This recipe was requested over on the CTF Facebook page. If you use Facebook, come over over and join us. I post daily reminders about thawing meats, soaking grains and planning your meals. It’s great if you’re in a meal-cooking rut or need some inspiration, because many folks post what they’re fixing for meals and snacks, too. I mentioned testing a chicken mole recipe and someone asked me to post it.
Chicken Mole
From the Menu Mailer
[Read more…] about Chicken Mole
Our Food Storage 101 article on our website was so popular, we decided to expand it into a blog series! Over the next several weeks, we will walk you through the whys and hows of food storage, whether you wish to have a week or a year of food on hand.
Why Should I Store Food?
There are many reasons why people choose to practice some form of food storage, and none of them are wrong. So many people are concerned right now. Since I began working with food storage in 2007, I have seen many reasons to choose to stock a deep pantry.
In 2009, our family sustained a major hit in the form of income loss when my husband, along with 90% of his co-workers, were laid off. Three months prior, everyone in the company had taken a salary reduction in a move to delay those lay-offs. We knew it was coming, we just didn’t know the day. Thankfully, we had one year of food storage in place when the lay-off happened. [Read more…] about Real Food Storage- Deep Pantry Principles for Traditional Foodists
While searching online for herb remedies, I saw sage as a runny nose remedy on many web sites in every form from tinctures to elixirs to teas. I tried it last night, and it worked well. TOO well. I took about one teaspoon crushed sage mixed into a little raw honey. It dried my sinuses out until they ached and I couldn’t breathe out of my nose on one side! I considered it to be a good trade considering what I had been experiencing and using a neti pot helped considerably with the discomfort. It fixed my runny nose for several hours, well into the night. It also stopped the coughing from post-nasal drip which in turn helped my sore throat, which was a huge blessing.
This morning, I gave each of the kids a pinch and I took two pinches mixed into a tiny amount of raw honey. Neither of the kids complained about taking it like that. I suspected they’d object to the tea, so this was a great solution. It is working extremely well, with no dryness or discomfort. I imagine if your runny nose was severe, you’d need a higher dose. Most websites recommended dosing it two to three times a day. I will experiment today with how often I need to dose me and the kids to be effective without drying us out. I am especially anxious to see how well it works to stop post-nasal drip that causes my kids to cough at night. I’ve been getting up twice a night to give them Ivy Calm for multiple nights now, and if this works I will switch to this instead as it is much cheaper.
Last year before Thanksgiving, I had ordered a one-pound bag of rubbed sage from Frontier, not realizing that it would be cups and cups of sage! So now I am glad to have one more use for this herb. I’ve been using sage tincture as an ingredient in mouthwash, and I believe now that I will make an elixir of it, too.
WARNING: Sage is a drying herb. If you are nursing, it will reduce or stop your milk supply. I would avoid it entirely while nursing, especially if your supply is borderline. It is also listed as a uterine stimulant and an herb to be avoided during pregnancy. However, I have seen no warning to avoid a culinary dose of this herb during pregnancy, so please do your own homework before considering this remedy if you are pregnant or breastfeeding.
Shared at Nourishing Treasures and Wildcrafting Wednesday.
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I haven’t blogged much in the last month because we have been working hard to get our raised garden beds built and extended onto some new ground. We are effectively trying to double our vegetable garden space despite being limited by the steep topography and shade from all of the woods. Once we are done, we will put in some new beds in a different area of the yard for the herbs and perennial plants. We also had an extended visit from my grandparents and my grandmother came down with shingles while they were here. That sent me into a tizzy of work, trying to get ready with extra food cooked and the chores and gardening done ahead in case the kids caught chicken pox from her. Their 14-day incubation period ended on Wednesday and they show no symptoms, so I assume they did not catch it from her. We will still continue to watch them until this coming Wednesday, just in case. So the last few weeks have been very busy but very productive.
Living in Western NC, our last frost date is mid-April but we don’t put out the warm weather vegetables until Mother’s Day weekend or after. This past weekend was too cool to plant out (under 55 degrees at night) and The Farmer’s Almanac lists today and tomorrow as the favorable days to get the hot weather plants into the ground. So I will spend tomorrow trying to break the new ground and get the grass/weeds up, finish spreading the 15 cubic yards of topsoil into the new raised beds, amending with azomite and greensand and then transplanting the plants out that were hardened off earlier this week.
I will be transplanting tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, winter and summer squash, zucchini, lettuces, melons, hibiscus and a good number of herbs. We will also be putting beans, cowpeas, carrots, lettuce and okra into the ground. None of my beets sprouted, so we will try those again later in the year. Once things are transplanted, the weeding, feeding and soil work on a large scale begins. We also have 5 roosters and a few hens to butcher soon and need to get the outside equipment set up for that. Since next Saturday afternoon is taken up with another scheduled activity, I hope we can accomplish culling the flock next Friday and Saturday morning, as Jeff normally gets off in the afternoon on Fridays.
On the personal front, my husband was able to get a new job in April. He was laid off one year ago today. Eleven months of unemployment was very difficult and the downturn in the economy has greatly affected us. I am grateful that the long period of unemployment is over and that God provided Jeff with a job at a company where he is happy and fits in well. The last year was a good opportunity to fine-tune my penny pinching endeavors and it helped me to weed through some strategies that, while they work, they take up too much time in comparison to the money they save to be useful to me on a regular basis.
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KerryAnn Foster runs Cooking Traditional Foods, the longest running Traditional Foods Menu Mailer on the internet. KerryAnn has over nine years of traditional foods experience and is a former Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader. Founded in 2005, CTF helps you feed your family nourishing foods they will love. Each mailer contains one soup, five dinners, one breakfast, on dessert and extras. You can learn more about our Menu Mailers at the CTF website. For a free sample Menu Mailer, join our mailing list. You can also join our forum to chat with other traditional foodists and learn more.
Each family has their own special Thanksgiving recipes. This recipe, included in the Thanksgiving Menu Mailer, is my crustless version of our family favorite Pumpkin Pie.
If you’d like to consider a low-carb pumpkin pie that has a crust, I would urge you to consider the recipe using coconut flour in Brice Fife’s book, Cooking with Coconut Flour (and at half.com). His recipe includes the recipe for the filling as well.
From the Menu Mailer Volume 4 Week 18
If you’re carb- or grain-conscious, this pie is quick to throw together and really fits the bill. This is our Thanksgiving choice this year since both my mom and husband are low-carbing to deal with health issues.
4 eggs
1 (15-ounce) can or 1½ cups homemade pumpkin puree*
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ginger
dash nutmeg
¼ cup honey/agave or ½ cup rapadura
¾ cup unsweetened coconut, rice, almond or dairy milk
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Grease a 9” pie plate and set aside.
In a bowl, whisk all of the ingredients together, mixing thoroughly to make sure the spices are disbursed throughout the batter (if using roasted, chopped pumpkin, combine all ingredients in a blender until smooth). Pour into the pie plate. Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake another 30 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean.
*To roast your own pumpkin, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds (save for another use, feed to your chickens, roast with oil and spices or discard them) and place face down on a rimmed pan. Bake at 350 degrees for an hour or until completely soft when pierced with a knife. Cut away the skin and run through a food processor until finely chopped. Pie pumpkins have the best flavor. If you can not find a pumpkin, a butternut squash can also be used.
Disclaimer: As a resident of North Carolina, I am not allowed to have a referral account with Amazon. I do not profit from you clicking the above link.
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Ever since I laid eyes on it, I’ve been drooling over this beautiful dress shrug in the Knit 2 Together book by Tracy Ullman. Because I can not machine knit the lace in the pattern on my Bond Ultimate Sweater Machine, I had to find something else to use. Google to the rescue. I’m currently working on learning Porcupine Quill Lace, as I thought it would be gorgeous attached to the shrug body. So I picked up some Red Heart Baby Soft, which is 22 sts per 4 inches, the right gauge for the pattern. It’s acrylic and cheap, so I figured it’s be great to learn on. [Read more…] about Knitting Lace
