Avivah Werner

Category: nutrition

  • How to make grape juice

    At the end of last week I found a great deal on boxes of wine grapes.  There were two kinds, Concord and a yellow grape that another shopper told me were called Niagara.  I tasted one of the Niagara grapes, and as I did, the memory of being a kid eating grapes in my grandparents’ backyard suddenly flooded over me.  These were the grapes they grew, something that I had entirely forgotten about.  They were so good!

    The grapes were super cheap because they were so ripe – the Concord grapes had some clusters that had mold on them and since I wasn’t interested in having to pick through them, I decided to get 2 boxes of Niagaras instead (they looked very ripe but in basically good shape).  The price was $7.50 for two boxes, and each box had about 18 pounds in it, so .21 lb.

    They made for great eating and we enjoyed the grapes for our picnic right after our shopping, but we decided to reserve some of them to make some homemade grape juice, something we’ve never tried.  When I got home I learned from reading online that it takes about 20 lb of grapes to make 7 quarts of juice – if I’d had any idea of that when buying the grapes, I would have bought a lot more.  We used about a third of a box, about 6 lb. of grapes, which made enough to fill a 64 oz jar plus a couple of cups more, about ten cups in all.  So my estimate on cost is that it was $1.25 for ten cups; when I get it on sale, I pay $3 for 8 cups.  That means that making my own grape juice cost me less than 1/3 of the price I can get it on sale. 

    Here’s how you make grape juice – this is soooo simple!  First you wash the grapes, then blend them slightly in a food processor or blender to break open the skin (yes, this means with the seeds and skins, but make sure all the stems are off, because it will make the juice bitter).  Put all of them in a pot with enough water to cover them, and cover the pot.  Then heat it until boiling.  When it reaches boiling, turn it down to medium low and let it simmer for about fifteen minutes.  Then line a strainer with cheesecloth or muslin, and set it on top of a cleanpot where the juice can drain in. Pour the grape mix through the strainer, and bottle the strained juice.  If you make a large amount, you can can fruit juice by water bathing it.

    This didn’t look or taste like the grape juice in the store; it was much better!  It was so amazingly good!  Everyone loved it and we all are sorry we won’t have any more.  When I encountered the sale, I didn’t want to buy lots of grapes (not that 36 lb is a small amount) that needed to be dealt with immediately, since I didn’t know how much time would be involved and was concerned that it would be a big project that would compromise the commitment I’ve made to myself to be ready for Shabbos by Friday afternoon.   (I already had a lot of unpacking for Thursday afternoon to do from my monthly shopping which was putting me on a tight schedule.)  Now that I know what’s involved, I won’t hesitate to buy up a bunch more if an incredible sale comes my way again! 

    Avivah

  • How to make yogurt

    Yesterday I made a large batch of yogurt, something I haven’t done in a while. I had forgotten how extremely easy it is to make, and it’s about a third of the price of the least expensive store yogurt!  I made a very large recipe of 1.5 gallons (24 cups), but the recipe below is for a more moderate amount.

    Homemade Yogurt

    • 2 c. milk
    • 2 T. yogurt to use as bacterial starter (look for any plain yogurt at the store that says it has bacteria in it – eg. acidophilus- you can get the smallest cup size sold)

    I used organic whole milk, but you can use any kind of milk you want.  Put the milk in a pot, and heat it until almost boiling, 180 degrees.  I have a candy thermometer for this, which eliminates the guesswork.  Once it reaches that heat, turn off the heat and let it cool down to between 105 and 110 degrees.

    Stir in the yogurt.  Don’t let the temperature go below 105 degrees before you pour into a jar, then cover the jar with a lid.  Now put the jar somewhere warm where it can incubate overnight.  An oven set to 100 degrees is perfect, but you can also put the jar into a picnic cooler.  If you’re using a cooler, line it with a towel, put the jar in, and cover it with a towel.  Some people put a heating pad set on low on top of the towel, or a hot water bottle, to keep the temperature constant, but if you make several jars of yogurt, then the heat from the jars will keep all of them warm without anything extra.  It should be ready within eight to twelve hours.

    I did a couple of things that made the process even easier.  First of all, I left the yogurt to incubate in the covered pot I heated it in.  Then I removed the trays from my dehydrator and put the entire pot inside (set at 100 degrees).  And that was all we had to do, except eat large quantities of it for breakfast. 🙂

    You can add flavorings if you like. This morning I had mine with some fruit spread that I canned a while back, and it reminded me of a healthy version of the yogurt cups with fruit at the bottom when mixed together.

    Avivah

  • Food stamp challenge

    Every so often I see various food stamp challenges – the idea is to see if you can eat healthily within the dollar guidelines that the food stamp allotment your family would receive.  Sometimes it’s for a week (which imo is a joke) and sometimes as long as a month.  I have yet to see a challenge like this that is encouraging and helpful (that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there, just that I haven’t seen it).  I think the point of a food stamp challenge should be to see how to eat healthily with limited dollars and then show people what you’ve done. 

    Instead, the consensus of the 3 or 4 challenges I’ve noticed over the past couple of years has been basically the same: it’s impossible to eat well on such a small amount, food stamp participants are penalized with bad health because they are limited to low quality food, and the government needs to do more to make high quality food available to everyone.  Yada yada yada. 

    Well, I don’t agree- at all – and that’s why I’m finally posting on a topic I’ve considered writing about for two years.  I think the US government food stamp amounts tend to be very adequate, even generous, particularly when people know how to budget or shop well.  The problem lies more in the lack of nutritional education and accountability than anything else.  And most people really don’t have much of a clue about how to effectively budget their food dollars well – teaching people how to make their dollars stretch in additional to nutritional education would end the supposed problem.  But that’s as political as I’m going to get about this topic, because this gets overtalked all the time and I think it’s a lot more valuable to focus on how to use food stamp dollars well than why it’s impossible to manage. 

    I think that most of those doing these challenges are somewhat guilty of nutritional elitism.  And I think that it’s good that there are those who are looking at the larger political picture and trying to make improvements.  But as wonderful as it would be if  we all had affordable mainstream options for local organic produce, grass fed beef, etc, people aren’t doomed nutritionally if they can’t afford it.  How to manage well within less than the ideal options is something that seems to get glossed over.   Most of us have to face non optimal choices sometimes, and we do the best we can with the resources that we have.  

    Over time I’ve shared a number of strategies I’ve used to keep our family well fed on a limited budget ($600 monthly for our family of 11).  Eating healthfully is important to me (we eat according to traditional foods guidelines – aka Weston Price/Nourishing Traditions), and I have the additional challenge of keeping kosher, which limits many of the bargains that a non kosher shopper could take advantage of.  The huge majority of the suggestions I make could be used by food stamp participants as well as everyone else.  So I’ll do a quick overview of some strategies that are applicable –  my apologies for being redundant for those of you who have been reading a while and know all of this already!

    First of all is where to shop.  Since the first food stamp challenge I read about a couple of years ago, I’ve made mental notations about which stores I shop at take food stamps.  All the major supermarkets take food stamps, including Trader Joes and Whole Foods.  Hitting the loss leaders and stocking up when things go on sale is the way to go.  An obvious caveat is that like anyone else with a limited monthly food budget, even if something is on sale, a food stamp shopper would have to buy smaller amounts in the first month, gradually building up the amounts they can stock up on as their sale stocked pantry builds. 

    I like to buy vegetables at a small ethnic grocery store (they also accept food stamps).  Their prices are better than the big supermarkets, the produce is fresher, and they often have vegetables that are marked down because of blemishes.  I’ve spoken to the manager there and a number of times bought cases of what I’ve wanted at an additional discount.  I rarely go to farmer’s markets, but I’ve heard that some of the larger stands are set up to accept food stamps.  The prices are best if you go at the end, since they often will lower the price so that they don’t have to pack up their veggies and take them home.   When buying any kind of produce, seasonal is usually cheaper than out of season produce.  You can load up on the inexpensive vegetables instead of the high cost ones.

    The discount grocery stores and salvage stores I shop at are a mixed bag – the Amish owned stores don’t take food stamps, but the rest I’ve gone to do-  regardless of who owns them, they basically all have the same prices.  These stores are a nice bonus to the budget, but I wouldn’t say someone who doesn’t have access to these is doomed financially (many states don’t have them, including my own) – they allow me to buy some things I would otherwise would avoid for the most part.  Most of what they sell is processed food, which I avoid.

    I buy in bulk through regular supermarkets and health food stores – as mentioned, these stores accept FS.   This is how I buy wheat berries and sucanat, for example, since we don’t use white flour or white sugar.  I also get coconut oil in this way.  I don’t recommend shopping at warehouse stores  because I don’t think they’re economical, but it seems that although most of them don’t take food stamps, one or two do.  I couldn’t check this out personally since I don’t shop at these stores. 

    Buying directly from the source, as I do for my raw milk and pastured eggs, won’t be an option.  However, there are other options at health food stores that may not be ideal but are still much better than the mainstream – they tend to be pricier than the less healthy option but by shopping frugally it makes room for the items that are more expensive.  I’ve even found organic milk (and even grass fed, though all homogenized) from time to time at the discount stores.  And you know what?  If someone buys regular milk and eggs, then that’s okay, too.  That’s not the main thing destroying the health of this generation. 

    Then there are other things that may be cheaper directly from the source but are available in the stores, like the raw cheese I recently discovered.  Someone using food stamps would be better off buying it in the store instead of buying at a cheaper price directly from the source so they don’t have to take money out of their pocket. (By the way, Trader Joes has raw cheese at a great price for non kosher consumers.)   Use these pricey foods as condiments instead of as a main dish, and a little can go a long way. 

    Processed foods are always going to be more expensive than buying the ingredients yourself, and  buying the ingredients instead of a more ready to eat version is always going to be where you save the most money.  There are the obvious things like beans and grains which help a food budget go far, and especially when soaked and prepared properly, are very nourishing and good for you.

    There are so many more possibilities to mention, but I think I hit the main ones.  So while the food stamp challenges continue, know that eating healthfully is within the reach of the vast majority of us, even when our budgets are very limited!

    Avivah

  • Making vitamin capsules

    My computer is still down so I’m sorry I can’t post more often – I miss being here daily!  We’re going to call another computer expert in since the first one can’t figure out what’s wrong. 

    I got my most recent order of herbs, and I got something new this time (well, actually I always get something new :)) that we’re putting to use today – I ordered kosher capsules and a capsule ‘machine’ to make filling them easy.  These are already lending themselves to more uses than I expected!

    I got the capsules to make using powdered herbs easy, basically the food herbs that are hard to take in large enough amounts when using as more than casual spicing.  But after getting it, I realized that we could use them for the powdered vitamin C (sodium ascorbate) that we use – until now we mixed it into juice but I use pretty massive doses when the kids are under the weather and they don’t  love taking it.  They don’t hate it, either, but finding a more pleasant way that works for everyone seemed to be a good idea.  And when dd14 started to fill them, she asked me if she should add some bioflavonoids to the mix.  (I bought the powdered bioflavonoids last year because it was the only form I found them kosher, but it is nasty tasting.  So none of us ever use it, even though you’re supposed to take the sodium ascorbate with it to maximize absorption.)  I thought that was a great idea, so now the kids have made over 300 capsules of this vitamin C mix – they used 4 parts sodium ascorbate to 1 part bioflavonoids.  Each capsule is about 500 mg and easy to take.

    The next capsules they prepared today were: ginger, tumeric, and cinnamon.  Dd14 has an extra bone in her foot that is causing her pain when walking, and I’ve been taking her to the podiatrist every 3 weeks since she got back from camp this summer.  He has been trying low intervention ways to deal with the issue, but at the last visit he said the inflammation is interfering.  He prescribed a local anti-inflammatory patch, but my insurance wouldn’t cover it and I’m not so sure I want to use it anyway.  (It would be over $200 every couple of weeks, if I do choose to try it.)  Dh asked him why he doesn’t just tell dd to stay off her feet for a week, and the doc said that wasn’t realistic.  I couldn’t believe I didn’t think of anything so obvious!  Instead I started researching natural anti-inflammatories.  Some of those are tumeric and ginger, and she’ll start taking the capsules today.  I think that this will take longer than the medical patch, but I’m more comfortable with it and so is she.  And of course we’re encouraging her to stay off her foot as much as possible.  Hopefully this two pronged approach will be helpful.

    Since I know someone is going to ask, I got the capsules from Mountain Rose Herbs – a bag of 1000 was $23 (I got size 00), and the capsule filling machine was $13.  You  can buy less, but this size bag was a good idea – my dd9 (her birthday is today :)) told me that if each of us has 2 vitamin c capsules a day, all that they prepared will last us just a month.  🙂

    Avivah

  • Herb recommendations

    At the end of last week a couple of the kids pulled up the tomato plants (at my request) and picked all the green tomatoes.  So because I didn’t want them to go to waste, last night I made six quarts of pickled green tomatoes and 2.5 quarts of green tomato salsa.  I bought a few large bags of organic red corn chips last week that will go nicely with the salsa for a yom tov snack.  And the kids tasted the pickled tomatoes tonight and gave them a thumbs up. 🙂

    Then yesterday my wonderful children put the sukka together, and I asked them to plant some seeds for me – but they went on to plant a bunch more than that!  They planted swiss chard, spinach, mache, lettuces, turnips, beets, rutabagas, and snow peas.  Since we all got so much done yesterday, I decided to treat everyone to a trip to the science center this morning, where we spent several hours and had a great time!

    >>Your blog is wonderful and so helpful. I was looking to place my first order at Mountain Rose Herbs (perhaps tomorrow) and I recall you wrote somewhere that your midwife had a special mixture of herbs she told you to take postpartum to avoid the discomfort (pain) after the birth. Is there any chance I could have the “recipe” and how it’s prepared/taken?<<

    As far as the recipe for minimizing afterbirth cramping, it’s a brew of Chinese herbs that this herbalist created for her clients.  I’d also love to know the recipe, but it seems to be a trade secret! 

    >>Besides elderberry, is there anything else you advise getting or having on hand for general purposes?<<

    What kind of herbs will be most useful will depend on what you foresee needing them for.  I started off using herbs by taking a blend of several for pregnancy and then I added on as they appealed to me.  I can’t claim that I was incredibly systematic about it – I got the herbs that seemed to have properties I felt would be valuable.  But it’s worked out pretty well since I’ve had on hand the herbs I’ve needed for the most part.  I have a couple I haven’t really done much with yet, though.  Before making an order, it’s best to have some idea of what it does as well as how you plan to use it.

    The easiest to include in your collection are the food herbs, like cinnamon, mustard, ginger, cayenne, garlic, tumeric – I get those in the grocery store in the largest containers I can fine.  I have several I’ve harvested from my garden or yard – burdock (blood purifier), plantain (skin issues), fennel (digestive aid), and sage (colds).   Then when I bought herbs, I got several that are natural antibiotics – echinacea, yarrow, and olive leaf.  Comfrey is for contact healing of cuts – I think it’s a must have.  I have pau d’arco for yeast issues (never used this but it seemed like a good thing!), spearmint for digestion, mullein and lobelia for upper respiratory infections.  Then there are herbs like chamomile for calming. 

    So the question is, what do you see as being the issues you want to deal with?  If for example, I had restless sleepers or issues of depression, I’d need different herbs than what I have.  I decided this winter to prepare remedies to address the following: flu, colds, upper respiratory distress, ear pain, cough syrup, digestive issues, and a basic first aid salve.  So I’ve made  elderberry syrup (colds and flus) and tonight finished the , echinacea glycerite (colds).  I plan to make ginger syrup for sore stomachs or indigestion (in addition to having fennel and spearmint, as well as peppermint oil), mullein oil for ear pain (this is something we rarely experience – I’m not even sure why I’m preparing it except it seems to be worth having just in case) and am astragulus and wormwood for a couple of other remedies.  I have a first aid salve simmering on the stove right now, my own creation. 🙂  I’m also planning to make a muscle cream and got arnica flowers and St. John’s wort for that.

    So for me at this stage (remember, I’m relatively new herbal healing), the most important herbs would be: echinacea root and leaves, elderberries, mullein, lobelia, comfrey, yarrow, plantain, and licorice root.  For anything else I think I could manage with whatever is in my spice cabinet, garlic, apple cider vinegar, and good nutrition!  

    Avivah

  • How to make elderberry syrup

    Last night I made my first batch of elderberry syrup.  It is filled with antioxidants and is good for preventing colds or treating them, depending when you take it.  I bought dried elderberries online, but if you are able to pick them fresh locally, all the better!  Here’s how simple it is to make:

    Elderberry syrup

    • 1/2 c. dried elderberries (or 1 c. fresh)
    • 1 cinnamon stick (optional)
    • 3 c. water
    • 1 c. honey

    Put the berries in a pot and cover with water.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cover.  Let simmer for 30 – 45 minutes.  Mash the berries with a potato masher, and strain through a fine strainer.  Add honey while liquid is hot, stir, and bottle.  Keep in the fridge – should last 2 – 3 months when refrigerated.

    I made four times this recipe and I ended up with three full quarts plus one 16 oz honey jar. I forgot to mash the berries, but since they were dried to start with, I think this was probably less important than when using fresh berries.  I added the cinnamon sticks because they taste good, but also because cinnamon kills bacteria and is great for fighting infections.   I used crystallized honey that was sitting around not being used because the kids said it doesn’t taste as good when it’s crystallized.

    Here’s a breakdown of the cost to make it: I bought the dried elderberries for 7.95 lb, and used 2/3 of that (wanted to save some to tincture), so the berries were $5.30.  I used three cups of honey, and if I figured the cost correctly, each cup was $3.33 cup.  That seems high to me (I thought I paid about 2.50 per cup, less when I recently bought small 16 oz containers for 1.99 each), but I based it on googling how many cups of honey are in a gallon (supposedly nine); I buy a gallon/twelve pound container for $30.  So the honey was $10.  I’ll add in .14 for the cinnamon sticks, since I got a container that had thirteen sticks in it for .88 so each stick rounds up to .07.  The total for 12.5 cups of elderberry syrup came out to 15.44.

    When you consider 4 fl. oz of Sambucol costs around $12.99, or to use their cheaper price for a larger bottle, 7.8 oz is $21.99, that’s a real bargain! Elderberry syrup from Mountain Rose Herbs is similarly priced with a 4 oz bottle being $13.25.  To put it further into perspective, 4 oz is about a quarter of a cup and 8 oz is half a cup – so I’m getting about thirty five times as much for the same price (my price for 1/4 c. is .31; 1/2 c. is .62).

    Because this has a limited shelf life and I don’t want to use up my fridge space hosting three quart sized jars for months, for immediate use I kept one quart plus the little honey jar, and canned the other two quarts so I can keep them on a shelf out of the fridge.

    This can be given when a child is showing signs of the cold or a flu, a tablespoon every hour or two, or you can give them a teaspoon each morning as a general immune strengthener.  This could easily be added to tea or (if you let the water boil down more so the final result is thicker) poured on top of pancakes or waffles.  Getting kids to have some of this isn’t hard at all.  This morning we gave the younger kids a teaspoon each, and a minute after ds3 got his spoonful, he came back holding out a cup and asked for a cupful!

    Avivah

  • Preparing for flu season

    Last week a couple of people asked me what I’m doing to prepare for the upcoming flu season, particularly regarding swine flu.  The first thing I told them is, I’m absolutely not getting a shot for it!

    I try to operate from a proactive and holistic perspective, so while shots (particularly these for the swine flu, which are highly experimental and untested – and in the last wave of swine flu, more people died from the shot than the flu) aren’t anything I would recommend for anyone, there are a few things that I’m planning to do.  Most of these are things to prepare for any kind of winter sickness, not just the flu.

    Firstly, I’d like to can up a bunch of chicken broth so I can quickly pull some off the shelf and have a sniffly child eating it within a few minutes.

    Next, I just noticed that I have almost no vitamin C powder left.  I can’t believe that it’s all finished since I bought four pounds less than a year ago.  But I’ll order another 2.2 pounds of sodium ascorbate from Bronson Lab.   (Edited to add that I switched to ordering from iherb.)

    Next, I’m going to order some dried elderberries so I can make elderberry syrup.  Elderberry is the thing to have for the flu – it’s a key ingredient in preparations like Sambucol.  (The Latin name of elderberry is Sambucus nigra – you see where Sambucol gets its name, right?)  I tried to order some a few months ago but they were sold out at the place I get my herbs, so I’ll get some with my next order.

    Next, I’m going to make an echinacea glycerite.  Echinacea is an infection fighter and a natural antibiotic.  I want to make a glycerite versus a tincture since a tincture uses alcohol, while a glycerite uses glycerine; the alcohol tincture isn’t as appealing for kids as the sweet glycerites.  (This isn’t for the flu, because of the cytokine storm issue.)

    I also plan to buy kosher glycerin capsules and a capping tool so I can fill my own capsules.  There are several powdered spices that I buy in the food section in a large container, knowing that they are helpful medicinally, too.  Some of these include: ginger, cinnamon, tumeric, and garlic.  It’s not practical to eat a large amount of them, but if I can put them into capsules, it would be easy to give a child feeling queasy, for example, a ginger pill.

    We already have a stock of vitamin D, which is effective in small amounts as a flu preventative, and in extremely high amounts, is a curative.  We aren’t taking it daily at this point.  We got this specifically with swine flu in mind.

    There’s a homeopathic remedy called oscillococcinum for the flu – the local health food store didn’t have any when I checked in the spring, but it looks like I can order it online.  Another item I’d like to have on hand.

    Something I did for my personal health today was to start a lobelia glycerite and a mullein glycerite brewing.  Last winter I shared how some doses of mullein and lobelia tea ended my asthma symptoms.  But since the camping trip a week ago, they suddenly resurfaced and I’m having a hard time breathing throughout the day and particularly at night.  Hopefully this will help.

    Since most people who die of the flu actually die of dehydration, I have several recipes in my notebook for homemade rehydration formulas.  This came in handy a few weeks ago when dd8 was playing all Shabbos long but not drinking much, and suddenly began vomiting repeatedly.  She couldn’t keep any liquid down, but the rehydration formula was great and I was very glad I had it since it saved us a trip to the emergency room.

    A suggestion in an entirely different direction is to stay out of public areas as much as possible.  Another suggestion along these lines is to have enough basic food supplies on hand so that if you get sick, you won’t need to run to the store.

    As I wrote last year on the topic of boosting immune function for kids, try to keep white sugar and processed foods out of your diets as much as possible, since they bring down your immunity.  While eating a good diet doesn’t guarantee an absence of illness, the better your diet is, the healthier you’ll be.

    Avivah

  • Shopping and gas costs

    >>With the price of gas being what it is, is it really worth making a 2-3 hour trip to shop really worth it? >>

    Well, let’s look at the numbers.   If I get 13 miles to the gallon, then I need 15 gallons for the entire day (it’s 100 miles in each direction).  With gas now at about 2.50 a gallon, it works out to $37.50.  So I need to save at least that amount before I start to benefit.  I gave the example of having saved over $110 when I bought three bags of wheat.  I don’t buy wheat every month (can’t eat nearly that much in a month!), but everything I buy is significantly less than it would be if I bought locally, not on sale.  (That’s not to say that everything is much cheaper, but that the things I buy are much cheaper.) I started buying 5 gallon buckets of coconut oil when I do my big shopping (it’s an item the store doesn’t carry but specially orders for me) – the shipping that I used to pay for one bucket was about $40.  And of course, I get much, much more than just one item – we have a 12 passenger van, and I remove one bench seat before I go.  The van is generally packed full when I get back – that’s why it takes me part of the following day to get everything unpacked and organized!

    I wonder how much people spend on their gas costs for their small trips every couple of days to the store?  Most people don’t think about there even being costs associated with it, but whether they think about it or not, they’re still spending that money on gas and shopping.  I think that’s it’s highly likely that most women spend just as much as I do on gas each month with shorter but more numerous shopping trips – but spend a lot more time in the stores than I do.

    However, it’s in large part due to the gas costs (and time needed) that my shopping trips have become more and more spread out.  At this point, I go shopping about every 7 weeks instead of every four, and supplement in between the big trips with small local trips every couple of weeks.  So the gas costs are really much less significant than it seems even from the number I gave.

    >>I have an Amish area about 2.5 hours away but that takes a day away from regular life (school, hanging out, etc) and everyone’s tushies get tired from being in the car for that long (even with our audio books and torah tapes).<<

     I don’t see it as taking a day from regular life as much as it being a day of regular life.  I try to do some kind of trip on that day, when I can – like going to a living history museum, a chocolate factory, potato chip factory, dairy.  It doesn’t always work out but the kids enjoy going with me anyway.  I can’t say exactly what they enjoy about it – a friend came with me once and I know it seemed boring to her from a kid’s perspective.  One thing the older kids said they like is having a long block of time to shmooze with me, which is why I don’t generally agree to have anyone come with me.  I generally buy some kind of treat for everyone, in addition to buying something for lunch and then (weather permitting) we have a mini picnic.  It’s generally pretty simple but the kids enjoy it. 

    >>In buying bulk, do you worry about bug infestation and how do you store everything?<

    Bulk grains are put into the freezer for 24 hours, sometimes more.  When it’s the winter time, this is greatly simplified by storing them on the stairs leading from my basement to outside that are covered by storm doors – that freezes them very quickly.   If there are any insects in it, they will be killed by this.  In the summer I find this much harder to do – I only have one freezer and generally need the space for perishable foods.  But whether the grains are frozen first or not, I transfer them from the bags they came in to food grade plastic buckets (most are five gallon, but the rectangular ones I prefer are a bit smaller).  They seal tightly and can be stacked somewhere in the corner of your laundry room or basement.  It doesn’t take up much space. 

    Avivah

  • Choosing a dehydrator

    about dehydrators- is there a substantial difference in what you use a dehydrator for versus what you would use a vaccuum sealer for? i am fairly certain that at some point you researched this, so i am trying to not reinvent the wheel. is there a reason you chose one over the other?

    I looked into getting a vacuum sealer at one point and didn’t see a need for it.  I might not understand well how the two work, but I’m under the impression that a dehydrator and vacuum sealer are two distinctly different appliances with different applications.  The dehydrator dries your food as a preservation technique, and the vacuum sealer sucks the air out of the container that you store something in, thereby creating a tight seal that will keep your food fresh long term.

    as far as a dehydrator, i have done a lot of reading in magazines (like mother earth news, natural living, etc) and they seem to say that an electric dehydrator should only be a first step until you can handle a solar one. …. so, do you have any ideas about what would be a good intro dehydrator? i don’t want to spend a bunch, in case i don;t use it so much, but i don’t want a super junky one either, since the one i buy will most likely be the one i have for as long as it lasts. what factors should i look at before i decide? i read your posts on this, but i feel like i need a bit more guidance…

    I think their point is philosophical and ecological, and I agree that solar dehydrating is good to do when you can.  If I could, I’d love to have non-electrical alternatives for all my appliances.  But solar dehydrating has its limits – like the weather!  And it takes a lot more time.  I need the reliability of a dehydrator that will do what I need, when I need, at a predictable rate.  I live where humidity can be high in the summer, which affects drying time.  I’ve wondered if I put my dehydrator in the sun if it would work well – I’d probably have to play around with leaving the door off to adjust for air flow.

    As far as what to start off with, there are two ways of thinking about this.  The first is, buy something cheap and see if you use it enough to justify buying something more expensive.  That’s not my position.  I had a cheapie dehydrator and it was inefficient, the results were uneven and poor, and I’d never consider dehydrating valuable or worthwhile if I were still using something like that.  So I think, decide if dehydrating is something you’ll do a good amount of based on your research about it, and then get a good deal on something good that you can use and enjoy using for a long time.

    Basically, a dehydrator is just a box with a heat source and a fan to circulate the air. Be sure that whatever model you get has a fan since without it, you’ll have to constantly rotate the trays and your results still won’t be even.  Get one that has a thermostat so you can control the temperature (different foods dry at different temps). A timer is a nice feature but not necessary.

    I chose the 9 tray Excalibur, which has an excellent reputation.  I got a very good buy on it because I got a factory reconditioned model with a ten year warranty for $150.  But I know that this is still a lot of money and many people won’t consider that affordable.

    American Harvest and Nesco are supposedly decent inexpensive alternatives (keep in mind the suggestions above about being sure to get a model with a thermostat).  Absolutely avoid Ronco, which is a piece of junk; I’ve heard very little positive feedback about it.  There’s a pretty new dehydrator out on the market called Good 4U which looks interesting; good price and seems to be good quality.  My concern with that one is that there’s no door because of the tray design so you’d have to have all the trays in all the time, and you couldn’t use it to let dough rise or make yogurt (which I haven’t yet done but many people do).

    In the end I think getting something you can use long term is actually a more frugal strategy than getting something cheap and later getting something that really works the way you want it. Junk just isn’t a savings, not in time and not in money.

    Avivah

  • Fig picking and preserving

    Today I planned to go pear picking, but my boys came home from shul and told me on the way home they looked at the tree I had gotten permission to pick- and it had been stripped clean!  It had been loaded less than two weeks ago.  I didn’t pick them right away since I was waiting for school to start so my kids wouldn’t feel uncomfortable having lots of people watching them (it’s in a busy area).  And then I couldn’t pick them right before the camping trip because we were busy packing up.  Well, as the saying goes, opportunity waits for no man.  It’s a good reminder – if you find a good deal, or a good opportunity, don’t sit around assuming that it will be there for you when you feel like moseying around to it!

    The boys also checked on the apple trees we picked from last year – hardly a fruit on the trees.  Later in the day I drove by another apple tree we picked that I was positive no one else would have picked from – nothing. I’m pretty sure that all these apple trees were hit by the late frost, just like the three pear trees we picked last year, and that’s why there’s no fruit.

    So I decided to see if we could go fig picking, and that worked out beautifully!  We picked about 4 gallons of gorgeous figs – soft and delicious.  None of us had ever had fresh figs before.  Dh told me when I got home that the gemara says that fig trees have several different ripenings, which is exactly what I noticed when picking – half the fruit on the tree was hard and green and won’t be ready for several more weeks, and half were soft and juicy.

    Since figs are so perishable, I wanted to deal with them right away.  Truth be told, I’m very sure that if I had left them around for a couple of days, the kids would have snacked them away.  But I didn’t want them to disappear with nothing to show for our trip, so I tried some new things.  First of all, I made fig jam, just honey, lemon juice, figs, and chopped walnuts.  It was more like a conserve technically, since it had fruit and nuts, but the recipe I used said ‘jam’.  Everyone loved it, but I didn’t think it looked attractive in a jar, which is too bad, since it is so delicious it would make a nice Chanuka gift.  But if it doesn’t look pretty, who would venture to open it up and try it?  So we have four pints for our family to enjoy.

    Today I pulled up a bunch of plants from the raised beds to make room for some fall planting, including a lot of oregano and sage (which smelled amazing).  I put all of it into the dehydrator, and since there were some empty trays, decided to fill one tray with halved figs.  I didn’t want to dry all of them because dried fruit gets eaten up very quickly and it’s almost disheartening to see so much fruit being turned into such a small amount.  For veggies, it’s great because I cook them and they rehydrate, but the fruit is mostly used for snacks, and I don’t like watching it disappear so fast. 🙂  One tray doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s 14 inches square and holds a nice amount.  I’ll see how that turns out in the morning.  So drying the figs was the second way I preserved them.

    Since the fig jam called for honey, it isn’t something that everyone in my family will eat, so I wanted to make something that didn’t use sugar or honey.  I looked through lots of recipes online but didn’t find anything.  So once again, I ended up making up my own recipe. 🙂  I cooked a mixture of rhubarb, strawberry, and chopped figs, added a can of orange juice concentrate to it (would have preferred apple but didn’t have that), and then stirred in a box of pectin for low sugar recipes.  We have 3.5 pints of that.  It still doesn’t look as vibrantly colored as I’d like, but I guess I have to accept that unless I use some artificial ingredients, the fruits I used all cook into less distinct colors than they started out with. 

    And that’s the end of the figs!

    Avivah