-6 and a 4-5 on the crash day, thus allowing the body to glide down to the lower BE day rather than plummet.

Ah, but how to put this concept into practice? Using Heather as my sounding board, I created a training cycle that incorporated bridging. Since my hardest sessions were hardest because of their duration and distance, I decided that I would need to vary my bridging sessions based on duration, distance, intensity, and load, all concepts familiar to athletes. Thus, I might follow a ten mile run with a shorter run at a faster pace. This might be followed by a long slow ski. And finally I might incorporate a weight training session.

Unfortunately, I discovered that while I was in shape to run ten miles, I was not in shape to follow up with a shorter intense run, as my body was too used to the hard day, easy day cycle that most athletes use. This did not mean that I needed to abandon my plan; rather, I needed to decrease my hardest day until my body could catch up to my new schedule.

After my ski marathon, I bridged very nicely, so much so that I did not even feel as if I had done the ski! But I also discovered a concept that I will call “layering,” which incorporates soft BE’s with exercise. For instance, the Big Ski probably evoked a 10+. Besides the physical stress, I was over-the-top thrilled to have completed the event, I had a ball with my friends and I saw some of the most incredible scenery Vermont has to offer. Aha! Next morning, I was unsure that I would be able to evoke a high enough amount of BE through skiing, and I certainly was in no shape to run. So I layered my BEs: I skied for 1 ½ hours; I skied as the sun was rising ahhhhh; I skied alone in complete solitude oooooooo; I skied on a magnificently beautiful lake surrounded by gorgeous evergreen trees heavily laden with snow weeeeee. So the BEs I was not able to evoke through the exercise alone I was able so create through circumstance and environment.

I discovered something else while doing my final preparations for the Big Ski. Unlike most coaches who taper their athletes’ training down to almost nothing the day before a big event, Scott Sonnon posits another theory; that the fourth day before the event should be the lightest day. This theory I put into action for the ski. The result? Never before have I had such fresh legs before an endurance event. I believe that it was both this method of tapering and the bridging that allowed me to race so well and recovery so quickly.

But you will notice that four days again. Something tells me that by combining both Kathleen’s and Scott’s philosophies (although Scott’s was not devised for BE issues), I actually bridged up to the event and bridged down after it. I have been playing with this idea for a few weeks now and will report back after I have more training time using it. My theory is that bridging up decreases the impact of the spikes in the same way that bridging down decreases the impact of the crashes.

Here are the folks who are helping put the newsletter together:

Gretel, our webmaster, puts it all together.
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The banner photograph is by Patti Holden.


©2009 Kathleen DesMaisons. All rights reserved. You are free to use or transmit this article to your ezine or website as long as you leave the content unaltered, use this attribution: "By Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D. of Radiant Recovery®", and notify kathleen@radiantrecovery.com of the location. Please visit the Radiant Recovery® website at http://www.radiantrecovery.com for additional resources on sugar sensitivity and healing addiction.

You are getting the weekly newsletter from Radiant Recovery® in response to your signup. A copy of this newsletter may also be found posted on the web at http://www. radiantrecovery.com/weeklynewsletter.htm.