Immune MishMash in the kitchen

When a touch of the flu hits your home be prepared with some tools to boost the immune system:

1. Brothy soups (bone broths are nice)
2. Elderberry syrups or tinctures (Check out my elderberry article in the next Potsdam Food Co-op's newsletter, coming soon)
3. Flu tonics: (No Time For Getting Sick, everyone around me was sick and needing my care, I had to be the one to stay functioning!)
4. Herbal teas: nettle, yarrow, rosemary, peppermint (Instructions for making medicinal infusions, teas, click the herbal teas link 
5. Hot baths with plenty of water (or the above immune herbal teas) to drink  while bathing. Fevers need to be kept hydrated and allowed to do their work. A fever's purpose is to destroy the microbes causing the sickness with their heat. Fevers are part of your immune response for healing infections. If you reduce fevers with medications and cold baths, the heat of fever cannot work for you. Keep the feverish person very well hydrated to avoid the problems of fever that people fear.
6. Whole food green drink such as SuperFood Plus
7. Foods rich in:

• Vitamin C (lemon water?),
• selenium (brazil nuts anyone),
• zinc (pumpkin seeds?)

I was making a pot of soup, pictured above, to offer something brothy for my sick kid's bodies. The flu hit and one kid had a fever for 11 days. Mom care was required. As I am making the soup, "extended fever boy" is lying on the couch around the corner and says to me:

Jake:  "What are you making for dinner Mom?"

Mom: "Soup"

Jake:  "Your soup is scary to me. It always contains one or more of the following:

• animal carcasses (bone broths)
• rotting bean matter (miso)
• vegetables that most of the modern world have never heard of!

Mom: "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

Jake: "I don't appreciate finding scary things in my scary soup. The soups usually taste good but what is in it terrifies me. I observe it very carefully before I eat it."

Makes a Mom run to the kitchen to create healthy fare for her loved ones!

The Soup Recipe

1. Bring 3-4 cups of water to simmer, slowly, no need to boil. Keep pot covered and on lowest heat.
2. Saute' a medium onion chopped into fine slivers. Saute' in butter from pastured animals, animal fat, or coconut oil.
3. Grate or finely chop cabbage, about 1 cup.
4. Grate a small celeriac.
5. Add both to onion saute' and quick stir fry.
6. Add above veggie mix to the simmer water and keep heat as low as possible. Do not boil this soup.
7. Finely chop kale and saute', about 1 cup.
8. Grate a carrot and add to saute'.
9. Toss into saute' some frozen red pepper strips that you perhaps froze before growing season ended.
10. Stir fry all 3 together and add to veggie soup mix in pot.
11. Add a pinch or two of cayenne to soup.
12. Peel and press 1-2 cloves of garlic into soup.
13. I then added 3-4 tablespoons of South River Miso's Sweet White Miso. 
14. Last addition was the flu syrup sitting on the counter. It contained raw apple cider vinegar, raw honey, garlic, onion, ginger, and turmeric. There was 2/3 to 3/4 a cup left in the jar. I dumped it all into the soup and stirred it up.
15. Soup was finished and ready for serving to my terrified kid.

The only thing else I would have added, had I some bone broth on hand, would be bone broth instead of the water at the beginning. I recommend keeping bone broth made and frozen in wide mouth quart canning jars for flu emergencies. 

Happy immune boosting soup making. I hope you efforts are appreciated and not creating a reign of soup terror!

Making Bone Broth:    From my educational handout on bones and minerals

Bone broths are made with fish, chicken, turkey, beef, and lamb bones and a tablespoon of vinegar to liberate the minerals.  Put bones in a sauce pan, soup pot and cover with water, just enough to cover bones. I squish the bones down into the pot. Add the tablespoon of raw apple cider vinegar and cover the pot. I soak the bones in the vinegar water overnight and slow simmer for hours the next day. I gently bring to a simmer on the stove top. Then I place in a pre-heated 220 F oven and leave for 4-5 hours if chicken bones and longer if harder bones. Remove bones and use as a soup stock for veggie soup or eat the broth as is (add a bit of unrefined sea salt to taste). If making veggie soup, I saute' the veggies before adding to the hot broth to avoid simmering the broth anymore.

The Protein Powder I Would Make and Use

Do you use protein powder Paula?

Should I be buying and using protein powder?

What is the best protein powder to use, the best base substance the protein comes from?

Answers: No, No, and Real Food.

A protein powder is derived from some food that the protein has been removed from. This creates a concentrated protein.

Let's be mindful around the food we eat. Protein powders are refined food products. The protein has been extracted from the whole food. Why not just eat the whole food? And, how exactly do they, whoever they are, extract the protein? Chemicals? Extreme heat? 

Mindfulness: Eat whole food.

The above powder ad says it is made from pea, hemp, chia, potato, and chlorella protein... (keep reading below the picture!)

www.bodyunburdened.com

Instead of Refined Isolated Protein Powder From These Sources, Try this:

• Buy hemp, chia, sunflower, golden flax, pumpkin, and sesame seeds. Organic and raw, of course. 
• Measure 1/2 to 2/3 cup of each into a mixing bowl.
• Blend them together well.
• Pour into a wide mouth quart canning jar.
• Use 1 to 2 (or more to your liking) tablespoons in your morning oatmeal, granola, smoothie....

You now have the benefits of a whole food, not just the refined out, isolated protein. You get the healthy fats, the fiber, and all the nutrients that are lost in refining of a whole food into just the protein powder.

Whole foods feed your body cells for:

1. healthy cell regeneration
2. preventative medicine
3. healing medicine

Wapatuli Pie Recipe

I remember Wapatuli Punch Parties from my college days... all too well. A cooler full of fruit juices, fruit chunks, and vodka-rum-whiskey and the party was on a roll. 

Call me old but I like my Wapatuli pie better!

When Jake asked me to make him an apple pie I was low on apples. I combined apples, cranberries, blackberries, and blueberries (all local fruit I froze over the summer, apples fresh from Martin's Farm Stand). I chuckled as I was making it as my mind immediately went to college Wapatuli Parties!

Pie Filling: 

• 2 large apples cut into bite sized chucks, leave skin on for the nutrients and fiber
• about 1 cup of each berry, add more to have enough to fill your pie plate
• 1/2 cup of sucanat, unrefined sugar

Pie Crust:

• 2/3 cup of a mixed flour blend: quinoa, amaranth, millet (I grind myself in my electric coffee grinder)
• 1/3 cup dark buck wheat flour (why the crust looks so deep brown)
• 1/2 cup each coconut flour and almond flour. I only used these as I was out of the above mix blend and did not feel like grinding more.
• 2/3 cup pasture raised butter
• 1/4 tsp. unrefined sea salt
• 5-6 tbsp. cold milk, the coconut flour soaks up more fluid as I usually use about 2-4 tbsp. cold milk
• extra flour for rolling out crust, I used the buckwheat flour

A whole grain crust is a much tastier way to enjoy pie. It has flavor unlike refined, white flour crust which taste like baked wall paper paste and butter. The butter is its flavor saving grace!

Place all ingredients into a food processor and process until the whole mess rolls into a ball. Cut ball in half and roll into pie crust and make your pie.

Whole grain pie crust can be crumbly. (See picture at bottom. I had to piece together a few patches!) Take time and be gentle with it. I use a cotton mat and a cotton sock cover for my rolling pin. I bought these in a package kit at Evans and White's Hardware in Potsdam.

Put the pie together and bake for 45 to 60 minutes, just until it starts getting bubbly. There is no need to over cook fruit.

Enjoy!

Cream of Kale Soup... and more!

I am big on the: 

Look in the produce drawers, see what seasonal produce I have on hand, and throw it all together 

kind of cooking.

My peek into the produce bin came up with a bouquet of kale; gratitude goes to the Kent Family Growers. I had an onion from the Martin's and plenty of garlic from Birdsfoot Farm. 

To me this looked like the makings of a good pot of soup, so...

• Saute' the medium sized onion, cut into small chunks, and the bouquet of kale, cut into thin strips, in bacon fat from local, pasture raised pigs, no nasty curing chemicals added.
• Add approximately 3 1/2 cups of goat's milk to the blender with 3 big cloves of the Birdsfoot garlic.
• Add the onion and kale to the blender.
• Sprinkle in, oh maybe 1/2 tsp. of medium heat curry powder (Nature's Storehouse or the Potsdam Food Coop).
• Blend until the consistency and smoothness you want in a cream soup is achieved.
• Pour in soup pot and gently warm.
• Ladle into soup bowls and add a pinch of unrefined sea salt if desired.

Then I discovered a beet, my beloved beets, in the refrigerator. I quickly grated the beet using my metal cheese grater. I sprinkled the beet gratings on top of this gently curry seasoned cream of kale soup.

It was divine!  (And it took maybe 20-25 minutes!)

Tomorrow night will be a repeat cream soup but I will be sautéing the celery leaves from a large head of celery from the Keim Amish Family Farm. Add onion, goat's milk, garlic, curry... and, yes, the grated beets on top!

Any good stories from your kitchen about throwing together a soup after just a peak into the produce bins?

Happy cooking and eating!