My Whole Food Vitamin

Have you heard of Bullet Proof Coffee? This is my bullet proof, whole food, vitamin & mineral morning drink.

Body cells need nourishing. Whole food eating is my basis for nourishing my and my kid's body cells. In today's world, our bodies can use every bit of extra cell nourishment we can get.

Recipe:

• 1/3 to 1/2 cup water, gently warm (not hot!) before adding to your blender. This helps the butter blend in.
• 1 tbsp. butter or coconut oil, your choice, I go with pasture raised butter. This helps the body better absorb the fat soluble nutrients.
• 1 1/2 tsp. turmeric - ginger blend
• 1 heaping tbsp. Superfood Plus powder formula
• 1 to 2 mg of iodine drops, when I remember to add it
• 1 tbsp. organic fruit juice concentrate (I use this for my kid's doses as a flavor enhancer. Cherry and grape concentrate work very well.)

****I added to my mix on 10/22/14:

OK, so I just watched the 9th video in The Quest for the Cures series: http://thetruthaboutcancer.com/live/episode9.php 

This is The Truth About Cancer video series that talks about cancer; what cancer really is and how to cure the body naturally.  I am going to add fresh black pepper to this mix!  Fresh as in you do not cook it and best when ground from whole peppercorns.

Blend all the ingredients, gently.

To make it easier, less cleanup, use an 8 oz jam jar. Add the warm water and butter and shake until melted. Add the rest of the ingredients and shake well; lid on please. It makes quite a green mess if you forget the lid!

The turmeric-ginger blend. I buy in 1 lb. bags from Frontier herbs; organic of course.  Available through the Potsdam Food Coop or Nature's Storehouse - support your local health food store!

This is the Superfood,  www.herbdoc.com. The chorella and spirulina are potent heavy metal detoxers.

There are many green food powders on the market. Try your local health food store. To find one, read ingredients carefully for 100% whole foods. This SuperFood Plus is available wholesale which considerably cuts down the cost. I keep it available and share my wholesale discount. 

My indoor herb garden. I chew sprigs of the herbs daily for their medicinal, healing properties.

Last winter the kids and I took Juice Plus over the winter months. We had a great winter, in regards to our health, and avoided all the viral bugs that swarmed about us. We may add JP again this winter. Juice Plus are blends of fruits and veggies that have been juiced and low heat dehydrated. Basically they are fruit and veggie juice powders.

What do you do to add extra, whole food nutrition to your life? Share in the comments. New ideas are always good!

Holistic Healing Taste Testing

I decided to do some taste testing of the holistic healing options in my Northern NY State. As I taste test around Northern NY I will report on my findings.

If any of the healing options speak to you, try them out and report back to me in the comments.

Acupuncture:  Ok, I confess, I have used and LOVE acupuncture for over 16 years. The taste test was successful after my very 1st acupuncture treatment. I guess I could say I have become a regular consumer! Acupuncture has helped in healing my sciatica, headaches, low back pain, and menstrual issues (I am sure there have been more!).

Originating in China, traditional acupuncture is the oldest continuously practiced medical system in the world. It is based on natural laws that describe the flow of life energy both in nature and in the body. Acupuncture addresses the needs of the whole person and has the best results when patients use it in conjunction with other health promoting attitudes and behaviors.Well known for relieving pain, traditional acupuncture is actually a holistic approach that addresses body, mind, and spirit.

I recommend you try acupuncture with Shelby Connelly and Five Elements Living. I am certain you will find it a tasty way to support your healing!  (315) 262-2622

• • addiction
• • common cold
• • migraines
• • allergies
• • depression
• • mood swings
• • anxiety
• • digestive disorders
• • menopausal symptoms
• • fatigue
• • sciatic pain
• • back pain
• • fertility issues
• • sinusitis
• • bursitis
• • insomnia
• • arthritis
   

Signs of Fall in the Kitchen

Some signs of fall, in my kitchen, are:

• Squash, squash soup!
• Root veggies of all shapes, colors, and flavors... yummy beets!
• Brussels Sprouts (Create a soup with b. sprouts using the Kale soup recipe, roast the b. sprouts before pureeing into soup.)
• Cabbage!

• Sauerkraut... the crock has come out of its summer hiding spot:

          To make the first batch of fall sauerkraut, cabbage from the Martin's Farm Stand.

The close up, below, displays the green bits of parsley from my front yard herb garden, the green bits of stinging nettles harvested from my yard (I am assuming the sting will leave during the fermentation process much like it leaves during the cooking process), and the chunks of local apples from the Martin's.

I make sauerkraut because:

1. Sauerkraut is good for gut microbes,
2. I can use local cabbage and preserve it for weeks,
3. It is quick and easy to make a batch that will be about 3-4 quarts (takes me about 30 to 40 minutes including clean up),
4. and, after sitting for 10 to 14 days I have 3-4 quarts of food that will enhance meals and fall root veggie salads for 2-3 weeks.
5. I have just enough time to ferment another crock with different goodies added to the cabbage: beets, carrots, celeriac, grated (raw) squash, parsnips, turnips, rutabaga.... before the current batch is gobbled up!

For a kraut recipe, click here. No crock to ferment in? No worries, use wide mouth ball canning jars.

Enjoy!

PS  I confess, I no longer use the hand grater (see my grating picture in my kraut recipe blog post that I linked above) to grate my veggies. I use my food processor. It cuts the prep time in less than 1/2!

Souped Up Soup!

Yesterday I posted about my "take a peek into the produce bins and concoct some sort of soup for dinner" experience in the kitchen.  I commented that tonight's soup would be similar but with sautéed celery instead of the kale. (My apologies on the typo about "now add the onions and garlic" as it was supposed to be add the onions and kale. I fixed that boo-boo.)

OK, so the planned soup just got souped up. I discovered 4 buttercup squash, from Old Market Farm, in my garage last eve. Now I did not exactly lose them, they were just momentarily forgotten. I decided to get them into the house before they froze and started rotting on me.

So I roasted the squash this AM. Revving the oven up in early AM helps to warm the chilled downstairs after a cool night.

To make this soup quickly, on an eve after working all day: get the squash steaming first, before you sauté the celery and onions. Cut a small to medium buttercup squash in half, remove seeds, and put into a pot of water that has about 1 inch of water on the bottom. When water starts to boil, reduce heat to a gentle simmer, and cook squash for about 20 minutes. It will be ready when you finish with the sauté and soup prep. 

Kitchen Advice: Never boil your veggies in a pot full of water; steam in the least amount of water you can get away with and not go dry. This goes for potatoes you are cooking to mash. Less water means less nutrient loss. Pour off cooking water into a coffee mug, let cool, and drink. Get every cell enhancing mineral and nutrient any way and every way you can!

Now get going on the celery & onion saute'!

• Sauté the medium sized onion, cut into small chunks, and the celery leaves in bacon fat from local, pasture raised pigs, no nasty curing chemicals added. (Use whatever you like for gentle sautéing: pasture raised butter, coconut oil... I would avoid most vegetable oils but that is another blog post and story!) The celery will sauté quickly, add the celery after the onions are just about finished.  This way you do not over cook the celery leaves.
• 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 celery to the blender.  
• Plop in big scoops of the squash, at least use one half of the cooked squash. Be careful scooping the squash out of the shell as it is hot and a steamed squash gets mushy not rigid like an oven roasted one. (Add lots of butter and sprinkle with curry, the other half of the squash, while it is still hot so the butter melts. Mash the butter and curry into the squash. Put into a dish and take to work tomorrow!)
• Sprinkle in, oh maybe 1 tsp. of medium heat curry powder (Nature's Storehouse or the Potsdam Food Coop). I use more curry with squash or pumpkin soup because the squash flavor can handle it without being overwhelmed. Besides, the spices in curry are amazing healers!
• 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.

Don't forget the beet gratings!  Beets soup up the soup in several ways:

• fiber
• nutrients
• raw veggie with dinner
• contrasting color to the pretty orange soup (this artsy cooking style feeds the heart, mind, and soul!)
• beets are used as cancer therapy in Germany and Russia!  Why wait to use as therapy; prevent health problems now!

Quickly grate the beet using my metal cheese grater. I sprinkled the beet gratings on top of this generously curry seasoned cream of squash/celery soup.

If the pot is big enough, or the eaters few enough, you will have left overs for lunch or later dinners this week!  OR... freeze in a wide mouth, quart Ball canning jar (leave head space for expansion during the freezing process) and enjoy in a week or two!

Cheers and happy, healthy cooking!

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!

Please Remove Shoes & Negative Attitudes

I painted this door sign years ago. I have glued and removed it from a couple of front doors. I was inspired to create it because of a bumper sticker: "Mean People Suck." I also related that sentiment to negative people and their energy.

This past Saturday I watched the documentary film Symphony of the Soil. I was reminded of the beautiful method of how soil rebuilds itself when we care for it in natural ways, recreating nature's gardening methods.

Another message that was clear to me: how farming with chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides is much like fraternizing with negative people - soil / soul sucking!

These chemical means of farming literally suck the life out of the soil. Chemicals slowly and insidiously kill off the soil microbes, fungi, earth worms, and various other life forms that are essential to healthy soil and life on this planet. Chemically farmed soil becomes dry, pale, lifeless, and infertile. Food grown in this soil is nutrient deficient like the very soil it was grown in. 

Negative people and negative energy (i.e. watching, listening, or reading the news) do the same to us. These things slowly and insidiously suck the life from our body, mind, and soul. Negative energy in our life is a real force that leeches the nutrients from our every body cell just as chemical farming leeches nutrients from the soil.

Chemical farming is a stress to the soil, to all biological life, and to this planet.  (All are one and the same.)

Negative people and negative energy stress our physical body, our emotional/mental being, and our soul. Negative energy activates the stress response. This response eats up nutrients from our body cells. This is one reason why stressed people get sickly looking (pale like the stressed soil), age faster, and contract more acute illnesses (colds, the flu, etc.) and go on to develop more chronic lifestyle diseases than relaxed, peaceful people.

Touch each other's lives, and your own, gently!  Northern Sun T-Shirt!

POSITIVE Action to take:

Surround yourself with warm, loving, positive energetic people

AND

Be a warm, loving, positive energy person!

See and inspire the good in everyone, including you!

Whole food RECIPE:  Tourlou Greek Mix-Mix (made with local ingredients!)

This is positively delicious!

• 5-6 medium ripe tomatoes (Richard Paolillo's & Vanessa Bittner's Old Market Farm)
• 1 medium eggplant (Kent Family Growers)
• 2 medium red potatoes (Keim Amish Farmer)
• 1 large red pepper (Keim)
• 1 large red onion (Birdsfoot Farm)
• 4-5 good size cloves of garlic (Birdsfoot Farm)
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 cup olive oil (I used 1/4 cup olive oil and 1/4 cup of Kriemhild Dairy's pasture raised butter)
• dash of nutmeg and thyme, I am a heavy handed dasher! I would say a good full tsp. of thyme and slightly less than a tsp. of nutmeg
• unrefined sea salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste after cooking

The finished Tourlou, Mix-Mix, with chickpeas. 

1. Cut veggies into bite size chunks and mix together well (except garlic)
2. Spread out in the bottom of two 8 x 13 baking pans
3. add oil, butter, bay leaves, nutmeg, and thyme and mix together
4. Bake at 350 F for 1 hour, set timer for every 20 minutes and mix-mix away adding water to not "fry" the veggies! This makes for a juicy creamy mix-mix!
5. If veggies not tender enough after 1 hour, give them a few minutes more
6. When finished cooking add the garlic via garlic pressing into the mix of veggies
7. Serve and add salt / pepper to taste
8. Serve with chick peas added to the mix or chunks of chicken
9. A side of whole grain pita bread, warm of course, is nice
10. Perhaps a 'lil Greek goat's milk feta too!

Hints:

• This dish can be eaten hot or cooled. Traditional Greek serving is when cooled allowing the flavors to meld. 
• I have used zucchini, yellow squash, buttercup & butternut squash, sweet potatoes... The eggplant, tomatoes, and onion are required... after that, add veggies to your delight. The more you make, meaning the fuller the baking dishes are, use more tomatoes to add to the creamy goodness.
• Another serving suggestion: To get a raw veggie salad in with this yummy dish serve with a Fall cabbage-root veggie slaw OR  sauerkraut.

Enjoy!

Common Sense

When you are making choices in regards to your health put your common sense into practice.

Ask questions about the choices you need to make:

• "Does this make sense in the overall scheme of things, with life, does it seem natural?" 
•  "IS this choice a natural choice, could this / would this occur and happen in nature?"  If the issue at hand goes against the grain of nature, it more than likely is not best for human or planetary health.
• "Is this choice best for my wellness?"  A yes answer is probably good for you and the planet.

So much health and medical advice is extremely unnatural.

If the advice goes against the grain of nature, it goes against life... life force energy.

Healing goes with the grain of nature, with the grain of common sense.

Question all advice you receive from healers, medical experts, friends and family.  When we question, we learn and grow as human beings.  

Take all information you receive from your healer guides as information to question.  Find answers of your own that work for you.  You will bless yourself with enduring, great health.