Super yummy, cultured squash!

My countertops are covered with the usual daily crumbs and sticky spots, things people get out and don't put away, and PILES AND PILES of impatiently waiting garden produce. This morning I woke up to an exploded green pepper. It ran out of patience. Oh, who planted so many green pepper plants this year? It took some doing to find some clear space in the kitchen to take the picture for this blog post!  I'll make some more salsa tomorrow, family, I promise!  Then we will have some clear space again.

It's quite a job keeping up with the produce coming in over the summer, and I am always feeling behind. But I've managed to keep a pretty steady flow of produce culturing. Our biggest successes this year have been green peppers (ugh, not my favorite), squash, zucchini, and tomatoes.  So, there's lots of salsa makin' goin' on!

To me, the benefits of cultured vegetables well outweigh the work and time investment in preparing and storing. They are loaded with vitamins, promote healthy gut flora, improve alkaline levels, balance thyroid, improve metabolism, and have amazing cleansing properties. They are full of vitamins B, C, and K2.  

Many healing diets recommend consuming some cultured vegetables with every meal for proper vitamin, mineral, and fat absorption.  The days that I do get my cultured veggies in me, are the days I feel superhuman! They are pretty awesome! 

One of my FAVORITE ferments is cultured squash! It is sweeter than most of the other fermented veggies, and so its savory flavor is a bit of a departure from the usual more sour ferments. I found the recipe for this squash  on Donna Schwenk's website, culturedfoodforlife.com. This is the one to make if you're easing into the flavors of cultured vegetables, since it isn't quite as pickled tasting.  

Now, I'd better go wipe the crumbs off my countertops.  

My long story, short

The ups and downs of the last several years:

I remember May of 2010 so distinctly.  I was on top of the world.  I had just completed my late return to college to finish my final year towards my bachelor's degree.  I was graduating with all A's from that last year, gave a speech during the ceremony, and could hardly believe I had just given birth to my sixth child the previous fall.  My husband and I were also wrapping up a huge undertaking that we had completely poured ourselves into for months.

I believe Jan-May of that year was the hardest work I had ever undertaken... nursing an infant who was having some major nursing challenges, giving over 100% in support and hard work to my husband's project, writing papers and completing assignments for school, and homeschooling and raising five other kiddos! I felt energetic, intelligent, and capable!

The moment I stood, presenting my graduation speech at college, still feeling the high of getting a perfect grade on my senior thesis, was a defining moment for me.

I had always been a good student, loved writing, reading, researching, and being a mom.  But at that moment, I remember taking a mental picture of the blessed life I had, and of the exciting potential of my future endeavors.  I just knew that God had big things in store for me and my family, and that He was giving me the skills necessary to accomplish the tasks he would entrust me with! I like to call this time of my life, the "full bloom phase."

The remainder of 2010 presented even harder challenges to give my energy to, and lots to accomplish, but the next distinct time that stands out in my memory is January 2011. That is when I finally had a chance to sit down for a moment after our big, crazy year.  I knew I didn't feel "right," but that it was probably just temporary exhaustion.

Things had finally calmed down, and I felt like my head was spinning. It was time to rest and recharge for a bit to recover from a huge year that had come to an end with the usual holiday craziness.  I figured that by the end of January, I would be back to my normal self.

Well, the inability to concentrate, read, or write a simple Facebook status update, along with an extremely fatigued feeling didn't go away by the end of the month.  Or by the end of the next month. I remained in a confused, perplexed zombie-like state for the rest of the year and on into the next year.  I like to call this time of my life, when I felt absent from everything going on around me, as "when my brain crashed and completely disappeared."

I had gone from writing beautiful, 10 page academic papers to not being able to read a complete sentence and typing my words with the letters all out of order.  After a lifetime of feeling like I was an analytic, academic type person, I was mentally paralyzed and completely wiped out.  Everything that made me, me... All the inside parts that make you more than just a shell, seemed to have vanished, and I was literally a shell of myself.  Mind and spirit had vanished. My body was on autopilot to get through the basic daily tasks of caring for my family, and that activity was very minimal.  You can see by looking back through my blog, that I did have a few thoughtful moments here and there.  Those moments usually meant I had done very little else that day or that week.  My good moments were few, and they were like a tiny allowance I was given that would be quickly spent on one task or another, and then there was nothing left, mentally or emotionally. If a day came that I was able to think fairly well, I had to decide what I would spend my meager allowance of thoughts and energy on, because I knew I would crash into zombie mode at any moment and wouldn't be back for days.

Distinct memory number three- August of 2012.  I was returning from date day with the hubby, and walking up the four stairs into the main part of our house, I felt my calf muscles seize up.  It wasn't pain. They just turned as hard as rocks and didn't relax again.  I became puzzled and sat down, and as I tried to figure out what this strange sensation was, my arms and legs began to feel numb with pins and needles.  By the next day, I couldn't get up off my couch all day, because my arms and legs felt like they each weighed 1,000 thousand pounds.  In fact, I felt like a huge invisible weight was pushing my whole body down.  I ended up lying down on my bedroom floor, because the sensations of weight pushing on me, pins and needles, and fire all over my skin made me feel like I needed to sink lower to the ground for some kind of relief.  It was like the dream where you can't move when the boogie man starts coming after you.  My body felt stuck, heavy, and covered in roaming prickly pains.

From August 2012, until March 2014 I spent much, much time in and out of those symptoms.  The bad times meant being bedridden, the good times meant living like a zombie with the addition now of muscles that were weighted with fatigue and painful inflammation and terrible all encompassing exhaustion.  I like to call this time of my life the "the time I was very, very sick."

 After some initial high dose Vitamin D therapy, I saw slight improvement by the end of 2012.  I started special methylated B Vitamins in 2013, after finding a gene mutation that was contributing to my crash.  Baby steps of improvement followed throughout the remainder of 2013.  There were some good times, then bad times again on my roller coaster ride of crashing, recovering, and crashing again.

By 2014, I felt that the baby steps I had taken through supplements were doing as much good as they were ever going to do. I was no longer bedridden or completely helpless, but I was so very limited in what I could actually accomplish in the down times, and the good times were tainted with muscle pain and severe brain fog.  I was happy with the progress, but knew that if I wanted to feel like my full bloom self ever again, I would have to discover additional steps to take toward healing.

God was so present in this sick period, and led me so faithfully through each baby step to take. But I will post the spiritual side of the story in a future entry.  

The next distinct memory I have is of a phone conversation with my mom in February of this year.  I told her I had been researching and praying, and that I was going to try an extreme diet to see if it just might help me. I was considering the GAPS diet or The Maker's Diet. I eventually settled on eliminating all refined sugars, processed foods, and grains. I concentrated on real foods, traditionally prepared, with lots of probiotic foods and nourishing bone broths.

Now, here's my FAVORITE distinct memory...

The first week of April in this year, I organically, miraculously, amazingly, and completely returned. I was back. My body felt like it should. My brain worked like it should. I felt like I had been gone somewhere for a couple years, and had just returned. I saw my precious family right there in front of me. I had intelligent thoughts. I felt my spirit soar with love, peace, and joy, instead of just feeling like I was clinging tightly to hope alone.

I am so very, very grateful to be healthy. I like to call this time of my life "the return of ME."

Lentil & Rice Salad

 

I cooked a new recipe with lentils this week.  It was fine.  The two people in the house who LOVE lentils, loved the recipe.  The others thought it was just O.K.  I used my own chicken broth, out of my frozen homemade broth stash, instead of the four cups of water.  I am trying to use my own stocks and broths as many times a week as I can, to ensure we are getting plenty of good minerals.  Also, I didn't add the pork in the recipe.  And that was all good and fine... 

AND THEN...

because of my love of Nourishing Traditions, Weston A. Price Foundation, and Makers Diet, which all inspire me to use quality ingredients, and not waste anything, I came up with my "leftover" plan!

Half of the leftovers I added more chicken stock to, for soup to freeze.  And the other half I used to warm up and fill the bottoms of our salad bowls.   

I put a substantial pile of the warmed up lentils and rice in the bottom of my salad bowl, and then added whatever fresh salad ingredients I had that day.  (I made three different versions of this salad three days in a row.)  Each time, though, I added my favorite simple salad dressing, Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Bragg Vinegar.  Since the lentil recipe already calls for olive oil, the flavors of oil and vinegar marry with this recipe in an amazing way!  I'm telling you!  Wow!

The olive oil drizzled over the salad is just beautiful, especially when I am thinking about how thankful my body must be for my increasing my oleic acid intake.  Oleic acid was the only nutrient I was low on in the last micronutrient workup I had done.  We will fix that!

This is so good!  All my little girls (ages 3, 5, and 7) were asking for more!  

(Lest you think I'm a healthy food snob, I want you to know I made chocolate chip, butterscotch chip cookies today and fed my girls yogurt for dinner!)

Here is the recipe I found in the New York Times:

Lentils and Rice With or Without Pork

Published: December 31, 2010

Time: About 45 minutes

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for drizzling

1 medium onion, chopped

2 celery stalks, chopped

1 large carrot, chopped

4 ounces bacon or sausage, chopped, optional

1 tablespoon minced garlic

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 cups lentils, rinsed and picked over

1 cup long-grain brown rice

3 or 4 bay leaves

Chopped fresh parsley leaves for garnish.

1. Put the oil in a large, deep saucepan over medium heat. When it’s hot, add onion, celery, carrot and meat, if using. Cook until vegetables begin to become tender and meat begins to brown in places, 5 to 10 minutes. Add garlic and some salt and pepper and cook for another minute or two.

2. Add lentils, rice, bay leaves and 4 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then lower heat so liquid bubbles gently, and cover.

3. After 30 minutes, if rice and lentils are tender and liquid is absorbed, the dish is ready. If lentils and rice are not tender, add enough liquid to keep bottom of pot moist, cover and cook for a few more minutes. If rice and lentils are soft and there is much liquid remaining (which is unlikely), raise heat a bit and cook, uncovered, stirring once or twice, until it evaporates. Discard bay leaves. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary, fluff with a fork and serve, garnished with parsley and drizzled with more olive oil.

Notes

Use any grain instead of brown rice; you can even substitute white rice. (Cooking time for white rice is half or less that for brown, so add later.)

Similarly, use any bean: cook longer as needed and keep an eye on the water to make sure the beans stay submerged in about 1 inch of water during cooking; wait to add the rice until the beans are tender.

Stock will add flavor, but don’t waste money on the canned stuff; use water instead. (The dish will taste like lentils and rice.) For more flavor, add onion, carrot, or other vegetables and an herb like thyme.

For the dish called Moors and Christians, substitute a red bell pepper for the celery and carrot, black beans for the lentils, and 1 cup chopped tomato for some of the liquid; let the beans cook until half done before adding the rice.

For smoky red beans and rice, add 1 tablespoon tomato paste and 2 teaspoons pimentón to the vegetables. Use red beans instead of lentils and cook until they’re half done before adding the rice (which should be short-grain). Simmer for another 15 minutes, then bake uncovered at 450 degrees Fahrenheit until the beans and rice are tender.

For mujaddara, skip the meat; cook two sliced onions in a couple tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat until they’re dark brown but not burned, and serve on top of the rice and lentils.

For lentil and rice soup — or any bean and rice soup — use more water, or stock if you have it
.

Beef and vegetable soup

Here's another garden-inspired recipe I've been using a lot this summer... 

Every time hubby and the kids bring in a cabbage from the garden, I know this will be making it's way onto the menu in the next day or two!  My parents were visiting when a cabbage was carried in from the back yard by a freckle-faced, bare-footed cutie recently, and my dad went on and on about how much he loved this soup!  So, here's the recipe (if you call using no measurements and adding all ingredients "to taste" a recipe) Dad wanted me to send you, Mom:  

First, brown about 1 pound of ground beef in bottom of olive oil drizzled pan, 

When the beef is about halfway browned, add a generous layer of dried Italian seasoning to mix in as it finishes.

After the beef is completely browned and cooked (and grease drained, if necessary), stir in a box of beef broth, a family-size can of tomato soup, and a can (same soup can) of water.  If you want the soup to go further, you can add a second box of broth, or more water, keeping in mind that more water always makes it necessary to add more salt!

As the soup warms up over a medium-high heat, have veggies sauteing in about 4 T of butter.  (I use about 1 yellow onion, 3 stalks of celery, and 3 carrots- here I was finishing up a handful of baby carrots)

While veggies are softening over medium heat, add chopped cabbage (small head, or half to more of a bigger head) to the soup pot.  

As the veggies continue to soften, sprinkle another generous layer of the Italian seasoning to the pan.

Once stirred into the vegetables, the veggie/herb combo should look like this...

Add a couple good sized tomatoes, (canned would probably work just fine... these are fresh from the garden...mmm!) to the soup.

Add the vegetables, and let the soup simmer as long as you'd like.  Your vegetables will probably need at least another 30 minutes or so with the rest of the soup, but as a rule, the longer the flavors meld on a low simmer, the better it tastes.  

And soup always tastes better the second day, after it's been hanging out all together for a while, especially when cabbage is involved!  

I didn't get a picture of the soup in the bowls, but we love to top ours with shredded cheese and a tiny dollop of sour cream.  So good!  Everyone at our house LOVES this soup, from the two year old all the way up to Daddy.  It's super easy, and makes everyone happy!

Homemade salsa

The abundance of the garden, even in a drought, promises our favorite recipes being put to use! (Thank you, wonderful husband, for faithfully planting, watering, and harvesting!)

Here is one of our favorite uses for the overflowing tomato platters...

Salsa:
4 tomatoes
2 small cans of green chilies
2 small cans of diced black olives
10 green onions
2 tsp garlic salt
2 tsp sea salt
3 T extra virgin olive oil
2 T tarragon wine vinegar
Jalapeno peppers to taste (if desired)

Chop- purée the tomatoes to desired consistency in food processor. Chop green onions in food processor separately. Mix the chopped ingredients with remaining ingredients in big bowl. If desired, add jalapeños that can also be chopped in the processor.

Ketchup & Jelly

Back when we did The Maker's Diet, my pantry looked like something out of The Waltons. Since then, we have added back in more "average American pantry" items than not. It is regrettable, but it's reality. My dream is to have my kitchen 100 percent healthy again someday, but the realist in me would really be happy with MOSTLY healthy.

I am so excited that the local grocery stores are making it cheaper and easier for me to buy healthy. Just a year ago, I had to pay big bucks for jelly and ketchup that have no high fructose corn syrup. But here is my pantry today... stocked with jelly that cost under two dollars and ketchup that was on sale for under two also! (With NO hfcs!) When food prices are rising, and people are trying to make the right choices AND save money, these are exciting changes!

Nuts

Any time I can prepare food for my family the Nourishing Traditions way, I feel like I have something to really be excited about. Our ups and downs in healthy eating are many. So any time I can fix something out of the very strictest of all traditional cookbooks is a big deal to me!

The information I am passing along in this blog entry is taken mostly from Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions. Enjoy the recipe and enjoy some delicious, nutritious nuts! The flavor of nuts is enhanced by preparing them this way... I highly recommend it.

Nuts are best soaked or partially sprouted before before eaten. This is because nuts contain numerous enzyme inhibitors that can put a real strain on the digestive mechanism if consumed in excess. Nuts are easier to digest, and their nutrients more readily available, if they are first soaked in salt water overnight, then dried in a warm oven. (You may also use a dehydrator.)

Preparing walnuts, pecans, peanuts, and almonds:

4 cups nuts

2 tsp sea salt (1T for peanuts)

filtered water

Soak nuts in salt water (enough to cover) in a warm place for at least 7 hours or overnight. Drain in colander. Spread nuts on stainless steel baking pan and place in warm oven (no more than 150 degrees) for 12 to 24 hours, turning occasionally, until completely dry and crisp. Store in an airtight container. Refrigerate walnuts. This method not recommended for cashews.

Farm Milk

Mmm... once you've had farm fresh milk, store bought just isn't the same. Today we drove past beautiful fall foliage, hay-bailed pastures, quaint farm houses, and pretty red barns to pick up some milk from a local farm. I'm not sure what's better, the creamy milk or the scenery from the tree lined curvy country roads.

The Maker's Diet recommends using raw milk, although I have not been able to make arrangements to do that for our family yet. I have a source, but the pick-up time and distance are something I just can't do at this point. Here's a link to the Weston A. Price Foundation, which can help you find a local milk farmer and learn more about the benefits of raw milk...

http://www.westonaprice.org/

The milk we are drinking now is from organically raised Jersey cows and is pasteurized, which is not perfect, but compared to the questionable standards of the organic milk at Wal-Mart it's so much better. And the taste is incomparable. It's fat content is much higher than any other milk I've seen and it makes incredible kefir. I highly recommend finding a way to get good quality milk! You won't believe the difference.

Baked Oatmeal

Our Monday morning tradition is to start our week off with our favorite breakfast, baked oatmeal. Here is the recipe...

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Baked-Oatmeal-I/Detail.aspx

I like to use some of the ideas from The Maker's Diet (J.S. Rubin) to make a healthier version of my favorite recipes. The substitutions I make in this recipe are exchanging the vegetable oil for liquefied coconut oil, using 1/2 cup raw honey for the 3/4 cup sugar, and drizzling pure maple syrup after baking instead of brown sugar sprinkled on before. We also put in extra raisins. I've made this recipe both ways, and honestly, it doesn't taste any better with all the sugar. It's just as good done the healthier way.