Green Pastures Cod Liver Oil capsules Givaway!

Cheeseslave is hosting a giveaway from Green Pastures of CLO/BO capsules. Click on the link for a chance to enter!
http://www.cheeseslave.com/2011/01/31/giveaway-green-pasture-cod-liver-oilbutter-oil-gel-caps/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Cheeseslave+%28CHEESESLAVE%29

Eye Candy

Check out these beaded cuffs by Nelkin Designs!
https://id306.securedata.net/sandrasingh.com/merchantmanager/product_info.php?cPath=76_699_708&products_id=3321
I won't be buying this myself, but it is fun to look!

Urban Homesteading

http://urbanhomestead.org/
This website is about a family in California, where there is a year-round growing season, and they grow 99% of their produce (6,000 lbs) on 1/10 acre (4,000 sq ft)! They also raise chickens, ducks, dwarf rabbits and dwarf pygmy goats. Check it out!

Green Pastures GIVEAWAY!

Click here:
http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/2011/01/210-green-pasture-products-giveaway/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheHealthyHomeEconomist+%28The+Healthy+Home+Economist%29
to enter to win coconut ghee and your choice of fish oil!

Quinoa Rejuvelac

The blog Green Fertility has a recipe for quinoa rejuvelac. I tried the recipe and liked it okay, but this run I am using more grain and adding apple slices and grated ginger. The idea of adding fruit was from the book Fresh Food From Small Spaces: The Square Inch Gardner's Guide to Year-Round Food Production. I looked on the internet for a gluten-free version and found the quinoa recipe on GreenFertility's blog. I'll let you know how it tastes, and please let me know if you want pictures.

Felted Wooly Moccasin Slippers

It only took me a couple days to knit these 'moccasins'. I found the pattern on Knitting Pattern Central. I doubled some Ella Rae wool with my scratchy handspun Lincoln, and the result was not too scratchy. For some reason they wouldn't felt by hand so I ran them through the dryer. I will give them to a friend.

Strawberry Soda

No, the stuff in the jar isn't beet kvass. It's going to be strawberry soda.
I saw a recipe for blueberry soda somewhere on the internet. It was cultured using a ginger bug which uses white sugar, but I set out to use whey and natural maple syrup. Only one small problem: we were out of blueberries.
Enter strawberry soda.
I made a syrup of about 2 cups of whole strawberries (I think it would be more like one cup if they were cut up - there were a lot of air spaces) with tops removed. I used frozen. 1 qt of water and between 1/4 and 1/2 cup of maple syrup, boiled, cooled, and tasteless berries discarded. Poured into a quart mason jar and added 2 tablespoons whey and 1/2 teaspoon sea salt. I'll let you know in three days how it tastes!

Grass is for cows!

I like sprouts as much as the next person, but I draw the line at wheat grass. Some health food nuts, especially raw food people, like to drink wheat grass juice. I am not convinced of its benefits and here's why: you can't eat grass unless you're a ruminant. That is a basic fact of life. The juice has the indigestible fiber removed, but think about it - if you need something modern to process it to the point of edibility, how is that food? Food is something you can eat raw. Or boiled, or baked, or fried, etc. All you need to cook something is a pot or pan, a heat source (like a fire) and maybe some rendered animal fat for frying. Or water for boiling. But to juice wheat grass you need a hand-cranked or electric grinder, a complicated modern invention. Did people drink wheat grass juice a a hundred fifty years ago? I think not! If you are going to drink juice, use something squeezable like a lemon. Or cook the juice out. But why on earth would you need to mechanically extract the fiber? That is not natural! Cider mills have been around a little while, perhaps not long enough to be a good thing, but longer than wheat grass juicers. Grapes can be juiced by stomping barefoot in a bin. Lemons can just be squeezed. But wheat grass? Grass is for cows, not people!
However, if you want all the nutrients of grass and more, you can use one of the oldest grass-processing methods known to man: feed grass to cow/goat. Milk cow/goat. Drink raw milk. There's your liquid grass, right there, complete with vitamin C.

Ginger Ale Update

I have tweaked my previous recipe to make the ginger ale fizzier - it happened by accident, really. Here is the recipe, modified from Instructables:
1 cubic inch piece of ginger, micro-grated
juice of 1 lemon (1/4 cup bottled lemon juice - the stuff from Costco rocks!)
1/4 cup real maple syrup
2 tablespoons whey (whey from straining kefir makes it extra fizzy)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 quart water
Mix all ingredients in a jar and let ferment for 3 days before sticking in the fridge. Strain before drinking.

REAL food nutrition E-course GIVEAWAY!

Cheeseslave is hosting a giveaway of Food Renegade's Real Food Nutrition E-Course.
http://www.cheeseslave.com/2011/01/14/giveaway-food-renegades-real-food-nutrition-health-online-class/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Cheeseslave+%28CHEESESLAVE%29

Garden at last!

I was worrying about the price of pots for my ambitious container garden, well, I worry no more! My family is renting a 30 x 30 ft community garden plot at Blackacre Farm, so I can plant stuff in the actual ground! I want to grow everything!