In the Kitchen - When LIfe Gives You.....

I did not plan for this morning to be spent in the kitchen.  I intended on weaving my second rug.  But plans change quickly, don't they?  I have never been one to turn down opportunity when it knocks on my door.  That is just what happened.

This morning after taking Journey to school, I made a quick stop at Fareway for a few things.. just a few.  As I walked past the produce isle, I spied a white paper bag with "99 cents" written on the handle.  That is a sure way to cause me to detour or double-take at least!  In the bag was a whole bunch of pears!  Lots.. I would say at least 3 pounds of them.  They were past their selling prime but just about at their eating prime, I would say.  I like them nice and ripe and juicy.

Not only did I spy this one bag, there were three more of it's little friends.  Total of 4 bags of pears there as if they had my name on them.  I put two in the cart and wrestled with myself about organic versus non-organic, as these were not organic pears, but just conventional.  Then I decided that while we do try to stay as organic as possible, we don't buy organic jams and jellies, nor do we buy organic fruit cups for Journey's home lunches....  so the bags won and soon I found all 4 bags of pears had jumped in my cart.  So what, maybe a total of 12 - 15 pounds of pears?  The activities of my morning had now changed and I found myself home about 8:30 with the loot.

After some quick "googling", I decided to make pear preserves, canned pears, and dehydrated pears out of my 4 bags, so I then got to washing and peeling.

Oh My Goodness.. it felt like hours of peeling pears when I realized I was only 1/2 way through my supply.  I had the canning pot on to boil, had washed 15 canning jars and lids, had a pot for the jam and a pot for the blanching of the pears going.  I literally peeled and cleaned pears until after 10am.

I am really tired of pears.  I have learned a new "diet" trick.  COOK alot.. when I am busy cooking it, I usually don't want to eat it.  Funny how that works, except with cookies.  There is nothing that compares to eating that first warm cookie right out of the oven.  I consider it a responsibility so I always do the first testing before my family tries them.

So the pear production?  Here are some on the dehydrator:

Pears are one of those fruits that suffer from turning brown in the air.  I did soak these in diluted lemon juice but they are still turning... the bananas do the same thing.  Oh well, they still taste good.

I also made my first batch of jam.. just boiled the pears until mushy and added pectin.  (I think I added too much and it will set up like a rock but it tasted good).  I added some stevia and honey to sweeten it and it made 6 little jelly jars full.

Then I left the rest of the pears quartered and boiled them for 2 minutes before canning 7 more pint jars of pears for later.  I think Journey will like these in her lunch instead of store bought when we don't readily have fresh fruit for her.

All in all, the last cans came out of the water bath at about noon, but I think I did really good with a $4.00 purchase... and Mike got fresh jam on homemade wheat bread for lunch today.  Happy Anniversary Honey!!

In the Kitchen - Another Explosion

I don't even like mushrooms.

I made cream of mushroom soup just a few minutes ago and had to cut up 5 cups of mushrooms, another 1/2 cup of onions, add it to 1/8 tsp of thyme, and 1 1/2 cups of chicken stock and boil it for 15 minutes.  Then the recipe called for me to puree it...

There is that word that I have come to hate:  PUREE... for me it just spells trouble.  I put it in the Magic Bullet blender just out of the boiling pot and turned it on.  Immediately I was covered with piping hot mushroom puree, as was the entire corner of the kitchen again.  I feel like my mother when she told me she did not know how she drove her car through her neighbor's garage door last year when I tell you I don't know how that blender exploded.  When I got it turned off, the lid was still on.

Journey says she saw it spew through the pour spout...  I hate mushrooms... and puree!!  I screeched loudly as boiling hot mushrooms stuck to my arms and landed on the front of my shirt!  I still have red marks all over my forearms where I am burned.  But after cleaning up the kitchen, I glowered at that blender, put a cloth over the top and turned it on again.  HA!!  Pureed mushroom and onions!!

Then melt 3 Tablespoons of butter in the pan and whisk in 3 Tablespoons of flour.  Pour in 1 cup of half and half and 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper.  Add back in the wicked mushroom/onion puree and cook over medium heat until it thickens, stirring the whole time.

Done.  The kitchen got cleaned, along with the cupboards, my shirt, the surrounding appliances, the floor, the wall, and everything else in the path.  The offensive soup is now in a glass jar in my refrigerator to be added to the green bean casserole on Thursday.

Happy Thanksgiving!!  Tomorrow I am supposed to get my new KitchenAid Stand Mixer and I sure hope I have had my last explosion in the kitchen for a while!!

Time to test the SmartKlean laundry ball again on this t-shirt, although I know it will work.. there is no trace of pumpkin left on the last shirt I exploded on. 

Onion Rings for Green Bean Casserole

The official cooking has started in my house for Thanksgiving dinner.  One of the favorites of my family is Green Bean Casserole.  You know the kind:  2 cans of green beans, one can of cream of mushroom soup, and basically French's Onions on top and mixed in the middle.  We have it every year for every holiday and they all expect extra to be cooked so they can have leftovers.

This year will be different.  I cannot buy a can of French's Onions, nor can I buy cans of green beans or cream of mushroom soup.  So today I tried making my own little fried onions.  When I make my own food I am in control of what is in it.  It is not that we are low calorie, or fat free in this house.  We just eat REAL FOOD and in appropriate quantities.  It is not as easy as opening a can of this and a can of that but I feel so much better physically and psychologically, knowing what is in my food.

These onions were SO easy to make and really were just like French's Onions but fresher and delicious!  Here is how we did it:

2 whole yellow onions (organic) cut into small pieces.
About 2 cups of whole milk (no added hormones, and non-homogenized)
About 2 cups of whole wheat freshly ground flour (sprouted)
A generous amount of garlic seasoned salt.
Olive oil for frying (olive oil has tremendous health benefits for an oil)

Soak the little onion pieces in the milk for at least five minutes (I cried like a baby cutting those onions today... are organic onions more potent than conventional onions?).  Heat the oil in the pan while the onions are soaking.

With two forks I lifted the onions from their milk bath and placed them in the flour and seasoning until well coated.  Then I fried them in the olive oil until brown and placed them on a paper towel to drain.  I was surprised that the flour stayed on them and they came out crispy and brown just like the onions I am used to seeing in the can.  Journey retrieved them from the oil with a slotted spoon and was eating them as fast as they were cooling.  I had to stop her from eating them all so we would have enough for the casserole.

Don't they look good??   They taste great and were really easy to do.  As with all the food I cook, I will keep them in the refrigerator in an airtight container until I put the casserole together Thursday morning.

Now to make the cream of mushroom soup with the remains of the milk and flour I used for the onions!  I love to have an opportunity to use everything and not waste!

Health - Avoid This Kind of Treatment!!

I am in no way going to tell you that doctors aren't needed or that sometimes you need medication to recover from an illness.  I just wanted to say that up front so that you know where I stand.  What I am going to tell you is that prescription and over the counter medications should only be taken when all other methods of treatment fail, and that all of them are chemicals that can produce side effects so should be used much more cautiously than they currently are.  Here are just a few things I learned about medications, and I learned them the hard way.

I used to suffer from chronic Gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD), or chronic heartburn as many of you know it.  I suffered for years, many nights unable to lay flat without pain, having difficulty sleeping, and hurting.  I took Tums frequently, and tried every prescription drug that the doctors would give me to help.  Prescription drugs provided me some pain relief and seemed like a Godsend until a few years after starting to take them I developed a severe and chronic fatigue.  I was so tired all the time that I finally had some blood testing done at the doctor.  My blood tests showed a dangerously and severely low ferritin level.  What that meant is that my iron stores were very very low and I was suffering from a form of anemia.  It took a special test to find it.. it is not routinely checked with annual lab work. 

What I then went on to learn is that anti-reflux drugs stop the production of acid in the stomach, thereby helping alleviate symptoms of heartburn.  But there is a purpose to those acids in the stomach.  They are there, in part, to help you break down and absorb the iron in your food.  Without those normal stomach acids, my body could not use the iron I ingested and it caused a severe form of anemia.  This is just one common side effect of chronic heartburn medication that many do not know about.  Chronic heartburn can, instead, be controlled with diet modification, which I now employ. 

Antibiotics.  Where would the world be without them?  I shudder to think of all the infections that would kill people without the invention of antibiotics.  But did you know that they, too, have frequent side effects that go undiscovered and undiagnosed?  Because my diet was poor and I consumed way too much diet Coke and even Vodka, I had very frequent urinary tract infections.  Many chemicals we consume in our diets cause bladder irritation and bacteria breed then where they shouldn't.  Five or six times a year, I ended up taking an antibiotic called Levaquin to recover from those infections.  What I did not know was that Levaquin has a fairly common side effect of causing tendonitis.  I did not discover that until recently as well and only after having pain from tendonitis in both hands chronically now, 2 years after taking my last dose of Levaquin.  Many report ruptured Achilles tendons after taking Levaquin.  Some of these tendonitis symptoms heal after a period of time but many do not and are permanent damage from the drug.  Mine appears to be permanent damage.

Because of the tendonitis and other pain I had, I used to take Vicodin or Hydrocodone several times a day.  I thought that was the way to kill the pain.  I also had frequent migraines and joint aches and took pain pills whenever those were bothering me.  Then I found out that pain pills are not the answer.  Both prescription pain pills and over-the-counter pain pills can also cause other problems including what they call "rebound pain".  What that means is that the more you take, the more you need.  Since I discovered what good nutrition would do for me 2 years ago, I have not had another migraine since.  With my hands I now turn to rest, ice or heat for pain control and have not taken another pain pill.  It is much easier to handle now than it was when riding the "yo-yo" pain cycle.

Cholesterol medication (Statin drugs are the worst) is another example of a drug that is widely prescribed but very harmful.  Cholesterol is NORMAL in the body... after all, they never want it down to 0, do they?  Cholesterol is PRODUCED in your body as a response to inflammation.  You may not even know you have inflammation, but your body does and produces cholesterol to line the arteries in order to protect them from the inflammation.  Of course we all know that too much of this lining of the arteries can lead to heart problems so the physician's answer is to give a chemical that blocks the production of cholesterol in the body.  Ok, great, but then what?  The inflammation, or root cause of the problem is never addressed and the body cannot heal itself.  Now I suppose you know I am going to fill you in on what causes this body inflammation, don't you?  Can you guess?  It is chemicals, toxins, sugars, and foreign substances that we ingest..  when you cleanse those toxins out of your body and quit over-indulging on them, your body will heal itself and the cholesterol issues that concern your doctor will magically heal themselves too.

The drugs frequently given to patients for their cholesterol are called Statins.  That is a whole class or group of drugs that causes many side effects in people that can be debilitating.  These drugs are known to cause arthralgias (pain in the joints), myalgias (pain in the muscles), confusion, memory loss, high blood sugars, and even muscle weakness.  In short, taking these drugs can make your life MISERABLE. 

Another interesting piece of information about cholesterol is this:  Cholesterol (your body produces it, remember?) is necessary to make testosterone in men.  Testosterone is the male hormone that makes men, well, men.  It is necessary for all the manly qualities that annoy us women so much, in addition to healthy sexual function.  Without enough testosterone a man can find himself unable to do the very thing he likes best to do (I don't have to tell you this, do I ? - I am trying to keep this rated G).  Enter Viagra.. or the little blue pill... 

You see, when the human body has all of the nutrition it needs every day, and when it is allowed to perform uninhibited, it can produce amazing healing.  The body works hard to stay in balance and will do so when we get out of the way.  Almost 90% of all chronic illnesses can be traced to a mineral deficiency... and minerals come from the food we eat.

When I nursed at an internal med clinic and reviewed patient's medications with them before the doctor came in to see them, I always new if I found a man with a prescription for Viagra, he would also be taking one of the Statin drugs... it was true 95% of the time.  It was really sad to find folks with a list of prescription drugs that kept growing with each frequent visit to the doctor.  The harder they searched for ways to feel better, the more drugs they were prescribed to treat symptoms and the more drugs they were given to counteract the side effects of the other drugs.  I think that is why I quit practicing traditional nursing.. just too frustrating.

Now I am only sharing all of this to enlighten you.  I used to take about 17 different drugs a day and I felt crippled and terrible.  My weight continued to climb and I felt much older than I needed to.  I took frequent naps and really had a poor quality of life.  Then I became enlightened.  I made changes and now find myself feeling young and energetic!  It has been a slow and ongoing process for me but one I feel I need to share with you.  Please be an informed consumer.  Look at the list of side effects on your prescriptions..   When you need it, you need it, but if there is an alternative out there... please give it some thought.  Feel free to message me in an email any time you wish to know about alternatives or have questions.  I will be happy to help you search out answers or talk to you about your specific situation or that of a loved one... 

In the Kitchen - Bread Saga Continued

In my pursuit to make a perfect (or even good) homemade whole wheat bread, I have encountered many failures.  Those sit in my freezer right now waiting for Thanksgiving to make into stuffing, so I have not felt entirely defeated as I have high hopes for each subsequent batch of bread.

I shared my honey wheat bread recipe several posts back and continued to work with that recipe, attempting little additions or changes to make it better.  Whole wheat bread seems to have a tendency to get hard and dry.  For people that are used to "Wonder Bread", this whole wheat bread leaves something to be desired.  I have learned a few things in my journey, including things about my own appliances.

A few years ago, we had to replace the lower heating element in our oven.  Other than that, the oven is in fantastic shape so there was no need to waste the money on a new one.  It has worked well ever since except I noticed a tendency to burn things like cookies.  I bought an oven thermometer to compare the "actual" temp to the temp setting I was choosing on the oven and I found that when I set my oven to 350 degrees, it was actually reading 400 degrees on the thermometer inside.  No wonder I was burning stuff!  So clearly, I need to set my oven temp to a lower target and check the internal temp to see what it really is before attempting to bake my bread.

I discovered Wheat Gluten.  Yes, we still eat wheat.  I think if you soak, sprout, and grind your own wheat, there is a good nutritional content to it and it is good for you.  I don't think the flour you buy at the store is very nutritious, as it has been treated to prevent it from going rancid on the shelf and gives many people stomach aches, even if they are not gluten intolerant.  In fact, Celiac disease is not as common as many would think.. more people avoid wheat products and go gluten-free due to their gut reaction to processed flours, not due to an actual gluten intolerance.  I am very supportive of folks that go gluten-free but my family does not need to at this time, as we have fixed the gut issues in the quality of the wheat flour we use.  So why wheat gluten?  Because whole wheat flour does not have a lot of gluten in it and sometimes does not rise as well in yeast breads.  This creates a denser loaf than I like personally so about 1 teaspoon of wheat gluten per cup of flour produces a good rise in my recipes and a softer, airier loaf.

The pan you use can make a difference too!  I only owned glass loaf pans until yesterday when I found some pretty good metal ones at a thrift store for 99 cents each.  I priced the metal ones at Bed, Bath, and Beyond yesterday and they were running 15 - 20 dollars each.  Ouch!!  When baking in a glass pan, it is recommended to lower the temp of the oven by 25 degrees from what the recipe is calling for.  I have practiced this religiously since I have a tendency to burn things but this makes it even more complex for me when already having to adjust for my oven temp issues.. so I am switching to metal pans.

I have also discovered that adding a "dough enhancer" to homemade bread is helpful.  These are ingredients that improve the texture, taste, and crust of the bread.  They include Gluten, acid, starch, and sugar.  We have the gluten as above, the sugars are in the form of honey.  We just need a little more acid and a little more starch.  Yesterday I used a bit of homemade yogurt as a dough enhancer and even though my bread clearly had issues coming out of the oven, it was one of the best tasting breads I have made to date!  There are many items in your kitchen and that you can buy to enhance your dough.  I am going to experiment with yogurt, vinegar, eggs, gluten, and other items.  You can find recipes for dough enhancers on the web that include gelatin, citric acid, powdered milk, ascorbic acid, pectin, ginger, and other ingredients that I don't readily have in my kitchen. 

So yesterday's experiment with bread was a new whole wheat bread recipe.  It had basically the same ingredients as my previous one in the same proportions.  The difference was the addition of a bit of "greek yogurt" as a dough enhancer.  I had some homemade yogurt in the refrigerator so felt lucky!  The baking was a little different in that it asked me to put the loaves in a cold oven and set the temp to 350, calling for a baking time of 32 - 40 minutes.  I followed directions to a "T" and checked the bread at 35 minutes.  Clearly not done.  Did not sound hollow enough when tapped on the top and the crust was not brown enough.  Back in the oven for 10 more minutes....  when removed that time, I checked it with a thermometer for the internal temp, which on wheat bread should be 200 - 210 degrees.  The smaller loaf read the appropriate temp but the bigger loaf did not.  Back in the oven for 10 more minutes with the bigger loaf.  Here is what happened to those loaves.

This is the smaller loaf that showed the correct internal temp.  This was taken about 1/2 hour after removing from oven.  See the dent on top?  That has happened to every loaf that has come out undercooked in the middle.  I fear it might not be done all the way through but the crust was plenty done.  Gave this loaf to Grandpa and Grandma last night.

The bigger loaf was put in longer and when removed I only let it cool for about 20 minutes before trying to remove it from the pan.  Big mistake.... here is the result.  The "muffin top" came off!

You might be able to see that the very middle was still apparently not baked completely through.  There might have been too much rise in it and maybe too airy and light?

Since this last episode I have read that you should not disturb or cut your bread for at least 2 hours after removing it from the oven.  That may have been why my bigger loaf broke and because I did not disturb my littler loaf for about 3 hours, it may be fine when my grandma cuts into it.

But I will tell you this:  That yogurt in there sure made the consistency of this loaf heavenly!  I will use dough enhancers from now on!  And I will not cut my bread or remove it from the pan early.  The quest for the perfect baked loaf of bread in this house continues and I only have one more week to find something valuable to do with the ruined loaves...unless I make Christmas stuffing too! 

If you have any hints for making the perfect loaf of bread, include some comments below.  BTW:  I only used 1/4 cup of yogurt for my 2 loaves of bread, in case you are wanting to use it as a dough enhancer yourself!!

In the Kitchen - Regrow your celery!!!

I just posted about re-growing green onions in your window sill.  It is very easy to do and I am also experimenting with re-growth of celery.

Again, celery is one of the vegetables on the "dirty dozen" list ..  indicating it contains more pesticides and contaminants than many others do.  As a result I am sad when the pre-Thanksgiving Grocery sale ads came out with conventional celery at 69 cents a bunch.  I buy mine organically and have to pay closer to $2.00 a bunch of celery.  Celery is one of those items at my house that I get only when I need it for a recipe and if I don't use it all, we just don't eat enough of it to prevent it from going bad.  It is something that I routinely dehydrate and keep around for cooking but when a salad or cold dish calls for a little fresh celery, I would really like to have it at my fingertips.

So I was thrilled when I read that you could regrow celery.  The instructions I read called for finding a clump (is it called a clump? - do you know what I mean by that?) with some of the roots still intact.  I was so excited to do this that I bought my organic clump of celery at Whole Foods this week and forgot to check for roots... when I got home with it I found that the roots had been cut off the bottom.  I cut off what I needed for the chicken salad and dehydrated the rest of the stalk (the word stalk just came out of my brain and jumped on the "paper" - so a "clump" must be the same as a stalk).

I read that if you keep at least an inch of the bottom of the celery, you can soak it in water and it will re-grow.  So I cut it off and stuck it in a shallow container.

 Now just a few days later, the most amazing thing is happening, even though by bunch of celery does not have visible roots.  There is a little bit of green leafy growth in the middle of it.  Some of the outer stalks have begun to fall off, but there is life in this little celery and I am going to make sure it grows!!  Take a close look at this picture:

Can you see some leafy growth in the very center? 

For celery, you are to let it take on some growth of a few inches and then re-plant it in some potting soil.  I will be watching for roots to appear and then looking for the right time to put it in a pot. 

I would be excited to have some fresh celery at my disposal through the winter months!!  Try your own at home this Thanksgiving when you are buying a big bunch of it for your stuffing or your veggie trays. 

In the Kitchen - ReGrow Green Onions

This is the MOST amazing thing ever... it ranks up there with the ability to create great quality vanilla yourself!! 

How many times have you wished to have green onions for a recipe or a salad and found you did not have any.  I don't routinely keep them around because I find they do not stay very fresh in my refrigerator so I buy them only when  have an immediate need and then have to pay more for them to be organic.  Such is the case with so much that I am studying and learning to make things myself that are good for us and will save us money and reduce our exposure to processed foods.  So now I found out you can re-grow green onions!!

I made some delicious chicken salad this week as a result of gathering enough chicken stock/broth to get us through the thanksgiving dinner.  (I will make turkey stock after that dinner as well to replenish the stock in my freezer).  So while making the chicken salad, it called for 2 stalks of green onion.

I bought a small bunch at Whole Foods that was organic and used some in the chicken salad and dehydrated the rest, EXCEPT for the ends with the roots.

I put the ends in a small glass of purified water and placed it in my sunny kitchen window.  They looked a little puny Monday afternoon when I first put them in the water but I heard they would regrow and wanted to check that out.

I don't know how well you can see but they are all cut off evenly and submerged in the water.

Now here is the amazing part.  After just a few days they look like this:

I took a close up picture this time because there has been some definite growth there!!  In just a few days I am convinced that I will have a new stock of fresh organic green onions in a couple of weeks. 

The way I understand this is that you can continue to cut them off and use them and they will regrow!!  I am so excited!!  You can wait until they are a bit bigger and plant them in dirt if you want to and they will still regrow you more onions every time you cut them off.   Now I will have fresh onions all the time! 

Are you going to try this in your sunny window?  If you do, just be sure to spring for organic green onions the first time and you will re-grow organic green onions!!