Ashwagandha and Hawthorn Herbal Teas

You will think I am breaking out in a new place again.  Well, I am, I guess, and I have sucked Dear One into it with me!  That is the surprising part...!

A few weeks ago I discovered a nine-part series on the internet regarding herbal medicine.  Somehow I managed to watch all nine episodes, and even took some notes.  The upshot of it was that I decided to try some herbal teas to see if they would, over time, heal my body from the inside out.

We discovered Dragon Herbarium and went there one Friday after work.  We had learned that ashwagandha roots might be the perfect herb for whatever ails you.  And hawthorn leaves are good for heart and circulatory system.  We puchased some of each, plus three other mixes of herbs...Be Well tea, Ruby Red Antioxidant tea, and Stress Free tea.  The last three were suggested by the saleslady.

We have been drinking the ashwagandha tea every evening since then and both of us seem to be sleeping better.  A week ago I started adding in hawthorn leaves while the ashwagandha was steeping.  It does not taste bad...sort of grassy, I guess you might say.  Apparently many people add honey and lemon, etc.  We don't.

Method:

We put 1 teaspoon ashwagandha roots and 1 cup water per person into a pot and bring to a boil, then lower heat for 10-15 minutes.  After that we let it steep at least 10 minutes and up to 30 minutes, depending on where my brain and hands are...! (It is so easy to walk off and get started on another project which totally removes the tea business from mind...)

We put the little tea strainers in our mugs, pour the steeped tea through them, and then drink up.

When we use just the hawthorn or other leafy tea we just put the strainers in the mugs, add 1 teaspoon leaves, then fill with hot water, put on the lid, and let steep for 10-15 minutes.  Apparently the longer we steep the stronger the brew.

Here is the hawthorn tea steeping.  The little tea strainers wash out so easily.  Being stainless steel they should never rust.  Bonus!

Next we are going to try dandelion roots!

Savory Broth Seasoning

If I could only eat one thing in the world, it would be a nice savory broth.  I could eat it every day.  Every meal.  And feel virtuous eating it!  The sad thing about the vegetable broth I make is that it doesn't taste like anything, which really puts me off.

Over the weekend I found a possible seasoning for vegetable broth. I made it. I put some in the brand new fresh broth I had just made in the Instant Pot with vegetable scraps, and this time the cores from the five Pink Lady apples.  I put one tablespoon of the broth seasoning in 1 cup of the broth and heated it one minute in the microwave. IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!

Broth Seasoning Recipe

1 cup nutritional yeast
3 Tablespoons granulated garlic
3 Tablespoons dried finely chopped onions
2-3 teaspoons coarse salt or sea salt
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon dried parsley flakes
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried turmeric

Place everything in an airtight container.  Put the lid on and shake very well.  Use 1 Tablespoon per cup of water to make a nice broth.  So good. I am thinking of having a cup of this and a slice of whole wheat toast for supper every night.  Quick and easy.

Munchie Monday: Twice in One Day!!

Do you ever have a day when many things go to the dogs at once?  Saturday was like that.  It was a day when I wanted to get a lot of things done.  The old days of multitasking are long gone, I guess.

The first thing I did was start some apples cooking for applesauce.  They were nice, but slightly soft Pink Ladies.  I found that we had five of them. I cored them, quartered them, and put them in a pan with one cup of water, put on the cover, and turned the burner on.  I set the timer for 5 minutes.  No problem. Looking forward to applesauce.  I also told Dear One that when the timer went off the apples needed to be shut off.

At that I went into the bedroom to strip the bed and get more whites into the washing machine.  I heard the timer begin to ding so I went out to the kitchen.  Dear One was still sitting at his computer, totally oblivious, it seemed to me.  So I walked over and turned off the timer...and went back to the bedroom.  By this time I had noticed my upturned Charlaine Harris book, threw myself down on the  stripped bed with the book and proceeded to read.  For a while.  After some time Dear One came in and told me the apples were still cooking.  OH NO!!!  It must have been 30 minutes by that time. 

I rushed out to the kitchen, discovered he had turned off the stove, but the pan was badly burned.  The apples were not even remotely cooked.  Word to the wise...either Pink Ladies do not mush up for applesauce or they to be sliced much thinner than quarters.  I placed the pan in the sink and filled it with water.  Pan number one in bad shape.

After getting the laundry done, and having brought the Charlaine Harris book to the living room, I did some reading after which we went out for some grocery shopping.  We also went to Dollar Tree to get a replacement plastic cover for plates cooking in the microwave. I had never seen one of those before we got to Oregon, but so cool!  With this cover over plates or cooking food, the top of the microwave avoids splatters.  At lunch time Dear One made his own lunch: some microwaved popcorn which he placed on top of the plastic cover.  When he pulled the popcorn bag out of the microwave, half of the cover came with it!  Well, I got it at the Dollar Tree and wasn't too sad.  Unfortunately, they don't carry them any more...

After putting food away from the grocery trip, I decided that mixed vegetables would be a great accompaniment to supper. I put them in my wonderful mostly-waterless-cookware steamer pan that I had brought with us from Vermont.  I put in plenty of water, covered them, and took the book I had been reading in the living room back to the bedroom since I needed horizontal for a while.  All of a sudden I smelled the vegetables.  Did I ever smell them!  I rushed out to the kitchen, pulled out a bowl since I was certain they had not been burning so long that the burnt taste would get into them, dumped the "good" vegetables into the bowl and set that second burned pan of the day into the sink and filled it with water.

Next morning I got a lot of the black out of them.  This is what they looked like after 24 hours soaking and scrubbing-

This was pretty discouraging.  After pouring in a big slug of white vinegar I refilled the pans with water.

After this second day, the larger pot scrubbed clean with a stainless steel scratcher.  The smaller pan, that was a nice stainless steep pan that was in the apartment when we got her, still needs way more work, so it is soaking again.  Maybe tomorrow I can get it clean.

About the possible burnt flavor...I put on a little butter and salt and pepper and enjoyed the vegetables.  Dear One did not want to try them.  Today I cooked up some quinoa, added the remaining vegetables, some leftover black beans, and some ground up roasted vegetables I had made for a friend but had not gotten there when they were at their freshest.  Mixed in with the quinoa, it made a very nice meal.  Dear One told me they tasted burned.  This from the guy who cannot smell so nothing tastes like anything to him!!!  They did not taste burnt.  At least, not more than a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10.  I had no trouble eating them.

Because he won't eat this, I have my food for the week already to go!  Score!  I may let him make popcorn for himself...without the cover!  Well, probably not. I am not really that mean...but it is to be thought of.

Food Friday: Homemade Raisins

It is abhorrent to me to waste good food.  Well, I hate to waste bad food, too, but good food.... Yikes!  Don't do it! 

So we had a big bunch of nice black seedless grapes that were not going fast enough for my preference.  When I pulled them out of the refrigerator and ate one, it was soft.  Action had to be taken. And fast.

Since we have that wonderful food dehydrator that is just sitting there being a nice storage surface, I decided to give a try at making raisins.

Here is a bowl of very delicious homemade raisins.  It only took about 30 hours to get them dried to this stage of raisin-ness, so I would not recommend doing this if energy preservation is your goal.  They are good raisins, though.

Chef A J is not a fan of dried fruit.  Now I see why:  this is two bunches of grapes in about one cup.  I think it would be pretty easy to snarf these down in a single evening.  Lots of delicious fructose calories right there!

Probably I won't do this again, unless yet again we have grapes that the grape eater is not eating fast enough to suit me.  In fact, maybe when we get grapes in future, I will start removing half of the grapes and transferring them to a different bag for someone else to enjoy.  It is a thought...

Mission Knitting: Afghan Progress

Here is the central medallion of the afghan completed, viewed from the back so you can see all the yarn ends needing to be woven in.  The next part of the project is to use the leftover yarn to garter stitch bands along both end to lengthen the afghan.  It is a great size for me just sitting in the chair, but since this is really for Dear One for when he naps on the couch, this size is not as good! 

There are parts of seven skeins left to knit on since I finished knitting on the 8th skein since I took this photo. I weighed each of the skeins then put them in two bags with as close to the same weights as possible so each end would be more or less the same length.  We shall see.

The plan, after the lengthening, is to use up some more yarn...a nice soft gray yarn...to make a border around the whole thing.  I think maybe five garter ridges will be enough.  Well, I will definitely be ready for it to be enough.  If I was not putting on the lengthening strips the border would be 540 stitches.  Adding the extra stitches for those garter rows will probably be another 160 stitches or more, so 700 stitches around, times ten round. 

This is planned to be a use-up-the-yarn project.  It amazes me that I could have acquired as much yarn as we have here in the workroom.  Unbelievable, actually.  Some we brought with us.  Unwise.  Will I ever learn?!  Maybe.

Mission: Home Repairs!

Over the years we have made numerous repairs, small and large, to our home...eventually replacing the house altogether.  Now here on our mission we/I have made a small repair.  Dear One would probably not have used lavender duct tape, but the other choice on hand was Christmas red and green plaid which did not settle well with me.

What do you think?!

Fun in the Park

We talk all the time about the park across the road from our office complex.  For a couple of weeks recently there was a fabulous structure there. It looked sort of Taj Mahal-ish.  We do not know what the occasion was as there was no signage that we could see as we drove by and we were too tired, and maybe a little too gutless, to get out and inquire, but it looked like maybe a bounce-y house.

There were cars lining the road.  Sadly, the complex had put up signs saying "No event parking".  Well, that is their prerogative.

This is not really a very good picture and does not give you the full scope of the structure but it was HUGE and covered a good deal of the field.  The kids we saw all had smiles on their faces.

Munchie Monday: Food Fails This Week

On Saturday I wanted to use up some VERY ripe bananas so I made the "Two-Ingredient" banana pancakes.  That is really a misnomer because there are two main ingredients but many other additional suggested ingredients you "can" use.  I have made these before and they were very acceptable to both of us.

Banana Pancakes

1 quite ripe banana
2 eggs
Cinnamon

Mash the banana thoroughly with a fork.  When it is completely smooth mush, and in two eggs and beat until no egg is visible.   Put about 2 tablespoons onto a lightly greased but quite hot griddle or cast iron frying pan.  When there are lots of bubbles, carefully turn them over to cook a little more.

In this picture you see what happens when you don't follow your own instructions. I made these two pancakes with 4 Tablespoons of batter.  For some unknown reason...though it might have had to do with wanting to get the job over with faster.

These were the 2 Tablespoon model.  They worked better though you can see one of them fell apart.

Of course, with almost the last of our Pure Vermont Maple Syrup and real dairy butter, they were not half bad.  Just not great, so not a total food fail, but close, in my opinion.  Plus I do think that bananas can actually become too ripe, and if so, should not be used.  This would be a great time to have a compost pile.

The second food fail was some salsa soup I made.  No, I did not find a recipe online for it.  We had gone tomato picking.  We did not find as many Roma tomatoes as we needed to make the salsa so I added some of the regular tomatoes.  As a result there was way more liquid in the salsa than even I wanted to eat so I decided to make it into soup.

Salsa
4 cups (Roma, plus other) tomatoes
3 cups sweet onions
1 jalapeno, seeded
3 cloves garlic (more would have been better)
3 Tablespoons lime juice
1 Tablespoon cilantro powder from some leftover cilantro we dried in the apartment

Put the tomatoes into the high speed blender jar first, then everything else.  Pulse until it is the chunkiness  you like.  Taste, then add salt and pepper to taste.  I like quite a bit of salt.

This was okay the first day but after sitting in the refrigerator a couple of days the liquid separated out at the bottom.  I decided that since it was soup weather, I would make it into soup for supper.

Salsa Soup
In large saucepan melt 2 tablespoons butter.  Add 3 tablespoons flour and stir until the flour is blended in and a little tan in color.  Add 1 cup heaving cream and stir until smooth (which will be a while if you were not smart enough to warm the cream in the microwave a little bit first) then dump in the salsa.  Stir until blended and hot. Serve.

This was not a total food fail, either, just not that much fun to eat. I should have put the salsa back into the blender and blended is smooth first or used my wonderful immersion blender. The problem was the texture.  Flavor was nice. Dear One ate the tiny serving I gave him without a word.

You can see that our stove top gets rather nasty when I am cooking...and for a while thereafter if I am a dead dog and don't feel I have one more ounce of energy for cleaning up. This happens too often.

The final food fail this week was a quesadilla.  How can a quesadilla go wrong, you might ask.  Well, this is how:  you use incompatible ingredients.

In this case I put a flour tortilla in the cast iron skillet.  On top of the skillet I spread a small amount of thick leftover re-fried beans.  On top of that I dumped about a cup of chopped steamed cauliflower that was also leftover.  There were a few corn chips in the bottom of the bag so I crumbled them on top of the cauliflower then topped it off with a little bit of shredded cheese.  After all, what is a quesadilla without some queso?!

After about 4 , or maybe 5, minutes, I flipped it over.  The chips fell out as well as a slug of the cauliflower.  No problem. I just ate that up quickly.  After letting the second side cook/burn for some time (I was busy with another project--actually, I had picked up the afghan because I was so close to finishing the central medallion that I kept sitting down to knit)  I smelled that it was cooked. (Fortunately I did not HEAR that it was cooked.  That would have distressed Dear One who is always concerned that the fire department might come to see what was for supper...)

Anyway,  I did eat it  but, much as I love black beans, cauliflower, corn chips, and even cheese, they do NOT belong together in a tortilla.  This was really a food fail.  Even I did not like it.

So another luscious weekend of eating at the mission apartment.  I hope yours was more enjoyable!

Vegetables for Breakfast

Okay!  I know what some of you are thinking:  she has gone over the edge this time, but really, I have not.  Why not eat vegetables for breakfast?  You eat cold pizza for breakfast, don't you?  There are vegetables there, aren't there?  Sadly I cannot get Dear One to buy into vegetables for breakfast (VFB).

Well, recently I always have vegetables for breakfast.  Roasted vegetables, baked potatoes, salad, fresh tomatoes.  Whatever is at hand and easy.  Often I make a bowl and find it is too much to eat at one time so I put it in a container and take it for lunch.  Killed two birds with one stone!

This was a fabulous breakfast.  A small bowl of roasted vegetables with a small bowl of steel cut oats and blueberries.  Lots of antioxidants and other good nutrients. I would like to have my act together to have a similar breakfast every day.  Not likely to happen, but on this day, the stars aligned and it did.  So yummy.

Nifty Barn

When we went to the garden to pick our own vegetables recently there was a big red barn (as well as many other outbuildings which we did not explore since they were closing soon for a company picnic) which has a wonderful sign painted on it.  I really liked it.

Well, I like barns anyway as they remind me of my childhood.  We had a barn with the same gambrel roof structure, but no sign...I can just feel smell the fresh baled hay in the barn floor and feel the scratchy stems at the ends of the bales as we children climbed all over the hay in our short pants.  Today you could not get me to do that on a bet!  In this day and age scratches turn into infections too easily and they don't want to heal overnight anymore...

Wildlife Near Us

  Recently I went out for a walk at lunch time.  Many of the trees had yellow hanging tubes on them.  I could not imagine what they were.  When I got up close to one of them I saw a creepy sight:

Can you tell what this is?

It is a yellow jacket trap.  It creeped me out.  There were lots of them around the park.  I have not been out for a while so it was a total surprise.

Gardening on a Mission!

We always had a garden at home.  When we found out where we were going to be living on our mission I was thrilled to see there was a balcony off our living room. Immediately I thought we would be able to raise lettuce and maybe a few herbs.  When we arrived we discovered that our balcony faces east so there would only be sun for a couple of hours in the morning.  That would not work for a garden.  Disappointing.

What to do, what to do?  Well,  a month or so ago I put us on a list of farms and gardens which sell to the public and/or have pick your own.  We get lots of notices, most of which are further away than we want to drive.  This week we received word that there were pick your own tomatoes!  Yay!!!  And I really mean YAY!!!  I love real tomatoes.  The tomatoes we buy in the store are totally tasteless and not at all juicy.  So I talked Dear One into a gardening trip.  The J's went with us, too.  So nice.

This is what we picked:

Dear One picked the berries.  Some of the tomatoes are Brandywine, which are very very flavorful.  The others (in the foreground) also taste wonderful.  I may be on tomato overload for a few days but since it only happens a few weeks a year, I don't mind the skin rash and tummy issues..  At least, not much...

Elder and Sister J gave us the Gravenstein apples, a new variety to me.  The corn is yellow and white, which is what we prefer.  My father always raised Butter and Sugar corn back in the old days when I was in my youth.  I personally picked hundreds of bushels of that wonderful corn to sell at the roadside stand, to sell at Tunbridge World's Fair (which is a September tradition), and for my father to peddle to the stores in our local area. 

Seeing that corn always brings back happy memories.  One of those memories being that our corn piece is where I met Dear One for the first time, when he came over to help my father with the corn picking.  True story.  May I say that he must have seen something there because as far as physical appearance, well at 5 o'clock in the morning, after walking through the wet cornfield, with pollen from the tassels, and "rain" from the cornstalks making all of us soaking wet, we were a sight to behold.  It was much more fun to pick corn at mid-day, but that was not the time we did it.  By 7 o'clock my father would have finished the milking chores and came down to pick us corn pickers up  to bring us back up on the hill for breakfast.  Often Mother would have made us hot chocolate.  Hot chocolate is a comfort food for me.  Thus renewed, we would go back for another few hours of picking.  Lots of bushels every day.

Munchie Monday: Whole Wheat Waffles with Blueberries

 Dear One loves waffles.  If I ever ask him what he wants for breakfast, he will say either waffles or fried potatoes. Or both.  Some days I am perfectly happy to comply...but only on weekends. 

There are a few problems with waffles in my mind:  with our previous waffle maker I frequently got burned.  That put me off big time. I hate burns.  They have bad memories for me.  Plus I don't like added pain.  A second issue is that waffles use a lot of flour.  Flour seems to me to be addictive.  Once I eat one thing with flour in it, the floodgates open and I pour flour-y things down my throat.  A very bad idea.  Another thing about waffles is that the recipes always make a lot of batter...so I can either make a ton of waffles, put the waffle batter in the refrigerator to vegetate until I dispose of it, or throw out the batter right away. I don't like any of these options.  Because of that, I tried something new...I made up my own recipe.

Whole Wheat Waffle Batter

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
3/4 cup milk
3 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 egg
1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup fresh blueberries

After putting the dry ingredients in a small bowl, I stirred them until smooth then added all the wet ingredients and stirred very carefully with a whisk.  This care was necessary since I had used a small bowl.  Next time, if there is a next time, I will use a larger bowl so I can be less careful with stirring.

In this case I left the batter to sit on the counter for 5 minutes or so because I wanted the flour to begin absorbing the wet ingredients. I planned to wait 10 minutes but became antsy for the waffles to be done.

NOTE:  before starting the recipe I hauled out the deep waffle maker and started it heating up.

After spraying the waffle maker, which by this time, was nice and hot and ready for batter,  I took a 1/4 cup portion scoop and scooped the thick batter into each of the four waffle wells  There was batter left over which I had expected. I sprinkled a few blueberries on each of the waffles then scooped up more batter and covered them up...thinking this would avoid a nasty blueberry mess on the waffle iron.  I let them cook for 4 minutes by the clock.

When I opened the waffle iron, there were four nice crisp waffles.  Dear One ate three and I ate one.  After all, with butter and pure maple syrup it is hard to pass them up.

This recipe worked okay.  They were pretty sturdy waffles and tasted about medium. PLUS there was no leftover batter at all!  A real bonus.

You can see there was not too much blueberry mess. I am not sure they added to the waffles but they were about at the end of their rope so, why not use them up?!

Another Thing NOT To Do!

Early in August I went to the Blue Moon Fiber Arts barn sale.  A drunkard should not stop in at a bar just to see what is available.  A yarnaholic should probably not go to a barn sale where there will certainly be fabulous yarns.  Well, I did do it. It was a lovely drive in the country.  WAY OUT into the country!  On a very beautiful summer's day.  Parking was in a field by the barn.  Yes, this barn sale was in a barn...the barn where they do their yarn dyeing.  In fact that day there were multiple times when people could dye yarns and...  But I digress.

As it happens, I only bought one skein of Socks That Rock yarn.  Being a skein, it needed attention before I could knit up some socks.  As it happens I did not bring a yarn swift nor a yarn winder with me to Oregon.  They are safely ensconced in our attic at home.  As it happens a couple of months ago I broke down and purchased a Stanwood Yarn Winder to re-wind yarn into cakes from balls that I had for knitting the afghan. The Stanwood works great.  So great, actually!  Except in this case!

If you don't know yarn, you might not know that there are multiple ways to buy yarn.  Sometimes the yarn comes in a "ball" with a center-pull end.  This is very nice.  The only thing about it is that the yarn ball often rolls all over the sapworks when you are knitting.  Because of this penchant for the ball to roll, many knitters like to use a yarn winder to make a "cake" of yarn which is flat on two sides, like a layer cake.  The yarn does not roll around.  This is wonderful.   I frequently make yarn cakes as a matter of course.

Another form of yarn put up is in a skein or hank.  This is when the yarn has not been balled up.  To wind this yarn, you need a yarn winder and a swift.  OR you need some sort of  apparatus or person to hold the yarn while winding it into a cake.  In this case, not having a yarn swift, I decided not to enlist Dear One's help, which turns out to have been a mistake.  I used a chair to drape the skein around.

This is what happened:

I thought by putting the yarn around a chair it would work great.  It worked great for about two turns of the yarn winder!  After that it just made a mess, whatever way I tried to make it work.  After a bit I thought it just needed to be more tightly held by the chair so I brought in a second chair.  This was even worse!

  So...don't do what I did!

This is the yarn cake on the Stanwood Yarn Winder.  At this point it is about half finished.  The picture of the mess is when it is not really much of a mess any more...I just stood between the chair and the Stanwood and lifted every strand over BOTH sides of the chair and very very slowly turned the crank on the Stanwood.  It did work.  Just slowly.  (The first time I ever saw a yarn winder and swift in use I was in awe!  The old lady using it -at the Hanover Knitter's Retreat one February probably a dozen years ago--just cranked away and the swift FLEW around and around.  Within two minutes a whole skein of yarn was is a wonderful smooth cake. So impressive. It was shortly after that when I purchased my own swift and yarn winder.)

So, a word to the wise...get a helper to hold the skein around two hands or use a swift. Next time I will do that,  if there is a next time...!

The Old Gray Mare...!

Prepare to laugh yourselves sick!

This morning I rushed around to get out of the apartment to get to the office.  As is was, we were a few minutes late.  Some time before we had our office devotional, shortly before 10 AM, I heard something drop on the floor and looking down I found a large paper clip.

A little while later I was walking by the treat corridor (not to get a treat, actually, but to speak with our financial secretary), and a large paper clip dropped from somewhere.  Weird.

THEN  moments later I was at my desk and yet ANOTHER large paper clip dropped to the floor.  When I reached down to get it, I noticed that MY SKIRT WAS WRONG SIDE OUT!!!!  Horrors!

Well, laugh all you want, because we all know that song about the old gray mare not being what she used to be, and I am just proving the rule!

Nobody said anything to me.  Does that mean no one noticed?  Or that they did not want to tell me?

Oh, well.  We all know I am losing ground, but in such a nice-ish way...at least hopefully.