Resurrect the Stock Pot!

I've been making my own bone broth for a few years, which I started doing when I learned about all the health benefits that come from this broth. But I still learned several things the other day from watching this nine-minute video. Check it out!

As the video states: "Broths cooked over a couple of days, made from whole chicken, beef bones, or fish actually repair the same parts of our own bodies as the animal parts we ingest. These broths—the more gelatinous the better--not only cure the common cold, they also build strong bones, heal the digestive tract [much the way fermented foods do], cure arthritis, joint pain, strengthen the immune system, beautify the skin, and provide the body with every single mineral it needs for optimum health to protect against a variety of diseases—even TB, diabetes, ulcers, and cancer."

Cooler Yogurt

Last week I wrote about our journey to raw milk and mentioned that with all the milk we are getting I've been able to make lots of things with it I never could before. One week I made a gallon of yogurt and it was so fun to have that much all at once!

I've made yogurt many times in the past, but always with store milk and always in my yogurt maker. This time, since there was so much of it, I finally made good on my desire to try making it in a cooler, something which had been on my to-do list for quite a while. And the result was so rewarding! It turned out much thicker and better than what I'd made previously. Everyone in my family enjoyed it.

In my search for how to make yogurt in a cooler, I found many, many sites, but these were the ones I referred to most:

NourishingDays.com
FoodinJars.com
KitchenStewardship.com
EverythingHomewithCarol.blogspot.com

I also found this cool site, which discusses "more than six ways to incubate yogurt without a yogurt maker":

SaladInAJar.com

I really liked the idea of making mine in a cooler, rather than a crockpot or oven with the light on because it doesn't require the use of any more electricity. As long as the temperature stays consistent for several hours, it should work just fine, which is why a cooler works. And after a successful first attempt, I give this green option the green light!

It's really not as complicated as some of the above tutorials make it look. What I did was pasteurize my raw milk first, because I had read that the good bacteria in raw milk competes with the yogurt cultures and so has a harder time thickening--I don't know yet if this is true for the milk I use. If you want to do this (those of you with raw milk), you can either heat the milk to 145 degrees and hold it at that temperature for 30 minutes, or you can heat it to 165 degrees and hold it there for just 15 seconds (link). Then I waited for it to cool down to 115 degrees.

Once the milk was at 115 degrees, I poured a small amount of it into a smaller bowl and whisked the yogurt culture (2 Tb. per quart of milk) into it until well mixed. Then I added this yogurt mixture back into the rest of the warmed milk and mixed it some more.

The last step can be done several ways (refer to above links), but this is what I did:

Line the inside of your cooler with towels (I used a large cooler since I made a gallon of yogurt). Heat a large pot of water to boiling, turn off the heat, leave the lid on, and take the pot off the stove. Immediately put the pot into the towel-lined cooler and shut the lid. Pour the prepared milk mixture into quart and pint jars, then place them next to the pot in the cooler, without touching it, and cover everything with another towel.

Then you just leave it all in there, undisturbed for 8-24 hours. I love how flexible this last part is so that I can check it when I really have the time. I left mine about 12-14 hours (overnight) and it was all finished and a better, thicker consistency than any time I've made it in my yogurt maker.

Yay for fresh, easy, and yummy probiotics!

Our Journey to Raw Milk

About three years ago I first started learning about raw milk and the incredible health differences between it and the pasteurized, homogenized milk most people buy at the store. At that time, I wrote a post with more details and included URLs to the most helpful sites I found in my quest for more information on this topic. You can find that here.

Two years ago, when we moved back west to a rural town, I happily thought, Maybe this way we can get 1) chickens and 2) a cow share! As you know, we reached goal #1 this spring and are now enjoying homegrown eggs. Goal #2 has recently been reached too, in a way... I found a generous family not far away who is getting too much milk from their cow and is willing to give us a few gallons a week. I can't tell you how excited that made me, when they first agreed to it! While this probably isn't a permanent situation (the family is trying to give up their remaining half cow share and I can't currently commit to the milking myself), it has been very fun to have this experience.

I have a cousin in Missouri who has been buying raw milk from a farmer for a few years now and here is what she has noticed about the differences in her family's health:

• Her oldest daughter's perpetual allergies are now gone.
• She and her husband both have more energy.
• Her third and fourth children never developed asthma.
• Colds went from 7 or 8 per person per year to 1 or 2. And when they do get sick they get over it faster.
• They all sleep better.

She acknowledges, "There are a lot of things that could affect all this, but I think it's safe to say that switching milk has something to do with at least some of them."

As for me, my family had never tried raw milk before these past few weeks and it took a bit of getting used to, but now I do think it tastes better than the processed stuff from the store. And I can do so much with it!

More about that in my next post...

Rethinking How to Make Yogurt

A few days ago a friend of mine brought us some homemade yogurt.  I've made a lot of yogurt for my family in the past, but I stopped a while ago, partly because I was discouraged by how runny it kept turning out.  My friend's yogurt, on the other hand, is as thick as cottage cheese!  I asked her how she makes hers (without a yogurt maker, like I have) and learned a couple things.  Then when I saw this video online by YogaMama, I learned some additional things I can try.  Now I'm more excited about trying yogurt-making again!

Speaking of probiotics and promoting healthy guts, YogaMama also has an interesting article about gut bacteria  and how it influences early development in infants.  Fascinating stuff!  (I'm repeatedly amazed at each new evidence that shows vaginal births are best for babies and why.)

Staying Healthy as Fall Begins

Many of us around the country are beginning to sense the coming of autumn as days shorten and temperatures begin to cool. I have already noticed that with that change of season, people are getting sick--including sniffles already at my house. So I've been thinking about what we should be doing better to prevent illness as much as possible, and looking back at prior posts I've realized how many things I've already written that address this. So I thought I would re-link you to them, in case you need the refresher, like I do:

• My list of 7 things to do to prevent illness

• The healing properties of Echinacea

• How promoting healthy guts improves your immunity

• How using essential oils promotes wellness and healing

• Honey's role in promoting wellness (and its curative properties)

• The importance of adequate sleep to our health

• And even the many health benefits of fasting (If you haven't read this information, you really should--it's quite fascinating!)

Immunity and Healthy Guts

After about a three year reprieve, beginning in October my oldest daughter started getting a virus every two weeks. We don't know why she gets this and no doctor has been able to tell us more than just that she'll grow out of it. But, as any parent of a sick child knows, illness throws off a child's balance and the overall momentum of life, not to mention being no fun for either the parent or the child. It can be exhausting and is a strain on the body to be sick so often. We've experienced so many of these cyclical viruses that we've learned to cope and we pretty much know what to expect. But sometimes they still put me at my wits' end. And so, knowing the medical community could do very little to help us, and making it a matter of prayer (again), I realized there were a few changes/improvements I could make to see if they would boost my daughter's immune system.

The biggest thrust of these efforts has been to increase her consumption of homemade yogurt. For the past couple of months I have tried to make sure that we always have this yogurt on hand, which means making about a batch a week (no biggie). When I first got my yogurt maker this daughter wasn't overly thrilled with the result, since she remembered when we used to buy that sugary stuff from the store. (Incidentally, my other daughter, who was never allowed yogurt before, due to her lactose intolerance, grew to love our plain homemade variety more quickly than her sister.) Over time she has come to enjoy it, sweetened with honey, and I no longer have to urge her to eat it.

While it may be too early to tell, I am beginning to notice signs that this effort might actually be making a difference, and I pray that it is so.

Yogurt is basically fermented milk--or cultured, if you prefer. Many cultures include fermented* foods in their regular diets just as a matter of course, and time and research has shown the benefits.

I realize now that I should've thought of regular yogurt consumption long ago, but you live and learn... Of course, we can add probiotics to our diets in other ways, but homemade yogurt--or at least good quality store-bought (plain) yogurt from the store--with acidophilus, bifidum and other cultures, is an easy, tasty way to get it. (Just add honey, fruit, or other natural and unrefined sweetener, if desired.) Eating this kind of yogurt aids in digestion, improves regularity, improves absorption of nutrients, and boosts immunity, as shown in this article, which also includes further nutrient information. No wonder it feels so good to eat it!

While yogurt manufacturers would have you believe that all yogurt is good for the health (and created equally), this is certainly not true. At least in my searches at grocery stores, I have found that most yogurts do not contain the necessary probiotics, and the flavored varieties contain so much sugar as to pretty much negate any good any probiotics may do, since refined sugar is not good for the gut and actually provides food for bad bacteria to feast on (and grow from).

So we will continue our experiment and hope that it proves effective for our daughter! In the meantime, the rest of us are seeing and feeling good results ourselves.

*Let me point out that these foods are not fermented to the point of becoming alcoholic, but only to the point of becoming full of the good bacteria that our guts need to help us stay healthy.

Review of My New Yogurt Maker

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about how CSN Stores asked me to do a product review for them. They gave me a budget within which to keep my "purchase" and I made my choice, feeling like it was Christmas! As you may recall, I chose a yogurt maker and was excited about the prospect of eating homemade yogurt again (which I hadn't had since I was a child).

Well, I am happy to report that the entire transaction with CSN was a pleasure from beginning to end. Everything I was told was true and I had no hangups in ordering my product. I have ordered many items online and am used to seeing confirmation emails after paying for the product. But with CSN I received a second email to let me know my order was being processed and the date by which I could expect to receive it. A couple days later I received a third email telling me my order had been shipped. I appreciated knowing exactly where they were in the process and when I could expect to receive my package (since I was so anxious to get it). And then it arrived a day early! Which just happened to be on my husband's and my anniversary. :)

It has been a week and already I have made yogurt twice. It's been delicious, fun, and just plain feels good to eat, the way probiotics do. I love that I can now make yogurt for my lactose-intolerant child from her lactose-free milk, so she doesn't have to be excluded anymore. And I love that I can make whatever flavor I fancy.

My only complaint is concerning the instructions in the yogurt maker manual. After my experience and the mistakes I have made so far, I would rewrite it to be more clear. (So if you happen to order this same maker and have questions about it, feel free to email me.) Other than that, I have only positive things to say about this product.

I would have to say that my favorite feature about the YoLife yogurt maker is its versatility. As you can see by the picture above, it comes with two covers, so if you prefer to use your own (taller) jars you can. One of my pet peeves is feeling manipulated or restricted by a company I have ordered something from, so I am delighted by this product which gives me the freedom to do things my own way. Oh, and it also comes with a 5-year warranty. What's not to love?

Probiotics

My youngest child was born with lactose intolerance and suffered indigestion issues right from the beginning (even though she was breastfed exclusively). Eventually this problem kept her from sleeping--at all. It took me a very long time to figure out what the trouble was, but when I did and eliminated milk products from her diet, over time her sleep drastically improved until for the first time she even took a nap every day! For any parent who has experienced major sleep loss due to a child's chronic inability to sleep, you will understand when I say this return to sleep felt like a miracle! We are still hopeful that she will grow out of her lactose intolerance, but for now we keep her away from lactose products. However, she still has a more delicate digestive system than the rest of us and frequently needs help to digest and be regular. That is why I have given her daily doses of probiotics for almost two years now. This is how it came about:

About 17 or 18 years ago, a friend of my mom's, who was a vegan, suggested something that she thought would solve my mom's newly-acquired postpartum indigestion troubles. My mom tried it and it worked so well that she used this "treatment" regularly up until a couple years ago (at which point it had quit doing its job, so she started using something else). Knowing of my child's congenital digestion issues, my mom suggested I try it for her.

It's fermented wheat water. Though it may sound gross to those who are unused to trying things of this nature, to me growing up it wasn't a big deal. After all, Dr. Mom always used vitamins, herbs, and herbal teas to treat our families illnesses or keep us healthy, we always had cider vinegar and brewer's yeast on hand (both of which I liked to drink). My dad drank goat milk (sometimes stinky) for a while, and regularly made wheat grass juice during a different phase. So, fermenting wheat in water for a few days, then drinking it mixed with juice concentrate, was not at all odd. (Note: It is only allowed to cure for a few days and the fermentation process does not produce alcohol.)

When I first started giving it to my daughter she was under a year old and devoured it like it felt good to drink. In fact, the first time I tried it was the middle of the night when she awoke yet again, writhing in discomfort from indigestion, exhausted but unable to sleep. I gave her a bottle of the wheat water mixed with some juice concentrate and she practically inhaled a couple ounces, at which point she relaxed in my arms, and within about 10 minutes fell asleep for the rest of the night. Thus my husband christened it "Miracle Juice."

I am now an even bigger believer in the value of "good bacteria," which is what the wheat water provides. I don't know why yet, but for some reason my daughter's body must be unable to produce enough of this on its own.

One healthy food diet explains the need for fermented foods in the diet this way:

"They are an aid to digestion, are high in the B vitamins, and are full of enzymes. They provide an acid environment in the bowel whereby favorable bacteria can thrive and overcome unfavorable bacteria. Re-establishing beneficial bacteria to the colon is a major part of many health programs."

One health expert calls wheat water "Rejuvelac," which sounds better than "fermented wheat water" or "stinky juice" (which is something else we call it). I've found a few different sites with "recipes," but they're all very similar to each other and to mine.

Before I started making it for my daughter, I tried giving her chewable acidophilus wafers. She liked those, and they did seem to help some, but the wheat water is more potent and immediate, I think (like the difference between taking an herb capsule and drinking the herbal tea).

Here is what one website had to say about what fermented wheat water actually produces:

"The sprouting of the grains creates some sugars by enzymatic conversion, and these sugars are then eaten by friendly bacteria (naturally present on the grain hulls) during the 'fermentation' process, creating lots more of the living probiotic bacteria."

And for anyone interested in learning about the amazing-ness of probiotics, read this. Maybe we should all be drinking wheat water!

So, once again, Mom's way is proving best, but it is only now that I am finding out why.