Women Know Your Limits · 3 days ago

Finally! A Candidate Worth a Vote! · 3 days ago

I haven’t been this excited about a political candidate in I don’t know how long. Sarah Palin’s speech to the Republic Convention was well done, well delivered and well deserving of my support and vote. Up until Palin’s speech, I can say that I was not at all excited about the options open to me in the upcoming election. Now, if she can continue to present the same message, with the same classy, competency displayed last night, she will be a good reason to head to the polls come November.

“Jay Severin”, a local talk-radio host said it best in this morning’s blog

But even more enjoyable than Palin’s mastery of stage last night was the hilarious glumness and nastiness of the reactions by virtually all the “journalists” on TV: Keith Olberwellian, Chrissy Matthews, Gene Obama Robertson, Rachel Mad-Ow, et. al. all looked and sounded like children who had just lost their best friend.

And maybe they have: little Barack.

“SHE WAS MEAN!”
“SHE WAS NASTY!”
“SHE WAS SARCASTIC!”
“SHE WAS NEGATIVE!”

Exactly.

Translation: she was EFFECTIVE.

Greek Baking Powder Biscuit Piecrust · 4 days ago

This is one of my favorite pie crusts when making vegetable-based tarts or quiches, such as my Garlicky Tomato Tart, which is a reformed Cooking Light recipe. Just like the tart needed some healthy updating – adding back grass-fed farm-fresh nutrients provided by properly-raised eggs and milk – the pie crust also needed some reclamation work, bringing it back in line with nutrient-dense foods of yesteryear, nearly lost to the industrialized, mass-produced, nutrient-deficient foods of today’s modern civilization.

Grinding my own grains, and soaking them in an acidified solutions goes a long way toward making the grains healthier and more easily digestible, explained in one of my favorite Weston A. Price articles, Be Kind To Your Grains.

Summer Time is Garlic Tomato Tart Time · 4 days ago

Labor Day has come and gone, and with it, the end of summer. Radio ads are warning, “cold temperatures are just around the corner”, but my calendar says that nearly 1/3 of the summer remains, and I’m determined to enjoy every last minute of it, my favorite season.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matthew 6

Besides, I’m not finished with my summer traditions, one of which is to make a lovely Garlicky Tomato Tart using fresh local produce from “our” organic CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture) farm.

The original recipe goes back to my Dark Days of Food, when I was convinced that Cooking Light magazine knew what they were talking about when it came to “healthy” food, removing all things fat, substituting “light” foods void of fat. While not all fats are healthy, the right type of fats are essential to life, explained in The Skinny on Fats, a classic article written by Sally Fallon, author of “Nourishing Traditions”.

Fresh Blueberry Lemon Sour Cream Pie · 10 days ago

Today, with a heavy heart, I pulled the last bits of summer’s blueberries from the highbush branches towering above my head. Four pounds of berries later, I said my goodbyes, giving a prayer of thanksgiving for the blessing of the place, both its abundant fruit and tremendous beauty. Taking one last look around at the hundreds of branches still loaded with fruit – far too many for one small family to harvest – I marveled that for the past month, we had been the only ones picking fruit from public lands. Others knew of its existence, often stopping along their nature walks or bike riding, checking our progress, their interest tinged with amusement in our family’s “old fashioned” activity. “It’s so much work,” most commented, while others queried what “one does with them beyond a pie…”.

2 Thess 3:10 For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either.

Not that long ago, I was several generations removed from having a hand in the planting, raising and gathering of our food. Picking berries is just one small way that we have changed the way we eat, and where we acquire our food. Watching my children gathering berries is far more satisfactory than chastising them for picking up every brightly colored package of synthetic factory-food off grocery store shelves. Foraging some of our food gives them a connection to the “living history” books and museums we’ve visited, providing real-life meaning to demonstrations and descriptions of a not-too-distance past where survival throughout the long, cold New England winters was dependent on self-sufficiency skills.

Healthy Pickles · 24 days ago

Who knew there were healthy pickles and unhealthy pickles! I didn’t until we discovered Wild Fermentation, a way to make pickles just like your grandmother…..well…..your great-grandmother……no, maybe your great-great-grandmother! Somewhere back in your genealogy, whichever grandmother it was who made pickles from a salt and water brine, not using vinegar or “processing” them using modern-day canning techniques, is the grandmother you want to copy. All others bought into the lies of the modern age which turned perfectly nutritious food into dead matter, unfit for human or animal consumption.

Where canning kills enzymes, heat liable vitamins and other nutrition, pickling by fermentation creates a nutrient rich solution that not only offers a wide range of vitamins and minerals, but also serves as a natural pro-biotic, aiding in digestion.

Lemon Souffle Pancakes · 34 days ago

Every once in awhile, my thoughts wander, contemplating owning a B&B or little country inn. I’m enough of a realist, that the first “B” part of the fantasy, as in “bed”, means mountains of linen laundry and endless changing of sheets, not my idea of a good time. It’s the second “B”, the breakfast part, that keeps me dreaming. Whenever one of my latest experiments is approved by happy, contented faces gathered around my breakfast table, I find myself contemplating, “what if” and “if only”.

The irony is, I’d never have expected any of my dreams to have included the word “breakfast”, unless it had something to do with travel, Paris and croissants. For most of my life, breakfast was something to be avoided, having an aversion to boxed cereals and pancake mixes, frozen waffles, and grocery-store eggs, all of which left me feeling queasy and light-headed. A simple piece of dry toast, accompanied by a cup of hot tea, satisfied me for decades. It was when my husband and I stayed at a quaint and historic Maine B&B, that I was inspired to expand my breakfast horizon.

Wild Blueberry Hunting · 37 days ago

Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing. Ezekiel 47:12

This summer’s wild berry crop has blessed us with abundant black raspberries and blackberries, their seeds deposited by creatures a few summers ago in our yard, along our rock retaining walls, and in a once-hoped-for garden stolen from me by a persistent and destructive woodchuck. When the last blackberry thorn extracted its blood price from my arm, its bounty tucked away in the freezer, my mind turned towards the next harvest – blueberries.

Unlike past summers, we won’t be journeying to northern Maine, exploring Bar Harbor and Acadia coastal beaches, enjoying whale-watch excursions, sailboat rides, lobster dinners around the campfire – a black tie and white linen affair back in Minnesota where I grew up – and my favorite activity, wild blueberry picking. It’s the blueberry picking I’ll miss the most, the daily ritual of rising first-light-of-dawn, heading out into fog-enshrouded seaside fields, steaming mug of coffee in one hand, berry bucket in the other, in search of fresh berries.