Sometimes you just need a little pick-me-up. Something slightly sweet, a little bit salty and nutrient dense.

Enter the fig.  Dried figs are nature's perfect snack. A serving contains more calcium than milk, is chock full of potassium and magnesium and offers enough fiber to keep you satisfied much longer than a typical energy or power bar.

These treats are full of nuts, seeds and fruit. They're easy to make and even easier to take with you.

Use soaked and dried "crispy" nuts, if you understand what that means. If not, use plain old raw nuts and keep tuned for the benefits of soaking nuts, seeds and grains.

This is my first post for The Nourishing Gourmet's Pennywise Platter Thursday. If you haven't already, check out her blog. It's full of information and fabulous recipes. 

Fig power bars

2/3 cup cashew nuts

1/3 cup sunflower seeds

12 dried calimyrna figs (or another variety. It's a heaping 1/2 a cup worth)

1 TB chia seeds (optional)

2 TB raw honey

1/2 tsp. sea salt

In a food processor bowl combine cashews and sunflower seeds. Process until mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Remove to a bowl and set aside.

Process figs in food processor until they have become paste-like. Add nuts back in, along withthe chia seeds, honey and sea salt. Process all ingredients until well combined.

Dump the mixture onto a double width of plastic wrap. Fold the sides of the plastic wrap around the mixture and, using your hands, press evenly on the top and sides until the mixture forms a log.

Place in the fridge for a couple hours until firm. Remove and slice.

There is one area of my life that sensibility doesn’t touch.

Shoes. I love pointy, high-heeled, ridiculously impractical shoes.

I don't wear them much anymore, because it's difficult to chase a toddler in them, but whenever I get the chance, I put on a pair of strappy red stilettos and pretend I'm still cool and stylish.

Everything else in my life is shaped by my need for order, practicality and sensibility.

Food and nutrition aren't exempt.

I was just coming off an unsuccessful attempt at raw food veganism (which I don't recommend you try unless you aren't concerned about starving your nursing child) when my friend Katie introduced me to a book called Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.

I glanced through the book and quickly decided she was crazy. Katie and Sally Fallon, both.

As a nearly life-long vegetarian, I was aghast at the blatant approval of meat.

As a fat-phobic "health nut" I was disgusted by Fallon's obsession with fat.

I've been told before, though, that I can be a bit rebellious.  I love the idea of going against the grain and riding a new wave.

That night, as I lay in my bed trying to fall asleep, I mulled over the daring concept laid out in Nourishing Traditions.

The USDA was wrong.  The dietitians and nutritionists, though well-intentioned, were misguided. The data and studies showing animal fats were responsible for heart disease and high cholesterol were flawed.

All night, I tossed and turned wondering if I was wrong. The next morning I stumbled, bleary-eyed, to my computer and did a google search on traditional diets.

What I found left me staring at my tall glass of soy milk glassy eyed and bewildered.

How it all started

Nourishing Traditions is cook/dietary book based on a book written by a Cleveland dentist named Weston A. Price. Eighty years ago, Mr. Price became concerned by the increasing numbers of patients with tooth decay and deformed facial structure. He set out around the globe, trying to find out the cause and prevention of these problems.  Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is the result of his research.

In his book Price documents his travels throughout the Americas, Africa, Europe and the Pacific, taking pictures and notes as he goes.

He was impressed by the native people with their straight teeth, wide jaws, strong bones and good health. He found that the people who ate traditional foods retained their beauty and health, while the people who ate a modern, processed diet rapidly developed cavities, decay, tooth loss and even bone loss.

Within a generation or two their children had lost the distinctive ethnic features of their ancestors- wide bridges, high cheekbones, well-defined palates- and had developed the pinched nostrils, small jaws and crowded teeth of his patients.

The two brothers on top display the reality of a traditional vs. a modern diet quite well. The brother on the left ate a modern diet.

The young boy on the left consumed a modern diet. The girl was raised on a traditional diet.

Unfortunately, despite being one of the most famous and thorough epidemiological studies of all time, very few people are aware of his research. Dentists of decades ago were required to read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Today they have never heard of him.

So, what did the traditional societies eat?

I'll give you a sampling of diets Weston Price found traditional people eating.

Inuits: Whale blubber, whale meat, caribou meat, seals, fish.

Scottish: Fermented oats, offal, raw dairy

Masai: The blood, meat and milk of cattle

South Sea Islanders: Seafood, pork, coconut, fruit

Switzerland’s Lötschental valley: Raw, full-fat dairy (cheese, butter, cream, milk), rye bread, veal

These people ate raw dairy products from cows fed on grass, eggs from pastured chickens, meat and animal fat from grass-fed animals, fermented grains, organ meat, seafood and seasonal, local produce. Price found that isolated people living on a traditional diet consumed four times as much calcium and other minerals and ten times the fat-soluble vitamins from animal foods.

What did they not eat?

Price found that people who left the traditional diets of their ancestors and turned to modern food developed modern diseases.

These people ate sugar, pasteurized and condensed milk products, refined flour and processed convenience foods.

Prior to the turn of the century the average consumption of sugar per person per year was five pounds. Today it is over 145 pounds! I'm supposing most of that is in the form of high-fructose corn syrup which is pumped into soda and processed junk food.

Traditional people didn't eat high-fructose corn syrup. They also didn't eat soy burgers, canola oil, genetically modified skinless, boneless chicken breast, carrots grown with fish genes, and milk from cows confined to fecal-filled pens that has been pasteurized to death.

My end of story

I took Nutrition and Physical Degeneration out from the library and as I flipped through, I saw picture after picture of glowing, beautiful, healthy, vibrant people.

Our own society stands in stark contrast to this. Each successive year reveals an increase in physical deformities, learning and mental disabilities, poor bone structure, failing eyesight, bad teeth, disease and illness.

The leading causes of death prior to the turn of the century were all communicable diseases. Tuberculosis, cholera, dysentery, influenza. Today the leading causes of death are environmental in nature. Heart disease, diabetes, cancer.

Very few people developed diabetes and cancer 150 years ago. Heart disease was unheard of. Yet they ate massive amounts of animal fats, meat and raw dairy.  They consumed enough cholesterol in one meal to give a dietitian a panic attack. The trainers on the biggest loser would keel-over if someone declared the food of our ancestors health food.

Despite the fact that I had been eating a low-fat, soy-filled vegetarian diet for years I could no longer pretend it was a healthy lifestyle.  I had been confronted with the unvarnished, and quite sensible, truth.

That day I ate a bowl of full-fat, cream on top, organic yogurt and haven't looked back.

Perhaps we need to re evaluate what we have always thought. Perhaps we need to ignore the advice of the USDA and sold-out government organizations, the advice of malnourished nutritionists and, instead, listen to the wisdom found on the pages of history's cookbook.

So you just had a hankerin' for some broccoli with garlicky creme fraiche yesterday. You went to the grocery store and finally found a little tub of creme fraiche in the imported cheese section. Confident you were about to see your children drool over something green for the first time ever you swaggered up to the self-check out lane and promptly passed out when it told you to pay $6.00.

I'm sorry.  I forgot to warn you. 

Creme fraiche is incredibly difficult to find and very, very expensive. 

When I finally found it at Whole Foods I bought one tub as an extravagance and resigned myself to insipid, watery, too-tart sour cream the rest of my life. 
But then I discovered something wondrous.

You can make it yourself!

You can culture a lot of dairy products yourself. Yogurt, buttermilk, kefir, cultured butter and the pinnacle of dairy-nirvana...creme fraiche!

Five reasons to make creme fraiche

1) The French originally made "fresh cream" by taking unpasteurized (or fresh) cream and letting it sit out for a day or so until the beneficial bacteria multiplied and produced a thick, nutty, slightly sour-tart condiment that elevates even the humble potato into something magnificent.

2) It's much thicker and much milder than commercially prepared sour cream.

3) you can impress guests by saying, for instance, "Would you like a bit of homemade creme fraiche on your split pea soup?"

4) It won't curdle when you use it in soups and sauces because...well, it just doesn't.

5) It's cheap and easy!

How to make this fabulous food

Take a dollop (about a tablespoon or so) of your ridiculously overpriced creme fraiche from the store and put it in a clean pint-size mason jar (any glass container will do).

Fill the rest of the jar (about two cups) with good-quality cream (raw, pastured, organic...as long as it's not ultra-pasteurized!) and stir to incorporate.

Cover with the lid and sit it on your counter for 24 hours (or a few hours more if you don't use the heater because your husband/wife/significant other freaks out about the cost of energy).

Put it in your fridge. 

There you have it. 
What are you waiting for? Go make a potato or something.

Five ways to "wow" with creme fraiche

1)  Roast some potatoes with olive oil and herbs. Toss with creme fraiche before serving.

2) Mix a tablespoon or so into your eggs with some chives and scramble.

3) Whip with a bit of maple syrup and vanilla extract and serve with fresh berries.

4) Use in place of sour cream on your burritos, fajitas and tacos.

5) Make a big batch and churn into cultured butter.

One more thing. Once you begin using creme fraiche, you'll forever turn your nose up at commercially prepared sour cream.  You may even carry a little container of it with you when you meet up for Mexican  with friends. You will certainly catch your three year old sitting in the fridge with a spoonful of creme fraiche in one hand and a pat of cultured butter in the other. Don't worry. It's good for her digestion. 

Roasting vegetables is the quickest way to get your kids to beg for some fiber and folate.
Seriously.

Throw in some garlic and creme fraiche- the only two foods necessary for human function (in my opinion)- and you'll be warning them not to fill their bellies with veggies.

Roasted broccoli with garlicky creme fraiche * serves 6

1/2 cup creme fraiche

10 cloves garlic

2 heads of broccoli, about 8 cups

extra virgin olive oil

sea salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400.

Place garlic cloves on a square of foil. Drizzle cloves with 2 tsp. of olive oil. Fold foil up over the garlic to form a little pocket.
Roast for about 20 minutes or until cloves are soft in their skin.

Let cool.

Pop garlic out of skin and mash in a small bowl. Mix in creme fraiche. If the sauce becomes too thick  you can thin it with a bit of milk or cream.

Trim broccoli, removing stems (these are great sliced and used in stir fry's). Make sure to cut florets into uniform size pieces.

Arrange broccoli on a baking sheet or two. Don't crowd them.

Drizzle with olive oil. Toss and sprinkle with sea salt and pepper to taste.

Roast in a 400 degree oven, stirring once or twice, for about 30 minutes or until edges are caramelized and stems are soft.

Remove broccoli to a bowl and toss with garlicky creme fraiche.

Serve immediately.