Good Food Friday: Immune Tonic

Well it is that time of year again I think it's safe to say we are all fighting something.  Being sick is no fun and sometimes staying healthy feels like a full time job.  Especially if you are trying to keep a whole house feeling fine.

I stumbled across this drink in one of my magazines and was immediately hooked by the ingredient list alone.  Lemons.  Ginger.  Echinacea.  I'm pretty sure this is the healthy vegan substitute for chicken broth!

Immune Tonic

Ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 2 tsp. honey or light agave
• 1 tsp finely grated peeled ginger (in the beginning I used powder)
• 1/4 tsp echinacea extract (sometimes I skip this, it's still amazing)
• couple drops of sriracha

Directions:

• Measure and combine all ingredients into a mug (I double mine into a pint jar)
• Add 1 cup boiling water stirring until sweetener is dissolved 
• Let sit one minute before serving

inspired by bon appetit magazine (01/13)

I've been using this to replace my morning tea or afternoon snack.  If you are brave for an extra immune boost you could add some fresh peeled minced garlic.  

Wouldn't this make a great soup base?  Some sauted veggies and a spoonful of rice.  See what you can come up with...

Back to Eden Film

Back to Eden Film

I first stumbled on this film back on September 21, 2011. I meant to watch it (more than the trailer I saw) and share a post about the movie. It has long been in the back of my mind and obviously I am just getting around to sharing now. Can I just say the film took my breath away, blew my mind, and built in my such a great excitement to garden I can hardly stand it?

As I have shared earlier this week; lately the chickens, rabbits, and garden seem like such a major, extra chore. I have to remind myself why I am doing this all. Why grow my own food when I could just buy it from the supermarket? Sometimes I just don't have the answers. Especially after we took some bad advice and fertilized our raised beds with un-composted rabbit manure late last fall. Apparently, the mild manure that can "just be added right to the soil" is only to be added if you feed pellets alone. We don't. We feed hay. You know... grass like the wild rabbits eat. Pellets are just a supplement. Well that means only add rabbit manure to your garden beds before composting if you have weed free hay. Funny the solid layer of grass and weeds growing like a carpet on all my old beds that we added rabbit manure directly to... lots more work. **Sigh.**

This movie changes all that for me. You know when you read and look in search of a better way to do something just knowing it is out there and it still alludes you. The answers are within this fabulous system revealed to Paul Gautschi by God and shared with the world. Now I just have to convince my husband, the muscles, and we will be in business. 

Here are the highlights that really stood out to me:

• Paul's love for God and gentle spirit are so appealing that you are just drawn in. His knowledge of scripture and application is just fantastic. I loved how the verses related so well to the action of gardening. 
• This is the perfect system. Designed by God, modeled by nature, and recreated by Paul. Amazing.
• That this "system" is being revealed now for a time of need. The ability to garden like this has always been "there" and many people have touched on or discovered many of the concepts shown but I do feel there is an element of timeliness in Paul's methods and in how it is revealed. I also feel pressured to have a food system in place for a time of need for myself, family, and strangers in need. 
• You may or may not be amazed as I was at the size, swift growing, and sweetness of the fruit/veggies. Even being said to taste like candy. In addition, the water content in the fruit of the garden is so apparent that I can't relate it to most modern food homegrown or otherwise. It was just dripping!
• No need for crop rotation (love this!), watering, weeding, fertilizing, soil testing, etc. Most of the chores of modern gardening are completely eliminated. Weeding, watering, and crop rotation are all major chores to me. Yuck! You don't have to "work" to keep up with this garden.
• I kept wondering how to create such a garden myself while watching. Either from scratch or with what I already have. About an 1 and 30 minutes into the movie you get a great demonstration of the beginnings of making a garden like Paul's. Clearly only time will make a garden as fertile as Paul's but you see the start and early success. There is also a step-by-step "how to" on the film web site.
• I love how Paul gives freely of his garden and his explanation of why he does so. Talk about beautiful. 
• The movie is a bit of a time commitment but it is so very worth it!

Please buy the DVD or give a donation if you have the financial means. I am not affiliated with the film in anyway but I love how you can watch the film for free and I feel that should be rewarded. I am sure it will be a blessing and money well spent. Have you seen the film? Or if you watch it please tell me what you think about it. I would love to know what stood out to you. Did you agree with Paul on his method's?

I Grew That

Tonight was one of those moments that reaffirms why I want chickens and a garden. Trust me... I think ALOT about throwing in the towel. I am tired, worn, and it often seems like just one more chore and one more expense. I feel like right now the need for cheap food outweighs the need for truly clean, healthy, and wholesome. I do what I can with what I can afford. Then as I am quickly throwing together a cheap and last minute meal I am out of onions. Ugh! I just sent Gary to the grocery store so no chance of going back just for onions. 

Then it hits me. All the things in the garden that overwintered were growing in the warm spring weather we have been having. Fantastic, there were onions (although small) out there. Ethan was still sleeping and Wade was playing and watching "Cars", so I ran out the back door and did a hurried garden raid. My Tuna Cabonara would be on steroids tonight. Swiss Chard, onions, asparagus, and a big fat carrot (although I left the carrot out of the tuna dish). Then three homegrown chicken eggs and I felt like I was soaring. FOUR ingredients from my own yard. 

I came in feeling like a hero and a warrior. I have to fight to keep thinking of the positives of these extra chores in my life and I honestly felt rewarded for my efforts today. I guess there is good reason to scatter more seed in the ground... even if I am behind this season.

Happy Gardening.

Real Food Wisdom from 100 Years Ago: What We Knew Then & Should Know Now

Source

I enjoyed the post from Food Renegade today and thought it was worth sharing here at TBH. The book "Graded Lessons in Physiology and Hygiene" written by a physician, Dr. William Khron, and used as a textbook in Texas schools in 1908 can actually be found and read online!

I intend to read "Grade Lessons" for sure for myself but enjoyed the amazing & knowledgeable quotes from the book shared in Kristen's post. For example, Dr. Khron shares a list of adulterated foods and his quotes are surprisingly correct for a time less medically knowledgeable. The following quote is just a sample of what Dr. Khron thought about one of these adulterated foods:

“Butter is sometimes made entirely from … cotton-seed oil, to which coloring matter is added to make it look like pure, yellow butter made of rich cream. This product is called butterine, or oleomargarine. It can be sold for about half of what good butter would bring…. In the United States there is a law against the sale ofbutterine that is not stamped to show plainly to the person buying it that it is not genuine butter, but an imitation. Such laws are right in protecting the people against false or counterfeit foods, and in preventing people from being imposed upon” (page 39). 

I grew up eating margarine and remember when I was so stubbornly offended that my mom found out butter was better for us. I didn't want butter... I wanted the fake, tasty stuff. Thankfully I have since changed my mind. 

Check out one more quote from the book and then visit Kristen's awesome blog, Food Renegade, and read the book online for yourself.
“Sugar, syrup, and candy are sometimes made from corn by a peculiar process, by means of which the starch of the corn is changed into glucose, and a kind of sugar not so sweet or healthful as sugar made from sugar-cane or sugar beets. This sugar is quite apt to ferment, or sour, and decay within the bowels, thus causing disease. Some candies are colored with poisonous matter” (page 39).

Can you say yuck?!? Hopefully my day in yogurt making and fermentation experiments pays off. I hope to undo some of the harm of those adulterated foods. 

Nourishing Our Children: 20 Minute Free Video on Traditional Diets

The first 20 minutes of the Nourishing Our Children video. The full presentation materials (DVD, e-book and study guide) can be obtained with a donation of $55 to the Nourishing Our Children campaign through January 18th. 

My thoughts on the first 20 minutes:

Nourishing Our Children is based on answering the question, "Can we be well fed but malnourished"? The video covers how Weston Price (a Cleveland dentist) set out to answer that question as he began noticing the increasing deformities in the mouths of children here in Cleveland, Ohio. Within the last year my eyes have been open to traditional foods. Fermentation (needed desperately in my diet to combat my infestation of candida), raw milk, animal fat (keeping the fat in our food and diet), eating non-industrial (man made) food, proper food preparation (soaking of grains, sour dough preparation, fermentation, etc.), etc.

Starting with reading "Real Food: What to Eat and Why" by Nina Planck my eyes were startlingly opened to the idea alone that fat is extremely good for us and essential in our diet. The right kind of fat, used correctly, do not make us fat! Amazing. I know. We are so focused on "low-fat diets". That is hardly our biggest health concern.

I have continued to endeavor to change my diet and Wade's from the industrial diet we are so very used to. Because of finances, busy life, and learning it is a slow and gradual process but I am encouraged by the knowledge that I now know how to well nourish myself and my children (and husband God willing!).

There is one more point I want to address. While I embrace and appreciate the idea of traditional diets and believe there is clearly something nutritiously right about them. I am cautious to embrace the idea of evolution being the driving force behind our need for traditional diets. I look at the concept of traditional foods and diets in light of what the Bible teaches us about our history and from our history our diet. What God made was perfect, what man makes is flawed. Everything with a grain of salt and seeking the truth through God's eyes.

What are your thoughts? Is this idea of traditional foods completely new and foreign to you or is this something you are already changing about your life style? I would truly love to know.

Keep your eyes open. Jackie was busy in her kitchen this morning. She may have something fun to share! You know... she is my inspiration for looking at holistic and natural health. She discovered it first and has paved the way and inspired me for years. 

Good Food Friday: Venison Stroganoff

Venison Stroganoff

We eat primarily venison, chicken, and pork. Soon we will eat primarily venison, chicken, and rabbit (all of which we can raise or hunt ourselves). If you are a reader of Nourished Kitchen, the Weston A. Price Foundation, or an advocate of traditional or real foods, you will know that on the list of Good, Better, Best: Traditional Foods for Every Budget has wild game under the best red meats you can eat. I have cooked for the last three years, substituting venison for beef. The only exception to that rule is that I like an occasional pot roast and my husband likes to get more ground from his deer. I cave to the buy one get one free sales for beef roasts about twice a year.

Here is a quick and easy recipe for venison (you can of course use beef) that is a family favorite. Don't know how to get venison if you don't hunt? Ask around! You maybe surprised at how many hunters you know who are willing to give you a venison steak or two to experiment with. You maybe hooked ever after. You can of course buy venison (which is farmed in the state of Ohio... you can't buy wild venison) or see if you can barter with someone for some venison meat. We barter hunting rights on a small two acre suburban lot in a township near by for deer meat.

Ingredients:
1 lb. venison steak, about 1/2" thick
2 Tbsp. butter
1 lb. mushrooms, sliced
1 medium onion (minced about a 1/2 cup)
1 can (10 1/2 oz.) condensed beef broth
2 Tbsp. ketchup
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. flour
1 cup sour cream
3 to 4 cups hot cooked noodles (I use egg noodles for this meal)

Directions:
Cut meat into bite size pieces. Melt butter in large pan or skillet (I use cast iron). Add mushrooms and onions and cook until onion is tender, then remove them from the pan. In same pan, cook meat until light brown (for venison I still leave a tiny bit of pink because I don't want to over cook the meat). Reserve 1/3 cup of the broth, stir in remaining broth, ketchup, garlic, and salt. Cover and simmer 15 minutes.

Blend reserved broth with flour, stir into pan. Add mushrooms and onions back into pan. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir 1 minute. Reduce heat to low. Stir in sour cream and gently heat (don't boil). Serve over noodles.

Tops this meal takes about 30 minutes. There is rarely enough left for one person to have left overs in a family of four. Enjoy!

Good Food Friday : Tuna Cabonara

This is my absolute favorite fast supper.  I honestly can not believe I haven't shared this with you!  It comes together super quick with staples I'm sure you already have in your kitchen and even being a pasta dish I packs in a ton of protein.  My only complaint is that this dish can be awfully "beige" and colorless so please do your eyes a favor and add the veggies!

My usual recipe for this makes enough for our seven but the ingredients are totally flexible.  You really can't go wrong.

Tuna Cabonara

Ingredients:

• pasta
• tuna
• onions
• red bell pepper (optional, in fact most times I don't have this but its great for color)
• fresh parsley (again optional but great for presentation)
• Parmesan cheese (fresh grated) 
• eggs, beaten
• salt
• oil or butter

Directions:

• Boil pasta in salted water until al dente. 
• While pasta is boiling, saute onion and peppers in oil or butter.  When veggies are softened, added canned strained tuna.  Cook until warm throughout.
• Have cheese grated and eggs beaten
• Drain pasta, but do not rinse.    Toss pasta into the tuna mixture and quickly toss with eggs and cheese.  The residual heat from the pasta will cook the eggs and melt the cheese.  
• Sprinkle with a pinch of salt and stir in parsley.  Serve immediately. 

I usually let the number of cans of tuna dictate the beaten eggs.  In our house, it is three cans of tuna to three eggs.  See, plenty of protein.  This recipe always makes it.  No matter what I have on hand I can pull this one off.  No peppers?  How about peas?  No spaghetti?  Substitute rice.  Just don't skip the cheese or eggs.   The combine and become the creamy sauce.