Liquid Sunshine Beverage

 

This is a beverage that I made up and have been drinking everyday. I hope I am reaping health benefits. I don't really know, but the ingredients are supposed to be really good for you. I think the color is so cheerful and inviting. I have dubbed it "Liquid Sunshine."

Ingredients:

Turmeric (3/4tsp.) - Antiinflammatory, blood thinner 

Ginger (5-6 slivers) - digestive aid, lowers blood pressure  

Astragalus (1/2 tsp ) - immune regulator 

Black pepper (dash) - good for stuff, and amplifies turmeric's benefits 

Lemon juice (splash) - nice flavor 

Pour hot water over all the ingredients in a pint jar. Stir well while you drink to keep the herbs from settling out. You want to drink all the dredges.

I have been learning from Doc Jones of the Homegrown Herbalist YouTube channel over the past few years. He has a great sense of humor which is always the number one quality that catches my interest in a teacher. I think his knowledge of herbs is way up there. He was a veterinarian for years and has a lot of clinical experience with herbs working for ailments in animals, a lot of which carries over to human uses. He is also an herbalist and teaches classes online.

Here are videos where he mentions Astragalus, Turmeric and Black Pepper.

Natto Making Experiment

This post is *not* a tutorial. I just want to document my first attempt at natto making. Making natto was an adventure and I made many mistakes along the way.

I have wanted to try making natto since I watched Emmy do it on her YouTube channel.

I started by soaking the soy beans for 24 hours. I heard that this small foam that develops on the water surface is an indicator that the beans have soaked long enough.

I drained the beans.

I cooked them in my electric pressure cooker for 25 minutes under pressure.

I put the hot soy beans into a couple ceramic vessels that I had sanitized with bleach. 

This is when I started to make mistakes. I realized that every example online only used shallow dishes to ferment natto. I had counted on using a deep container to ferment a whole bunch at one time. I had to alter my plans and use only a shallow layer of beans in my containers.

Boy, did I have a lot of extra soy beans!

To inoculate my soy beans with the right culture I put a chunk of frozen commercially prepared natto in the center of the hot beans.

After a few minutes it was totally thawed and I stirred it around thoroughly to get culture on all the beans.

I used a piece of plastic from an old cereal bag, which I had also sanitized, to seal in the moisture. I poked a few holes for breathing and left my thermometer through one of the holes to monitor the temperature.

Here I ran into another problem. I had counted on using the electric pressure cooker to keep my fermenting beans at the right temperature just like the lady in the video had done. The problem is that my electric pressure cooker is not an Insta-pot brand and it does not have a yogurt setting, which I had not noticed until I was ready to ferment my beans.

After ample googling and blog reading I came to the conclusion that I would try my crockpot on the keep warm setting. I believe that the keep warm setting is still too hot. (Natto ferments at 90°-113° F.) I planned to turn it on for a while and then turn it off for a little bit and so on and so forth through the night. 

I fell asleep and left it on for too long, or so I thought. And then it got too cold one time, or so I thought.

I wasn't too optimistic when the fermentation time was over. I checked to see if the beans had the strings to prove that they had turned into natto.

We had strings! Somehow it had worked!

We eat our natto on top of a serving of rice with sardines or boiled eggs. 

I like to garnish with pickled onions or peppers or green onions. And always a sprinkle of soy sauce.

I eat my bites on little pieces of nori when we have some. Very tasty and very nutritious.

Beef Liver Pâté

 

I like this liver spread on toast. I feel good about eating this because I know it's a food with a lot of nutritional value. The flavor is an acquired taste I would say. It is a very adult food. 

Liver Pâté

1 onion diced

1 carrot shredded

2 T. fat or oil

1 1/2 tsp. ground thyme 

Dash of cayenne pepper 

1 lb. Beef Liver 

3/4 cup broth

1 T. lemon juice 

1 T. Worcester sauce 

1 T. Salt

1/2 T. Pepper

1 stick of butter

Saute the carrots and onion in the fat or oil. Sprinkle in the ground thyme. Cut the liver into chunks. Add the liver to the skillet with the onions and carrots. Add the broth and cook gently until the liver pieces are no longer pink.

Add the lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. 

Pour everything into a blender. Add salt and pepper. Blend until smooth and cooled down a bit. Add butter a few tablespoons at a time. 

Chill for one day to meld flavors. 

Lambsquarters | Wild Edibles

 

Lambsquarters is a common weed that is usually very easy to grow. For some reason there was no established presence of lambsquarters in our yard when we moved here a few years ago. Disturbed soil is all the invitation that Lambsquarters needs to come take up residence. True to form Lambsquarters seeds have found their way to my garden beds, finally. I am sure to never have a shortage of lambsquarters from now on. Lambsquarters self sow prolifically, and you know that I going to be letting my lambsquarters go to seed. :-)

Lambsquarters is a very easy to identify wild edible. The leaves are triangular in shape with rough toothed edges. The underside of the leaves have a powdery white coating this coating is on the topside of young leaf clusters. The stems can have purple streaks. Sometimes this purple color is a feature of the young baby leaves at the tips of branches.

I found this highly accurate while also humorous quote on Sam Sycamore's web page about Wild Spinach:

"Lambsquarters is yet another example of an extraordinarily common and nutritious edible wild plant that most farmers and gardeners exterminate in order to make room for their inferior lettuces and wimpy salad greens." 

I couldn't agree more. Lambsquarters is easy to grow, easy to harvest, and easy to prepare. And it has a mild flavor. You can use lambsquarters in any application that you would use spinach. And that is simply because Lambsquarters is wild spinach! 

I like to eat lambsquarters raw in salads, and in sandwiches. I use lambsquarters in cooked dishes like pasta, egg casserole, potato hash, and soup.

The tender stems can be eaten raw like broccoli stalks dipped in ranch dressing. 

Lambsquarters leaves can be harvested by picking them individually or (what I prefer) by snapping off the young few inches of leafy stems at the ends of branches. By continuously clipping back new growth you cause the plant to branch out and turn into a shrub like shape. This gives you much more area to harvest from.

When I harvest lambsquarters I like to pop it into a bowlful of water. The leaves with retain their crispness if they are in water which is nice if you are eating them raw. Even if the lambsquarters has been picked for a while and gone limp it will perk right up if you pop it into a bowl of water.

Have you tried Lambsquarters? Do you have a favorite way to eat it? Please let us know in the comment section!

Sandwich Loaf Sourdough Bread Recipe

 

This recipe includes oatmeal for a really flexible moist bread loaf that can be thinly sliced for sandwiches. It is my favorite bread to make now that I have an active sourdough starter again. My whole family devours these loaves so quickly, which is why I make a two loaf recipe.

Oaty Sourdough Sandwich Bread

2 cups boiling water

1 cup oatmeal (old fashioned or quick oats)

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup molasses

2 tsp. salt

2 cups active sourdough starter (mine is whole wheat)

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

2 1/2 - 3 cups all purpose flour

In the bowl of a stand mixer: pour the boiling water over 1 cup of oats and let sit 5 minutes. 

Add butter, molasses, and salt.

Wait until the mixture cools sufficiently so as not to kill the yeast. You want the temperature to come down below 120°F.

Stir in the 2 cups of sourdough starter. 

Add both types of flour and mix for 5 minutes on low speed.

Rest 15 minutes.

Knead for 5 minutes by machine.

Form into ball, cover, and rise in a warm draft free place 2-4 hours. (2 hours at warmer temperatures and 4 hours at cooler temperatures.)

Grease 2 loaf pans. Shape dough and raise in loaf pans for 2-4 hours until nearly doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 400°F. Place a large roaster pan in the oven while it is preheating on a shelf below where the bread will bake.

When rise is complete slit the top of each loaf with a bread knife.

Use a steam baking technique by adding 1 1/2 cups of water into the hot roaster pan as soon as the bread is placed in the oven to bake. Close the oven door at once to trap the steam. Bake at 400° F. for 35 minutes.

Remove to wire racks to cool.

Slice and enjoy!

Matthew 6:11 
Give us this day our daily bread. 

Green Tomatoes Before The Frost

This year I picked all my green tomatoes before the frost and lacto fermented them. This is the first time I have tried preserving green tomatoes. I didn't want the tomatoes to go to waste, if possible.

I have this belief that fermented foods are really healthy. That is why I settled on lacto fermentation as my preservation method.

My Harvest! 18 pounds of produce.

I chopped the tomatoes and the peppers that 
I found in the garden.

I salted the vegetables and submerged
 them in a brine.

In one crock I used these muslin
spice bags to help contain the tomato
pieces under the ceramic weights.
The spice bags didn't have any spice
in them. I just needed some kind of cloth
to hold all the tomatoes under the brine. 

In these glass containers I used plastic lids
to hold the tomatoes under the brine.
I stacked the one vessel inside the other to weigh
the lower tomatoes down.

After 12 days at room temperature I checked
the tomatoes for acidity by tasting them.

There was quite a lot of kahm yeast
growing on the surface of the brine.
This yeast is benign and harmless.

I tried scooping off some of the yeast,
But most of it mixed into the brine and fell.

The tomatoes tasted briney and sour.
They had a nice tingly zing. 

Now, tell me if these picked tomatoes look appealing to you. I think they look delicious! But I am weird that way. Lol! I like all kinds of foods that turn Mr. In the Mid-west's stomach. Let me add: he is in no way a picky eater. I'm just strange. Haha!

Anyway, I really like to chop these pickled tomatoes into a smaller dice and use them as a topping for bowls of rice with natto, tuna, and freshly diced onion. Yum!.......for me. :)

Let Thy Food Be Thy Medicine

 Two ways to eat fresh onions and garlic

Why eat fresh garlic and onions? These bulbs contain a component called Allicin among other health promoting components. Allicin inhibits the reproduction of bacteria and viruses. I don't know all the science, but you can read more HERE on Herbazest.com.

Whenever I am fighting a bacterial or viral infection I try to consume as much garlic as possible.

Most of the time I straight up eat garlic cloves. But, eating garlic can be way more pleasurable.

For onions try this Tomato Onion Salad.

Dice half an onion and a medium tomato.

Mix together with salt, pepper, basil, a couple tablespoons of mayonnaise and as much apple cider vinegar as you like (2ish Tbsp. for me).

This salad was so delicious that last time I was sick I was eating this salad twice a day. That makes 1 whole onion a day! I think that it did me a lot of good and it was real food as medicine.

I love garlic! There are many ways that I get fresh garlic into my diet. I've made a garlic and oil emulsion as a salad dressing. That is a good way to get a few fresh garlic cloves with a meal. My family has a tradition of making what we call Garlic Salad, which is a garlic spread made from cooked eggplant pulp, bread crumbs, olive oil, vinegar, and salt. It is similar to the Lebanese dish; Baba Ganu. I quit adding the bread crumbs and I like it much better that way. (I never told my Grandma.Shhh)

One of my favorite ways to eat fresh garlic in a meal is a variation of Huevos Rancheros.

I mix 3-4 cloves of minced garlic with a couple ounces of cream cheese.

Spread the cream cheese mixture onto toasted corn tortillas.

Top with a fried eggs and chopped cilantro.

And, for a added boost for flavor and health promoting capsaicin, add Tabasco sauce or your favorite hot pepper sauce. 

There you have it! Two ways to make food your medicine by utilizing the flavors of fresh onions and garlic!

I hope you enjoy!

Let me know if you have tried any of these before or how you use food as your medicine!

Psalms 104:14 

He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle,

 and herb for the service of man:

 that he may bring forth food out of the earth;

Onion Pack For Congestion

 

I had to make onion packs this week for my sick baby. This is an old home remedy for congestion. It helps break up the congestion and get the phlegm moving.

When I was a new mom I was at a loss for coming up with a way to put this on a person. I tried putting the onion on the skin and wrapping a scarf around the chest. It didn't work.

This works:

Dice about a 1/4 cup onion and place in the middle of a flannel rag or cloth napkin. Sprinkle with ground mustard. 

Go easy with the mustard it can be irritating on the skin. Ask me how I know....

Fold the napkin strategically encasing the onions.

I fold it so that one side of the pocket is only one layer of fabric thick. You can see how the onion juice easily soaks through on that side. 

I place the thin side against the skin and then safety pin the pack to the inside of the patient's shirt.

Make sure when you safety pin the pack on, that you go through all the layers of the pack that way it will stay neatly folded and doesn't spill onions everywhere.

I also had to mix up some garlic infused oil for earaches. This is my favorite remedy for earaches.

I mix about 1 TBS. Olive Oil with 1 freshly grated garlic clove. I put one to two drops of this garlic infused oil down the ear 4-6 times a day. Wiggle the ear a little to make sure the oil goes all the way down. You can use a small piece of a cotton ball or wadded up bath tissue to plug the ear and keep the oil from running out and staining pillow cases.

Lavender essential oil (diluted in a carrier) wiped on the outside of the ear hole has been very soothing, in my experience. I don't recommend that essential oils be put into the ear canal. Keep the essential oils on the outside!

I like to use a blend of Laurel Leaf, Eucalyptus, Peppermint, Melaleuca, Lemon, Cardamom Seed, Ravintsara, and Ravensara essential oils, also, wiped on the outside of the ear hole. This helps take the edge off of the pain. I use the dōTERRA Breath® blend (diluted in a carrier). 

There is a cool company that sells knock off Young Living and dōTERRA blends. HERE IS A LINK. I have never tried them or done a side by side comparisons. But, I am sharing their site because they are much cheaper. And, I am not an essential oil cult member, even if I am a dōTERRA consultant. ;)

I hope you are all staying well! Let me know if you have any tried and true congestion and earache home remedies! :)

A Bunch of Drying

 I've been drying some of summer's bounty the last couple months.

The children and I picked pineapple weed all throughout June. We were able to collect almost a full quart jar of dried pineapple weed flowers. I blended them with mint and lemon balm for tea.

The rest of the herbs and flowers from my yard, that can be used for herbal infusions, I have been collecting and blending together. 

There is a little borage, calendula, mint, lemon balm, lavender, and rose petals. I added some anise seed and ginger. I'm calling this Yard Blend Tea. :)

From our neighborhood community garden I have all this basil to dry.

These hot banana peppers are from my garden. I did not feel like pickling them. I decided to hang them and once they're dry maybe I can grind them into some kind of chili powder. ? I have never done anything like that before. Have any of you ever dried banana peppers? I could use some advice!

Psalms 104:14
He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle,

and herb for the service of man: 

that he may bring forth food 

out of the earth;