Salad Dressing Made Easy!
Summer abounds with lush, juicy, crunchy, yummy produce. A simple salad dressing, lite and tasty so as not to overwhelm the taste of the amazing fruits and veggies, is essential in the kitchen.
Commercial salad dressings are full of garbage, fake ingredients, that do not nourish your beautiful body cells.
Making a salad dressing, from scratch, is terribly simple AND you will know every ingredient that goes into making it (and into your body!). You can create a cell nourishing, heavenly tasting salad dressing in less than 30 minutes. (This includes picking the fresh herbs and rinsing them off!)
Have a quart size, wide mouth canning jar, on hand for the finished product.
- Pour 2 cups raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar (ACV) into your blender.
- Skip outside for some fresh herbs. Yes, it is important to skip. When we create food from a happy, loving space, our energy infuses the food and nourishes all who eat it. Go ahead, skip.
- At home I skip to pick: basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano, parsley, cilantro, mint, and dill. Today, I am writing from my family's camp in the ADK Mts. I have to go with what is on hand: my rogue oregano and thyme plants all over in the lawn, wild mint, dandelion greens, and raspberry and strawberry leaves. Shh, don't tell my kids about the wild stuff, they might freak out.
My Friend Basil, my Hornbeck Canoe, and an ADK lake... does it get better?
- Pick big handfuls of herbs and remove all bugs. Despite the bugs lending a 'lil extra protein to the dressing; the bugs prefer to be left outside with their lives intact. Rinse the herbs and put into the blender with the vinegar. (By the way, at home I use local ACV from Martin's Farm Stand. I love how there is always a big gob of the "mother" on the bottom of the gallon jug of ACV. This can be used to ferment another batch of AVC. I tried feeding it to my kids on a spoon. Seriously, it is like sauerkraut or yogurt... good for the gut. I got it past their mouths once. I was threatened, by both my sons, if I ever tried that slimy trick again, well it was not a pretty threat! I just eat it myself and figure some day they will come around to Mom's holistic way of eating!)
- Put cover on the blender. This is a very important step. If left undone, it can be a catastrophe in the kitchen... green liquid dripping off the ceiling in a circle above your head. Trust me, I know this to be true!
- Blend into a green, foaming puree.
- Pour into quart canning jar.
- Stir with a spoon to calm the foaming green stuff. It will seem like it has swollen to fill the whole jar but it will calm down.
- Add a good squeeze of organic, yellow mustard. I would say about 1 tbsp. More mustard will not be an issue.
- Pour in some organic, extra virgin olive oil to fill jar. No, the olive oil featured below is not organic. It is from Italy where Monsanto has not created their death grip on food! I do not put the olive oil into the blender because it makes the blender an oily mess to clean. I simply rinse the green, herbed vinegar stuff out of the blender and drink. No soap or hot water required for clean up.
- Voila'! Dressing fit for fresh, local produce nourishing your cells!
Optional ingredients: unrefined sea salt by the pinch or two and either local, raw honey or local, maple syrup. Maybe a tbsp. of the sweetener. Maple syrup will blend in at any time in the making process. If using honey, add honey to the vinegar herb puree when blending, as it mixes together better.
To use: Use a hefty, long handled soup or serving spoon. Remove jar cover and stir well. Remove a big spoonful as you are stirring. This keeps a better blend of oil to vinegar, otherwise the oil rises to the top quickly when you stop stirring. This is fine, you want this effect. Commercial dressings stay blended because they have chemical binder ingredients.
Storage: I leave my jar on the storage shelf under my kitchen table, no refrigeration required. AND it will last until you use it all up. Vinegar preserves!
NAKED Skin Care
NAKED Skin Care, Natural Skin Care That Is
I used to make my own shampoo, conditioner, lotions, face creams, blah, blah, blah. I still do make my own face stuff but really, how much time do I have? Homemade gluten free bread, homemade veggie slaws, 100 % homemade meals from local foods, and fermenting my own veggies. There IS only one of me!
I have had psoriasis for 15 years, just after the birth of my eldest son. Hmmm, coincidence? Anyhow, I have pretty much kept it to a very mild issue with diet, sunshine, yoga, and natural lifestyle choices. Gluten free is a huge help!
Then, along comes Eli, Son #2. He developed psoriasis at 8 years of age. It's a gut and whole body health issue but no time to write a book to explain all that in detail. Try to get an 8 year old to leave gluten alone. (Someday he will wish he listened to me...gluten intolerance, if continually irritated with gluten can become full blown celiac disease. It's just like pre-diabetics and diet or orally "controlled" diabetics who continue to indulge in sugar... just wait, they can develop full blown, insulin diabetes from the continual irritation of sugar in their systems.)
Yes, We will be doing another Gluten Free Workshop; me and the Local Living Venture. Sign up for their newsletter and get informed! Use this email address and ask them to subscribe you: sustlivingproject@gmail.com
OK, so I digressed a bit, forgive me. I was looking for natural skin care for psoriasis to help my son. His is much worse than mine, but, may I add, completely disappears when he leaves gluten out of his diet. So, anyhow, I found these products. I know apple cider vinegar is good for the gut and good for the skin. Keeps the microbes healthy and in check. But I did not want to make the products myself. Again, how much can I do everyday?
LOVE this company's stuff: http://www.justnaturalskincare.com/Psoriasis/ALL-skin-psoriasis-products.html
Bottom Line: Psoriasis Advice
1. 100% Whole food diet... am I a broken record about this or what?!
2. Gluten free, no refined sugar.
3. Naked sun: as naked as you are comfortable being outside! Sun to the skin, protect the face (it's the wrinkle factor on the face!).
This is the email, I just received from JustNatural, offering a 20% discount in March. There is no better way to try something new than with a discount! OK, maybe free, but that is not an option! They even have products for stopping hair loss with age.....
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Please consider choosing products with fewer chemicals and your hair and skin will thank you for it. We ask that you try natural hair care products and experience the change for yourself.
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No Time for Getting Sick
Just a spoon full of honey helps some medicine go down...
or so Mary Poppins said so! And who wants to argue with that legend?
This spoon is full of the "syrup" I made last night when I felt my throat on fire, my salivary glads swollen, pain in my left ear, and my neck lymph glands all swollen up. No time for being sick, I had to stop whatever the bug was. Stop that bug in it's tracks!
Into the blender:
1/2 cup of raw, apple cider vinegar (ACV)
1 medium onion chopped into chunks
1 whole head of garlic, cloves separated and paper skins peeled off
Optional good choices to use for this preventive elixir, this magic potion: horse radish root, ginger root, cayenne peppers, turmeric root. The more of these you add, the more immune boosting and anti-inflammatory benefits you reap. Up the ACV to 1 cup and use chunks of the roots that are about a thumb's size and as much or little cayenne as you can tolerate.
How to:
Blend into a liquid. Pour into a pint size ball canning jar.
Add 1 to 2 tbsp. of raw, local honey (preferably honey with pollen, propolis, and royal jelly still intact for extra immune boosting powers) and stir into the liquid until the honey dissolves.
Immediately take 1-4 tablespoons.
If your tummy will not be happy with the raw garlic and onions, take 1 tablespoon every 15 to 20 minutes until you have 4 into your system.
The first tablespoon I took, I added 1 drop of oregano essential oil.
Take the jar to bed with you, spoon in hand. After you get ready for bed, take another 1-2 tablespoons.
By the time I turned off the bed side light, I was feeling 50% better.
Every time you wake up in the night, take some more.
In AM, take some more. Take every 2 hours or so for the next day or two. Finish the jar of "syrup."
This certainly beats getting the flu, or whatever was after me. I will admit that getting sick on occasion: having a fiery hot fever, sweating it out, and resting to get better does do good things for the body (but hey, that is another blog post). I did not have time this week to befriend the flu bug!
Eat garlic, onions, horseradish, ginger, cayenne, & turmeric . Assist your immune system this winter!
Gospel of the Slaw
So, you may be wondering if I have lost my mind, maybe a new chapter has been added to the Bible that you did not hear about yet, or something weird is going on... well, it is none of the above.
I have the best encounters with people I work with, one on one and in group settings. People are truly amazing when we allow them to be at their very best.
I am often encountered with the "I eat nothing but salads and I still cannot lose weight" issue. I try to explain that summer vegetable salads, in the fall and winter, are very cooling to our body. Summer veggies are for summer eating. When we summer cool ourselves, in the winter, we also slow our metabolism.
Want to rev up that metabolism with warming, winter nourishing veggies? Try a root veggie and cabbage slaw. Recipe below.
Now for the title, it goes back to the people I meet thing I mentioned above. An endearing client labeled my slaw recipe as the "Gospel of the Slaw" and paid the good recipe forward to many friends and family members. The slaw is a great way to get yummy, raw veggies into your winter diet and keep it all seasonal.
Be well, eat slaw.
PS Grating a butter nut squash and spicing the salad dressing with cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, ginger, and vanilla is another fun way to enjoy raw winter veggies.
Root Veggie & Cabbage Slaw
Assemble enough vegetable to feed the people who will be gracing your dinner table, red and green cabbage and root vegetables: beet, parsnip, rutabaga, celeriac, carrot, purple carrot, turnip, winter storage radishes (bigger than the summer salad radishes), kohlrabi, salsify, burdock, horseradish, etc.
Fine chop red and/or green cabbage
Grate, on a metal cheese grater, root veggies. Pick root veggies you grow or can acquire locally. I use 2-4 root veggies with the chopped cabbage, choosing different root veggies with each meal.
Add a grated apple. My kids eat more, and more willingly, when the juicy sweetness of a grated apple is part of the salad.
Mix together in a bowl with the above dressing
Cover and refrigerate until meal time. I make this dish last and serve immediately with every fall and winter meal.
Optional: add a few raisins, add walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds… just make it yummy for you.
Salad Dressing
1 cup organic extra virgin olive oil
1 cup raw apple cider vinegar
1 tsp. organic prepared mustard; preferably made with apple cider vinegar, not grain vinegar
Dash unrefined sea salt
Dash fresh pepper
Crush clove of garlic
Herbs to taste: rosemary, basil, oregano, thyme, parsley
Optional: 1 – 3 tbsp. dark maple syrup or sucanat unrefined sugar
I make this dressing in a Ball, wide mouth, quart canning jar so I always have it available for dinner salads, whatever the season.