Because my kitchen is so tiny, has no pantry, and limited cupboard space, Kyle and I have gotten creative about storage !!
This is only half of the apples we were given! Wow, has it been over a month since last I wrote? Yeesh, it doesn't feel like it!! Time has been FLYING. Kyle has started going to a men's Bible study at church that is really challenging him, and working a LOT of extra shifts at his 3 jobs. Thats been great for the ol' Dave Ramsey envelope system, but because all the schedules are rotational we don't have any kind of set 'weekend' per se. I have a new Nannying job starting in January, I'll be starting an online course to get a license in Nutritional Therapy, and we've been traveling all over the place! Its been great but when we do have a day with nothing on the docket and no one coming over or expecting us, we jealously treasure it!
Well, I know I promised a blog post about herbs and herbalism and my personal thoughts, interests and experiences with it. BUT A friend gave us 2 bushels of windfall apples, and so the last 2 days I have been learning how to can, peeling, coring, cooking, and canning APPLESAUCE! My Amish friend told me you can mix up Apple Pie filling and can it also, so I'm saving the nicer, less bruised (or wormy or mildew-peeled) apples for that. I also want to dehydrate some. I have an old cookbook that my mom used to have a copy of called 'the vegetarian's epicure' or something like that. She used to make German Apple Pancake out of that book and I honestly like it better than apple pie! So i may be making that for tomorrow's breakfast... but my point was that the cookbook has the easiest, tastiest Scone recipe. It involves buttermilk, which I haven't really used until 2 years ago and I LOVE cooking with it! It makes breads, pancakes, biscutes and scones so much more wonderful! Last time I made the scones I chopped some dehydrated apples my Grandpa gave me and put them with cinnamon and some sugar and made my own rendition of apple-cinnamon scones. They were a huge hit with my husband! I also like grating orange peel and adding dried onion to the batter. Ahh... Fall food is the BEST! I'm experimenting tonight by Nourishing-traditions-ifying my Vegetarian Epicure recipe. I mixed the buttermilk, butter and eggs and used spelt and buckwheat flour instead of white flour and am letting it soak overnight. Soaking grains in milk products overnight starts a lacto-fermentation process (like sourdough) that breaks down the parts of the grains that are difficult to digest or that leach vitamins and nutrients out of your body. I'm noticing a huge difference when Kyle and I eat LOW gluten or NO gluten, but also soaking grains helps a lot too. We feel less bloated or just 'blah.' My friend wants us to go completely gluten free, but that just doesn't sound appealing to my husband or I. Low gluten we can do. Zilch gluten? Meh. We aren't intolerant, its just not the easiest thing for your body to assimilate into the good stuff. Which, when you are trying to repair your gut (like in Kyle's case) or recover from Adrenal fatigue (like both Kyle and I) then focusing on easy-to-digest stuff is best.
Well, I know I promised a blog post about herbs and herbalism and my personal thoughts, interests and experiences with it. BUT A friend gave us 2 bushels of windfall apples, and so the last 2 days I have been learning how to can, peeling, coring, cooking, and canning APPLESAUCE! My Amish friend told me you can mix up Apple Pie filling and can it also, so I'm saving the nicer, less bruised (or wormy or mildew-peeled) apples for that. I also want to dehydrate some. I have an old cookbook that my mom used to have a copy of called 'the vegetarian's epicure' or something like that. She used to make German Apple Pancake out of that book and I honestly like it better than apple pie! So i may be making that for tomorrow's breakfast... but my point was that the cookbook has the easiest, tastiest Scone recipe. It involves buttermilk, which I haven't really used until 2 years ago and I LOVE cooking with it! It makes breads, pancakes, biscutes and scones so much more wonderful! Last time I made the scones I chopped some dehydrated apples my Grandpa gave me and put them with cinnamon and some sugar and made my own rendition of apple-cinnamon scones. They were a huge hit with my husband! I also like grating orange peel and adding dried onion to the batter. Ahh... Fall food is the BEST! I'm experimenting tonight by Nourishing-traditions-ifying my Vegetarian Epicure recipe. I mixed the buttermilk, butter and eggs and used spelt and buckwheat flour instead of white flour and am letting it soak overnight. Soaking grains in milk products overnight starts a lacto-fermentation process (like sourdough) that breaks down the parts of the grains that are difficult to digest or that leach vitamins and nutrients out of your body. I'm noticing a huge difference when Kyle and I eat LOW gluten or NO gluten, but also soaking grains helps a lot too. We feel less bloated or just 'blah.' My friend wants us to go completely gluten free, but that just doesn't sound appealing to my husband or I. Low gluten we can do. Zilch gluten? Meh. We aren't intolerant, its just not the easiest thing for your body to assimilate into the good stuff. Which, when you are trying to repair your gut (like in Kyle's case) or recover from Adrenal fatigue (like both Kyle and I) then focusing on easy-to-digest stuff is best.
Flower herbs and mugs for the herbal teas I've been brewing. Not only are these jars excellent storage, but they look very pretty and give my kitchen an Old World look that I love! So all that to say: My head is spinning with different ideas and recipe's to experiment with and try and share with you! But I'm having a hard time collecting my thoughts on herbs, other than I confess I've snuck some herbal powders into my applesauce this time, and am using lots of fresh ginger in it too! I'm finding its a REALLY fun way to hide herbs in food so get that extra kick of vitamins, minerals and good stuff!
And I need to go to bed. I've got bone broth cooking overnight and apples in the crock pots again (I now own 2 crockpots. Yay!) and tomorrow I'm making the scones, chicken soup out of the bone broth, tomato soup, and I'm going to make some chocolate-chip cookies out of Almond flour. Well... maybe it will be almond flour. I picked up some raw chestnuts at the Farmer's Market last Saturday because they sounded interesting, so I might pulverize them in the Nutribullit and use them instead of going out and buying some expensive almond flour....
Well in any event I'll letcha know how it turns out. I'll try to remember to post the recipe tomorrow. The lady who taught me to can this afternoon gave it to me and I don't think she'd mind if I shared it with you!
This is why I am not writing anything that people may think is educational. I need to keep this post very clearly out of the educational realm and firmly in the 'ramblings and update' category of life My brain is whirring with too many ideas! I'm not focused enough to educate you right now... sorry!
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