Would you like some tea?

Have you ever felt compelled to make fermented tea from a slimy hunk of fungus?



I have.

I'm blessed to have cool friends who have things like kombucha scobies to give away. A couple of weeks ago, I became the proud owner of my very own scobie. (Thanks, Apryl!) And now, we have successfully fermented our own batch of kombucha.

I have to tell you, this is about the most disgusting-looking thing I've ever considered ingesting. In general, we're taught to avoid things that are growing fungus. But kombucha is different. That mushroom on top is chock-full of healthy probiotics, spreading it's healthy goodness all through the tea.

I had a fantastic time poking at the scoby with a wooden spoon. There was lots of "Oh, ew!" and some minor squealing going on. I'm such a sissy when it comes to things that are slimy.


And then there was the question of who would be doing the tasting.

Thankfully, my sweet oldest daughter happily volunteered (a brave little soul, she is.) I mixed it with a splash of cranberry-raspberry juice, and she drank it all up.

Then Littlest One demanded her own glass. I gave in and tasted it... and honestly? It was really good. It tastes just like the kombucha I buy at the health food store. And it's a heckuva lot cheaper. You can reuse the scoby over and over, growing new baby ones to give away with each batch. How cool is that? It's like the gift that keeps on giving!

For more information about kombucha (and in case you're convinced I'm crazy) here's an informative link:
Kombucha Tea (wikipedia)

And here's the site where I got my kombucha-making directions from:
The New Homemaker: Kombucha

The end of The Diet

Twelve weeks ago, I started a sort of cleansing diet. Twelve weeks ago, I wasn't sure I'd survive.

For three months, I didn't eat any sugar (or honey, or agave, or maple syrup, or any other sweeteners except stevia), wheat, dairy, yeast, fruits (except sour apples), fermented foods or processed foods.

Most folks hear that list, and wonder what I did eat. To put it simply: meat, vegetables, and whole grains.

You'd be amazed at how hard it is to give up sugar. When you think of sugar, you think of sweets - cookies, candy, etc. But it's in everything, everywhere you look, hiding behind all kinds of different names. Most crackers have sugar, even the kind at the health food store have "evaporated cane juice" which is, um, sugar. Salad dressings all have sugar, and if not sugar, then honey. Or even worse, high fructose corn syrup. Everywhere you turn, every label you read, there's probably sugar in some form. And the addiction to sugar! Oh man, it's a hard thing to give up. The first two weeks were absolutely terrible. My blood sugar has been completely off kilter for.. eh, about the last twenty eight years. To cut sugar completely and let my body regulate was not an easy thing. It's funny though, without sugar in my diet, I've got more energy than I've ever had before. It feels so good to not be exhausted all day, to have energy to keep up with everything I need to do, to have the energy to run around with my kids. Funny how sugar just sucks the energy out of you, and how much you notice it after you've given it up.

There were some things I really missed - and some things I didn't think I would. The worst was skipping the slice of still-warm bread on baking day. I still had to cook all the things I wasn't eating, since I do have a family. Poor Chloe - "Um, Mom? That diet's not on us too, is it?" Both children were very helpful, actually. If I did cheat (which I did about five times in the 12 weeks of the diet) they would remind me: "Mom, that's not on your diet." If someone offered me something I couldn't have, they'd tell them, "Mom's on a diet, she can't have that." I snapped at them a few times - I didn't need diet police, thanks.

I learned to substitute: almond milk for regular milk, spelt or brown rice flour instead of whole wheat, stevia for sweetening. Have you seen the commercials for Stevia in the Raw? I didn't know it existed until I saw it on the shelf. It claims to work as a "cup for cup alternative" to sugar. It's a lie. Don't buy it, the stuff tastes absolutely awful. Stevia tends to be slightly bitter, but in that form, it's terrible. And the filler is a by-product of the corn industry, which I find irritating. Anyway, I did find a more natural version of stevia and learned to use it for some things, but it's definitely not the same as sugar.

I concocted a few "sweets" recipes - carob-chip cookies, apple crumble. Of course, they weren't actually sweet. The cookies were hilarious to me - they looked like cookies. They had the texture of cookies, chips even. They just didn't actually taste like cookies. It's amazing the things that taste good though, when you're not eating much. Apples (the only fruit I could have) were sweet enough to get me through my worst sugar cravings - buckwheat flapjacks topped with simmered apples and cinnamon turned into one of my favorite meals. Thankfully, I did this diet through apple season here - nothing beats fresh, local, organic apples.

I learned some things philosophically too. I think it's mentally healthy to deny one's self something once in awhile, it builds confidence and strength. Learning to resist temptation is good for the soul: it's especially difficult when that temptation is Mom's lasagna and apple pie. Or buttermilk pancakes. Truly, my mother's cooking was the hardest thing to avoid.

Now that it's over? I'll probably never go back to the way I ate before, except maybe as an occasional treat. My body's much happier with the way I've been eating the past three months - I can't find any reason not to keep it up. I'll add back in a few things - honey, whole wheat. The rest of it, I'm pretty happy without it.

Except that we're coming up on Christmas cookie season. I did great resisting temptation, but I'm not sure even I have it in me to pass on Russian tea cakes and chocolate-dipped brownies!

Pumpkin Cookies: Friend, or Foe?

I was going to post a quick little blog with pictures from our recent afternoon spent decorating pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies with a new icing recipe.



Because they were cute pictures.

And we had a lot of fun.

I was going to tell you how my sweet children do such a great job of eating healthy foods without complaint that I decided they deserved an "almost normal" kid treat.

But not anymore. No, this is going to turn into another boring, natural health blog. Sorry. But do bear with me.

My children have been utter spazzes for two days. They've been running and screaming through the house, pushing and shoving and fighting, jumping on (and off) of the furniture, and crying at the drop of a hat (or fork, as the case may be.) In short, these are not my children. My children may be energetic, but not like this. Even my hyper seven year old possesses more self control than this. I thought about posting a blog asking for someone to return my children and please take theirs back, because this wasn't working out for me.

And then it clicked.

Orange pumpkins. If you've watched Barney's Favorite Colors enough times, you'll know that if you mix red and yellow, you get orange.

Red dye makes my children - especially my oldest - absolutely crazy. They have it so infrequently that I often forget about it's effects, but it doesn't take me long to remember. She turns from a sweet, if energetic, little girl into Satan's spawn. (I'm convinced this is the primary reason devils are often depicted as being red.)

I had to get out of the shower four times tonight, sopping wet and naked, to ask (beg) my children to calm down. This is not normal. The evening culminated in tears for everyone (myself included in that,) with Littlest One (thankfully) falling asleep fairly quickly, and Biggest One throwing a full-blow, out of control violent tantrum.

The difference is like night and day. Since we've started eating real food, these episodes have diminished significantly. We went to a birthday party back in February where the main color was pink, and we had a meltdown that day, too. But it seems like if I think about it, I can always trace this rotten, scary behavior back to the evil Red Dye.

So while my kids definitely deserve a yummy treat once in awhile, we're going to stick to natural colors from now on, thanks.

If your kid is the same - sweet as pie one day, and on the road to auditioning for the role of Satan the next - maybe food dyes are something to consider? I'm glad we've got this figured out. I never want to live through another night like tonight. You can Google "Red Dye Behavior" for more stories and information about the chemical effects of Red Dye on the brain. I did. It's scary stuff.

Thoughts on Natural Healing

One hundred years ago, women learned how to feed their families by watching their mothers and grandmothers. They learned to garden, they learned to prepare simple, nutritious meals that satisfied taste buds and nutritional needs. Recipes and techniques were passed down through the generations, a knowledge embedded in the culture of our nation.

Sixty years ago, we stopped listening to our mothers. We started letting the Department of Agriculture tell us how to eat. We started cooking with microwaves, preparing soup from a can, and buying our dinners in boxes in the freezer section. And look where it's gotten us - we're suffering from terrifying epidemics of cancer, diabetes, obesity, depression, heart disease.

Exactly the same can be said for the medicinal culture of our nation. One hundred years ago, women relied on home remedies and simple, natural medications and herbs to treat their families' illnesses, aches, and pains. And much of the time, those home remedies worked. I'm happy to admit that there are some true benefits to scientific progress. At the times when home remedies don't work, we're lucky that we live in a day in age when we can turn to the medical profession for help. But I don't think that means we need to give up those tried and true home remedies and herbal medicines. In fact, I think we should try them first. We've learned in the past five or ten years how bad antibiotics really are for us, and we're learning more every day. We're learning about the risks of vaccinating our children against common diseases. We're watching children's medications like Tylenol and Motrin get recalled. There aren't any side effects from a dose of cod liver oil or a concoction of herbal tinctures.

Many of us are re-learning how to feed our families. I think it's time we started learning to care for our families' medical needs as well.

I had a happy success over the weekend, when my Littlest One came down with a bad cold, and then a case of pink eye. Poor kid was sneezing and sniffling, and refused to open her eyes. It was about the most pathetic thing I've ever seen. The first thing I did was start feeding her herbal antibiotics. In a shot glass, I mixed half an ounce of warm water, a dropperful each of echinacea (immune booster) and olive leaf extract (antibiotic properties) with 10 drops of grapefruit seed extract (also antibiotic) and half a teaspoon of honey (to mask the awful taste.) I gave her that mixture four or five times a day. To help ease the discomfort of the pink eye I tried a compress made of grated potatoes (an anti-inflammatory) wrapped in cheese cloth and then soaked in warmed raw milk with honey (antibacterial properties) mixed in. We called it her "squishy" and she held one on her eye every so often through the day.

Forty eight hours later, she's bright-eyed and bushy tailed and you'd never know she was sick.

I'd decided that if she wasn't getting better by Monday I'd take her in to see a doctor, but I'm glad I didn't need to. No icky antibiotics, no side effects, and Littlest One is back to normal again.

Have you had any successes with natural healing? What are you favorite remedies? We may not be able to ask our great grandmothers, but we as mothers can certainly trade ideas and build up our knowledge banks!

The garlic harvest

I just spent an hour sipping Plum Creek merlot and braiding garlic in my front yard as the sun was setting.

I'm pretty sure there's no better way to spend an evening, if one must spend it alone.

Except that I reek of garlic, and the scent may very well not dissipate before my husband arrives home tomorrow.

The girls and I harvested the remainder of the garlic tonight - 61 heads in all. I braided all the softneck heads, and just tied the hardnecks into bundles. Since the best place to cure garlic is somewhere dry, warm, and sheltered from the elements, I have bundles of garlic hanging all over my front porch. It'll have to stay there for about two weeks, until it's dried enough to store.

Sadly, I'm quite certain this means I shouldn't expect any sexy vampires to show up and keep me company when my husband leaves again. :::sigh:::

On the up side, we have enough garlic to get us through the year, with plenty to flavor spaghetti sauces and salsas, and to keep us healthy in case we're plagued with strep throat or bronchitis again this winter. There's plenty of satisfaction in knowing I can grow my own medicine.

I'd share pictures of the braids with you, but I assure you, they're not that pretty. Braiding garlic is harder than it looks!

Is there hope?

I might just be crazy optimistic. I realize that. But it really seems to me that more people are making The Change. A lot more people.

This stuff is making it big. There's a whole TV show about it now, this crazy idea of actually eating real food. There are fantastic journalists writing books and articles that people are really reading, there are bloggers lining up like crazy to share the things they're learning and doing in their kitchens.

For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, people are starting to question whether the scientists really have any clue what they're talking about, and they're doing it en masse. As shoppers, we're learning that just because the Wheat Thins box tells us they're healthy, or the Oreo package says it's only 100 calories, does NOT actually mean this stuff is okay to be eating. As moms and housewives, we're donning our aprons and wielding rolling pins, baking our breads and muffins from scratch again, after finally figuring out that the pre-made mixes our mothers adopted are actually probably killing us. We're shunning the aluminum cans and learning to make broth, we're insisting that huge corporations like Wal Mart start providing us with organic yogurt and whole grains. And they're doing it.

There have been movements like this before - people trying to tell us that this "modern" way of eating is probably making us very sick, telling us to get back to eating actual food. Remember the "Back-to-the-Landers"? But we've never listened the way we are now. Maybe it's because we have more tools now - we have access to articles online, we have the means to share the knowledge we gain with huge quantities of people easily. People don't have to listen to their doctors regurgitate outdated, incorrect nutritional philosophies anymore if they don't want to.

I'm excited. I think it's cool to be a part of this. It thrills me to see so many people joining forces, using every outlet, to get these ideas out to the general public. To the many bloggers, to the TV chefs, to the journalists willing to shun politically correct "nutritionism" in favor of actual fact - a big Thank You. Little by little you're creating hope that our species could actually survive, that our children might not die of Western Disease.

We're starting to stand up for ourselves - do you see it? Or am I just optimistic crazy?

Adventures in Homemaking - Yogurt Soup

I attempted yogurt making for the first time this weekend. It wasn't exactly what I'd call successful. It didn't set much... well, at all really. I know homemade yogurt isn't as thick as store bought yogurt because it doesn't have all the additives like pectin and tapioca, but I'm pretty sure it gets thicker than this.

I followed the crock pot method. I feel like it wasn't exact enough - no measuring the temperature of the milk, etc. I'm going to try the standard method of heating the milk, then culturing it, then putting it in a cooler full of hot water bottles to keep it warm, and we'll see how that goes.

The other thing that could've caused trouble is that I couldn't find plain yogurt in any store I looked in. I got the closest I could - only milk and pectin, made by Dannon - but it wasn't just plain yogurt. Most of them that were labeled "plain" had not only milk and pectin, but tapioca, sugar or corn syrup, different preservatives. WHY is it so hard to find Just Plain Yogurt? Even Vitamin Cottage, our health food store, didn't care any plain yogurts that were actually plain. I find this irritating. Can anyone recommend a brand that's actually plain, that I just haven't found yet? Please let me know if you know of one, so I can try that and see if it helps my yogurt set. The up side is that once I manage it once, I can keep going with our homemade yogurt and I won't have to buy any more. The other possibility is buying live yogurt cultures, but they're pretty expensive compared to just using some pre-made yogurt to culture it.

So anyway, enough ranting, we all know real food is hard to come by. Hence the Adventures in Homemaking blog posts. Ya win some, ya lose some - that's what keeps it interesting!

I fed the liquid yogurt to the girls this morning. I mixed in a spoonful of homemade strawberry jam, sprinkled it with homemade granola and diced fresh strawberries, and they were pretty excited at the idea of strawberry soup for breakfast. Guess I can't call it a total failure then, can I?

It does a body good.

We bought a gallon of milk today. It sounds like a normal thing, picking up a gallon of milk.

But since joining the Real Food Challenge, getting milk has a whole new meaning.

Getting a gallon of milk means driving out to a little local farm and buying a glass jar full of milk that came out of a cow this morning.



Of course, when one is buying real milk from a real farm, it's hard not to ask for a tour of the "facilities". This means tramping off behind the house and visiting with the local livestock - like teeny cute little baby lambs...



It means meeting face to face the cow that provided us with our milk.



On so many levels, this brings me huge satisfaction, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
I love the my children get to meet and pet the cow that their milk came from. It provides them with a solid connection and appreciation for their food. We're so far removed from where our food comes from - the milk in the grocery refrigerator, the chicken breasts on the styrofoam packing tray, the broccoli in the plastic bag. To really see it, up close and personal, to even pet it and watch it's enormously long tongue snatch some hay from your hand, brings the reality home.

There's something that feels so.... honest about this. Just look into those big brown eyes...


Isn't she adorable?

And her milk is fantastic. Smooth and creamy and delicious. Two Little Girls can attest to that.



I was surprised to find that it's actually cheaper to buy raw, local milk than it is to buy the "healthy" stuff at the health food store. No more pasteurized, hormone-infected milk for us, thankyouverymuch. I love the idea of not feeling guilty when I give my kids a glass of milk with their homemade whole grain cookies at snack time. Yum!

Grocery Day

Is it pathetic that grocery shopping is the highlight of my social life each week? That is to say, I'm outside of these four walls that surround me, and there are people my age milling about. So it's not social. But it *feels social after a week of homeschool and toddler-speak.

I grocery shop once every three weeks, with short trips in between for fresh produce. My most recent goal is to buy only dairy (because we have no cows or chickens) and produce (because it's winter and I can't grow it) and baking/dry goods (until I have a wheat field and a sugar farm, anyway.)

I'm almost succeeding. We're eating almost entirely from scratch, still a lot from the freezer (veggies frozen from last year's garden) and I love the satisfaction in that.

I finally figured out a recipe for ranch dressing that tastes just like the real thing, is healthful - even medicinal - and includes no gmo's or msg or artificial colors and flavors and preservatives and even no dairy. It takes less than five minutes to mix up a batch and I can eat as much as I want without feeling bad about it. And we all know that the only good reason to eat raw vegetables is for the ranch, so this pleases me.

In addition to the ranch, I've concocted a fantastic balsamic dressing that's equally as easy to prepare. One more store-bought convenience food I can scratch off the weekly grocery list because I can make it better and cheaper and healthier from scratch.

Dairy-free ranch dressing:
1/2 c. canned coconut milk (not the sweetened stuff, just plain coconut milk. look in the Asian foods section.)
3/4 c. Vegenaise mayonnaise substitute (made from grapeseed oil)
1 Tbsp. parsley flakes
1/4 tsp. dry mustard
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. onion powder
1 clove garlic, minced

Mix all ingredients well. Let sit for an hour before serving so flavors mingle. (I use my stick blender for this, it works great.)

Balsamic dressing:

1 c. olive oil
4 1/2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
2 tsp. dijon mustard
1 clove garlic, minced
juice of 1/2 a lemon

Combine all ingredients except oil in a glass jar. Stirring briskly, pour the oil in as slowly as you can manage, stirring constantly.

The other option is the stick blender or a small food processor - process until the mixture becomes slightly thickened and is rather creamy in texture. I like this more than just stirring.

I don't think I ever even considered salad dressing to be a convenience food until a couple of years ago, and even then I was afraid to try making it myself on any sort of regular basis. But with some practice, it's pretty easy to get used to.

Fenugreek

A friend has managed to convince me of the benefits of glyconutrients. Essentially, they're sugars that are missing from today's average diet - sugars that are only found in fresh fruits and vegetables within days or even hours of them being picked. If we buy our food at a grocery store, these sugars are pretty much completely gone. In so many ways, eating store-bought produce robs us of essential nutrients, and this is just one more way.

So I bought the supplements. And I looked at the ingredients list. I'd just assume get the nutrients from real food instead of a capsule if at all possible.

Some of the things aren't really feasible - I won't be eating an excess of maitake mushrooms, for instance. But one ingredient listed was an old and familiar friend: fenugreek.

Fenugreek is a nursing mother's best friend. If ever one's milk is in short supply, simply swallow a dozen fenugreek capsules each day and soon you'll be overflowing. I've taken it myself while nursing both babes at one time or another.

But fenugreek is good for more than just nursing moms - it's a primary source of mannose and galactose (which are glyconutrients.)

And voila! - fenugreek seeds are found in the local health food store, ready for sprouting and quite tasty on salads and in soups. Just for fun, I decided to try them.



I posted once about growing sprouts - it really is an easy thing to do. Some people invest in fancy seed sprouting equipment, but I manage just fine with mason jars and pantyhose. Seeds are cheap - $3-4 for enough seeds to a few months at least, and that's with eating sprouts nearly every day. They're green and fresh - you can't get much fresher than pulling them out of the jar and putting them in your favorite soup.

If you're not up for fenugreek, there are lots of other sprouting options - our Vitamin Cottage has a whole rack of different seed varieties. Just in case you're as desperate as I am to grow something green, it being winter and all. ;o)