Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Bread, Cook, Cooking, Ebook, Flour, Food, Grains, Home, soaking grains on April 13, 2012| 4 Comments »
Let’s call today Free Friday! I just love free 🙂 I have downloaded this Ebook a while ago and was reminded of it today. It’s called Is Your Flour Wet? It talks all about the importance of soaking our grains, why and it gives recipes too! No need to be in the US for this free item! Check it out and reference it often 🙂
http://theprairiehomestead.com/isyourflourwet.pdf
Happy Free Friday!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Cooking, free webinar, gnowfglins.com, traditional food on April 9, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Most people who follow my blog are into traditional foods, so when I got my invited to GNOWFGLINS free webinar I figured this was the best place to share. GNOWFGLINS is one of my favorite places to get information, they are also the people who offered the free grain mill before. They have a huge knowledge of traditional foods, you can subscribe to their site and have access to forums and online classes for a small monthly payment, or you can lurk like I do for free. I have signed up to receive their newsletter and updates and webinar updates. If you are interested in more traditional cooking I really recommend you check out their website.
Interested in time saving tips and tricks for your traditional foods kitchen? Want to get more done — not less — for once?
Boy, can we help! Come to a free webinar to learn our best tips for working smarter — not harder — in your traditional foods kitchen.
The best part, it’s free. The webinar is Friday at 1pm Pacific time, however the beauty of webinars is they have a replay feature. If you are unable to attend the actual webinar, if you sign up they will send you a link to the replay and you can watch it on your own time. 🙂 Click here to sign up
Hope you enjoy it!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Cooking, Food Matters, God, Hungry for Change Movie, PCOS, Raw foodism, Smoothie on March 9, 2012| 3 Comments »
The “occupy movement” is really popular up here, so I had to chuckle when I thought of the title of this blog. Several years ago I probably would have been on board with this whole thing, but God really has humbled my heart and this once liberal is fairly conservative now. This blog is not about the occupy movement but 51% is important…
In the last few days I have been really getting into the film Food Matters, which in my last blog I said you could sign up and watch the first 40 minutes (of an 80 minute movie) for free. The same company that put out Food Matters is coming out with a new film on March 21 through March 31 you can watch it for free. I love free! Nutrition has really been my passion for the past few years. I have been doing a lot to learn about things that I wish I had known my whole life. My body would probably not be in the shape it’s in (hormone imbalance, insulin resistant, over weight) had I learned these things a long time ago. But, I didn’t and I’m not going to let that hang over my head anymore, I’m learning it now and I’m grateful.
I used to go to a naturopathic doctor, she was giving me homeopathy to help with my PCOS and my symptoms. I saw her for two years and paid every cent out of my own pocket, my health insurance didn’t cover her because she is not a MD. I since learned that homeopathy is really not of God, in fact it’s opposite of. I won’t get into that here if you want to read more about it you can go here or simply search “homeopathy and Christianity/God.” When I quit seeing her I went to another ND who did an ultra sound on me to discover my ovaries are COVERED in cysts! It was very traumatic to see, this guy wanted to put me on Metformin, which I was totally opposed to, I never went back. Then I got to feeling that God wanted the credit to getting me healthy. Sure the doctors could have probably done something for me, and I probably would have been better by now, but I truly feel that God wants to heal me and when I am healed by His way, then I can shout it from the roof tops!
A side note on PCOS, when I was diagnosed (by a saliva hormone panel) I did a lot of research on how to reverse this. There wasn’t a lot out there, pretty much Metformin was the answer, just not my answer. I did find a lady on youtube with a channel, she posted a video about how she reversed PCOS. I was not at the time ready for the diet she suggested, which was a raw food diet, and how she reversed her PCOS. Times change though…
Now, I think I have figured out what it is that He wants me to do in order to heal my body. After watching the first half of Food Matters, it was like the light went on. Eureka! I got it! What I learned in the first half of Food Matters is that basically our bodies see cooked food as an invader, not only does it cause our bodies to go on the defensive and white blood cell counts climb, but cooking also makes food lose nutrients. 50% of protein is lost when meat is cooked, did you know that!? I didn’t. Am I advocating eating raw meat? No. Although a rare steak is quite tasty, we also have chickens and I am not afraid to eat a raw egg from them. In fact I’ve made raw eggnog with raw milk and some of our home grown chicken eggs and it is FANTASTIC! There was a study done that people who ate 51% of every meal, raw, were healthier and the body didn’t go into defense mode after they ate. So the first major thing to change in our diet is to eat 51% of each of your meals in raw food. I showed Hubby the first 40 minutes of Food Matters and he also was changed by it. Every morning since we have woke up and had a green raw smoothie for breakfast. The smoothie is filled with stuff we already had, banana, raw milk, stevia, kelp powder, dulce powder, protein powder (we have pea protein), carob powder, wheat grass powder, and a super food spirulina powder. I am a coffee-aholic. This week I have had coffee one time, which happened to be today because of two really rough nights of sleep. I actually woke up this morning, turned of my alarm thinking it was Saturday… reality was not my friend this morning.
Have I been perfect this week? Absolutely not! Every meal (other than breakfast) has been cooked for the most part. Although I have been eating a lot of salads for lunch. I make a conscious effort to eat more raw food though, a banana as a snack, some pineapple, some nuts. Last night I made raw “ice cream” with frozen bananas some raw milk, a bit of stevia (and I added a bit of maple syrup, the real stuff) cinnamon and vanilla. It was a tasty treat! The next goal is to add fresh juice daily. We have a juicer…somewhere that I need to pull out and put in a prominent place in our kitchen. I am not to a place where I am giving up meat, we are having a slow cooked roast for dinner, oh yum! I do feel though that adding a large portion of raw foods to each meal is a good place to start. Especially in the morning starting out with our smoothie, anyone can start the day with a fresh smoothie it’s actually faster than cooking eggs. I haven’t added a raw egg to the smoothie yet, but I am going to now. I eat my own eggs raw, I don’t advocate eating store bought eggs raw, because you never know where they are coming from and what went into raising them. Read more about the health benefits of raw eggs here.
As I sit here at work sipping my morning smoothie, with a banana and pineapple on my desk, I’m ready for the raw day. I don’t know what’s up ahead, but I do know I feel like I’m on the right track. I highly recommend you take the 40 minutes out of your day and go to http://www.foodmatters.tv/ simply add your name and email address to have instant access to the first 40 minutes, I intend on paying $4.95 today to finish the video. And on March 21-31st you can watch the whole new movie they have out called Hungry for Change by going here you can sign up to be invited to watch the movie for free during those days. They have some teaser videos on the website too so you can get your interests sparked like I did mine. I promise it will change your life if you allow it to.
Posted in Fermentation, tagged Bread, Cooking, Dough, Flour, Home, Sodium bicarbonate, Sourdough on October 28, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Fermented foods is my new passion. I am learning a lot about it, how healthy it is for us, especially grains. Most people who have issues with eating regular wheat flour can actually tolerate sourdough because the grains have been soaked and soured, it breaks down enzymes in the flour that are generally the cause of the intolerance. I don’t seem to have issues with wheat, although I don’t know that for sure, I’ve never been tested. However it is quite the “fad” to be gluten-free. I made sourdough pizza for a friend who was gluten sensitive and he didn’t report any issues back after. Anyway, I bought a sourdough Ebook from gnowfglins.com and got started right away getting my starter going. The Ebook is awesome! I highly recommend it, it has tons of recipes, tricks, and help for your sourdough needs.
After I got my starter ready I tried all types of things, rolls, pancakes, crackers, pizza. But my favorite and the easiest is something they call Bucket Bread. Basically it’s a combination of flour, water, and sourdough starter and you make a large batch of it and put it in, you guessed it, a bucket. 😉 I use a gallon bucket that use to hold our coconut oil. My first few buckets were pretty good. I got good rise on my dough and although there were a few doughy breads, for the most part I did well. Then it stopped, I think maybe with the colder weather change. But I’ve made two buckets (which is quite a bit of flour and several breads) and the stupid dough wouldn’t rise! I’ve laughed at myself a lot calling them hockey pucks. They have been perfect chew toys for the dogs, I’m sure they got quite a jaw work out too. Hubby was always pretty generous and ate the bread anyway. One turned out like a pancake and I left it out to rise and had nice bubbles on top, I couldn’t figure it out! It was so frustrating.
Last night was the break through moment, thanks to Hubby. I had the last bit of dough in my bucket, I’ve had ZERO success with this bucket, but I had to make the dough. It was getting quite sour! So I added a bit more flour, and then hubby suggested something, he actually said use some baking soda. The light bulb went off! When I make sourdough pancakes, I add baking soda to give it fluff. What a wonderful idea! So I eyeball and dump some in. Instantly my dough started to get puffy! I did a little dance. 🙂 Hubby came in later and said “did you put in baking powder?” and I said “no baking soda.” He had said soda but had meant powder, but just that little mix up gave me the ah-ha moment I needed. We were actually out of power, so I’m glad I didn’t need that. So I covered them (I made two loafs) for the first 15 minutes per the instructions, and hoped for the best. After 15 minutes I took off the covers and they were looking plump and brown. I had a fear of a doughy middle, like most of them have turned out recently so I left it in a bit longer, another 15 minutes. When I pulled them out they looked fluffy, but with that same sourdough crisp crust. One looked a little too done… so I dumped them on to the cutting board and sliced into the big one. It was fluffy!!! YAHOO!! It made my whole week actually, is that sad? Taste test with Hubby and our friend turned out great, we put some raw butter on there with some homemade peach jam, er syrup, it didn’t quite set up right. Everyone loved it and went back for more! I found my solution to my hockey puck bread, and it was so wonderful. I see lots of bread in our future.
Posted in Fermentation, tagged Beverages, Cooking, fermentation, Fruit, Home, Kefir, kefir water, Milk, probiotics, Sugar on October 26, 2011| 2 Comments »
About a year ago I got milk kefir grains from a nice person on craigslist. I thought it would be a wonderful way to get probiotics into our bodies. It worked, for a bit. I just couldn’t get use to the very pungent tasting drink. Even with fruit and sweetener I just couldn’t get over the tart taste. But the stuff in the grocery store is SO good!! I thought for sure I would enjoy it, turns out the amount of sugar that is added to the stuff you get at the grocery store would spike your blood sugar so high you’d be doing the Freddy on the front porch. (or maybe that was when I had my first cup of coffee…) Either way I couldn’t do it, hubby on the other hand enjoyed it, or so I thought. Turns out he just liked the probiotics and the protein from the milk. We were using raw cows milk but have since switched to raw goats milk, but I gave up the idea of milk kefir a long time ago. By the way I pronounce it KEY-FUR. So I found a yahoo group about Kefir and joined. A few days later a wonderful woman who lives not far from where I work dropped off some water kefir grains. Basically it’s the same probitoic goodness in the milk kefir but no milk, Yay! It is supposed to taste like a soda of some sort. This lady gave me directions, 1/2 cup of grains to 1/3 cup sugar, fruit and 4 cups water (well you start out with 5 cups water, but you simmer the water and fruit and it reduces). She was using ginger and I’m sure it makes a wonderful ginger ale type drink, which I make in a lacto-fermented soda, I’ll post that later. So I wanted to try fruit, we have an abundance of frozen blueberries that hubby harvested so I used blended blueberries, water, and the fruit then I made my first mistake, I added the grains. There are two different ways to do kefir water, one says to put the grains in a small sack (burlap/cheese cloth type) then you can easily remove the grains, the other says just put it all together and then you can just wash the grains off when you’re straining it. After 48 hours I strained and found that I couldn’t separate the fruit bits out of the grains! Of course you have to rinse with cold water and after my fingers were numb I figured it was a lost cause. I grabbed out as many big grains out that I could and fed the rest to the chickens.
With my first lesson over, we drank the “juice.” It was sweet and yet had a fermented/wine type smell. It didn’t taste fermented it tasted sweet. The next batch I added frozen blueberries, in a large pot with 10 cups of water (I’m doubling the recipe) and simmered. After that I strained off the blueberries, added my sugar and let the mixture cool. After it was cool enough to the touch (what is cool enough? well it felt cool to the touch, not warm…) I poured it into two half-gallon jars and added the grains. Let it sit 48 hours and again, success! Sweet goodness.
My third attempt, again another lesson in this one. But we do learn from the mistakes don’t we? It’s hard to make the same mistakes twice. This time I decide I want to try Elderberry. Hubby and I LOVE Elderberry. God made these perfect blue/purple berries that not only make one of the best wines I’ve ever tried, and some amazing muffins, but it also is an immune system booster. Many cough and cold remedies have Elderberry in them. So we generally harvest a lot of berries, last year our buckets were OVER FLOWING with these beautiful little berries. The only “bad” thing is the seed, it is quite big for the little berry, and it’s got this crunch that you can’t really explain, you just have to try. Too many seeds can be bad, only because there is just too much crunch. Oh and I forgot to mention it makes an amazing jam too! Ok… back to the subject at hand. So when I’ve made Elderberry soda before (with the lacto-fermented version) it was VERY explosive, which leads me to believe that the sugars are eaten up pretty quickly, and ferments quickly. I followed the same rules for the kefir water and left it for 48 hrs, but the end of that time there was obvious fizz on the top of the jar. We strained it and this batch smelt VERY fermented, in fact I was a bit apprehensive to try it. Hubby went first, bless his heart. He likes it! So I give it a go, when you don’t take a big inhale before you drink it’s really great, when you do you get that fermented smell first then you can’t help but taste it. It seems to have settled down in the fridge, although that could just be my brain playing tricks on me. But what I would do different, is probably add less grains, more sugar and maybe even ferment it less time, or a combination of these things.
Kefir water is a hit in our house. Hubby is even considering retiring his milk grains for a bit. They can keep in the freezer so can the water kefir grains actually. This way if and when he’s ready for milk kefir again he can have them, and when our water grains multiply like crazy then we can save some, and give some away. I think too many people don’t do “nice” things anymore, everyone seems to expect something and no one can truly get something for nothing. I do think it’s important to share, I mean isn’t that one of the first things in life we learned? So I plan on extending my water grains to some folks on craigslist, and maybe here if anyone is listening. 😉
Happy Kefiring (totally just made that up, I think)!
virtuousgracious 