I can't grow spinach at this time. I don't have the infrastructure and raised garden bed space or set up. I have three, four by four raised bed garden plots that I purchased in excitement when we bought the house five years ago. They have since begun to fall apart. Pesky pests like squirrels and raccoons and OPC (other people's cats)...I took the F out, dig up and poop up and just mess anything I have planted.
A knee injury and family hardship put two of my five seasons out of range to learn Gardening. Gardening requires learning, trial, and error, and finally building healthy soil. This makes me have to buy some things. Like spinach. It would be too expensive from the grocery to home can spinach. So for eight dollars at Costco for 2 large bags, I can put ten, two-person portions in the freezer. This tastes way better than can spinach and I don't have to cook it down for fresh. Win-win for me and my knee. I'll show you.
Pre Washed Or Triple Washed
Even if my produce says pre-washed, already washed or triple-washed, I still wash it very well. Gloved hands, protected hands can still stop and pick or itch their face or nose and or whatever else tickles or itches. I prefer to rewash all, my pre-washed produce.
Two large bags cooked down in butter salt and pepper till tender. I removed some of the liquid that cooks down from the spinach and cooked the rest away.
Before you know it the pan that was overflowing is no longer.
Then it is time to fill the containers.
It is amazing how two very large bags cook down to ten small containers, I now have ten delicious sides prepped and ready for dinner.
I am updating a kitchen scrap garden blog I wrote about last year's celery. I also do the same with the bottoms of lettuce and cabbage. I just started some celery, lettuce, and cabbage today (3-23-20) Check Back in a few days, I will add some more pictures as I go along. Below is my blog on the celery that I grew from scraps last year.
If you have a few potatoes with eyes on them you can cut them into pieces, set them out to harden on the edges for a few days. Plant them shallowly in the dirt in a big flower pot or a 2-5 gallon bucket. As they sprout keep covering the area around the plants as they grow taller. When the container is full of dirt the potato plants are ready to begin their magic. Depending on the size of your container you could get anywhere from 10- 60 potatoes at the end of its life cycle. Worst-case scenario,? You fill your time productively, and if your plants fail you gave your dirt some good nutrition. Better yet, use the peels from all your veggie scraps as mulch on the topsoil of your kitchen scrap garden.
Youtube has so many videos teaching you this stuff. Take some time out from constant news watching and back up and be proactive. You are using scraps what is the harm maybe in 30-60 days you will have a small amount of food to add to your fridge. You can even plant carrot tops it will only be greens but greens are greens. Buy some bags of dirt, a few pots, and do a little container gardening. In Texas, this is the best time to begin. At worst you are learning a new skill with the time you are sheltering in place.
Growing Celery From Kitchen Discards (updated)
I use a lot of celery lately as my daughter and I are on the eating protocol from the GAPS diet. So I decided to try something I had read about over the years. I started growing celery from my discards. In a few weeks, I should be able to start harvesting Celery. Below are photos are the growing journey so far.
If you are interested in learning about the GAPS Diet I have written a blog on it.
Keeping Mushrooms For A Longer Time In Your Freezer Or Refridgerator.
I sometimes get so frustrated because I get busy and forget I had mushrooms I wanted to add to my cooking. Then they go all stinky and slimy. Taking advantage of sales and buying mushrooms in larger quantities will allow you to store them for whenever you need them in the freezer.
Simple solution, sautee them in butter or oil,
then store in the fridge and use within a week, or put in small freezer bags or containers and freeze in portion or meal sizes and keep for up to a year.
Mushrooms hold their texture and taste well when frozen.
What exactly is GAPS? GAPS is an eating protocol or an elimination diet. It was put together by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride Most people don't realize it is two issues and type groups that have the same acronym. It is undertaken by those who come to a realization that they have severe gut issues and problems. Acid reflux, Diverticulosis, IBS, Constipation, Frequent Diarrhea, Nausea, Frequent Tummy Aches, Upset Stomach, etc....... This would be the Physiology side of Gaps. The psychology side is neurological. ADD, ADHD, Autism, and many other psychological issues.
People are willing to undertake this eating protocol to heal their gut. Science is proving more and more every day that the gut is in charge of so many things having to do with our day-to-day living. Our gut controls so many aspects of our body. Take the time to google the gut-brain connection and read some of the studies from the top hospitals in our nation. They all tie our gut, endocrine systems, and brain together in a dance that for most of us is way out of balance. This, in turn, has made all of us way out of balance. We are taking antibiotics and other prescription drugs that treat symptoms but do not cure them. In many cases, a whole host of new problems arise from the medications that are meant to help.
This eating protocol is a drastic yet simplified way of eating through the elimination of Frankenstein foods, ( Processed Foods) and returning to simply eating whole foods. You also remove all grains, sugars, dairy, as well as the Frankenstein foods. The focus revolves around something from our past that has been lost through reliance on prepackaged and store-bought foods. It isn't forever just until you heal. After one month, I see a drastic difference, but I also still have a way to go. My gut is bad and I am too overweight.
Broths
Ask anyone you know in their late forties and early fifties, if they remember their grandmothers and great grandmothers always having a pot of soup or stock on the stove. The resounding answer you may hear is that yes they always had soup going or were always cooking soup. Why is that? Everyone knows or has heard. Oh, feed them chicken soup. In the past Mothers and Grandmothers knew that soup and broth heal, yet society has moved away from and has disbelief that soup actually heals. Old wives' tales meet science.
An old story talks of a woman who had two chickens. One seemed sick. Rather than put it down, she killed the healthy chicken and fed its broth to the sick chicken. Her family enjoyed the chicken soup as well. The sick chicken got well and later became a pot of chicken soup. She killed the one healthy chicken to heal the sick chicken and ensured her family ate two chickens.
Water Kefir
The GAPS diet or protocol is meat stock, meat broth, and bone broths first, then the broths and stocks are made into nutrient-dense soups. Adding in naturally occurring probiotic foods in increasing amounts heals the gut wall and helps the gut strip itself and reform with new gut lining.
Fermented Vegetables
Kombucha
While making broths you will need to bring your constitution up as to what level of broth you can go. You can use basic bones and carcasses, or you can experiment and add more parts of the animal that will bring deeper healing. The bones and fat will suffice if that is all you can bring yourself to do. My daughter and I chose to experiment for the healing.
Eating whole animals has been removed from our mindset. I remember it began in my generation. When my sister was little I remember she wouldn't eat eggs when she found out they came from a chicken butt.
Eating these fats and proteins binds together separated gut lining most often referred to as leaky gut back together through a tightening and reformation of the gut wall and lining. It takes as little as a few days or as long as a few months. It simply depends on the severity of your gut health. The Gut is tied to both the psychological and physiological aspects of GAPS. Healing the gut starts to help or contribute to a lessening of symptoms of severity.
My GAPS Journey
I think all of my children have gut health issues that tie into auto-immune disorders or constipation. Since discovering GAPS I have tried to encourage all five to consider GAPS.
About four years ago I was told I have a floating gall stone, and raging acid reflux. I didn't even know I have acid reflux. My doctor, as well as a technician who took my gut pictures, said mine was one of the worst they had ever seen. It is silent but could be deadly. Not being aware of acid reflux can silently erode your esophageal lining and at times lead to throat cancer. I was also told that I have fatty liver disease.
I took meds for a short time for the acid then quit as it made me have high blood pressure. The acid reflux I didn't know I had, I know I have now, since starting and stopping the medication. In one of my many internet searches, I finally found GAPS
The author of the GAPS Diet, Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride did a three-part series about her book. If you have any type of gut issues, then most likely your whole family does. This video series is well worth your time. Each part of the series is about thirty minutes.
Since starting GAPS in February 2019 my gut is soft and squishy not distended and hard. Inflammation in my whole body has gone down and I have lost thirteen pounds. I am still on the introduction phase of GAPS and I plan to stay on it as long as I can stand it. I'm not bothered eating soups. I make broths, and set aside the meat and then make soups.
My daughter and I are both now on GAPS. She is a full-time teacher and very busy. She is also recovering from a nuclear die-off of her thyroid. When she researched what I was doing she asked to join me. Her immune system is severely compromised by her thyroid issues. Her doctors helped her make the decision to kill off her thyroid as her symptoms were becoming life-threatening.
So, my week is made up of making broth and soups for us for the week. I started making broths with a full array of veggies for flavor but switched to just broth. I have since put back the veggies for flavor upon request by my daughter. Some soups are whole and some are pureed. The chicken carrot pureed is delicious.
Next round I am trying tomato. This batch in the photo was broccoli and carrot pureed as well as chicken broth.
On the introductory protocol, you can have salt and pepper and just about any vegetable removing the most fibrous parts. Any veg you find bothers you at first you can remove it before eating your soup or omit and reintroduce later. It can be in the soup for flavor and removed before consumption. The only exception is no potatoes and parsnips. We are currently doing meat broth. We save the bones to reuse in the next batch once they are removed. All my meat broths are simmered no more than three to four hours. When the bones are cool I place in a ziplock freezer bag or vacuum seal, date, and then place in the freezer. When I use them a second time, I add them with the fresh item, be it chicken, beef, or lamb and then discard them. ( I have since stopped adding the bones to the next batch of broth and I am just saving them for future batches of bone broth at a later date in the protocol. )
Freezing Bones
It took me a bit of research on how long you can freeze bones for batches of bone broth. It seems it doesn't matter how old they are as bone-broth cooks so long and with the vegetables for flavor as well apple cider vinegar they will make a broth and taste fine. The USDA Was My Source
I found that after the first week my cravings were almost none. I have a few slip-ups, but I have gone black coffee no more milk or cream, and no sugars. I had previously switched to sweetleaf and rarely have sugar at all anymore. Previously I had also stopped first using artificial creamers and went back to half and half. In the last year, I had switched to full cream. Now the only milk I have is yogurt. We have even located raw milk and are making our own raw yogurt. When I don't have raw milk I just get the best low homogenized organic milk. I usually get Kalona Super Natural Organic Whole Milk. I also simplified the making of yogurt by buying an inexpensive machine that took all the ability to mess it up out. I also bought the extender accessory and extra jars as I always have more than seven jars when I make yogurt.
I think the fats and oils in the broth stop the cravings. I know when I drink my broth I am usually satisfied, but you have to eat the soup four to six times a day to have proper nutrition.
We try and use organic where ever possible. We found a store for local pasture-raised and healthy-fed lamb, chicken, beef, and goat. The store is a Halal meat market and doesn't claim to be organic. The animals are just raised on pasture, in a healthy manner and it is local. It is actually cheaper than the grocery store. The taste is by far so much better than what I am buying at our grocery stores. I know that the meat is better than the grocery because the animals are out on pasture. We can get almost all the bones and joints for the broths also. It is awesome to behold, they bring the carcass out and cut the bone type you request right off a hunk of the animal. Now that is FRESH!
We are working our way up to trying goat. Neither of us has ever had it that we remember. Here are this week's broths and soups. I'll try and update weekly what soups I have concocted as I can get out of the kitchen!
22-quart roaster Beef Broth
1 leg shank, 1 package of neck bones, 2 pounds stew meat, 1 half-gallon previous beef broth made with the same bones, but also 1 pack of beef hoofs
1 leek well washed brown bits removed. Include all green stalk that is healthy for flavor
6 whole organic carrots unpeeled. peeled if unable to find organic. Leave them whole.
4 or 5 cloves of garlic if desired. I leave out as I find the broth gets a weird flavor. I add garlic at the time I make the soup.
2 organic chickens, or other meats and bones.
Bring roaster to a boil, turn down to simmer Salt and pepper to taste when the chicken, beef, lamb, or pork has begun to release into the water and it is cooked enough to be safe for tasting. Simmer for two and a half to three hours. Just until the meat wants to fall off the bone or fall apart. If you miss well fish it all out. No big deal just more work. Remove carrots if they are cooked and you can serve them with another meal. Or eat when you want to go for carbs or sugar. Continue to simmer roaster until the meat cools and you can pull it from the bone. Set all meat aside and put back in all bones, gristle, guts, gook, and fat. Add back all water and oil that ran off the meat while cooling. Simmer one more hour.
At this time I usually put the broth in half-gallon jars and quart mason jars.
When cool I refrigerate. I already had some half-gallon mason jars. Most often they are all full but I was able to combine things or put in smaller mason jars and cull out seven jars. My daughter purchased two packs of six jars. This past week I bought another six-pack of half-gallon jars. I can make three types of soups that last us both all week and then broth to drink throughout the day. My pans are large soup pans and I can usually get us each two gallons of soup and a bit from each pan.
Repeat with beef bones and lamb bones. Not really any variation on the broths when I make them. They are the same ingredients in the same quantities, just different bones.
Because I make three soups at one time I chop and sautee my onions, celery, and leeks in one pan and split between the three pans. I sautee them first because I think the richness adds to the overall flavor of the soup.
Chicken Broth
Made with 2 whole organic chickens and 5 chicken feet
(this batch was the first time I used chicken feet and I used too many.)
Chicken soup (Peas and carrots)
In a large soup pan, add broth into the pan until half full. Sautee a large onion chopped, 1-2 leeks rinsed well with brown removed or cutaway. Use all the leek including the green and chop finely, 8 stalks of celery chopped. Add to broth. till tender and add to broth.
Add
1 large bag of peas
8-10 carrots chopped
1 half-cup sauteed mushrooms
salt and pepper taste
add broth until the pan is just full enough to simmer without boiling over.
Simmer until all ingredients are done. Cool and bottle up into the fridge.
Chicken soup ( yellow squash, carrot, and Brussel sprouts)
In a large soup pan, add broth into the pan until half full. Sautee a large onion chopped, 1-2 leeks rinsed well with brown removed or cutaway. Use all the leek including the green and chop finely, 8 stalks of celery chopped. Add to broth. till tender and add to broth.
1-2 cups chicken cooked in broth
3-5 fresh yellow squash chopped or 1 bag frozen
2 bags frozen Brussel sprouts braised and browned
4-6 chopped carrots
1 half-cup sauteed mushrooms
1 cup chopped red, yellow, orange, and green bell pepper
salt and pepper to taste
simmer soup until cooked. Cool and bottle up put in the refrigerator
Beef Soup ( Turnip, Kale, Napa Cabbage, and Carrot)
In a large soup pan, add broth into the pan until half full. Sautee a large onion chopped, 1-2 leeks rinsed well with brown removed or cutaway. Use all the leek including the green and chop finely, 8 stalks of celery chopped. Add to broth. till tender and add to broth.
8 turnips chopped
1 napa cabbage
10 carrots
1 half-cup sauteed mushrooms
2 bunches Kale
all the beef removed from making the broth
salt and pepper to taste.
simmer until well cooked and then cool and bottle up for the refrigerator.
Feed your Family Like Your Grandparents and Great Grandparents Did In The Past.
The Lost Art Of Food.
When it comes down to food, food production and storage, our Grandparents surely had it right. Times have changed in such a way that how we store food and the amount of food we have on hand in our homes at any given time is almost catastrophic. Granted life was a lot more rural than urban, but they planned for the year and to get through the winter. Life is a bit more high-tech now and in the process of all this technological change, we have lost some key skills. Most people are totally clueless about the ways of storing food for the long term. Fermentation, a crucial type of food preservation in the past, is greatly feared and barely utilized for the health benefits it provides. Processed foods are king and take up most of the space in our cabinets and pantries.
People Have Become Disconnected From Their Food
In the past, children were taught food preservation, as a matter of course. It was just part of childhood learning the way of food. That is not the case today. Most children leave home barely knowing how to cook. Food is not raised, nor grown for the most part in households. Food comes from the store.
Those born in the fifties and sixties bridge both the past and modern technologies. Technological change in society and food production in just a thirty-year span has changed how we eat and how we get and store food drastically.
I was born I the sixties and my children in the eighties, How I was raised and how I raised my children based on societal norms is drastically different. Even when I was a teenager you could still have milk delivered. Today, in some places having milk delivered by a farm is actually illegal. Raw milk is illegal in twenty states in the United States. Raw Milk Laws By State
By the time I had my children Milk delivery was a thing of the past already. The difference between me and my parents is substantially more dramatic in its differences Looking back I can see where the change began in me and my siblings. Our parents also following societal norms to a certain degree, but also what they were taught by their parents. My parents were about eight or nine when world war two ended. They came into adulthood in the economic boom of the 1950s
American Prosperity
Following world war two America experienced a time of great prosperity before a deep recession hit in the 1970s.
I have some of the fondest memories growing up in the country. The weekend was for yard work and gardening. We helped our parents till, plant, weed and harvest all summer long. My sister and I should have also been helping our mother prepare it for storage but she didn't teach us when we were small. Even in my childhood, our parents began moving away from teaching us the way of food survival. I talk to my sister and she doesn't remember our mom preparing food for the winter. All summer long our mother canned, blanched, and froze our bounty from our large garden. We also Purchased all our beef, pork, and poultry in bulk.
This is the way our grandparents lived and taught our parents to live. In the process, they saved a large amount of money. My sister can't remember the three large chest freezers we had on the back porch. The freezers were completely full of the summer and autumn bounty. My generation was the beginning of the lost way of food. I had a large learning curve to get back to preparing my foods that are healthier and more natural.
I consider our food supply to almost be poison. Gradually, but not completely, my husband and I have been changing the way we eat over the last ten years. We still have a way to go. Fast food and processed food is mostly laden with harmful chemicals and sugars.
Our food contains way more corn than people realize. If you can't pronounce it you shouldn't eat it. Corn is genetically modified to accept round up as pest control. We are told it is not harmful, but anything that has such a toxic chemical present in its own genetic makeup is not healthy. No matter how many scientists say it is so. I have a brain and I use it. Common sense should prevail here.
King Korn
If you have Amazon Prime you can watch King Korn on prime. I think the thing that motivated me the most to stop eating corn, was how long corn sits in the open environment before its scooped up and processed into our food supply.
Bring Back The Past
Using grocery store sales, price matching, loyalty programs, and bulk purchasing, as well as Farmer's markets, we can move the garden back to our table. By Canning, dehydrating and vacuum sealing foods you can increase their shelf life by leaps and bounds. Deciding to take control of your food purchases, you will make the quality of your food better, healthier, as well as, save money in the process.
Consider A Garden
You don't have a large sprawling garden. You can utilize a few raised bed gardens around your yard. This will add foods that are more nutrient dense because you raised and harvested them fresh from your yard. It is not necessary to have a big garden to bring bounty to your table, cabinets, and shelves. Then again, if you have space, why not try a garden in the summer and fall months. If you own your home put in a few fruit trees that grow in your region.
By having a garden and fruit trees you can have fresh and organic produce and fewer pesticides. If gardening is not your thing, find farmer's markets in or near your town. Most all fruits and vegetables you purchase from a farmer's market will probably be organic, if not then at least healthier and way more nutrient-dense than conventional farming. It will also be cheaper than in the store. Buying bulk always is cheaper overall.
Stores may be bigger and more complex today than in the past, but you can selectively purchase items in bulk and on sale. It sounds strange to say buy more to save, but that is what we need to get back too. Some hard work and planning at the outset will actually give you more time and more money in the end. There is no reason that while living urban that you can not bring rural to the table and to your wallet. Lifestyles less of convenience and more of frugality.
Canning pumpkin has become one of my favorite things to do in the fall. Starting late September, pumpkins begin to show up in stores. Typically all you will find at the store are the ones people carve for Halloween. They have a wonderful taste when home-canned. There are other pumpkins that you may find taste better. Your best bet to find them is at some kind of pumpkin festival or church and hometown hayride. These venues will have a wider variety of pumpkins for sale.
If you do a bit of research online you can find pumpkin names and taste profiles and decide what you are looking for in terms of tastes for eating and for baking. My favorite thing in the world is mashed pumpkin with butter salt and pepper. By canning pumpkin, I can have pumpkin for pies at Thanksgiving, and buttered pumpkin all year round.
I found these pumpkins at the store. This was literally the only type they had. A word of advice when choosing pumpkins. Look at all the pumpkins, usually, stores will store them in a large container. Look at the pumpkins and see if any have mold or mildew or rot starting on them or at the stem. If so do not buy them or any near them if possible. You have to check the stems very carefully. Make sure they are strong and firm with no softness or rot.
Take the pumpkins home and wash them right away. Use a mild soap and simple bleach water. Just a solution with a bit of bleach in it to kill the pathogens from the field that might facilitate stem rot. Dry them very well especially around the stem. Kept in a cool dark place on a table or up off the floor.
You can keep pumpkins, and other winter squashes for several months or usually most all of winter. They usually will keep until you are ready to home can them or just rotating them into your meals. Usually, I will keep mine on a piece of cardboard on the floor all along my dining room wall. I also keep them in racks layered alternately in different directions so air can move through and also on my kitchen table.
My daughter and I found a really great sale on winter squash so we bought quite a bit as it keeps so long and is seasonal. We are currently doing the GAPS diet. and winter squash is part of the introduction part of the diet. The acorn, butternut and spaghetti squash was a great find. When it no longer becomes feasible to store on the table and the rack we will home can the squash.
When you are ready to start canning the pumpkin there is going to a lot of prep work to get to the point where you can safely can the pumpkin. It ends up being a lot of work at the beginning yet at the end is well worth it. Not to mention by home canning you control what is in your food. Nothing but food! Being able to open a can of home-canned pumpkin and in five minutes have hot buttered pumpkin as a meal or with a meal is well worth the work at the front end. After experiencing the ease of putting a meal together post canning. I have come to love canning. I am very willing to put the hard work in at the beginning for the fast and easy reward at the end.
Pumpkins have a lot of steps to get it to the canning jar, or stored. if you cut it in half, deseed it, and roast it in the oven to deskin it, you can no longer home can it. You can only freeze it. So that leaves hand deskinning.
You can do this in several ways. After multiple years of canning pumpkin in the fall, I found my happy method. Rather than peel the whole outside as this picture shows,
I cut it into the desired chunk sizes. I then cut the peel off from the one-inch chunks. This method seems to go faster. The recommended size to cut your pumpkin is one inch as recommended by all ball canning books and the National center for home food preservation.
The removal of the seeds, deskinning, peeling, chopping, and cutting into one-inch squares is highlighted below.
You can hot pack or raw pack vegetables when home canning. The method below is a hot pack. After cutting the pumpkin into one-inch squares, I rinsed it and then blanched in boiling water for 2 minutes. I then placed it in jars with one inch of headspace. You then pour clean boiling water up to one inch creating the one-inch headspace. Typically I would add one teaspoon of salt in vegetables, but as pumpkin also has a sweet profile I left out the salt. Debubble with a wood or plastic skewer pushing the pumpkin around gently. This will force out any air bubbles inside the jar in or around the pumpkin. After de-bubbling the water or pumpkin may shift allowing you to either add more pumpkin or more water to realign back to one-inch headspace.
Fill your canner with the jars as you are filling them. As you are hot packing turn your canner on low and begin to slowly bring up the heat so that the canner and jars are of the same heat. My canner the All American 921 holds seven, one-quart jars.
Once you can have canned the pumpkin for the recommended amount of pressure for your area, and the recommended amount of time per either the ball canning books or the NCHFP, turn off your canner and let it come down off of pressure. Once it is down from pressure you can remove the pumpkin from your canner and let it cool. Follow all instructions as per your personal canner. Once cooled for twelve to twenty-four hours, check all your seals, wash the jars, and store them on your shelves. I have found that with average size pumpkins that I get almost seven-quart jars per pumpkin.
From start to finish the pumpkin is delicious and beautiful in jars. I get wonderful satisfaction looking at my canning closet seeing the fresh in-season produce I have canned that I can have all year long. I have been doing three to Four pumpkins for my household. This takes me through the holiday season and pumpkin for me and the occasional guest who loves pumpkin as much as I do.
Happy Canning!!
Before you know it the pan that was overflowing is no longer.
It is amazing how two very large bags cook down to ten small containers, I now have ten delicious sides prepped and ready for dinner. 
