The Key to Eternal Life and Grandmother Spider

Well maybe not, but close.   Here's 3 gallons of Kraut I made and 2 gallons of Kraut Juice.  We never eat a meal with meat without some fermented veggies.  It's just the way it's sposed to be..

I have a Teacher that's been with me since I was 8 years old (at least that was my first encounter with her). I always called her my "Highest Teacher" because she seemed to be ...... my .... well it's hard to put into words.  Anyway years ago my stepson was living with a Swami dude who was for real.  One time he channelled my Teacher and told my step son that she was called,"Grandmother Spider".
  She has always seemed to be concerned the most with my Spiritual Growth...whereas other guides help in other areas. 
Anyway the other night I was working at my bench late at night, it was a very Magically Creative night where I found myself talking and singing.....  but not in English...  not sure what it was, but it flowed out like a fountain of Joy.  I kept having to look up from my piece to let the Juice flow up through me. It was really amazing.   I was feeling Grandmother Spider and I looked up, and leaning against the window was a carving I started for a Journal quite some time ago......  There was a Spider hovering there right in front of ..... well, you'll see.

Pretty Trippy Huh..

A Live Tasty Healthy Treat

 Arugula Flowers, Watercress Flowers, Kale Flowers and Chive Flowers.    I like to save the seeds from these to make Sprouts.  And if at just the right time I take the tip top flowers off, it makes the seed pods swell and seems to increase the seed bounty.  Gets done faster because all the energy goes to the seeds, not to more flowers. And the longer it takes the greater chance of Fungus or bug damage.  So we Feasted. I made us a salad with these potent little Babies and with Salad mix we traded for at Market, and Cukes and carrots we traded for (Thank you Sweet Leaf).   Aren't they so beautiful.

 The White flowers are the Arugula (yum), Small yellow are the Watercress, the large yellow are the Kale, and the Purple are the Chives...(really tasty in soup by the way)

What we Eat.

 Greens from the greenhouse, fermented carrots, home made French Onion soup made with Organic Ox Tails and Organic Free Range Lamb topped with watercress and parsley from the garden.

 Organic egg yolks over veggies and sprouted lentils cooked in duck fat.

Bountiful, Bountiful, Bountiful

A few days ago a neighbor was going to harvest a huge grass/bug/crawdad/milk fed pig and called and asked if we wanted the fat to render into Lard. Taryn had mentioned this to him in the past. Well we got maybe 60 ponds of fat that day, some looked like bacon, it had a bunch of meat on it. So I started rendering it into Lard, and cooking the cracklings (OMG YUM), and cooking up some of the meat and freezing some meat for future use.  Now a lot of folks have been hypnotized by certain vested interests into believing that Lard is bad for you, when the fact is it is amazingly healthy, and a kind of fat your body craves... (unlike the horrible and virtually poisonous plant oils like corn and canola which along with Margarine have played a major part in destroying the health of "civilized" people.)  Anyway if you want to know the truth about fats, check out Weston A Price's site.... but that's not the rant I'm on today, today it's about BOUNTY.  Now from the fat we got a few days ago I'll derive pounds of cracklings, and gallons of lard... Then the farmer called today with more. 
Well last year I made a vow that I would not miss the final days of the farm stores sale over in the valley.  Thisteldown Farm on the last two days sells everything really cheap...and as it turns out, gives pumpkins away for free.   So today was the next to the last day, and as long as we were headin up river to pick up more Hog Fat...(and as it turns out Bones for soup) I figured we'd better head over to Thistledown farm and see what kind of deals we could get....

 

And I tell you what, WE SCORED .

We came home with about 30 pounds more hog fat

40 ears of corn

25 pounds of beets

25 pounds of carrots

50 pounds of onions

2 huge heads of celery

2 huge heads of Broccoli

6 garlics

5 huge heads of cabbage for making sauerkraut

4 sweet potatoes the size of footballs

10 Large free Pumpkins.. (dudes, if you are my age eat as many pumpkin seeds as you can, with your Saw Palmetto capsules or tincture, this will protect your prostate....and if you tend towards losing hair, the saw palmetto will grow it back ...with the only minor side effect of making you a little hornier than normal.

Every time I am good about taking the saw palmetto for a while my hair starts growing in thicker. and...well never mind the rest)

4 Boxes of apples for sauce

1 box of apples for storage

So my work was cut out for me when we got home..

It was gettin late so I decided to just deal with the ongoing Lard and crackling project...the corn, and the cabbage.

So here is tonights project

 I got the corn shucked and got it off the cob..

Then I put it in a baking pan with some lard and cracklings, gonna cook it a while in the oven, then freeze it...

On the stove I had cracklings cooking

Here I used a handy corn kernal removal tool to get it off the cob...

Then the dang stove broke. Temp sensor went on the fritz, so the boiler stayed on and would not turn off, even shutting off the power and turning it back on...and the dang thing came on again....  Well I didn't feel like tearing the stove apart tonight, so I got a little break and came in here to write this blog and eat some frozen blueberries..... Now that I've done that I'm gonna go and slice up the cabbage and put it in a crock with some salt and pound it for an hour or so....then add some juice from an old batch of kraut and pickles so we get a jump start with the good bacteria.

It was another wonderful bountiful day....AND Bracken's first real juant out into the world besides going to the midwives...And he was totally good....basically slept all the way there, then had some boob for lunch, then slept all the home.... Maybe I won't do the kraut tonight..... I think I'd rather go stare at Bracken if he's asleep...and if he isn't We're gonna play... YAY!!

Mama's Breakfast

You gotta feed the Mama well.   Today for breakfast I made some lamb sausage with 1 1/2 pounds of free range grass fed lamb, mint leaves, sage, Italian seasonings, one egg, soy sauce, garlic and some smoke sauce. Then I put one of our chickens eggs over some home made brown rice sourdough caraway bread.  Then there was a piece of my home made cherry/applesauce date raisin sourdough rice bread spread with grass fed Ghee, and some home made elderberry applesauce and a half of a home made pickle.  (You know if you eat some fermented food with every Meat meal.... the meat goes down so happily )

Yummy Nutritious food for a New Mama

There isn't much better food than fresh caught Salmon for a pregnant or new Mama. Here I took some fresh salmon a friend of ours caught, chopped up a real home made pickle (actually fermented), four slices of free range grass fed bacon, some celery seed, some coriander, some parsely from the garden....and made a nice scramble...... with a little fresh home made organic apple/cherry sauce...
I love to cook.

Then I made two loaves of brown rice sourdough bread. ( We don't do Gluten...or sugar.) So  I make Brown rice sourdough bread. One loaf was regular bread with caraway seed, the other was a sweet bread with apple/cherry sauce, dates and raisins...OMG, it turned out so well.  We put a little grass fed Ghee on it then cover it in  organic Blueberries we picked this year... Yummy.

Here the bowls are waiting for blueberries and a little home made goats milk kefir.... Heaven on a plate.

Making the Magical Food, NATTO

About a year ago I had Natto for the first time (in this life). I tried it because I had read about Nattokinase, a substance made from Natto that is sold in certain health food stores and I think as medicine in Japan. Nattokinase has been shown to support normal blood pressure, dissolve blood clots and prevent them from forming in the first place!
Natto is a fermented cheese-like food that has been used in Japanese culture for more than 1,000 years , it's made by inoculating Soybeans with a certain Bacteria called Bacillus subtilis.  Nattō contains large amounts of vitamin K, which is involved in the formation of calcium-binding groups in proteins, assisting the formation of bone and preventing osteoporosis. Vitamin K₁ is found naturally in seaweed, liver, and some veggies, and vitamin K₂ is found in fermented foods like cheese and miso.  Nattō has very large amounts of vitamin K₂, about 870 micrograms per 100 grams of nattō. It is also a non meat source of B12 so it's a good thing for Vegans and Vegetarians to eat. Nattō contains many chemicals alleged to prevent cancer and recent studies show nattō may have a cholesterol lowering effect.Nattō is also said to have an antibiotic effect, and its use as medicine against dysentery was researched by the Imperial Japanese Navy before World War II.
But basically it a a Slimy stinky, stringy mass of strong tasting Heaven.
Anyway I developed a taste for it, and now so has Taryn, and it's good food for the baby inside her....so I decided to find out how to make my own.
So here we go.
Stuff you need:
A bunch of cooked organic soybeans (4 cans or equivalent) It's best to start from scratch (dry beans) but I couldn't find any in town so got canned organic beans.
A way to keep the inoculated beans at about 108 F.and moist ( I'll give you a tip how I did it).
A tad of salt, maybe a teaspoon
couple tablespoons of sweetener to feed the culture ( I used molasses).
and a couple containers of packaged Natto from your local Asian store (or the culture/bacteria from a place online like Gemcultures).
So the most important part is to keep it about 108 F. and fairly moist, with s fair air supply for 24 hours.
So here is what I did.

I got a big pot that our dehydrator top fit on, ran an external thermometer which I just hapenned to have (see honey, it's good I save all that stuff).

Then is a bowl I mixed the 2 packages of store bought Natto (the seed). With the salt and soybeans and molasses. I put  a plate on top of the bowl and then put the  bowl down in the pot and set the temp to around 108. You don't want it to go under 100F..... a little higher isn't as big of a deal cuz it's gotta be really hot to kill the Natto bacteria.  ( I played with the controls beforehand so I knew where to set the knob on the dehydrater). Then I put a towel I soaked in boiling water down in there too.  Now I just let her rip, checking to see if there was still water in it....and I let it go for 24 hours.

TA DAA.  See the strings...that means it worked.  Now you can age it in the fridge for from a day to a week....

Or if you are like me and can't wait you will put it on top of a nice lamb curry that you made for lunch, and are now having for dinner...
Yumm

Country Tips on Cilantro/Coriander

I love Cilantro, and to me, Coriander (cilantro seed) is like the essence of the Cilantro. Did I mention I love this stuff?  Well one problem I found in my salsa making days, and in cooking with Cilantro is...it loses all it's flavour.  But on the other hand Coriander seems to maintain it's. So I use it when cooking.  Oh, in case you didn't know, Cilantero, in fresh leaf form mobilizes heavy metals out of your body, in fact it's one of very few substances that do this even across the blood brain barrior.... so for those of you worried about oncoming senility...(generally caused by heavy meatals that accumulate in the brain tissues totally screwing up the whole electrical process there).....eat this stuff.
OK so every year we start with seed we saved from last year. Now here is a little tip, something I figured out that has saved me a lot of grief in the Springtime, when getting out last years seeds only to find that some little critters liked those seeds as much as I like sunflower seeds..... So here's the solution....that good ol food grade diatomeceaus earth. Microscopic skeletons of diatoms that are like razer sharp daggers to small little critters. (works on fleas and all kinds of nasty fur inhabiting creatuers as well)..... and it doesn't bother humans to touch, like chalk.... totally good to eat, doesn't bother pets, but you don't want to breathe a lot in of course, don't want to breath in dirt or old rags either.... but anyway, mix it in with your seed.  So we start out the year with a mess of this seed. Half I save for cooking, and totally broadcast the other in a huge area... I'm not going into the growin process here... gotta be on the Flow or it'll bolt every time.... But here now it's the end of the season.... Here is a huge harvest of coriander.

 

So,now that we have a fresh crop, what to do with all the leftover coriander seed.. ?

 

Well, I put it in a food processor and dusted it up as much as it wanted to go, then sieved it out with a fine screen..... Then put it in a salt shaker to use when cooking....

Yummmm, I love that stuff

The Eleventh Commandment and a recipe for a Roast

The Eleventh Commandment

Well the other day in an alternate dimension when I found a moment for some serious relaxing I suddenly found myself channeling "the Intergalactic Interdimensional Great White Brotherhood of Dudes that are a whole lot more spiritual and wise than any of those other upstart Fakes out there pretending to be high knowledgeable beings, Federation," or as those of us on the Inner Circle know it simply as I I G W B O D T A A W L M S A W T A O T O U F O T P T B H K B.

Anyway they sent me an important message for Humanity.
They said that when Moses went home to his wife with the 11 Commandments, she didn't much like God's tone on the last one, so she got out her chisel and broke off the bottom of the tablet..... it had actually given Moses a hernia anyway so she felt she was kinda doing him a favor cuz he was toting those tablets around all over the place trying to convince his drinking buddies that "the Lord" actually wrote them and gave them to him......   But luckily now thanks to me channeling the I I G W B O D T A A W L M S A W T A O T O U F O T P T B H K B we can finally know the TRUTH.
OK, here it is,
Commandment 11: " Human females shall be forbidden from attempting to Prepare Meat to be consumed."
 Now when Moses passed this along verbally to his friends there was some misunderstanding on the subject, and Vegetarianism was born..
Also on that subject there were some of us folks back then that were attempting to live spiritual lives and the problem was way back then that we were just too dang centered in our lower centers...All we really wanted to do was fornicate... and eat, and sing and dance and stuff like that.  We really had no hankering for the "Higher" centered Qualities.  So this group of folks realized that there were a couple sure fire ways to release our grip on our lower nature... One was building a small mud hut like an oven, and baking ourselves in it until we became delirious and had lots of visions... And the other one was eating lots of fruits and vegetables and no meat until the point we became totally ungrounded, malnourished, and capable of having visions...
OK, don't shoot me now, I'm just the messenger here.
But the fact is from my experience woman are indeed missing the gene that enables them to properly cook meat of any variety.  Maybe I'm biased because 20 years with my ex wife and still I couldn't convince her that meat could be prepared in ways....besides BOILING.  Boiled Beef Roast...GAG, Boiled Pork...GAG, Boiled any Freaking meat GAG GAG GAG.  So since I know there are a bunch of you heathen woman out there who aren't going to abide by the 11th Commandment, plus a bunch of you I know whose male counterparts are so freakin lazy that they aren't going to help you with the meals, I offer here a sure fire way to make meat that will melt in your mouth, actually taste sweet and juicy, and make you want to dance, and sing and fornicate....oops, I digress spiritually momentarily...

So here it is:
First get some amazing piece of grass fed free range organic meat like that provided by Deck Family Farm.
Click here to check these good folks out..
This is important, "free range grass fed organic"... if you are gettin your meat at the supermarket it could kill ya...
You need parchment paper
Tin (aluminum) Foil
Some nice homemade elderberry wine if you have it, if not some other nice red wine..
Some Broth if you have it
A skillet of hot Grease
herbs and spices
Onion

Amazing Deck Family Farm Pork Roast

So first you brown the Roast in a pan of hot grease, this sweetens up the Fat.

Then you set it down on a piece of parchment paper that is sitting on a piece of tin (aluminum) foil.

You add your herbs and spices and wine... I used garlic and Sage for this pork roast. For Lamb I use dried mint leaves all crumpled up...and maybe a little sage and Garlic. And I didn't have an onion, but onion is also very important as it is a natural tenderizer. And I like to caramelize them before I add them, makes em really sweet.
DO NOT SALT IT !!
That will suck all the juices out.
Then you wrap it up real tight.
(The reason for the parchment paper is that Taryn doesn't like to have food touching aluminum because it causes Alzheimer's....)... and It needs to be wrapped really tight so it cooks in it's own juices. (you can even add a little of that broth if you had it).
This tight wrap is essential, sorry no crock pots or dutch ovens without wrapping it....

Then you stick it in the oven on really low, like 275, and leave it all day...

Then you take it out and can salt it now and eat it with some good healthy fermented food like sauerkraut or kim chee or some other fermented vegetable.  Then after it digests a while, dance and sing and UH, do any other thing that comes to mind...

Simply Awesome...and Awesomely Simple Chicken Vegetable Curry

Simply Awesome...and Awesomely Simple Chicken Vegetable Curry

over Pan Fried Rice Noodles

This turned out to be an amazing meal, so I thought I'd share it with my friends.. But I'm afraid we ate it all, so I just have the recipe to share instead...

So I started out with a big cast iron pan with some Deck Family Farm bacon Grease in it. I cut up half a huge purple onion, a few cloves of garlic, a tablespoon or so of celery seed and maybe 1/4 cup of leftover radishes from Taryn's salad. I started cooking this on med. clarifying and slightly caramelizing the mixture. Then I cut up a breast and thigh of Deck Family Farm Chicken that we cooked in a crock pot Saturday so we'd have dinner when we got home. (somehow pregnant Taryn didn't eat the whole chicken that first night).

Then I cut up a couple of carrots and threw in about 3/4 cup frozen peas. Cooked all that for a while with some soy sauce. (If I had white wine I would have used it). Cooked that a bit then added a can of Coconut milk and a modicum of curry powder. ( I'm cuttin back on Fire creating foods...and this is a pretty fiery dinner).... 

Then I added some leftover vegetable soup Taryn had made with beets, and carrots and Kale and celery and Chicken bone broth....  AAAARRRHHH    AHHHH !!!

 I stirred all this in with the coconut milk and everything else.

Meanwhile I was boiling some Rice Noodles.  They got done and I drained the water and put them in a pan with a bunch of melted organic local butter and started frying them...then I put maybe a tbs. of toasted sesame oil in the pan and fried the suckers up with some salt.   

Then I poured the coconut chicken curry sauce over the top, and Pansies!...or, violets?.... no......VIOLA!  Incredible edible tasty....

OH, and P.S.

The inspiration that I didn't follow through on....which I actually couldn't have ....cuz we didn't have a lime......was to, at the end..... squeeze a fresh half lime over the top of each of our bowls....with some finely grated  lime peel on top of that.   That would cool some of the Fire of that meal.. (like the celery seed, or celery would do.)

Super Baby Balls

Taryn's going to be going to Portland for a few days, meeting her Mom and Sis and Sis's boyfriend, before they all come back here.  And being pregnant she needs mega nutrition.  ( She's eating like 2 horses). She only wants to be eating the best food whilst she's feeding the little internal babe. And you know how it is when you travel...eatin good aint easy.  She's been packin up a bunch of stuff, but I wanted to make her a high power treat...So here it is.
A mess of raw almonds soaked for a day.(this makes them way more digestable)...
a couple tablespoons of Chorella (Super food...algae, actually crosses the blood brain barrior to remove heavy metals...a rare talent shared by fresh cilantro)
Added in a few tbs. of good virgin coconut oil, a few of grass fed Ghee, a few Tbs. of bee pollen, a few of honey...and a bunch of carob powder.  Ran it through the food processor until it was nut buttery... then rolled it into balls and then squished coconut into it.  Viola...SUPER NUTRITION....
Problem is Chorella is a magical food...but tastes pretty darn bad...so I hope she'll eat em anyway. But you can always make it without the chorella...maybe add a little brewers yeast for the B Vitamins.....
I know I won't have a problem eating them...
  and the baby will love em.

Livin High

OK, so this is the leanest time of year for us.... Survival (payin bills) becomes a lot more difficult because it's been since December since we had Market to sell our wares, and the Internet business is kinda slow.  But we're livin like royalty here.  For lunch today we had Elk Burgers (Thank you Lara for the elk). 1/2 pound of ground elk each with an egg mixed in and some garlic, some salt and liquid smoke and herbs. Topped this with home pickled and canned jalapeños and home made REAL pickles and some goat cheese. We also had some Natural no chemicals Turkey Bacon I accidentally bought...(Leanest lookin bacon I ever saw....oops). I put some wasabi coctail sauce on mine. And we had this with a wonderful Spring Salad... Poverty aint all that bad.....

Making Home Made Smoky/Spicy Cheese (OH MY GOD!)

So it's winter and the Goats are dry...
What to do about cheese and milk products?
And without the Whey it makes it very difficult to make the fermented veggies we practically live on.
Well we both don't do all that well with cows milk, but our neighbors are getting way more than they can deal with, so we buy or trade eggs for fresh unpasteurized raw milk from them.. (Not Dead Milk).  Taryn makes kefir out of it for our Smoothies because kefir will digest a lot better than just milk.  But we had this extra gallon, and I decided to make some good old fashioned farm cheese. That would give us a whole mess of whey....and a good side product....the cheese.  Might as well see how we do with Home Made cows cheese.
So I took the gallon of milk and put it in a big deep glass bowl (don't use metal) and added just a little squeeze of  some rennet in the milk and set it near the stove for a night.... In the morning it was cheese. (almost)  Now if you don't have rennet you can use raw apple cider vinegar, 1  1/2 tbs or so.
So the cheese and whey was separated over night, now I put it in a mesh bag and let it drip out all night.  The next day I squeezed more water out...tasted it....not impressed, too bland.... (Don't worry, a day later it actually tasted goaty almost. YUMMM) Then I added maybe a tbs. of Himalayan Crystal Salt.... maybe 1 1/2 tsp of liquid smoke, about a tsp of cayenne, about 1 1/2 tsp. of celery seed and a tsp. of honey and maybe 3 tbs. of fresh picked chives cut up real small..(normally I'd add garlic but I'm cutting back a tad on the "heat" foods, hence the addition of celery seed to counteract the cayenne).. And I stirred it all up.
It was so freakin good....the best darn cheese I ever had.... Phhttt ...... pfart....pffftt..... just kidding, it's a half an hour later and I've eaten a bunch off a fork and mixed some in with kale and eggs and ate it.... Unbelievably Tasty.... and I can still breathe and my stomach isn't trying to sing a song in some foreign language...   YIPEEE

Incredible Cooling Nettle Lime Soup

Well Taryn had a craving.  She needed something cooling and refreshing, yet potently green.... An Inspiration came to me and from that OMG,

I made a very tasty amazing soup.

 

Incredible Cooling Nettle Soup.
INGREDIENTS
A bunch of fresh nettles, enough to jam into a large pot.
1 Lime
 2 tbs.Lemon Juice
 A handfull of shredded Coconut
5 tbs.Fresh Butter more or less
2 tsp. Toasted sesame oil
Salt to taste
Cayenne to taste
Celery seed 1-2 tbs.
Coriander 1-2 tbs
Dry fruit… optional I put in some plums and strawberry leather I made
Ground almonds 2 cups

OK, first you steam the Nettles for 20 miutes...

Then you stick them in a blender and blend em up

Put em back in the pan, and save any leftover water from steaming them and make tea.

Grate up the lime rind, then add it to the soup...

Squeeze the lime into the soup and if you want you can throw the halves in and cook. 

Throw everything else in and simmer for as long as you can stand it and not eat it....

Eat it right away, or make it a cold soup...put in fridge and cool it off.. Yummy

 

Start with a packed full pan...add just enough water to steam for 20 minutes

 ...Puree it Up...

 

  

 Add in everything, then simmer.

We got some nice yummy organic butter from some friends with a cow, cheaper than store bought.

Taryn said it was just what she needed...and " The Best Soup Ever"

Making Strawberry Swirls

It starts here in a field that was just packed with succulent organic strawberries, so many that it took no time at all to pick our baskets full

Then we made some awesome jam with just strawberries and agave nectar.... but come Feb.1st I finally realize that we don't eat bread and the jam is just sitting out there in the pantry...and I'm craving the taste of Early Summer.  So I spread the jam on the dehydrater on special sheets made for fruit leather... Then dry it overnight..

The next morning we have trays of fruit leather.....

But fruit leather is kind of a hassle storing and eating,

 so I decided to make something handier..

Peeled off the leather, then rolled it up real tight...

Then I rolled it up in the middle of the wax paper, and took it out to the shop and squished it in a vise, then hammered it with a sledge hammer, trying to mesh it into a solid chunk..

That didn't really work like I'd hoped...but OH Well.

Then I got the scissors and cut the roll into manageable sizes..

Then I took this horrible picture of the finished product.

  Now we can put it in the jar with the dry fruit, or in the trail mix jar with nuts and dry fruit...

Yummy, the incredible, intense, flavor blasting taste of fresh summer berries

....times 100...

My tongue is singing....

"Strawberry Swirls Forever"