October 2009

Dear Friends,

This latest edition of our newsletter starts with an update for you on Flu Prevention, given how much attention everyone seems to be giving this topic. I trust you’ll find it of value as you make your way through the fall and winter seasons.

As some of you may already know, there have been changes at the Fourfold Healing Clinic in the last six months. The team at the Clinic has expanded, we are updating the website and adding new features, and continue to improve the Community Supported Health (CSH) plan. I’ve asked Dara Crawford, latest addition to our team, to outline some of these changes for you. I’ve also asked Brooke Moen, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture specialist, to tell you about her philosophy and practice for patients.

In addition to these reports, I want to discuss two very powerful books whose topics I think you will find interesting, some Recommended Reading for you. We’ve also got a delicious Nourishing Recipe from ForageSF, and information for Bay area residents on two exceptional women who are Nutritional Coaches and serve as Personal Chefs on a limited basis.

In the coming months, I will be traveling and speaking on everything from A1/A2 milk to cancer. I hope to have a chance to connect with you, whether it be at the Clinic, by phone or e-mail, at the Weston A. Price conference in Chicago in November, or the Fourfold Healing Conference in NH in January. I’m also quite excited about a series of online lectures I will be doing for the Growing Edge Institute.

Warmest wishes to you as we make our way together along the Fourfold Path to Healing.

Tom

IN THIS ISSUE

FLU PREVENTION

Every fall I get lots of questions from patients about what they should do about flu prevention and treatment. Every year around this time there is also building hype about the devastating effects of some particularly virulent flu strain, with major concern about the availability of flu vaccines. And every year, spring arrives and nothing much has happened. Some people got sick, most didn’t, the whole thing is forgotten for a few months, only to start all over in the fall.

This year, because of the swine flu (H1N1), the hype is especially virulent. Predictions of dire consequences and of impending mandatory vaccines with possible criminal charges for negligent naysayers pepper local newspapers and internet sites. People are told to go to their doctors at the first sign of the flu to find out if they in fact have the swine flu. The trouble with this is doctors actually can’t tell if a person has the swine flu or not from a usual history and physical. The only sure thing to come out of all this is that someone – well actually, pharmaceutical companies which are among the largest and most lucrative companies in the world – is making a fortune from these vaccines. I guess I could say, who wouldn’t like to make a product with no competition, no cost containment mechanism, and that the government forces everyone to buy. That’s almost as good a gig as the Federal Reserve bank, which gets to decide how much money to print, how much the government needs to borrow, and the interest rate the government has to pay for the privilege of borrowing this money.

The fact is that neither I nor anyone else can really separate the hype from the facts here. In situations like this, I take the cautious approach: I’ll believe it when I see it. Until then, the well-recognized side effects of vaccines loom large. Our immune system is constructed in a very specific way. It has two “arms”: a humoral arm which makes antibodies and therefore remembers what it has encountered, and a cell-mediated arm which identifies and digests foreign stuff, including micro-organisms and some toxins. Natural infection activates both arms. The cell-mediated arm digests the micro-organisms and clears them through fever, rash, mucus, etc. The humoral arm remembers, so we don’t get sick again from these same organisms. The enemy of this well-functioning system is to be infected but not clear the organisms, which sets up unresolved foreign elements in our blood. Many think these become the later cause of such things as auto-immune illness.

The basic problem with vaccines is that they deliberately bypass the cell-mediated arm (otherwise people would be sick) and activate the humoral arm. A lifetime of this is strongly associated with diseases of lowered cell-mediated immunity, specifically cancer and auto-immune illness. Every culture that has adopted widespread vaccine programs inevitably deals with epidemic-like rates of these two categories of illness. This doesn’t even address the issue of the simple toxicity that comes from injecting thimerosol, formaldehyde, dead viruses, etc., into our blood stream. Many organizations have documented the toxicity of these products and their association with chronic illness. Suffice it to say, the vaccine approach to dealing with illness is a switching-type-of-illness strategy rather than a preventing-illness strategy. Personally, I’m not thrilled by the types of illnesses that are provoked by vaccines.

My prevention strategy for flu is fairly simple, and I have outlined it in newsletters before. First, adequate vitamins A and D have been strongly associated with flu prevention and better outcomes in past studies (see the vitamin D council for further info). A good prevention strategy is 1 tsp of cod liver oil and 2,000 – 5,000 IU per day of vitamin D3, depending on blood tests, throughout the fall and winter. In addition, elderberries are a proven flu prevention remedy, particularly elderberry/thyme syrup at 1 tsp twice per day in the flu season. Congaplex from Standard Process can also help with prevention and treatment, with a dose of 3 to 9 capsules per day depending on the patient’s age.

People still will get sick no matter what we do, but hopefully by using these strategies and avoiding vaccines, we can manage acute illness in the way our bodies were designed to do, without either great debility from the flu or having our prevention strategy actually foster worse illnesses for us in the future.

FOURFOLD CLINIC UPDATE by Dara Crawford

Since May of this year, working with the fantastic team at the Fourfold Clinic, I have spent many hours talking with patients and getting to know them and their families. Feedback has been incredibly important in helping us to formulate new strategies to provide better patient care. In addition to working at the front desk, as part of our commitment to continuing this dialogue, I will be updating the website and managing Dr. Cowan’s web presence. I look forward to your suggestions on how to continually improve the Clinic.

CSH and Fee Changes:
The Community Supported Healthcare (CSH) plan has been an incredible experiment in providing affordable healthcare for everyone, regardless of income. As an ongoing project, we have had to make changes along the way, and we will be making more changes beginning in November. First, we will be raising the minimum monthly payment to $25. If you are currently paying less than $25 per month for the CSH, we will be contacting you sometime in October to make sure that you are aware of the change and to ensure that you would still like to participate. At the minimum, this means that after the first appointment, you will be paying $125 for six months of unlimited access to Dr. Cowan. This continues to be a bargain and far below what any local private practice physicians charge.

We will also be raising the rates for all first-time appointments by $25. So, a first time phone appointment under the CSH plan will now be $200. A first time office appointment (not CSH) will be $300. A first time phone appointment (not CSH) will be $275. All of this information can be found under the “Community Supported Healthcare” tab on the Fourfold Healing website.

The Community Supported Healthcare plan has been expanded to include acupuncture as well. For those of you who live or work in the San Francisco Bay, this is exciting news. Brooke Moen, the Fourfold Healing Clinic’s acupuncturist, has become quite busy since she began offering her services as part of the Community Supported Healthcare plan. The CSH rates for acupuncture range from $100-$200 a month for unlimited acupuncture treatments. If you sign up for the CSH acupuncture plan, there is no additional cost for the first appointment, and just like the CSH plan for Dr. Cowan, you decide what you can afford to pay per month. If you’re interested in acupuncture treatments, call or e-mail Brooke soon because her availability will surely become more limited once the word gets out. (brooke@brookemoen.com or www.brookemoen.com)

Fourfold Healing Website and New Media:
We’ve been listening to your questions and feedback and are working to make the website easier to navigate and to make our office more web-friendly. So far we have created a page that explains the Community Supported Healthcare (CSH) program and the various payment options and rates. We also know that many of you appreciate the fact that you can e-mail Dr. Cowan directly (drcowansoffice@yahoo.com) with brief questions and updates. We’ve built upon that idea and added have added an e-mail address (frontdesk@fourfoldhealing.com) that you can use to contact the front desk directly. Karen, Sabine, and I will be happy to answer any questions you may have via this e-mail address.

We’ve also added three new web-based features to www.fourfoldhealing.com, under the Contact tab. First, you can now request an appointment online. Just fill out the form and press submit and we will either e-mail or call you with some potential dates and times. Secondly, you can request supplement and prescription medication refills online – in fact, this is the simplest and quickest way to request a refill. Just fill in the name of the medication, dosage and quantity you need refilled and we will get right to it. Often patients leave voicemail messages requesting refills, which can lead to days of phone tag and confusion for everyone. We’re hoping to make the whole process quicker and easier for everyone with the new online option. Finally, if you have a health question for Dr. Cowan that doesn’t require an appointment, you can ask him using the “Ask Dr. Cowan a Question” link, which will email your question directly to Dr. Cowan. All of these new features are under the Contact tab on the home page at www.fourfoldhealing.com. We hope you’ll visit the site and give them a try.

We’re also pleased to announce that you can keep updated on the latest information related to Dr. Cowan and his work on Twitter at 4foldhealing. We will be posting information about relevant articles and research, current events, and upcoming appearances, so if you’re already “tweeting”, start following 4foldhealing to receive our updates.

TCM AND ACUPUNCTURE AT THE FOURFOLD CLINIC by Brooke Moen

At the Fourfold Clinic, we are experimenting with the best way to take care of patients. One attempt is to add my services to the Community Supported Healthcare Plan. With this, we’ve been talking about community health and what that means. To me, it is the idea that illness is not an isolated incident, nor does it happen in a vacuum. Rather, it is part of a larger context of cause and effect patterns. As we have seen in the world particularly as of late, symptoms — cultural, economic, or physiological — are part of a larger system. Nature provides the best teacher of such symbiosis; it is the ultimate example of community.

This is the foundation of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which I’d like to share with you. For thousands of years, practitioners have been looking to nature to learn how elements and systems function. Without modern distractions such as media, or the advantage of current medical tools (such as imaging or blood tests), the Chinese utilized our most powerful human tools of observation and analysis. Acting as the first scientists, they felt the pulse, looked at the tongue, and developed a sophisticated system of diagnosis, using metaphors based in nature to describe patterns of health and illness. They took hundreds of herbs over hundreds of years and noticed the specific effects. They developed Acupuncture; the insertion of fine needles at various points on the body, which are part of a specific point prescription, to treat an organism’s carefully diagnosed imbalance. And lucky for us, they wrote it all down.

As a lifetime student of this complex medicine and its wise worldview, I feel honored to utilize its tools of Acupuncture and herbal medicine to help patients feel better. However, a major part of community health that I’m learning from Chinese Medicine’s Taoist roots is that the practitioner’s job is not to “bestow health” upon a patient. Rather, I am a partner in the patient’s journey of “unlearning.” Together, we peel back layers of conditioning (physical, mental, and/or emotional), to facilitate a person’s intelligence coming forward. By intelligence, I mean an innate knowing; the body and soul understand how to be healthy.

As an example of how this works, I’ll explain what one of my teachers means when he says “Give them feet.” All traditional healing systems emphasize digestion; help the patient digest and you improve assimilation. Many of you have experienced this with efforts to heal your gut with GAPS, among other things. But assimilation means more than just digesting food and processing nutrients. Its how life is taken in, processed, and transformed into energy. So if I can help a patient digest, assimilate life, I help to put his feet on the ground. I help him strengthen his ability to discriminate, trust his inner logic, and make decisions based on his natural “appetite,” rather than logic outside himself.

Another story shows how healing is community by nature, and is related to the idea of “nailing one foot to the ground.” We all have a sense of the importance of routine, particularly if we spend any time with the elderly or infants. And as part of the Fourfold Principles, Dr. Cowan has taught us much about rhythm and regularity. I often instruct patients to start by eating the same breakfast around the same time every morning, or in some cases, just eating breakfast. This may sound simplistic, but a survey conducted at a school of Chinese Medicine illustrates the power of this concept. Essentially, Hispanic patients who ate a daily staple of beans, rice and corn were compared to Euro-American patients who did not have a daily staple, and the Hispanic patients responded to Acupuncture and herbal medicine much more quickly and successfully.

Guided by this philosophy of creating stability and facilitating trust in a person’s innate wisdom, my treatments consist of three basic elements. The first is talking with a patient about her life. I listen to her experience, and encourage her to help me understand what she most needs. We talk about how the little things we do every day are powerful in the long run; like drops in a bucket, what we add slowly but surely over a lifetime will determine the bucket of health we carry around. Along these lines, recommendations such as drinking bone broth, doing abdominal massage, resting in the afternoon, and abiding by the seasons are discussed. How to nourish one self is a guiding principle. And since healing through food is a cornerstone of treatment at our clinic, I help patients understand how to do this.

The second element of treatment is Acupuncture. From a Western Medical viewpoint, it encourages the release of endorphins, which supports the all-important immune system. The Chinese Medical perspective can also put it simply; Acupuncture either moves what’s stuck, slows down hyper-function, fires up hypo-function, or in most cases, a bit of each. For the patient, this means lying down, having 3-8 fine needles inserted, resting (often sleeping) for 30-40 minutes, then waking feeling very relaxed. Many patients describe the post-acupuncture feeling as calm, yet energized.

The third element of treatment is herbal prescription. The Chinese Medical Pharmacopoeia consists of around 400 herbs, which are combined specifically for the patient’s constitution, symptoms, and how each herb compliments another. I use Spring Wind Dispensary, an herbal pharmacy where I once worked, because I trust the safety and sustainability of their products.

Treatment might consist of any or all of these three elements, depending on the patient. The idea is always to be assisting you with calibrating to the seasons (meaning rhythm of time cycles more than weather) through eating, resting, and taking herbs, so imbalance or disease will pass through, rather than becoming chronic. In some cases, regular Acupuncture sets up the body to better accept Dr. Cowan’s treatment plans. In others, well-timed treatments address specific pathologies such as menstrual difficulties or an injury. Some focus on the counseling aspect, while others work on a deeper level, helping the body let go of past or current issues that are difficult to access mentally or emotionally.

I hope this glimpse into community medicine has been interesting and useful. I’d like to think I’m addressing a good question I often get, “does Acupuncture work?” My answer is that it’s not magic, its medicine. This is the spirit of community health; rather than isolating a person and her symptom, instead let’s consider a broader picture of health. In China, when someone was sick, everyone in the family would take herbs and drink rice porridge, even when the ill person could not. This is the spirit I hope to foster at Fourfold, and I welcome you to take a seat at the table. Please call me at 415.420.3447 to learn more.

RECOMMENDED READING from Dr. Cowan

I don’t usually review two books in the same newsletter but there are some hidden but compelling similarities in these two books, The Vegetarian Myth and Cancer is a Fungus, that made me feel like I should. In many ways, it is the link between these two books that is the probably the most fascinating story.

The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith
Very occasionally powerful, life-changing books are written that give one the palpable sense that “if people would only listen” the world might be a different place. The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith is one such book. In this book Lierre essentially tells two intertwined stories. One is the story of the deterioration of her own health as a direct result of adopting a vegan diet. The second is the related tale of the destruction of our planet essentially as a result of the widespread adoption of agriculture, specifically agriculture based on the growing of grains. Her central premise is that, unlike what we are all led to believe, the absolute worst thing that could ever befall humans or the earth is if we all adopted a vegetarian or, worse yet, a vegan diet. To many, this is such an unbelievable head spinner that they simply will not even be able to entertain the ideas that are presented by Lierre. The ideas, the argument she presents to make her case are powerful, coherent and irrefutable – grains and in fact a grain-based (i.e. vegetarian) diet are literally killing us all.

First, the ecological argument. We are told that the biggest users of fresh water and the most wasteful, ecologically speaking, food we can eat is meat. We are told that if instead of feeding grains to cows to get meat, which is anyway poison for us to eat, we should feed that grain to people thereby feeding at least 30 people with a grain-based diet for every one person we can feed on a meat-based diet. We are told to eat low on the food chain to conserve resources and be ecologically friendly. And, finally and crucially we hear people proudly announce they don’t eat anything with faces as a sign that they are living out their deeply held convictions about social justice. The facts actually tell a completely different story.

Imagine the Middle East 10,000 years ago when the only people living in what we now call Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, etc., were nomadic hunter-gatherer types. This area was referred to as a paradise; it was lush, fecund; Lebanon was the land of the cedar forests. The area between the Tigris and Euphrates was literally paradise on earth. Then came agriculture, specifically the growing of grains. As happens where grains are grown and irrigation is used, the soil began to lose its vitality, the humous layer was lost. The irrigation and the converting of perennial grasses and the animals that live on these grasses to annual crops is akin to mining the nutrients and the fertility out of the soil. Without sufficient animal manure and animal bodies to put nutrients back into the soil, without the annual flooding of the plains that is stopped when irrigation systems are used, the land loses its nutrients, the soil becomes more salty and, as evidenced in the Middle East, eventually, inevitably the land becomes a desert. Lierre describes this process in intimate detail so the reader is left with no doubt that in human history, whenever the transition from perennial grass-based land – alongside naturally flowing lakes and rivers, co-existing with verdant forests – is converted into grain based agriculture, the inevitable result is everything dies. Everything – the plants, the insects, the wild animals and eventually the people.

Think of our own Great Plains. A brief 300 years ago this was a vast territory of perennial grass-based prairie, supporting millions of diverse forms of animals, plants and people for thousands of years. In fact over those thousands of years, the soil, the land that is our only home, was getting healthier and healthier. Estimates show that the topsoil layer of the unspoiled Great Plains was in some places more than 12 feet deep, a vast reservoir of fertility, of health of possibility for seemingly endless life on earth for a multitude of plants and animal beings. Along came grains and their “evil” cousin soya beans (the vegan diet and food processors’ darling). By this time agriculture had become more sophisticated, no more planting grains with sticks and burying fish in the soil, the green revolution. A blink of an eye later in terms of earth time, the Great Plains have become a literal wasteland. The only tall grass prairie left is confined to a few museums, the topsoil is in many places just a few inches thick; the animal and plant species extinctions are estimated between 20 to 40 percent. The human community is impoverished, the rivers are poisoned and the food is not worth eating. A few years of drought and we have a literal dustbowl as the few inches of topsoil left blows out towards California. Some would say this unspeakable tragedy is a result of commercial (chemical) agriculture and that what we need is a return to organics. They are wrong. In fact the first great dustbowl on the plains happened before there even was such a thing as chemical agriculture. No, as Lierre shows, this is the inevitable result of grain-based agriculture. It happens in every circumstance, at different speeds for sure, but in every instance where perennial grasses are converted to annual food crops, particularly grains.

If this wasn’t reason enough for conscientious people to shun a grain-based diet, Lierre spends the second half of the book detailing the negative health repercussions from adopting a grain-based, vegetarian or vegan diet. For those familiar with the work of the Weston A. Price foundation or The Four Fold Path to Healing, this will come as no surprise. What will be eye-opening for many is a detailed chart that compares the physiology of meat eaters with that of herbivores. If you still have any doubts that humans are literally physiologically required to live on mostly an animal food diet, I recommend checking out this enlightening chart. Lierre has done her homework. She references many studies that have been done in the last 100 years documenting the superior health outcomes, the absence of chronic disease, and the total absence of cancer and heart disease in people who eat the food that comes naturally out of a perennially based grass and forest system. What do these people eat? What is the “human” diet, the diet that works back to heal the land? Conveniently it is one diet, called the GAPS diet. As probably more than a hundred of my patients can attest, those who have literally regained their health as a result of the GAPS diet, it is no surprise that the very diet that can heal so many sick people is the very diet that,when applied to agriculture, can heal a “sick” earth.

Get this book, read it, pass it to your friends, especially your vegetarian friends, for as Lierre often says in our current situation, it is not enough any more to just have good intentions. You also have to be informed about what it is you are fighting for.

Cancer is a Fungus by Tulio Simoncini
In the last year, Cancer is a Fungus has become the hot new story in cancer. That alone made it worth exploring for me. The book is written by Italian oncologist Tulio Simoncini, who after his medical and oncology training, began to see conventional oncology treatment as basically a house of cards. As he explored deeper, he began to question not only the success of conventional oncology treatments, especially chemotherapy and radiation, but the entire scientific basis of our current view of cancer. An unquestioned “truth” in conventional oncology theory is that cancer is a genetic defect that arises as a mutation in a single cell and then grows from this single cell stock to first form the primary tumor and then metastasize to the other organs in the body.

This understanding of cancer in conventional oncology is the philosophical basis for all of our current therapies. That is, if we catch the cancer early, when it is still just a primary tumor, we remove this mutated cell mass and cure the cancer. If the cancer has spread we try to kill it with poison (chemotherapy), radiation, hormones or more lately specialized genetic products (i.e. Herceptin). After investigating the history of this theory and the dismal success rate for this type of therapy, Dr. Simoncini came to the startling conclusion that this whole genetic mutation theory is totally incorrect. This apparently rocked his life. His initial response to this revelation was to go back to university to study philosophy, apparently with the question of how is it that we as a “culture” decide that certain things are true. The first part of Cancer is a Fungus is the exploration of why we think certain things and in certain ways.

The second section of the book is the exploration of the history of how oncologists came to believe in the genetic defect/errant cell theory and the evidence that it is incorrect. Dr. Simoncini quotes from current oncology texts such as “the mechanism through which chromosomal alterations occur is to date unknown” to try to demonstrate that the proof that cancer is a genetic defect is simply unproven hypothesis. He then turns to current therapies in oncology and, using actual numbers from conventional literature, shows that the success rate for treating cancer is somewhere in the 2-5% range – in other words about the same as random events mixed with a strong placebo response. His conclusion is that the basic theories of our current approach to oncology and the treatments that have resulted from these theories are a dismal failure and should be abandoned.

Dr. Simoncini then turns to discuss his “revolutionary” theory in oncology which is that the vast percentage of cancers are actually nothing more than infections with the fungus we call candida albicans. This same fungus that causes vaginal infections in women, opportunistic infections in AIDS patients and skin rashes in many people is fingered by Dr. Simonicini as the sole cause of the vast majority of cancers. As evidence, he explains in detail the life cycle of candida and how it actually causes disease in humans. He points to research in various oncology journals suggesting that when pathologists look for candida in human tumors they find it in anywhere from 79% to 97% of the cases. And, finally he points out that in nature, especially plants, almost all tumors (e.g. of trees) are known to be caused by a variety of fungal infections. Fungal masses become tumors; when the host defenses slip, they spread; they are almost impossible to get rid of by the organism without some sort of intervention, and they are remarkably pleomorphic in their appearance. Dr. Simoncini makes a solid case that cancer is not some big scary multi-factorial mystery. Rather it is simply a combination of a weakened host and its subsequent invasion with candida albicans.

Finally, we get to the part of the book that makes the rest relevant. This is the section, backed up by written histories, pathology reports and in some cases actual CT scans or other x-rays (some are on his website www.cancerfungus.com) where Dr. Simoncini relates how when he treats his cancer patients with the appropriate anti-fungal therapy somewhere around 90% of his patients will be “cured” of their cancer. Among the cases he presents include cancer of the pancreas, melanomas, lung cancer and a variety of the cancers known to have particularly poor prognoses. The surprising part of the therapy, well actually shocking part, is that the treatment he uses is high dose of a concentrated baking soda solution injected via intra-arterial catheter directly into the tumor/fungal mass. This means in the case of a cancer of the pancreas you must instill the baking soda directly into the pancreatic artery. This is, of course, a fairly complex procedure requiring the skills of surgeons and radiologist trained in this technique. Currently, as far as I know, the only place this therapy is available is with Dr. Simoncini’s group in Italy but his intention is to make his case and literally revolutionize the treatment of oncology patients around the world with his simple and straightforward approach.

Two questions arise at this point. First, is it true that you can cure most cancer patients with this baking soda approach which, as he points out, literally proves that cancer is either a fungus (baking soda is a good anti-fungal defect) or maybe a baking soda deficiency (unlikely)? And second, what does this have to do with The Vegetarian Myth? Tackling the second question, what is striking about this is that when you put together GAPS theory, low-dose naltrexone theory, and the basic story of The Vegetarian Myth, what emerges is that pre-civilized humans simply never got cancer. Civilization is essentially the process of turning complex and stable diverse ecologies into large fields of grain. Another way of saying this is we convert the diverse nutrients from the soil into carbohydrate and opiate-producing factories. This degrades the ecology of the earth and turns us into weakened (from the opiates), obese (from the excess sugars), poisoned (form the modern agriculture techniques) beings. Our strong susceptibility to chronic yeast infections is a result of the above three factors. Put this all together and cancer does start to look like a fungal infection. Unfortunately, I can’t confirm the baking soda treatment from personal experience; if anyone has a personal experience, I would love to hear about it. What I do know is that the more determined I get to restore the ecology of my patients, including getting rid of candida, the better the results overall. Dr. Simoncini makes a strong case that baking soda is the most direct way. I use and have used other ways of improving host defenses and affecting candida besides baking soda. Regardless, Cancer is a Fungus has piqued my interest and helped me see that fundamentally we in the GAPS and WAPF movement are on the right track.

NOURISHING RECIPE from Iso Rabins of forageSF

Heirloom Tomato Ragu with Wild Boar over Fresh Pasta
We cooked this dish at our underground Wild Boar Dinner in San Francisco in September. Thanks to Ellen Roggerman for input on the sauce. For this dish we used orange and red heirloom tomatoes from Balakian Farms near San Francisco, and wild boar from…well that’s a bit of a secret. The first thing you want to do is start the wild boar cooking. That’s what is going to take most of your time in this dish.
We used several shoulders of boar in this instance (because that’s what we had), but other cuts that respond well to slow cooking, or even ground meat, could work.
Ingredients:
1 10-lb boar shoulder (or several smaller ones)
garlic
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil
1 C red wine
2 white onions
5 lb heirloom tomatoes of different colors (hint: if you want to get heirlooms cheap, go just as the farmers market is closing, we got these for $1/lb)
coriander, herb salt
Sucanat to taste

Wild game has a tendency to dry out more than cultivated meat, so slow braising is key. Preheat oven to 300 degrees, then coat the meat in a rub of garlic, thyme, and olive oil. Place in large stew-pot or baking dish, cover well, and cook…for 4 hours. Check on the meat every hour or so, to see how it’s looking. The meat is done when it is falling apart. Take the pan out of the oven, and remove meat to separate plate to rest. Pour off all but 2 Tbsp of liquid from pan, add wine and cook over high heat, scraping bottom of pan to remove cracklings, cook down for three minutes. This can be used to add an intensity of flavor to the pasta sauce, or saved in the fridge (keeps about a week) to flavor another dish.

For the Sauce:
First I cut the heirlooms into segments using a 3:1 ratio of orange to red heirlooms. The orange heirlooms taste amazingly bright and sweet so I use some red heirlooms to give the flavor more backbone or base. Heat a good amount of olive oil in a pan. Brown chopped garlic and add onions and salt. Allow onions to get soft and translucent. Add almost all of your orange tomato segments and then slowly add in red tomatoes in stages. Turn burner down to medium. As the tomatoes release their juices, watch the color. If it starts turning too brown, add more orange tomatoes.

Add coriander, herb salt, and kosher salt to taste. Cook for 30-40 minutes until tomatoes are very soft and lots of juice has come out. Let cool and then blend with an immersion blender (if you don’t have one, using a blender in batches works too). Keep the ragu somewhat chunky: you don’t need to blend it very thin but also don’t want big pieces of skin. Return to pot and heat. Add more coriander and salt if desired. If flavors aren’t coming together well, try adding a bit of sucanat, 1/2 teaspoon at a time. Take the wild boar that has been resting, and pull apart as you would pulled pork. Add to sauce, and cook a further 10 minutes to blend flavors. Serve over fresh whole grain pasta or brown rice.

Iso Rabins is the founder of forageSF, a wild foods business/community in San Francisco that provides a monthly box of all local, sustainably foraged wild foods to its Bay Area members. In addition to the CSF (Community Supported Forage), forageSF leads guided edible plant walks to teach people about the abundance of wild edibles just beyond their yards. You can find Iso and forageSF at www.forageSF.com

FOR BAY AREA RESIDENTS

A Note from Personal Chefs and Nutritional Coaches Anna Mollow and Jane Hyman-Herman

We are personal chefs and nutritional coaches in Sonoma County, California. Our delicious, nutrient-dense foods are made using locally grown organic or “beyond organic” ingredients and traditional food-preparation methods. We will personally prepare for you just about any traditional food you may request: stews, casseroles, soups, kimchi, sauerkraut, pickles, bone broth, yogurt, kombucha, liver pate, mayonnaise, and lacto-fermented tonics. We specialize in creating entrees and baked goods to be eaten on the GAPS diet.

In addition to food preparation, we offer nutritional coaching. Our approach differs from that of most nutritional consultants: rather than advocating weight loss or restrictions on calories, carbohydrates, or fat, we help you incorporate more satisfying, nourishing foods into your diet.
For more information, please call us at 707.528.4554 (11am- 11pm PST) or write to us at uncommonculturesfoods@gmail.com.

UPCOMING CONFERENCES AND SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS

The Weston A. Price Foundation’s Wise Traditions Conference, “Honoring the Sacred Foods”, is coming up in just a few weeks, November 13th through November 16th just outside Chicago in Schaumberg, Illinois. Dr. Cowan will be discussing cancer from the perspective of the work of Weston A. Price, including a description of the “true” cause of cancer and exploring the shortfalls of conventional diagnosis (including biopsy) and treatment. He will also provide a review of holistic treatments for cancer including diet, supplements and herbs, with an in-depth look at the use of Iscador (mistletoe extract) in successful European treatment plans. For more information and to register, go to www.westonaprice.org and click on the link to “Conferences” under Get Involved.

Dr. Cowan will also be speaking at The Fourfold Healing Conference in Nashua, New
Hampshire, from January 29-31, 2010 alongside Sally Fallon and Jaimen McMillan. This is
an incredible opportunity to spend time with the authors of The Fourfold Path to
Healing and to learn more about their unique viewpoints on nutrition, movement, and
health. Health professionals, dietitians, nutritionists, and anyone else with an interest
in the health and well-being of their friends and family should attend this conference.
More information about the Fourfold Path to Healing Conference can be found
on the Fourfold Healing website. If you’re interested in helping spread the
word about the conference, we’ve also set up a Facebook page for the conference
(http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nashua-NH/The-Fourfold-Path-to-Healing-
Conference/145047436751). If you’re on Facebook, “Become a Fan” and suggest that
your friends do the same so we can spread the word about this exciting weekend of
education and discussions.

This spring Dr. Cowan and The Growing Edge Institute will team up to present a six-week, internet-based series of lectures entitled “Healing From the Inside Out”. The Growing Edge Institute is an innovative online learning institution and community. Past speakers have included Eckhart Tolle and Starhawk. This spring Dr. Cowan will discuss a variety of topics including the causes and treatments of gut disorders, heart disease, cancer, and much more. Each week he will spend one to two hours discussing these topics, after which he will be available to answer your e-mail and online questions. We are very excited about the opportunity to work with the Growing Edge Institute and we will post more information as we determine the exact dates and time for the course.