On a Personal Note...

Happy birthday daddy! Remember this?

Maybe rolling one ton round bales with the lawn tractor was not the best plan :-)

Herbal Teas for What Ails You This Winter

One of my favorite mystery writers and thoughtful Hill Country blogger, Susan Wittig Albert, was kind enough to let me reprint some herbal remedy teas from her most recent "All About Thyme" newsletter. Full of herbal facts, recipes, and seasonal notes, her newsletter can be found at abouthyme.com. There you'll also find information about her books, a sneak peek from her upcoming China Bayles mystery Morning Gloria, recipes, and more. 

Ginger and Lemon Tea for Colds and Flu

 

1½ cups water

½ cup lemon juice

4 slices fresh gingerroot, about ¼" thick

¼ teaspoon cayenne

1 tablespoon honey

Bring water to a boil in a non-reactive pan. Bruise the slices of gingerroot and drop them into the boiling water. Reduce heat and simmer about five minutes. Remove from heat, strain into a cup. Add lemon juice, honey, and cayenne. Stir and sip. 

Thyme, Sage, and Peppermint Tea for Coughs and Fever

 

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 teaspoon dried sage

1 teaspoon dried peppermint

1 cup boiling water

Place the herbs in a tea ball or strainer in a cup. Pour the boiling water over them, cover and steep 8-10 minutes. Sweeten with honey. Sip while warm, up to two cups a day, for 3-4 days. 

Lavender, Rosemary, Thyme Tea for Headaches

 

½ teaspoon dried lavender flowers

½ teaspoon rosemary, bruised

½ teaspoon thyme

1 cup boiling water

Place the herbs in a tea ball or strainer in a cup. Pour the boiling water over them, cover and steep for 8-10 minutes. Sweeten with honey. Sip while warm.

Dry, high pressure days (like today) do a number on my head and nose so I'll be sipping some of these shortly. What are your favorite herbal teas for what ails you?

Quick Harvest Just Before Second Freeze

Last night we had our second freeze so yesterday afternoon I went out and harvested this:

That is just shy of 8 lbs of bell peppers.

1 lbs 3 oz serranos and jalapenos.

 And 8lbs 4 5/8 oz green tomatoes.

  

Who has recipes for bell peppers?

Ginger Cookies

Recipe UPDATED! I was making these cookies the other day and realized that a few things were off in the way I wrote it. Not a huge deal but I want to make it easy for everyone, even those who don't have enough experience cooking to interpret what I meant, rather than what I wrote. 


This post is linked to the "Whole Foods for the Holidays Progressive Dinner" blog carnival, (dessert edition) hosted by Modern Alternative Momma. Visit for more real food desserts.

I also contributed this recipe to "Pennywise Platter Thursdays" on The Nourishing Gourmet.

Eggs from our hens.

This cookie is one of our favorites. I started with a Martha Stewart ginger cookie recipe and made some big changes - way less sugar (and whole sugar instead of brown), black strap instead of regular molasses, much more spice, chopped candied ginger, and whole wheat flour. As always I use free range eggs (my chickens) and Organic Valley butter (which the Cornucopia Institute says is pastured as advertised). Since it's made with nothing but whole food, have more than one!

Very Gingery Cookies

375 degree oven. Makes about 12 (before dough is nibbled).
 

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (we use King Arthur White Whole Wheat... it might be too heavy if you used traditional whole wheat)

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. baking powder

3 tsp. ginger

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. cloves

1/4 tsp. white pepper

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

1/4 cup rapadura

1/8 cup black strap molasses

1 egg

1 Tbl. vanilla paste (or extract) if you're using commercial stuff. 1/2 Tbl extra strength extract from your kitchen or mine.

1/4 - 1/2 cup candied ginger, chopped

Sift together dry ingredients. Cream butter, rapadura, and molasses. Beat in egg. Stir in vanilla. Add dry ingredients mixing until just combined. Stir in candied ginger. Roll into balls and place on buttered cookie sheet. Squish balls for a flatter cookie (if you like them that way). Bake at 375 for 12-14 minutes.

Devour.

P.S. These are super low sugar cookies. I've spent years gradually adding less and less sugar to my baked goods. I'm used to it and now I find that I'm not crazy about normally sweetened thing. However, this might be too much too soon. Feel free to add up to 3/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup molasses as the original recipe calls for.

What To Do With Green Tomatoes

Here in Texas we still have tomatoes growing in the garden. Where I live on the coast we may not get a hard freeze for a month or it might freeze tomorrow... you never can tell. Some of my friends in the Hill Country however are getting their first freeze tonight. That means lots of green tomatoes coming into the kitchen.

What to do with green tomatoes?

Part Two: The Bathroom (A List of Methods for the Non-Disposable, Low Waste Life)

Welcome to part two. Be sure to check out Part One: The Kitchen and stay tuned for parts three and four.

The Non-Disposable, Low Waste Life - List of Methods

(This is the entire list in simple form.)

Kitchen

- make our food from scratch

- buy loose tea, bulk items, and no single serving sizes

- reusable, compostable, recyclable packaging

- no paper, no plastic flatware, little non-reusable food storage

- no non-stick or plastic cookware, dishes, etc.

- we don't buy water

- reusable grocery sacks

- compost and chickens

Bathroom

- no make up or deodorant

- cloth menstrual pads

- recycled and recyclable razors and toothbrushes

- pee wipes

- cloth shower curtain

- solid shampoo

- homemade soap

- vinegar rinse

- if it's yellow...

- no chemical cleaners

- buy hemp

Bedroom

- salvaged furniture

- no VOC paint

- lighting choices

- no synthetic clothing

- durable clothes and shoes

- mattresses and linens 

Other

- bike

- combining trips in the car

- cloth ribbon, upcycled packaging

- paper and cardboard as garden mulch

- sew and mend

- soap

- grow food

- wash in cold, dry on the line

- limit air conditioner and heater use

Bathroom:

• No makeup or deodorant
  

Half of us don't wear deodorant. Neither of us wear makeup. I haven't done makeup since I tried it out for a year when I was 13. Not a fan. I do use lip balm and some lotion in the winter. Making both these things is on the to do list.

When is a Sustainable Textile Not a Sustainable Textile?

Keeper of the Home has a nice series of on going posts about sustainable gifts for the holidays. So far she's told us about some yummy lotions and lip balms and very cool reusable gift wrapping. Yesterday's post covers glass straws (I heart glass straws!) and green fashion. It was the featured green fashion website Fashion and Earth which got me agitated and inspired me to write a post about sustainable textiles.

In the world of eco-textiles we have the clearly bad, the slightly better, and the actually sustainable. There is a lot of confusion about which is which. If we are really interested in making the best choice we need to do some critical thinking about what a truly sustainable fiber is. 

Hand-sewn tea towel from naturally grown hemp.

I think there are three questions to be asked on this issue:
 1. How much do we really need? Sustainable clothing is expensive. If I spent the money I used to buy all my normal clothes on a few high quality pieces of sustainable clothing, I'd have much less clothing... but so what? 
2. Is it even worth it to buy a slightly less destructive version of my favorite t-shirt or should I stop all together and pay the money for true sustainability? Are the intermediate, "better than conventional" steps valid?
3. Should the intermediate, "better than conventional" products be marketed as sustainable? Are these really products that should make us feel "pride and satisfaction"? Will you indeed "positively affect your community and set examples for others"? Or is this just more green washing?

I'm only going to deal with question #3. My issue with Fashion and Earth (and other "eco" clothing purveyors) is not whether we should take intermediate steps or be more radical - that's another discussion. I don't want to talk here about how many clothes we need - maybe another time. But I do want to talk about what is and is not a sustainable textile. If you've made the decision to spend the money and buy a real sustainable textile, which should you choose?

Here's the short version: If we want truly sustainable fiber crops we're talking hemp, animal fiber, silk, and perhaps flax linen. Organic cotton and bamboo rayon are not and probably can not be sustainable fibers.

The Candidates:

Hemp: I'll start here because it's a clear winner. This is what Fashion and Earth's website says about hemp (emphasis mine): "Earning a reputation as one of the most environmentally friendly fibers in the world, hemp is also one of the oldest plant fibers harvested for clothing, popular as far back as 8000 B.C. A particularly hardy plant, there’s no need for pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers in its farming, and it needs very little water to grow. Strong, durable and naturally wrinkle-resistant, hemp fashions also offer the cool hand of linen and the softness of cotton." Anything you can do with cotton you can do with hemp. 

Organic Cotton: It's nice that some cotton is grown organically since conventional cotton is such a heavily sprayed crop. But, in order to grow cotton organically you have to grow it somewhere very dry and/or you use organic pesticides which (while better) can still be ecologically disruptive and toxic to animals other than the insects you're trying to kill. Cotton uses a ton of water. If you grow cotton in the desert for organic purposes (as many pest-susceptible crops are) then you have to use a ton of water in an ecosystem which already doesn't have much. So we see aquifers being drained to support "organic" farms.