The Slow Road

For someone as naturally impatient as I am by nature, perhaps it's a great cosmic joke that the one lesson I seem to be repeating is...learning patience.  I trust God with the results...isn't it funny that Practicing Patience is one lesson where I'd most like to be a fast learner??  ha!

We're all a work in progress.  Because in many ways Jack and I still have one foot in the "standard American Way-o-Doin' Things" (meaning  not yet out of debt, long commute blah blah blah) and the other foot squarely on our ideal path, progress has been slow and steady.  I'd much prefer it to be fast and permanent!

Chronic health problems seem to dog me.  I've made a lot of "gentle changes" and others that were more abrupt, have had setbacks, have had victories.  Looking back on the past couple years, we've made significant changes to nearly every area of our lives, Jack and I.  We're eating much more consciously, sensibly, healthfully. 

Still, I have constant allergies/sinus problems, ear infections, and occasionally bronchitis and walking pneumonia.  One bout of pneumonia as a teenager nearly took my life, and ever since then have had a somewhat wimpy bounce-back response internally.  I've been to the specialists, and I know there's a time and place for pharmaceuticals and antibiotics...and I also know the cost of having been so reliant on them over the longterm.  I'm TRYING to embrace a more sustainable answer for both Jack and myself...he's on board.  The difficulty is in the Phasing-Out process while improvements are underway but not fully achieved yet.

There are areas in which we still have to make a lot of headway...or rather, regain a LOT of lost ground.  We didn't get "here" overnight...it took years to learn that we NEEDED to undo and change things, or else.  We're in that middleground of progress that takes ever-more-diligent efforts and goal-setting to keep the momentum and see improvements through till they're fully achieved.

I've had a long bout of illness the last couple months and have been very determined not to use my normal fallback of "doc visit and antibiotics/get better/relapse/doc visit and more antibiotics" namely for the reason that over the course of many years the result has been nearly NO immune system left to wallop infections with.  

For a period of time last year, I focused on eating raw foods.  I then continued incorporating them into our daily eating on a lesser scale than originally attempted.   My conclusion at this point is that ideally, Jack and I NEED raw and cooked organic greens and vegetables, nuts, fruits/berries of every kind as the bulk of our eating...no more processed foods and chemicals, and fewer heavy foods and meats. 

The smackdown of reality is that until we are growing our own (and right now we're returning the yard back to Curb Appeal Minus Garden in order to sell our house), we can't afford much in the way of REAL FOOD.  So yes, we do have green smoothies and I try for half our dinner plate to be raw food or very dark braised/stirfried greens, etc.  I hate to think what our health would be like if we were still heavily bogged down in the Standard American Diet any longer.  In fact, in eating better, I can almost not tolerate storebought meats now...I literally can taste the nastiness...bleach or poop or something, but the taste is unmistakeable after a while.  Not that we don't eat meat, just significanly less till we can raise our own clean meat or barter for quality in some way.

But I digress...

I need to get better, lose a lot of weight, keep on keeping on, not lose momentum.  I feel terrible overall right now.  If I can stick to much tighter goals, especially in the area of weight loss and exercise this year, (and Jack, too, we're a team) MANY of these health issues will reverse and disappear.  Ever tried to exercise when you have a double ear infection and it hurts to breathe?   I know...wahhhh wahhhh....Robbyn needs to go all Nike and Just Do It.  (true!)  Robbyn is also used to popping a Z pak and Bam! being somewhat functional in less than five days...and this time I'm TRYING to be more natural.   Tick tock, tick tock...I'm learning patience...

No Antibiotics = Very Slow Recovery for me right now. 

,,...and more patience.   (I must say, convalescing and reading good spy novels are mutually compatible...though it doesn't exactly get the dishes magically done)

Now for the good news...they say Necessity is the Mother of Invention.   )  Well, in learning more about some supportive herbs, of course Moringa came up (since we are experimenting with growing it).   Ours will be dormant till the late spring, and we weren't sure of how to harvest it except for the fresh leaves.  We've eaten up our reserves of frozen moringa, so I ordered some moringa powder made of the dried, ground up leaves.  With the tremendous nutritional support and immune-boosting qualities and actual nutrients, I wanted to begin experimenting with the ground up moringa powder as a tea and in things like soups.

It's potent stuff!

So far, I've used it in tea, and so far it's most enjoyable in hot tea rather than cold, since the powder does not stir in well in cold liquids unless you beat it in well (think a fine powder like corn starch).  In soups, I use my stick blender.

With moringa, a little goes a long way...it has a very green somewhat peppery taste with a ginger-type warming sensation.  Soon, I'll purchase empty caplets to make my own capsules so I can take some of it with my other supplements on the occasions I want a larger dose than my tastebuds decide they can handle in a tea or soup.

Tonight's meal was simple toasted black bean "patties" with a dab of plain yogurt and some salsa, and a bowl of  red lentil/moringa/chicken broth/garlic soup.

I'm having to learn a different time frame of healing minus the quickie pharmaceuticals I've used over the years.  There's a lot my body will have to clean out.  I'm not new to herbs and supplements but the slowing down...the reprogramming my mind from a "pop the pill and hurry and get well" mentality...to a "build a strong core immune system over time" is something that doesn't come easily to me.  Because it requires....PATIENCE...arrrggghhhhh!! 

:)

And perhaps this is how mellow, gracious, naturally-paced living is embraced??  (I embrace, I embrace!)

I hope I learn my lesson.

Fast.

Whine-Free Update

Just an update on some of the plants that have graduated from Bucketville to The Bermuda Rectangle (the lot next door where we've spread horse barn compost throughout the year, giving rise to a jungle of Bermuda grass and various other lawn-mower-defying growths....oh for livestock!)

Last year, this lot was flat and bare. Now we have a good collection of test plants going. Seen here are a pigeon pea and some moringas in the background.

We see these both as potentially valuable crops to us beginning now, but even moreso in the future. Rather than back up and reiterate the many uses of these under-utilized (in our country) plants, here are a couple of good links from one of our favorite resources, ECHO (an hour away, practically in our own backyard, yay!)

Pigeon Peas link

Moringa link and Another Great Moringa Resource list from another site

And not pictured in this post, but something we're trying to encourage the proliferation of is the Chaya plant (the link is a download...it's worth a good read) Jack's trying to get some cuttings of our very small plant going in the Bucketville nursery.

If there's anything that can pick me up from the doldrums, it's seeing that some of these plants are hardier than our horticultural learning curve, and the joy of spending time reading many of the resources from lists like this...it inspires me that we have so many underutilized plants that we really NEED to gain the wisdom (regain, more often) to use in our own backyards. And we DON'T have to have fancy equipment...there is so much we CAN do at the most basic level (reminder to self!) Here's such a list...


MJ had recently requested pics of the pigeon pea progress here, so here are a few. We didn't know when to plant them this year, so we may have planted them late...no pods on them yet, but one of our intentions in growing them was as a fodder plant for livestock. (We're working out the growing part ahead of time... no livestock as yet) See how tall this one is? Kaleb's size lends perspective to how much growth we've seen in these in a relatively short time. I think Jack planted the pigeon pea seeds in July, starting them off in (what else? ha) 5 gallon buckets. Things learned?

1. They prefer being in the ground
2. They're vigorous enough to skip the bucket stage and just be sown directly at their permanent site.
3. They prefer a drier location that's not often waterlogged.
4. They really put on growth quickly.
5. Of all our plants, they are among the ones that take the most abuse...heat, drought, extremes of weather. Let's see how they do this winter...
6. They make good nurse plants to give partial shade to smaller seedlings. That's what the buckets beneath are in the pictures shown.

Shown below are the moringas, started at about the same time, or even later than the pigeon peas. The growth is amazing...I think these are in the 8 to 10 foot range high. We were supposed to cut them at the 3 to 4 foot height if we wanted a coppice sort of rotational leaf/limb harvest, but we have to get our act together and read up on it before we start hacking away. Thankfully, there are excellent resources ( see those lists above) to familiarize ourselves with. But to answer the question of whether they'll grow? Yes! They are not much good as a shade tree, but the leaves and the entire tree all have individual uses...the leaves are packed with so much nutrition, they're said to be the cure for malnutrition in most of the known warm-weather world, even where there are weather extremes of heat and drought. And I believe they are cheap and easy enough to grow that their harvests should benefit the entire world at large nutritionally, without science and marketing putting a hefty price tag on it.

Here's some idea of our little jungle we have going. There's something really encouraging about seeing this where before I couldn't get a shovel to penetrate the hardpan. Jack gets the lion's share of credit for the brawn and sweat involved moving a lot of that manure and digging all those holes! He told me once he never knew he could grow things, but I have to say the plants and he seem to have a symbiotic enthusiasm for each other. Most likely my biggest contribution is fueling the plant addiction...ha! (that's not really an exaggeration)

Below, a closeup of a pigeon pea bush/plant

Here is another superstar plant...to say they grow like weeds falls short of describing how, in plastic bins, these things grew so fast they now top seven and eight feet in height...so fast we got preoccupied with other things and didn't get them into the ground fast enough! But the ones transplanted even at this late date are going gangbusters. These are the cranberry hibiscus, also known as false roselle. It looks along the lines of a japanese maple, and the leaves are simply delicious picked at the small tender stage and eaten fresh...they are a fresh lemon flavor, and the color is gorgeous. It's on my To Do list to expand my use of these in the kitchen...I have many ideas I just haven't tried yet. In the meantime, they just continue to grow. Our plan is to keep these much shorter so they'll take on a bush form instead of more vertical leggy growth. One thing we've learned is that the leaves have to be utilized immediately upon picking, or they wilt quickly. They can be prolonged by cutting a branch and keeping it in a vase of water...and make beautiful leaf bouquets that way.

I can't get enough of this color...

Here is a closeup of the moringa leaves, with morning dew. All parts of the moringa are edible. The leaves can be cooked, or dried and powdered. They are edible fresh, too, but have such a strong peppery flavor that way that a little goes a long way. Cooking them or drying them for additions to soups and so on de-intensifies the sharp flavor significantly, and it's not very noticeable...but oh, the nutrition! Super great, and responsible for keeping whole populations of third world babies from malnutrition, and mothers in milk. Don't get me started on breastfeeding as a topic :) My baby is 21 and I was fortunate enough to be able to nurse her for a great start in life. Ok...back to the post :)

One of the few branches of medicine I'm really enthusiastic about :)

Well, that's about it, but no post is complete without Kaleb photos. I'm sorry about my rant in the last post. Besides my hubby, Kaleb is a bright light every day...how can anything be really terrible when you have 100% devotion and adoration from this soft and loyal companion?

Regal canine... and his squeaky toy.

He's not always asleep on the floor. I took these pics to illustrate that wherever I am, he accomodates me, but HAS to be next to me. I love those instincts. I have to be careful not to step on him sometimes...he's truly a Velcro dog.

See what I mean about having to be careful? This is the wheel of my computer chair...as I am sitting in it.

Love is...my own personal bodyguard glued to whatever I'm near, if he can't be glued to my person. Love you, Kaleb!

And of course, the frog leg pose always makes me smile!

Thank you so much to you all for encouraging me after my last post. I really love you guys!

I know it's time to go now because Kaleb's run out of patience and trying to get my attention with a very insistent wet nose. I'm not alert enough to read his mind just now, and just got a blank stare from him when I asked him if little Timmy is trapped in a mine shaft. Plus we're in the wrong state for mine shafts. But outside we go for some air and sun :)

Some Things We've Gotten Right: Kombucha

(clicking on any picture will enlarge)

It's hard to believe it's been nearly 9 months since we were given our first Kombucha SCOBY (thanks, Maria!).

Last year we branched out a bit in investingating pre-biotics, pro-biotics, and lacto-fermented foods. The first three experiments involved our first attempts at culturing real milk into Caspian Sea Yogurt and Kefir. Of the two, we most enjoyed the Caspian Sea Yogurt, but only managed to sustain the culture for 3-4 months at a time before it got overactive and changed from its original taste and texture. The Kefir was enjoyed, too, but simply was more maintenance than the CSY, though we enjoyed both. Our uses of them centered around pairing them with fruit or granola (or both), or with frozen fruits and honey as smoothies. Boy, was it good!

As the very very hot months here progressed, we got caught up in other projects, and the "milk projects" took a backseat, since they require a good bit of regularity (though none of it was difficult). At the same time we'd researched those, we'd also played with the idea of buying a Kombucha starter "mushroom," or "SCOBY" to being making this highly-beneficial probiotic fermented tea. We noticed how many people made kombucha regularly, and that its appeal seems to be widespread and has a very loyal following. We also noted the potential health benefits. But frankly, I was just intimidated about it and afraid I'd poison my family by accident in all my experimentation.

Thankfully, there were online friends such as Maria, who coached me past my initial insecurities and got me off to a good start on this VERY EASY process of making Kombucha. She sent me the gift of one of her baby SCOBYs, yay! Shown above is the glass of kombucha I'm enjoying while typing this very post...and I do have to say it's NOT an acquired taste for us...it's simply delicious!

The more it's allowed to ferment, the stronger its flavor gets. If left to its devices, it will essentially turn into a sort of strong vinegar...so best to drink it and refresh it before it reaches that stage. At its best, it's an effervescent slightly tart slightly sweet tea with a hint of apple, and a delightful sweet cider smell.


This closeup shows the foam and tiny carbonation bubbles in a freshly-poured glass. Mmmm!


Kombucha has helped me forgo drinking Cokes (sodas, to you northerners). Jack never drank soft drinks much, but I did, especially on those blazing hot summer days. Now ice cold kombucha or water with lemon is our drink of choice. We save old bottles and use them sometimes to store kombucha in the fridge...if there's any left!

Before I ever got started, I went online and compared pictures of the SCOBYs I saw...they varied significantly. Some were pristine white and looked like pure paraffin. Some were uneven, or had "blisters" in different places. Some were creamy beige and others were unevenly colored anywhere from beige to darker brown spots. Some were pure spongy discs and others were layered, uneven pancake stacks. Some of the brews were barely tinted and others were very dark, nearly opaque.

And then there was the matter of the "strings" and odd floaty things. That's where the warning bells kicked in for me. So I read on...

Now that we've been doing this for several months, I'm not saying we're experts, but I am saying we've found what works for us. The hanging-down fibrous "jellyfish tentacles" that develop under the SCOBY ("mushroom") are normal and are what help create the changes from a simple sweet tea to a delicious fermented probiotic. In the jar shown below, I've made a fresh batch of sweet tea and poured it into some reserved kombucha (a couple cups or more from the first batch) and let the mushroom remain the same. I handle the cooking implements with very clean hands but have to make sure there are no traces of antibacterial soap left on them because that would quickly kill off the very GOOD bacteria we're trying to nurture in the kombucha. So after cleaning my hands and utensils, I rinse all in plain white vinegar, which serves to keep things clean but is friendly to the kombucha.

If I have a good, strong SCOBY, I'll often smooth off a lot of the fibers that hang down off the bottom layer, and if the bottom layer begins looking flaccid or seems to be coming apart easily, I'll dispose of it and rinse the next layer up with a little vinegar. In the picture below, all the layers were healthy and I needed a jump-start to a large batch of new tea, so I left the fibers. I no longer worry if they cloud the brew slightly, etc...I'll just get rid of the fibers the next time I brew a batch. They're actually healthy for the brew. Just filter them out when you pour some to drink (not harmful to drink, but I like my drink without any "floaters.")

A clean piece of kitchen linen is what we use to cover. A rubber band keeps it secured tightly but the layers of cloth allow it to breathe, which is necessary for the fermentation. We keep our jars in a shadowy area in a hutch we have, where they won't be handled or moved around in between batches.

My "mushroom" used to look thin and very uneven, and I was worried it was unhealthy, or maybe dangerous. I learned that it just takes time to get the batch built up to consistent brew, and the first couple of batches will make way for much better ones in only a few rotations. The way we now have SCOBYs for our three 3-gallon containers is by taking one of the "pancake" layers from another SCOBY and putting it into the jar along with a few cups of reserved kombucha, and then adding in the newly-brewed tea. Making sure to have a couple other SCOBYs on hand assures that you can keep things going if you feel one needs to be replaced. Here's how one of ours looks now. It is smooth on top but still has a "blister" here or there, which is normal for ours. We don't leave them exposed to air without a cover unless refilling with tea...especially with occasional fruit flies about.

(In the picture above, there is a reflection of the paper towel roll against the glass...there is not a white ghostly apparition at the left side of the brew ;-))

Here's a closeup...

We followed a very precise method at first, but then switched to what works best for us. Here's what we usually do:

1. One of our containers has a spigot. The other two do not. We use the tea in the one with the spigot first.

2. As the first container's being drunk down (usually quickly) the others are fermenting. By the time we drink the first container down to about three inches from the bottom, we simply refill it with some of the kombucha from the other containers. We do this for a couple of draining and fillings, never fully draining any container. This, for us, accomplishes the same thing as the Continual Brew method.

3. At some point, all three containers will begin getting low. We don't let them get lower than 3 or 4 inches from the bottom (several cups of brew remaining in each). If we're going out of town or don't want that big of a refill soon, we leave them As Is...covered, with several cups of brew in each. Undisturbed. They can stay this way for weeks, and will get stronger and stronger as vinegar. Not enjoyable to drink, but it preserves the SCOBYs.

4. If we DO want more of the Continual Brew Kombucha, we simply make several batches of sweet tea. The proportions we use are 1 cup plain sugar and several small plain Lipton tea bags per gallon of Spring water (any kind of purified water works as long as it has no salts or chemicals). They are cooled to room temp before refilling the containers. Sometimes we fill the containers all the way, sometimes not, but always use the same tea-to-sugar ratio per gallon. We never pour them in hot or cold...always at room temp.

5. Before pouring the new brew into the old, we assess how vinegary the remaining kombucha in the container is by tasting it. If it's really vinegary (like as strong as pickles), I'll remove some with a measuring cup till there's only an inch or two in the bottom. I like to skim from the top and not pour it out because that old kombucha has mature probiotics in it that only get better with age, and these are often concentrated at the bottom of the brew. (I do NOT wash my containers each time since we do continual brew. ONLY if my entire batch looks strange do I wash everything and start it over.) If the remaining brew is not very vinegary, I just leave it all and pour in the new batch.

6. I rinse the SCOBY in white vinegar and smooth off any dark brown strings or excessive hanging fibers. I look at the bottom layer to see how slick and healthy it seems. If it seems to be disintegrating, I pull off the parts that easily disengage and discard them, and then rinse the bottom with some vinegar on my clean hand. Nothing clinical...just smoothing the excess with my hand wetted with vinegar. It's at this point that if you have a "baby SCOBY" pancake forming one or more layers and you want to share with someone else, separate the part that easily comes apart and set aside in a sealed plastic bag with a few tablespoons of kombucha to keep it wet inside. If your SCOBY doesn't separate easily and the layers cling tightly together, I leave it be.

7. If there is ever any DRY discoloration or DRY mold on the SCOBY, or any discoloration besides brown, discard it and the entire batch of remaining kombucha, wash everything thoroughly in hot soapy water, and rinse all in white vinegar. You can restart it with a few cups of kombucha and a new baby SCOBY from another batch if that one's not got mold on it. Add a couple tablespoons of white vinegar to the liquid (this helps balance it) and a teaspoon of a pure grain alchohol. It might take a couple brew cycles to get back to the good mature flavor after doing this.

8. Fasten clean linen or cloth squares to top tightly with rubber band. Don't use cheesecloth, as the fibers are too widely spaced and dust and fruit flies can get in.

9. At some point in a few days or more, you will see "floaters" in the liquid, which are the floating fibers that are active in fermenting the kombucha. These are normal, and can be strained out when you pour yourself some to drink. In our container that has a spigot, most of these are concentrated at the bottom of the container below the spigot line, so most times we just drink it straight without filtering.

10. At any time, if the "floaties" actually move, look at them closely. If they move on their own, there is an imbalance and you have "vinegar eels"...nothing pandemic, but discard it all, clean everything, and start it all over.

11. We don't let our kombucha get below 72 degrees F. The warmer it is above that, the faster it "brews." If it turns too vinegary too fast, we simply drain some of it out and put in fresh tea mix (as stated above).

12. Basically, though this seems to be a very long set of instructions, it's not hard at all. You essentially make fresh batches of sweet tea and instead of putting it in the fridge, you put it with your SCOBY and it makes some delicious kombucha just by sitting around. The worst you ever have to do is very seldom discard a batch, clean it all, and start over, but if you have harvested the new layers of your SCOBY and started other containers, you always have that to fall back on.

13. We used to make a separate new batch every time we drank the old. Our modified "continual brew" method is an adaptation of the method described in some literature we ordered. By simply refreshing the brew while still leaving the concentrated bottom liquid in the container, the continual brew method, for us, seems to give a more consistent product. We often leave in as much as 6 or 7 inches of the old brew, depending on how vinegary it tastes. Some people love a very sharp-tasting brew. Jack likes his with a bit of a bite, and I like mine just at the carbonation stage but not very vinegary. It's just personal preference. The stability of the continual brew makes for fewer Start-Overs for us, and less cleaning overall. But there comes a time when it all needs a good scrubbing. Reserving some of the liquid and keeping the SCOBYs healthy ensure some reliability to restart it all again. We much prefer the continual brew method since it just works better for us.

Oh sure, we are novices at this and we've made mistakes. For instance...

1. Right after we got our first baby kombucha, Jack's mom went into hospice and for two months we were not here at home doing anything at all. I put the baby into the fridge with some reserved liquid. It took a while to come out of "dormancy" when I was finally back home to get things going again. But it did finally do its thing.

2. Neglect. I'm the culprit when that happens. Scenario...we've drunk all the jars down to the last few remaining inches of kombucha. And I plan on making a big brew to refresh them all. And then we get caught up in 100 other things and it doesn't happen for a while, and all the while the kombucha keeps getting more vinegary. Well, by the time I do make the big batch to refill them they're almost pickled...ha! But they still do their thing, despite my benign neglect.

3. A certain husband who will remain nameless got so desperate for a new batch of kombucha once that he couldn't wait for me to make it. So he did. Only he used enough tea bags to start his own Boston tea party, and used brown sugar instead of white. Thankfully, he only filled one of the jars with that. It was black and opaque. Ergo, it soon became time to start it allll over again, and Robbyn finally un-procrastinated and re-did the whole shebang.

4. Yes, SCOBYs can, indeed, be left floating in their kombucha-turned-vinegar for nearly two months and still remain healthy. (Don't ask me how I know...) But whew, you only need a little of that to kick-start the new batch! :)

My advice for anyone considering kombucha but still having some trepidation...go for it! Find someone nearby who already brews their own, if possible, but if you can't do that, buddy up with an online friend who's a pro at it and give it a whirl. I can MAKE it faster than I can type about what we've learned in trying.

To sum up...it's as easy as making sweet tea.

We feel it really ramps up our healthy internal bacteria, which gives the bad guys a double-whammy sucker punch. Let's hear it for the probiotics...woo!

Got Kombucha??

Health, Purity, and When Does the Maturity Kick In?

I've been feeling overall worse the past few months, and it's my own fault.

Last year during Jack's mom's hospice stays, I succumbed to frequenting the Diet Coke machines for those really cold "good burn" cans of Diet Coke, even though truth be told I'm not crazy about the flavor. But the cold and the burn was soooo good in the middle of all that parade of pureed food (Mima's), hospital smells, and sacks of cold take-out food.

I didn't do so well getting off that little treat once things settled back down and I was back home. It manifested in liters of root beer, Vernor's ginger ale, and more root beer, though we kept the kombucha going and always drink a lot of water. But I really didn't need that many "treats," and they eased their way into my grocery cart a lot more than they should have. (My own fault)

I also tried to get us off breads and empty starches so much, and have done so-so at that. I'm pretty happy most of our breads have been those I've made, but cheap sandwich bread has sneaked back in more and more.

And then recently, I just felt BAD..probably fighting off the creeping crud everyone in town seems to have to a greater degree than we have. I noticed my emotions hitting a bit harder than usual, cravings I don't usually have making their appearance, and my work schedule at night creating an unnatural cycle for my sleeping...which also impacted my eating.

I'm not a Diet person...never will be. But I do believe in objectively meditating on (not in the eastern sense per se) the habits I have from time to time, to examine just where I stand. In short, in the past few months I've begun to feel very unhealthy.

Some things are long term projects and some are short term. Short term, I can make some very important steps to return to better health:
1. Completely avoid aspartame and any other synthetic sweetener, in anything (meaning the diet drinks...I don't use artificial sweetners in anything else) I actually like most drinks unsweet, and if I need a sweet fix, I can use a tad of Xylitol (natural)
2. I've overloaded the proportion of my eating with red meats and taste substitutes. It's hard to be honest about this, but flavorings are chock full of preservatives and I've eaten stuff with those flavor enhancers all up in them. We've also been eating a lot of red meat. For myself, I need it now and then but to beef up (ha, pun!) more on my dark greens for those B vitamin fixes.
3. I've overloaded my body with large portion sizes. This also happened gradually...I'm not a snacker, so it mostly happens at mealtime...which is why I've not gained weight. But I feel like my system is overloaded. It needs some lightness.
4. I've made poor "fast food" choices when it comes to eating at work. I've actually bought and eaten pure old Seven-11 junk food, and last week ate Ramen noodles (yes with those awful preservative-flavor packets) nearly every night...no matter how bad they made me feel!! I was hormonal then, so I won't beat myself up about it, but the solution lies in never buying the stuff in the first place...I know better and know how it makes me feel, but ignored my better wisdom I know not why. Rebellion maybe? Well, it didn't end up making my world better. Better to have one or two fantastic pieces of real chocolate next time than carb-o-gazillion empty starches. Ugh!
5. Dramatically ramp down the fungus-loving foods...processed sugars, and much of the bread. I'll have to always watch the quantity of things like bread since I just like them so much. I have a hunch what with my diabetes and all,the anti-fungal connection is something I need to pay much more attention to, and make the very simple and satisfying substitutions that make my body unfriendly to a proliferation of things like candida, and other "fungus stuff"...meaning all the foods that feed disease rather than defending against it.
6. Ramp UP the probiotics...mature kombucha will be our main thing for this. We love it but have drunk less of it because I havent made as much of it as I was...but that's changing now.
7. Yerba buena. We're going to use it daily in our tea...it just has so many benefits and does so well in the climate, we need to use it! and it's delicious.


Thankfully, our modest pantry and freezer stock of staples has been a lifesaver..it really makes those trips to the store so much less expensive and it just doesn't take much to eat right...except eating right!! :)

I don't spend time beating myself up, and I've been thinking of what my body seems to be crying out for. I was delighted today on payday to be able to get a few things from the health food store to that end...

1. Women's Hormone-supportive herbal tea blend. I think that will ease a lot of the triggers I'm feeling as far as cravings
2. An affordable 10-day Stress Cleansing kit (herbs to address stress and cortisol, gentle cleansing herbs to get my system reset from the overload of yuck
3. Acai berry capsules -- for support, wide range of benefits, and I want to try it to see how it does with my body as I cleanse

I'm going to do a gentle cleanse, drink the hormone-support tea each day, and take the acai berry for additional support, while eating only small meals that are fish or lean chicken, dark greens and salads, water with lemon, plain water, or kombucha. I think that may help me to get back on my feet and understand how to fine tune my health a bit.

It's time for the mature part of me to put some constructive limits on the throw-all-care-to-the-wind part of me. Ultimately, I need to lose all my weight and see if I can ditch this diabetes once and for all. THAT would put a lot of things right in my world :)

I'm very aware of the purity of foods, too, and this is a longer term target area...namely GMO foods. It's said that 70% of foods are full of GMOs and are unlabeled to that effect. That makes me furious, frankly. So I'm becoming aware of the foods most often genetically modified (not meaning hybrids but meaning DNA tampering by the likes of Monsanto)....these are corn, soy, sugar, and canola...and I'm not sure what else yet. But soy and corn (think HFCS and other sweeteners) are in SO many foods...for instance, try buying a salad dressing that doesn't have soy or canola in it...nearly impossible. And think of what your food ATE...meaning cows, chickens, etc...was their primary diet corn, soy, things with hormones/chemicals/pesticides? They are what they eat...and we are what we eat when we eat them.

The other purity issue is preservatives. Since we're not buying much in the way of processed foods ( yeah, I know...Ramen noodles, in the trash you go!), this is not as much an issue, but it's still sneaky. To purchase a package of chicken breasts, you have to read the fine print...what was injected into them? Ah, a solution....?? (what sort of a solution, blehh) Was it packaged in plastic? Sprayed with something to preserve its color, freshness, keep from spoiling? Chemicals.

We have not been able to eliminate chemicals entirely...yet. We don't buy solely organic. I don't care what anyone says, we can't afford it. Yet. We're working towards that. First, to simplify our spoiled tastes and our habit of instant gratification, and our habit of overeating. This week's shopping trip brought home a couple small cabbages, some lettuces, celery, some grape tomatoes, one small pack asparagus, a pack of chicken breasts, 9 lemons, and a lot of clean drinking water (we have sulfur stinky water here).

That'll do us well...we have beans, turkey, staples like basmati rice & such, a couple calabazas and that Musquee Aux Provence we haven't cut into yet, along with the last quantity cooking I did a couple days ago (spaghetti sauce w/lots of herbs & a bit of rigatoni) to round things out.

I'm VERY happy to be working from a pantry-based list rather than a store-based one! I'm also really happy about fasting from heavy meals and going to salads and a lot of water and support herbs to get back on track.

Vitamin D? It's time to get outside and soak up some sun puttering among the seedlings! And then get some more much-needed sleep....ah, gotta love shabbat and that "enforced" day of rest, wooo! :)

Hope you have a lovely night and weekend!

Shabbat shalom from our family to yours :)

More About Yerba Buena

This herb made its new home at our house last April (here's the first post from then). It's Yerba Buena, or Jhibbaweena, depending on your accent ;-)

To read more about it, you can head over to my post today at Women Not Dabbling in Normal. Yerba Buena, a wild indigenous mint, is a very versatile addition to nearly any garden, thrives in many zones, and is a worthwhile standby in the herbal medicine cabinet, soothing bathtimes, or beverages such as the mojito ...check it out!

This Kind of Loss I Like!

...weight loss, oh YEAH!

My body and I, we're pretty forgiving of one another...we've been through a lot together and due to that fact, many years ago I determined I would be kinder to it and decided to stick to the resolution of Never Dieting Again, Ever.

And I've stuck to that.

Dieting put me on a crazy cycle of...something...that just never worked for me and instead made me very very concious of eating, in all the wrong ways. You just don't fix a food fixation by creating further fixation.

Now I realize there are a lot of things that are so normal about the way I eat. Sometimes emotions trigger a longing for comfort foods, sometimes we include foods in celebration. A lot of folks think both of these need to be banished, but I've always thought there are powerful connections there we can't ignore.

A few things I have tried to become more aware of, and more deliberate about:

1. My body must be maintained via what it needs than rather through what I think I want as far as instant gratification
2. I need to treat my body, and its limitations, with respect
3. My body does not define who I am
4. My body does affect nearly all I do
5. My body responds well to careful attention
6. Stress must be examined and dealt with constructively, or my body will become ill
7. I need adequate rest, water, movement, and sunlight

As I've gone about my Un-Diet, here are some facts personal to me that I've come to realize:

1. When I cook at home, we eat better
2. I no longer care to look young, look like someone else, or dress for success
3. I would like to be able to wear whatever I like and make cute homemade skirts and tops. Someday I hope to be a size where I can do that
4. My weight issues prevent me from enjoying many activities I've always wanted to be free to do. This does not discourage me...it keeps goals in my mind's eye as incentive to treat my body well for the longterm.
5. I love milk, hot homemade bread, real butter, real foods. I have learned that any of these is so enjoyable that I don't need much of it to satisfy me.
6. Vegetables...if I will cook them homemade (or serve some raw) it infinately rounds out my eating to be much more satisfying and reduces my cravings
7. If I'll eat real foods, I will not fixate on food
8. Since I've become diabetic, I seldom crave sweets...weird, huh?
9. Kombucha has cut my cravings down to nil, keeps me detoxed, and has speeded up my weight loss...with no other changes having been tried. I FEEL BETTER now after drinking it each day for a month. Sometimes, I have no craving for it, so I don't drink it. Some days I have to have glass after glass of it, always over ice.

I've got a long road ahead for my ultimate weight loss goal. I've done it before, and know it can be done by doing one thing: the right thing, long enough...that's it!

I'll be adding in alphalipoic acid and biotin at minimum dosage levels for additional blood sugar support. We continue to supplement with regular dietary addition of fresh gynura procumbens "diabetes plant" leaves.

All of this is leading somewhere...

I'm at the cusp of an important number in my weight loss..you know, one of those numbers that represents a big hurdle...an ugly number that must be gotten past. I'm 4 pounds shy of passing that number, big Yay!! As of the beginning of this year, I've now lost a total 14 lbs. I've lost it without dieting, though with some deliberate changes, and am really hoping to be passing one of those landmark Big Ugly Numbers after the next 4 lbs.

This past week, I lost 2 lbs (included in above total)...a big surprise!

There are three things which may have contributed --

1. We're drinking a lot less milk since the prices are so high, though I'm not limiting it in cooking
2. I'm drinking a LOT of kombucha daily
3. I'm cooking at home for nearly every meal


I'm not sure which of these, or which combination is the biggest factor(s), but Yay!! I'll keep on trucking

Just posting this since any downward trend in the weight numbers is really a good thing at this point :)

Hooked on Kombucha

This has been a huge leap for me, but it's something as easy as making a pitcher of sweet tea...

making Kombucha.

I'm posting this article for the faint at heart...folks like ME...with pictures. As a beginner, I've had a hard time telling if my Kombucha is "ok," and I'm unfamiliar with what it's supposed to look like in its different stages. I have to admit, as an uninformed amateur, if not for the encouragement of others, I'd have taken one look at this and declared it Funky and Disgusting.

But it's ANYTHING BUT that...so here's a peek at my learning curve.

Making Kombucha is much like many other things are, and have been, in this learning process. I want to can jellies, fruits, veggies, soups...when I learn (well, re-learn) those canning skills, one of the biggest obstacles I have to overcome is my discomfort and unfamiliarity, and the fear I'm going to somehow kill off my family with some deadly pathogen lurking in a homemade product.

Maybe this is evidence of how brainwashed, or at least dependent, I've become throughout the years in trusting commercially-marketed products rather than homemade ones. I think there's a lot of fear and distrust and misinformation that has to be undone by any homesteading-minded person to even get to the point of taking that first step into the unknown and trying something new.

We did that a while back with fermented products when we found a source for yogurt cultures needing no cooking whatsoever, especially the Caspian Sea Yogurt. We used it, got the hang of it, found our comfort zone, discovered how to use it in our meals and found the range of good and bad fermentation indicators. It helped that at no point the yogurt looked weird or funky...that's not one of the stages of the yogurt fermentation process.

I was more leary about Kombucha, and was holding off on trying it indefinately till Maria generously offered to give me one of her extra starter "mushrooms" (SCOBY) and gave me really simple instructions on how to get it off to a good start. Despite my trepidations, I said Yes!

(I just wanted to be sure I wouldn't kill the little starter culture...I have kind of a knack for doing things like that)

It was at about this point that things began to pick up with Jack's mom's illness, and things got crazy around here. And it was at just that point that our little baby SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast) arrived in the mail from Maria (I still have to send the Thank you note...I'm the ultimate loser of a procrastinator!!)

Don't you love getting a box delivered by the mailman? Here's what was inside, including the beautiful card...lovely!



Up close, the baby SCOBY looked like a firm, gelatinous, jelly-fish-ish round disc, and the liquid it was in smelled divine...like a floral, apple-y smell..clean and sweet. A fingertip taste-test confirmed that it had a light cider taste...mmm!

I brewed the tea, added the sugar, diluted it with water and when it reached room temperature, I added the baby SCOBY into its new home.

Ok, so I didn't have a clean tea towel, so an old clean shirt of Jack's was sacrificed to the cause... the SCOBY is floating here at the bottom, but as it fermented it straightened out to meet the edges of the container and floated at the top.



Then life hit hard. Since the SCOBY is content in its liquid at room temp for days (or more) at a time, covered with a cloth secured with a rubber band, it was left to its own devices. When I was home, I changed the liquid out every 7 to 10 days. The liquid was murky and smelled vinegary, and...I was afraid to taste the liquid. There was a white floating scum on the top of the water that I was SURE was something bad...maybe my ferment was moldy?? I laugh now to think of it, but since it was neglected in between new brews of sweet tea solution, I took white vinegar (SCOBYs like white vinegar) and "cleaned it up" each time, reserving a little liquid to include in the new batch with the growing SCOBY. Oh, dear!

Finally, I realized the white surface scum was the good stuff...it was not fuzzy or dry and not turning colors. It was the part that thickens as the little SCOBY grows bigger. I confirmed this by looking at a lot of pictures on the internet.

My SCOBY, once at home in its brew of tea, has never looked perfectly pristine and white, but one of its babies has, initially. It separated into two sections like flaky biscuits do, and the underneath "flake" was white and seamless...the upper one was beige with an irregular surface. There were dark brown hanging fibers floating from underneath, like jellyfish tentacles, and some floating fibrous bits in the liquid itself, which seemed partially murky.

Again, if it were not for the convenience of an internet comparison, I'd have chucked the whole lot out of fear I was brewing some deadly potion.

But we found YouTube videos that showed all sorts, and saw that there is quite a range of brewing techniques and differences in the appearance of the different SCOBYs. Some are a pristine white, nice and thick, while others are highly layered and of varying thicknesses. Colors ranged from Dark Beige with variations within the layers, to pale and pearly. My SCOBY has variations in it and an irregular, but smooth, surface. At no point have I seen any mold, so I relaxed. I found a suggestion of adding a few tablespoons of vinegar for added mold protection, so I've been doing that routinely now.

After Jack's mom died, we had some time off and we decided to start the Continual Brew method. We are very much trial-and-erroring our way as we go...

We purchased another glass container, this time with a spigot at the bottom, and instead of emptying the contents after every 7-10 day brew cycle, we allowed it to do its intial ferment and then have a pitcher of the sweet tea solution made up to replenish any Kombucha we pour off daily. We don't worry about measuring how much gets replaced...we keep it filled to a fill line on the jar...easy!

To say we're enjoying the continual brew Kombucha is an understatement! Here are the three containers we have going right now...

This is a second baby that we're growing, and its container of Kombucha...it has variations of opacity and transparency, but in a couple weeks it will be a thick and solid re-useable "mushroom."

Here's the original SCOBY, being coaxed from dormancy (it had been stored in the fridge for a time)..it's getting thicker and whiter... it's rather like a leathery apple-vinegary scented pancake. (Sorry for the badly focused pic)



We're hooked! In fact, I was so hooked the first day it was ready to drink, I had (should I admit this publicly??) 6 iced tea glasses of it over ice ...all in one evening. The caffiene wired me so much, I was hyper and when Jack called me from work, I was feeling goooooooood...so good he got a little worried and told me to hold off on it another couple days to make sure most of the sugar had been fermented out. I've not had another 6 glass day yet, but I'll say this is my new favorite drink!

We don't keep soft drinks in the house, or order them often, so around here it's usually water, and occasionally milk or homemade limeade. But Kombucha over ice?? perfect!!! It's tart, lightly sweet, slightly carbonated (and if you store it in the fridge a few days bottled it ramps up the carbonation further). I used to filter it so there were no "floaters" but now I pour it straight over ice right from the Kombucha container spigot.



Man, it's good!

And so our science experiments continue! Among the three containers, we should be able to keep some Kombucha drinking going on!

I feel great after drinking it, and am sleeping especially well...like a baby, with dreams in amazingly vibrant colors...the first dream was of my buying a horse for the first time in my life...he was a beauty! (in the dream...)

Warning to other diabetics...you'll need to let it ferment to the more tart stage to insure a lower sugar content.

Kombucha...and Kombucha-making has turned out to be a fun (and nutritious) addiction. I'm glad I'm somewhat past the trepidation factor. This fermented drink is quite robust and loaded with glorious probiotics..the healthy bacteria that will chase the bad bacteria in our bodies right out of town :)

More About Moringa

...today at Women Not Dabbling in Normal

Stretch-the-Veg Greens Update

Jack had surgery yesterday on his forehead, to remove a cancerous place.

Yes, the C Word...the panic-inducer, life-flashing-in-front-of-your-eyes word association. The day we found that out, I was pulling up every possible internet dietary recommendation I could get my hands on under the title Cancer Prevention. At the top of every list was the category Greens. Dark, leafy greens of every sort are a vital component of a body's cancer-and-other-diseases defense team. Those same leafy greens are something we really need to include more of in our meals around here, and that means finding ways to enjoy eating them as well as developing some garden savvy in growing them.

Thankfully, they seem to be an easy food to grow, and here in Florida, we should be able to stretch a couple of seasons and still keep them going. In colder areas, I'd imagine they could be included among other greens grown under a protective polytunnel or other crop-prolonging method.

We didn't have an active seasonal in-ground garden of any sort this year, for reasons discussed in prior posts. What we did do is begin slower-growing plants, and some herbs, trees, experimental and exotics in 5 gallon (what else?? ha) pots. We're gearing up to make decisions about what to start putting into the ground and whether we'll be seeing any daylight with our goals for relocation. So many decisions, quite a bit of waiting, and so many things that just can't wait...it's a head-scratcher sometimes trying to find ways to strike a balance.

Recently, I posted about dual-use veggies...ones commonly used for a better-known food (think beets, turnips, sweet potatoes, okra, papaya), but with the real potential of dual usage for humans for a second table food. In these cases, the second food is Greens.

We're continuing to experiment a bit with our Blood Sugar Regulator plant, Gynura procumbens/ Sambung Nyawa. Its flavor is not unpleasant, but since it is a new taste to me, I'm not used to it...and so we experiment for a better taste "fit." So far, we've had it raw in salad, steeped fresh in hot water as a tea, blanched, and a cut up and stir friend ingredient in chicken enchiladas (mmm!)

We still have 3 1/2 gallon ziplock bags full in the fridge, and I'm trying not to waste it. Tonight's inclusion was with some shredded cabbage, stir-fried in a tablespoon of olive oil with a pinch of salt and then continued briefly with the addition of a couple tablespoons water, to sort of steam/stir fry it just till the greens brighten and begin softening. I don't cook past that point...I like them tender, cooked till no longer crunchy, but no more...I can't stand pale, gray, limp overcooked cabbage.

The picture above is at the just-done point. I served this for each person tonight for dinner in a bowl, in this order: hot cooked rice, some cabbage and greens served on top of that, and a ladle of steaming Winter Squash-and- Turkey Soup over all. Yum!


Over at a recent entry on Duane Marcus' blog The Funny Farm, he's written about finding another wonderful Asian green called Komatsuna. It is said to be delicious eaten for its greens as well as its stalks, which can be substituted fresh for celery. I've never tried it, but he says his customers enjoy it, and gives it great reviews for its hardiness and ability to withstand some cold weather as well as heat without bolting. It's a warmer zone plant, so we'll be looking into it for sure. Thanks for the heads-up, Duane!

We Can't Afford the Supermarket

And we can't afford to buy organic AT the supermarket. I wanted to buy a normal head of cabbage...at the supermarket.

It rang up at $8.50.

I'm sorry, I'm not paying $8.50 for ANY head of cabbage.

Buying local is not something that's easy here, and with the drive, paying more for long-distance "local" is not in our budget. That's what happened to the pet milk purchases, too...too much gas needed, prices too high.

Now they're too high in the store, too, and we're needing to change from questionable food to REAL food pronto. Learning that anything vegetable or animal out there now could be (and IS) genetically modified, ALL foods with only a few exceptions are permeated with pesticides and herbicides, and anything in a can or package usually has multiple preservatives all up in there ....all those things have tipped the scale for us. No longer do I live where a neighbor can gladly pawn off her excess zucchini or tomatoes (to my glee) on me. I don't have neighbors with dairy goats or cows. I have nothing seasonal growing in my backyard buckets, and have nothing stockpiled, except a modest collection of staples and dry goods.

We even have to buy water...even the water we cook with. For me, the girl from Tennessee, this seems like a budgetary travesty. Buy cooking water???

Simply stated, we can't afford to eat from the store anymore. I can remember when buying chicken thighs, or a whole chicken NOT cut up were the cheapest cuts of meat. Even these I can't afford. Even ground chuck I can't afford.

It literally would be cheaper to raise our own animals...even if not for any other reason than the cost alone. It would actually be cheaper for me to buy a live chicken and slaughter it than it would be to buy the cheapest chicken from the store. The times, they are a-changin'.

We're putting our heads together about what we need to grow to survive, from the bottom up. We will be identifying our own preferences and what our bodies need the most as far as nourishment and disease prevention, and those things will be planned for first.

First will be the staples that would see us through no matter what...what we could survive on even if we had nothing else.

Next will be the nutrition-dense secondary veggies and grains...all the seasonal crops that we could eat fresh and put away for the longer term. The basics to round out the staples.

Alongside these things will be the herbs for flavor, nutrition, and medicinals.

Lastly, the fruits, experimental crops, the veggies and fruits and various plants whose variety that would extend the basics into many different sorts of meals.

Does anyone have lists like this, starting from the Can't-Do-Withouts on up? If so, I'd be really interested in what's worked for you and your family, specifically which crops and plants you most rely on.

The old Victory garden concept has morphed into survival gardens for the long-term far beyond anything that's happening as a result of sending our boys overseas. Now we need because of battles in "progress" -- what's happening in test tubes and bio-tech labs, in China, and in the oil industry. Our "progress" is like the snake that tried to swallow its own tail.

We've just been "progressed" right out of being able to buy a week's worth of groceries at my own grocery store.

It's time to sow for our future, and take it into our own hands. There is now an urgency. Not a panic, but definately an urgency.

Medicinals in the Garden Update

Remember these guys? They arrived in June and have been growing out back in Bucketville ever since. To see their progress, you can jump to my article today on the collaborative blog Women Not Dabbling In Normal, where you'll probably get lost in all the other wonderful posts you'll find from the women there, like I do....

By the way, if you do go there, check out the new Yahoo group, Friends Not Dabbling in Normal, on the sidebar of that site. There's a great group of people actively having the fun of getting to know each other and throwing out some great questions and tips related to homesteading. Enjoy!

(Jack just reminded me I sound like I'm advertising...that's not my style, but I'm just delighted to see this awesome community connecting in yet another important way, and it's such fun!)

(Merrily singing "This is My Blog, and I'll Type What I Want To.....) heehee

Using Those Corn Tassels

If dealing with fresh corn, this will only work if you have pesticide-free corn to work with...

You know those brownish tassels, or corn silks, that adorn shucks of fresh corn? They make one terrific herbal tea.

I began using them years ago when I ordered some in bulk to custom-blend some herbs for my own herb teas. I haven't done that in years, but with all the fresh corn coming in in our area markets, I was able to save some silks myself.

The dried ones I bought in bulk appeared brown, and these, after air-drying them, retained their lighter color. Their effect is as a very mild, gentle diuretic...very effective but not taxing to the internal organs. Since there is hardly any taste, any other pesticide-free herbs or teas can be added for flavor, if desired.



There may be a more scientific way to do it, but I simply pour almost-boiling water over it and let it steep a minute, then sip. It works for me any time I feel I'm retaining fluid, and I never have had an adverse reaction. I don't pretend to offer medical advice to anyone, so please don't take this post as such. I'm simply sharing something very simple that works for me...and is as close as that ear of corn. I hate to throw away wonderful, nourishing herbals :)

(Later Note: Oops! I forgot to mention that I drink the liquid but not the tassels. It can be strained off, if desired )

Teff: An Alternate Grain

This post'll have to be quick..I'm headed to work soon.

I'm hearing a lot of mention about experimentation growing grains from home. With food prices and availability being what they are (and not appearing to be headed the other direction any time soon), we're all having to consider moving our supplier from the supermarket to our own backyards. This is comfortable for us to a point, but what about growing grains and things we'd usually buy in bulk from a larger source?

I just wanted to post something about the grain, Teff. It's something I ran across when glutting myself with gorgeous reading on native/traditional foods of Africa and the Middle East. Teff is an ancient grain with the distinction of being very low gluten. But you had me at "ancient."

What's great about low gluten? There are a lot of folks out here with a sensitivity to higher gluten grains such as wheat. My sis has recently been diagnosed with such sensitivities...some are downright allergic to gluten.

Another interesting thing is that Teff is Ethiopia's primary traditional grain...the fermented flatbread that's really more like a pancakey crepe is called Injera. It's cooked on a griddle and used by hand in lieu of a untensil to carefully pick up bites of cooked food (and it's juices)and eat them. I had some Injera at an Ethiopian restaurant, and it was served where you could use it to select bites from a communal (at your own table) dish of stewed meat or vegetables...delicious!

In reading more about Teff, it seems it's been making its way closer to home. Teff grains are not its only virtue...the plant itself makes a good fodder plant. I know it's being grown in Kansas and Oklahoma, and the brief research I've seen has shown it seems to be able to weather both wet weather and conditions as well as droughts.

I love exploring "ancient" plants, and I'm looking for some teff grains to test in our kitchen, especially to ferment some batches of Injera, which looks very straightforward and easy. The fact it's adaptable to extending the growing season and to be a good forage for livestock is an added bonus. I can see us doing a test plot soon if it's really that adaptable.

If you've had any experience with this grain, we'd love to hear from you! If you experiment with it, we'd love to hear your adventures :)

We Have Gynura Procumbens!

(No, we're not contagious...ha!)

We received the Gynura plants we ordered a while back. When researching herbal alternatives and supplements in conjunction with diabetes and high blood pressure, we found this is a plant used as a traditional medicine in different parts of the world.


We are unsure how to use it, though we have read the leaves are used to make a tea. They are also used to make extracts.


In the literature we've managed to find, some studies have been done comparing Gynura Procumben extract's efficacy in comparison with Glibenclamide (brand name Glyburide) in rats with Type 2 diabetes. It would seem from the results of these initial studies that Gynura Procumbens extract demonstrated a similar action to that of Glyburide in helping to lower the blood sugar for rats who had Type 2 Diabetes. In healthy animals it did not lower it and no adverse symptoms were noted in the report.


I don't put this here to suggest to anyone else to seek treatment this way, or by experimentation...in fact I am not sure yet how we will utilize these plants. But I do know we have reached a critical point in our lives where what our bodies need to help correct or even heal some of our physical conditions is something we're having to consider growing ourselves. We can not afford expensive prescriptions for years to come, and don't want to grow reliant on them. We also want to reverse these conditions, and our personal hope is that with the right combination of care, we can see them disappear altogether.


You can't go around randomly nibbling this and making tea out of that, if you have no idea what effects different plant parts will have medicinally on your body. There are such things as sensitivities, allergies, and toxic plants. Natural medicines are often in the form of teas and often require a gentle and steady consumption, without the "instant fix" of pharmaceuticals. Many of these herbals are naturally much easier on the body, too.


A note of caution is to please not try something simply because we are. There, I said it :)


That said, we are excited to find this plant. We had to look very hard to find a grower who could ship us a live plant. Now we have 4!


I am SO happy that we have the basis for some future remedy to support controlling or even remedying adult Type 2 diabetes. If we ultimately find a way we consider safe and effective to utilize the Gynura Procumbens, we'll be delighted! The 4 Gynura are the plants shown in the middle of the photo.



As you can see, the Gynura plants came with two little friends...one's a Russian comfrey, and the other is the spicy and fragrant middle-eastern herb Zaatar (not to be confused with the spice mix also called Za'atar).

Looks like Bucketville is growing...

I'll post more about what we're hoping to accomplish with some of the things we're growing for medicinal purposes. As with the many other areas of our experimentation, some of this is new territory for us, and a bit of it is familiar. I never cease to be amazed at what's before our very eyes along the roadsides, in the backyard, in the woods...the growing things we overlook and have lost our memory of in relation to their benefits to our health and our gardens. SO much traditional wisdom has been discarded in the past few generations! It is such a rewarding search to find places in which their memory has not grown dim, and to embrace their "re-discovery."

Tamarind Drink with Zing!

What do you do when you're in the store and you see these?

Actually, they still had their shells on before this picture was taken. The photo shows the interior, and if you look closely you'll see there are long stringy fibers and lumps, which are the seeds, surrounded by a sweet and slightly sticky pulp. If you pull the strings off, you can pop bits of the fruit into your mouth and suck on them like candy...very tart candy! The seeds separate easily from the pulp...and they germinate here in Florida quickly, too.

These are tamarind pods, and they're found in that part of the produce section where I'm not really sure WHAT anything is, but where my husband lights up and exclaims, "oh, look! it's a (fill in the blank with a fruit I've never heard of)"

These are actually "local" to us, meaning they probably didn't come from just down the street, but are native sub-tropical fruits we can grow. And of course, in the name of experimentation with potential fruits we might grow, we taste! I found out tamarind is a favorite around the world, in proximity of the equatorial belt.

The pulp can be hand-squeezed into blocks or lumps from which segments are cut or pinched and formed into candies simply by compressing it somewhat and dusting it with powdered sugar, or a sprinkle of salt. It is delicious without either...nature's own Sweet Tart. It is also featured in local cuisines of nearly every subtropical country, in chutnies, sauces, condiments, and drinks. It's a distinctive ingredient in familiar-to-me condiments like Worchestershire sauce, Heinz 57, and Britain's HP sauce (my favorite being the HP Curry Sauce). When I heard it could be made into a drink much in the way lemons are made into lemonade, I wanted to try it!

And that's how we ended up with a bagful of pods, which have stayed in a glass jar ever since, until last night when I ran across a very simple recipe for a Tamarind drink. Essentially, you boil the peeled pods and remove as many of the strings as possible. You add some sugar to the liquid as a sweetener, and then strain the mixture a time or two to allow the fruity pulp through but removing the seeds and other bits.

Here's what mine looked like while boiling...I was only working with a handful of pods to begin with. Here are the pulp and seeds and you can see they are separating.

I strained it, and the pulp that was left behind I saved a bit of and added it back to the liquid, because it was the consistency of applesauce and tasted wonderful. The taste reminded me of a very complex, rich apple, very tart like a lemon's tartnes, but deliciously sweet. It reminded me of a tarter version of spiced cider...but different...but not "weird different." Yum!



This is how the liquid looked strained...I might not use as much water next time, but I have a feeling either way, it's really good. This was supposed to be set into the fridge and chilled to serve over ice, but frankly it was SO good that Jack and I divided it and drank it quite warm. He'd worked outside yesterday and was worn out, and he found it rejuvenating.



He pronounced it exactly as he'd remembered tasting in his childhood, and drank it straight down with gusto! Well, alright, it's a keeper :)

The even more delightful aspect of incorporating tamarind into drinks and meals is that it really packs a nutritional punch, which would account for its popularity in hot climates reaching from Africa across the Middle East, India and Eastern Spice Trails, the Far East, Central and South America, and all the Islands along the tropical belt worldwide.

We put a few seeds from one pod into some potting soil only a couple weeks or so ago. Looky what's coming up!

We now have about six baby tamarinds! If these are fertile and produce good fruits, they'll do so in about 6 to 8 years, and boy will the harvest be a whopper...a single, good, producing tree can average up to 350 pounds of pods a year! The fruits can be stored in the pod or hulled and seeded to store just the pulp.

And if there weren't already enough culinary uses for the tamarind, they are also traditionally used in some cultures to polish brass...

On the Wish List, we'll keep the tamarinds if they do well as they get bigger. What can you say for a fruit that's easy to store, adds a lot of flavor to life, is packed with vitamins and iron, and can be used to make a natural "soft drink" that rivals anything artificial out there? I love the fact that the seeds come up readily with no fuss and seem to thrive in the blistering heat. What's not to love? When the time comes that we can offer seeds we've saved, tamarind seeds are so plentiful I'm guessing they'll be among the first.

I'm so glad we tried this!

Venturing Into the Land of Curative Medicinal Herbs

I'm an herb geek at heart, but have not had the opportunity to put it to much practical use...yet. Other than teas and some basic spicing up of foods, my herb knowledge is lying fallow as far as practical application in my family's life.

That is one area we're trying to gradually change.

Some folks really don't consider medicinal herbs much more than snake oil remedies, while others see the term "herb" and assume anything "herbal" is safe to take for anything, in any quantity.

We've learned through a process of trial and error over the years that we still have much to learn. Many herbs' benefits have been enjoyed in their native habitats by populations indigenous to those locales, many of whom still practice time-honored remedies using the herbs at hand. In western society, change has come slowly..."progress" in "medicine" meant a societal replacement of traditional wisdom with the "modern" convention of man-made copycat pharmaceuticals.

It's our innate belief that anything man-made will never be as suitable for the human body as its natural counterpart, if that can be discovered...or recovered.

We have some physical health conditions that warrant a closer look at natural solutions for things we now take pharmaceuticals for.

Let me briefly interrupt this to say that I am NOT one of those folks who advocates that people with precarious or fragile health conditions throw caution to the wind and dump their pills down the toilet. I'm also not the sort that believes that all pharmaceuticals are mind-altering and that if we just have faith in God we can believe ourselves into better health, do or die. As much as I believe we can restore our immune systems so that they can withstand the stresses of today, I'm also grateful for the discovery of penicillin and the polio vaccine. As cautious as I am about the use of widespread vaccinations of our children, I also see the benefits and understand the difficulty of making viable choices for ourselves and our families.

We have to use wisdom and a lot of attention to detail, and it's nice that the internet can open doors of inquiry into many of the plants, seeds, roots, leaves, bark, etc that are in the natural world that can be used to support, mend, and heal our maladies.

I like actually handling things that are mild, work over a longer period of time, and are usually gentler, (most herbs fall into this category) and applying my own problem -solving to our health problems and our future as we age. The medical community cringes when they hear individuals trying to come up with their own remedies. There is some foundation for this, as we shouldn't consume or practice health-related things with ignorance of our bodies and a diagnosis. But ultimately, WE care about ourselves differently than a doctor or health practitioner does...we simply live with ourselves daily and can become intuitive about certain things long before a physical is done in an office.

We are dealing with hypertension, diabetes, and needing to lose weight. We are working toward implementing foods that are more anti-fungal and that lend support to our "inner world" of digestion and healthy bacteria...things such as certain fermented foods and nutrient-rich foods such as "live-bacteria" yogurt and kefir (to name only a few) that will build up our immune systems and reduce our susceptibility to allergies and asthma. Raw milk products are touted to be a positive contributor to this sort of recovery, and we're trying real milk-related things and testing it out as we go.

We've had a very very positive response to the Caspian Sea Yogurt. Our bodies feel lighter, and better...it's hard to describe, but it's very real. We've lost much of our cravings for breads and sugars, except the occasional dense whole grain food and fruits. We've almost completely eliminated processed foods, especially anything with preservatives and food coloring. Getting off of processed flours and sugars continues to be a goal.

In searching for plants AND in searching for gentle herbal support for some of our health concerns, we've found some that overlap. Our gardening goals have expanded to include a wider number of herbs and medicinal plants, and we've found that many of the plants we have on our gardening list for foods, nectar, or forage also have mutiple uses in salads, teas, fertilizers, or medicines. Incorporating these things, and growing them ourselves are current goals.

So we are searching out specific plants for medicines, and in doing so have begun compiling a list...one that is growing longer and longer. I'm amazed at how many plants are available in herbal pill form but are not grown here in the States. Many of them are widely grown in Asia or India, the African continent, or South and Central America...but not here. So the search cuts a worldwide swath.

We experienced this sort of fun when beginning a search for natural home-friendly soaping plants (saponins), many of which have been used by native populations in different geographical situations all over the globe. Indigenous to the U.S. was the soapberry tree, and I'm happy to report that our little soapberry twigs that looked so dead are now leafing out with a vengeance, loving the heat that's already bearing down on us here in Florida. Soapnuts (from the Ritha tree) were another experiment, and are very slow growing, and reputedly hard to germinate, but we're trying, just for fun...the little seeds get daily moisture and warmth outside in a protected area. No signs of life so far, but we'll keep waiting. The soapnuts themselves, the sort used for washing clothes with, can be bought retail...we were just searching for the source so we can grow our own. That search took us all the way to India, as did a more recent search for plants used to help with diabetes-related concerns.

Yesterday, we found mention of the plant Gymnema Sylvestre, described here, which has been used by some populations for many generations to assist diabetics. It's available as a supplement through herbal suppliers, and we're in the process of seeking a source from which to purchase the plants or seeds.

We know better than to just go crazy popping any sort of medication, herbal or not, without a lot of discrimination and care as to amounts, but I'm going to try (slowly, carefully) the bottled pills of this herb in hopes of easing my body off its dependency on the higher doses of synthetic medicines, while working to lose weight, eat the right things, etc. There were several herbs we found mention of that actually seem to provide pancreatic support, even some that encourage regeneration of healthy pancreas tissue, so it's definatly worth a look...and some deliberate tracking and care as to the results. This is a longer-term project, and is only one of the ways we're trying to become less dependent on "things elsewhere." Medicine can be a drain on our resources, as can doctor visits. I still have not given up hope that my Type 2 diabetes can be reversed with weight loss, eating right, exercise, and other supports. It just has to be gentle and gradual, because the ol' blood sugar goes crazy with any sudden changes :)

I'm in the process of compiling a list of the medicines we want to grow. These are as simple as white willow, the bark of which is the source of aspirin, and can be make into a tea drunk rather than taking an aspirin...and willow twigs soaked in water a few days are said to be an excellent root stimulator for starting garden and tree cuttings, too. We'll see! Jack is trimming some willows this week and we want to see if we can start some Moringa trees from cuttings.

As much as we'll devote our time and energies to cultivate open-pollinated organically-grown heirloom vegetables, indigenous trees and plants, and seek to satisfy our food needs ourselves this way, we'll also be paying attention to plants that are good at keeping ourselves and our animals and plants in top health. Everything from nectar-rich plants for bees, native grasses/seeds/forbs for grazing health, diversity in field and hedgerown plants, and collecting traditional (and sometimes "exotic-to-us") seeds, fruits, and plants...those PLUS educating ourselves about how to use plants as healthy nutritional and medicinal support are VERY much becoming our passions :)

As we have some successes, they'll be reported here, as will the flops. We look forward to years to follow in which we have surpluses of seeds and cuttings to share for free for anyone else who might want to add them to their homesteads, too!

It's so fun...it seems the plants to be discovered are endless...