Make Your Own Rice Milk!

When the cost of manufactured almond and rice milk became more than I wanted to spend, I found a recipe for rice milk that works just fine.  I bought short-grain organic brown rice.  In a big pan I  put 4 qts. of water and 1 cup of the brown rice.  Bring it to a boil and turn it down to simmer for 1 to 1 1/2  hours.  Let it cool for a while and then stir it up and blend it, then strain through cheesecloth.  Wring out the cheesecloth when it gets about through and pour the rice milk into a pitcher or jar.  Keep repeating this process until you have finished.   I remove the residue in the cheesecloth and collect it for take-out.  I take it out to the hens, and they love it.  I also rinse out the cheesecloth between batches.  


I add 1/2 T. real maple syrup, 1/2 T. honey, and a dash of Redmond salt to each 2-qt. pitcher.  This makes almost 4 quarts of rice milk.   We use it mostly for smoothies or "hot chocolate" made with carob. It is quite good, and saves a bundle.

Soothing Handmade Soap

I started making soap several years ago because my sister told me I should!  It contains olive oil and coconut oil, very soothing to the skin and easy to make, once you have the ingredients.  The most fun is experimenting with different scents from essential oils and adding a few extras, like oatmeal, sage or tumeric, and superfatting with oils such as Vit. E and cocoa butter.  If you want to make a trial batch, here is a small recipe for a beginner:  

Wear goggles, and no young children around.  Use rubber gloves and a heavy apron. This is because of the lye being so caustic.  As long as you are careful, do not worry.  Have some ice ready in a basin or large bowl to cool down the lye water.  Your goal is to get the lye water and the oils at approximately the same temperature, and the lye gets very hot when you mix it into the water.  

Use plastic or stainless steel pans and spoons.  You will need an immersible thermometer for the liquids.  

Wearing your goggles and rubber gloves,  

Water:  1 C.                      Mix the lye carefully and slowly into the water.  Mix with a spoon, set in a bowl of 

Lye 1 C.                            ice and put a thermometer in the lye mixture. 

Coconut oil 1 C.

Olive oil  1 C.  

Vegetable shortening 1 C   

Measure the above 3 ingredients into a pan and heat on low until it is melted.  Allow to start cooling and measure temperature with a thermometer.  You can set the pan in a bowl of ice.  

You want the lye mixture and the oil mixture (still separately) to come to about 110 degrees.  While they are cooling, get your mold ready.  You can use a shoe box or a plastic box.  It is easier if the box has straight sides.  Line with a plastic bag, spread out to the corners and sides.  

When you get the temperatures right (and you may have to re-heat one or the other carefully), you carefully add the lye mixture into the oil mixture, stirring as you do so.  Take a wisk and stir the mixture until it traces, which is when you can drizzle a spoon of the mixture across the surface and see a trail.  This does not take too long at all, so get it in the light right so that you can see it well.  Here is where you could add a tablespoon of an essential oil and/or a superfatting oil like cocoa butter, melted already.  They would of course need to be stirred in well. 

When it traces, immediately pour into your mold.  Cover with plastic, then a blanket or towel.  It will be quite hot, and needs to incubate for 24 hours before you take it out of the mold.  At that point you can cut it into bars and let it sit in the air, bars separated, for about 2 weeks.  Then it is ready to use.  The soap goes through a chemical change so that it becomes very soothing (saponification).   

  

Fall Garden

Kale and Red Onions

Just about anything you would plant in the early spring (Midwest) can be planted in late summer.  You don't want the nights above 70 degrees and you have to allow time for harvest before frost--a little tricky.  However, the hardier crops, like kale and spinach, can be covered with clear plastic to keep them alive all winter.  Healthy eating!

Skillet Pot Pie

I like versatile recipes that can be used with many different ingredients, depending on what you have available.      It makes for creativity!  But it also saves the time of hunting for a new recipe.  For this main dish pot pie, use any combination of vegetables you have as long as they don't take long to cook, like potatoes, which you would need to steam ahead of time.

This is great for left-over cooked vegetables you have in the fridge and raw or frozen vegetables.  Cut them to bite-sized.  Onions and garlic, minced, will add good flavor too.  Oven at 425 degrees.  Get out your cast iron or oven proof skillet and lightly grease it.  Add the vegetables, and if they look dry, add a can of soup or canned vegetables, or make a white sauce using flour or cornstarch (recipe on the box). Season with whatever spices you like, such as curry, basil, marjoram, cumin, cilantro, parsley, garlic and onion powder, a dash of cayenne, etc.

Top with any biscuit, cornbread, muffin, or tortilla recipe. You can either drop it by spoonfulls to make a drop-biscuit type of topping, or spread it all over the top of the vegetable mixture.  Bake about 20 min. and sprinkle with a little cheese, some nuts, and serve with salsa or olive oil/vinegar dressing.

For this skillet pie pictured: My veggies were tomatoes from the garden, broccoli, steamed potatoes, onions and garlic.  The tomatoes were so juicy I did not need anything for moisture. I used a cornbread recipe for the topping, (from organic corn we grind ourselves and eggs from our hens).  Preparation time and baking took only a half hour total.  

Meet "Wheatballs!"

Want to cut down on eating red meat and also get more whole grains in your diet?  (Not to mention cutting food costs!)  Get some whole wheat kernels.  Crack them (grind coarsely) in a hand grinder or coffee mill.  Or you can buy it already cracked.  

Cook 1 C. cracked wheat in 1 3/4 C. water about 15 minutes, stirring now and then. 

 Add 1/4 C. minced red onion

          2 T. Braggs Liquid Aminos (or use soy sauce, but Braggs is better)

          1/2 C. whole wheat flour

          1/2 C. rolled oats 

          Spices:  1 1/2  t. cumin, 2 t. dried basil, 1/2 t. coriander; dash of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

 Shape into meatballs, about an inch in diameter, and brown in skillet.  I use a little coconut oil, even in a no-stick skillet.  Serve with spaghetti sauce (I use my home-canned) over pasta, mashed potatoes, or polenta.  You can also use this wheatball recipe to make patties instead and use them in place of hambergers.    

Dilly Garlic Toasted Rolls with Veggie Spaghetti

I used the spaghetti sauce that I had made in the crock pot with basil and red onion (See previous recipe.) on whole wheat spaghetti noodles.  Then on top I sprinkled some nutritional yeast and chopped yellow tomatoes, a dash of almond "parmesan" and added a drizzle of olive oil. I served it with this split, toasted whole wheat roll which was buttered, then sprinkled with a little garlic powder and dried dill weed.  Good eating!

Crockpot Spaghetti/Pizza Sauce

We have had several half-ripe tomatoes with bad spots, so resourcefully speaking, I had to do something so that they would not become a total compost. (I do love the red-yellow-green color combination of these heirloom tomatoes.)  There has not been an abundance of tomatoes this year to warrant a big production of canning.

I cut up the good parts of the (washed) tomatoes, threw them in three smallish crock pots, chunked up about 1 medium red onion, and a handful of basil leaves from the garden for each crock pot. That's it!  I did not even take off the tomato skins.  I let it cook all night on high, no lid, so that the moisture would decrease.  I did not even add salt.  Next morning I turned the crock pots down to low for a couple of hours, then turned them off and let them cool down.  I saw that the volume had gone down to about half and the mixture was getting thick enough to make good sauce.  Then I just put the contents into the blender.  It tastes wonderful!  Sweet, thick, and just right.  I have made several batches--canned some of it, ate some on our mud-oven pizza (more about that later), and had some on spaghetti.  It could easily be frozen.  Great sauce, very little work, using up what is available.

Resourceful Decorating

Ok, so this is not food!  But it does reflect my resourceful nature.  The thrift store finds here are the coverlet, pillowcases,  bedskirt, and red pillow cover that I made from a thrift-store sweater.  The treasure hunts were such fun, and I spent not more than $14 total.  My form of guilt-free recreation!

The hens

In an effort to be more self-sustaining we acquired 5 hens about a month ago after Bob built them a beautiful A-frame chicken tractor.  This provides them a movable spot of ground in the yard every day.  They roost and lay eggs in their upstairs quarters, and spend most of the day pecking and scratching for food downstairs.

They live on laying pellets, water, and grain as well as table scraps we give them often.  They squawk if they see me outside and I do not bring them a treat.  We have 3 Black Astralorpes and 2 Buff Orpingtons.   Their pecking order is really something to behold.  The largest black hen is the boss, Sargeant.  The other 2 black hens, Lizzy and Lucy, are next in line, and the 2 tan hens, Fanny and Blondie, are at the bottom.  Fanny and Blondie are very easily intimidated by Sargeant.

They all lay light brown eggs and are really pretty low-maintenance.  The grandchildren love to find the eggs in the nests.  We pull the ramp up at night to keep out the predators, in case they decide to burrow underneath and have a chicken dinner.  Then we move the tractor to a different spot in the yard.

It is nice to know that the eggs you are eating are hormone/antibiotic free and come from happy and well- nourished hens.  It is pretty cool to gather your own food, right here in the city.  

Quinoa, (keen-wa) the versatile grain

I decided to make my own food for 5 days of cabin camping this summer.  I wanted to try to come up with menus that I could prepare quickly that would be healthy.  I learned about this grain called quinoa, high in protein and lightweight.  Its' blandness lends well to being adaptable to just about any flavor.  Available from the health food store, it can be breakfast, lunch, or dinner, depending on what you put with it.

I used vegetables from my garden which I had washed and bagged ahead of time, nuts, dried fruit (some of it I dried myself at home)  and spices to flavor the quinoa.  We really never got tired of it. I cooked for my husband and myself and gave out a lot of samples to other campers.

Quinoa is cooked with twice as much water as grain.  It takes about 20 to 30 minutes.  I used 1 C. quinoa for a meal for both of us, which was plenty.  The greens I added at the end of the cooking time.  I just turned off the heat and added them, and put the lid back on.

Spices added to lunch and dinner were used interchangably--mainly just cumin, dried basil, and curry since I was travelling lightly.  Redmond salt was also added sparingly.  I brought along a small chopping board and a pocket knife which I used to chop the vegetables.  Rugged, huh!

Here are my menus.

Monday:  (Breakfast was at home.)
                Lunch:  quinoa with almonds, kale, onions, fresh basil, and fresh tomato
                Dinner:  quinoa with carrots, walnuts, spiced with curry.
                Snacks:  dried bananas with peanuts; orange; apple

Tuesday:  Breakfast:  quinoa with raisins, pecans, nutmeg (grated fresh), honeybutter, and cinnamon
                Lunch:  quinoa with beet greens, onions, basil, and fresh tomato
                Dinner:  quinoa with pizza sauce (canned, homemade), green beans I canned last summer, cumin as a spice, and peanuts
                Snacks:  dried blueberries with almonds; apple; orange

Wednesday:  Breakfast:  quinoa with apple, pecans, grated natural coconut, cinnamon, and honeybutter
                     Lunch:  quinoa with green onions, almonds, and broccoli raab, curry and cumin
                     Dinner:  quinoa with green beans, carrots, walnuts, fresh tomato, basil as a spice
                     Snacks:  dried banans with peanuts; apple; orange

Thursday:  Breakfast:  Quinoa with banana and peanuts, honeybutter, and freshly grated nutmeg
                 Lunch:  quinoa with celery (chopped fine), nutritional yeast, ground flax seeds, almonds, raisins
                 Dinner:  quinoa with garbanzo beans, green onion, and pizza sauce
                 Snacks:  raisins and pecans, apple, orange

Friday:  Breakfast:  quinoa with dried blueberrys, almonds, and honeybutter
             Lunch:  quinoa with walnuts, beet greens, ground flaxseed, and nutritional yeast
             Dinner:  quinoa with coconut, green onions, carrots, and pecans
             Snacks:  peanuts and dried bananas, orange, apple

Saturday:  Breakfast:  applesauce and granola bars (no time to cook!)
            

Garden coleslaw you could eat all day!

I harvested this giant head of cabbage from the garden and needed a way to use not only that, but also the zuccini that have piled up in the fridge.  Bob says this he could eat this concoction all day.  Few calories I am sure, and quite tasty!  Shredded cabbage, nearly that much zuccini, chopped red onions, chopped sweet red peppers, a couple tablespoons of nutritional yeast, pumpkin seeds--because that is what I had in the fridge (but you just about any nuts you have) for crunch.  Dressing of olive oil, red cider vinegar, and honey, a little salt.

Scrumptious Lentil Stew

Soaked a pound of lentils overnight.  They sprout when you do this, and the food value increases.  I fixed this to serve with the beet muffins.  I included zuccini, red onion, and carrots from the garden, and garlic, minced.  Spiced with cayenne, cumin, thyme, tarragon, curry, and rosemary.  I think this dish tastes like tender roast beef.  OK, so not everyone does!  Also great with corn chips or cornbread.    

Beet muffins the kids won't recognize!

The neat thing about this recipe is that you can substitute another cooked, pureed vegetable instead of beets--like carrots, broccoli, sweet potatoes, or peas.  Great way to add nutrition.  Sneaky!

  

2 eggs, whisked (so exciting to use our own eggs from the hens, Lucy and Sargeant)

2 C. beet greens/beets, cooked and pureed in a food processor or blender

1/4 C. olive oil, 1/3 C. honey

2 C. whole wheat flour,  2 t. baking powder, 1 t. baking soda, 1/2 t. Redmond salt

Stir the dry ingredients together.  Add wet ingredients, then if needed, add a little water (maybe 2 or 3 T) to get a good thick, but stirrable consistency.  Bake at 375 degrees in greased muffin tins for 25 min.  

Dilly Potatoes; Almond Parmesan

The grandkids did not complain, so this passed the test!  Whole food, plant-based dinner:  Yukon gold potatoes dug from the garden (skins left on), olive oil, dill weed, nutritional yeast, almond milk, my canned pickle relish.
Served with chopped cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden with a topping of almond "parmesan."  This is made in the food processor:  1 C whole almonds, 2 T nutritional yeast flakes, 1 t. onion powder, 1 t. Redmond salt, 1/2 t. garlic powder.  Pulse until the almonds are finely ground.  A quick and healthy replacement for Parmesan cheese.

veggie wraps

 

This is so simple and good! Just a whole wheat tortilla with avacado, minced red onion & shredded zuccini (from my garden), and a little shredded cheese. I do without the cheese, but for my guests it is available.

Potatoes, Greens and Eggs

We just had this for lunch, it was delicious. I used steamed potatoes (yukon gold potatoes from our garden), sauted in a skillet. Once browned I added chopped kale, chard and basil from our garden and let it cook a few minutes. Then I added 3 eggs (from our chickens).  I scooted the potato mixture to the side and lowered the heat to cook the whisked eggs, stirring them as they cooked.  When they were still shiny I turned off the heat and stirred them in gently with the potato mixture.  Added a sprinkle of Redmond salt, creole seasoning, cumin, kelp, and curry.  Served it with raw peanuts, and chopped onions and tomatoes.

Some filling filling for those tortillas.

Today for the really big tortilla I used black beans (which I had soaked and cooked yesterday), spiced just right and mashed, some minced celery for crunch, chopped green onion from my garden, salsa, and some mashed sweet potato. I served it with a green salad. I made sure the tortillas and beans and sweet potato were hot before adding the other stuff. Yumm!

I will freeze the left-over black beans. Great with brown rice and chopped tomatoes and my vegan "cheese." See how easy this healthy cooking is!

Lola

Homemade Whole Wheat Tortillas

Homemade whole wheat tortillas (wraps) are so inexpensive, yummy, and versatile. Much better than paying $4 a package for store-bought that are full of preservatives that you can't pronounce.

I use just whole wheat flour, sea salt, water, and a little olive oil.
2 C. whole wheat flour, 1/2 t. Redmond  salt, and 2 T. coconut oil or olive oil.  Add water to make a stiff dough that can be rolled out.  Flour the board with more whole wheat flour and keep turning the ball of dough so that it does not stick to the rolling pin or the board.  Roll into a circle.  Sometimes I make them about 7 or 8 inches in diameter. Today I made them bigger.

I  cooked them  in a fairly hot skillet, drizzling a bit of olive oil on the bottom.  Cook it till it starts to bubble and turn it over, then let it brown on the other side a bit. About every 3 tortillas I wipe the skillet with a couple of paper towels to get rid of the flour that has built up and turned black.  Filled, these make a meal--very filling!