Category: How-To / DIY (Page 12 of 14)

How To Decaffeinate Your Tea

March 9, 2010 / Lindsey / 7 Comments

I just love tea! Something about having a hot cup of tea in my hands is very comforting. When I lived for a short while in New Zealand, one of my favorite things to do was make myself a cup of tea, and take it outside into the chilly grayness of the late-winter afternoon and with one hand pull up little weeds from the flower beds while sipping steaming tea from the other hand. That’s a fond memory I’ll never forget.

Anyway, over the past few years I’ve become less and less tolerant of caffeinated tea. Caffeine used to do absolutely nothing to me, so I could drink it and not notice anything one way or the other. But gradually it began to affect me in a negative way. I stay away from any caffeinated drinks now because they make me feel jittery and nauseated (too much strong dark chocolate also has the same effect).

But I love black tea with cream…especially Earl Grey. And the kitchen at work is always stocked with tea bags, hot water, and half & half. But the tea bags are fully-caffeinated English Breakfast black tea, Earl Grey, and green tea. What to do? DIY decaffeination! Here’s my method:

1. Put a teabag into your mug. Fill the mug with very hot (or boiling) water. (Fill the mug a quarter full, half full, or totally full…it doesn’t matter.)

2. Let the teabag sit in the water for 30 seconds.

3. Pour out the water (but keep the teabag!)

4. Now you’re ready to brew your actual cup of tea; fill your mug with very hot (or boiling) water, steep your teabag for as long as you prefer, add milk, cream, or sugar if you want, and enjoy!

I’ve been decaffeinating my own tea for a few years now, and this method really works for me. Caffeine is very water soluble and most of it leaches into the water within the first 30-45 seconds of brewing your tea. I’ve read that this method removes about 80% of the caffeine…about the same as the pre-decaffeinated tea that you can buy at the store. (In fact I like how the little “pre-brew” process softens the bitter bite of the tea.)

Now, I’ve read some silly debates about using hot water versus boiling water…and how you “must never” use this method with tea bags — only with loose tea, and so on. In my opinion, it’s baloney. If the water is hot enough to make tea, it’ll work. If you use tea bags, it’ll work. If you use loose tea, it’ll work.

I use this method daily, though I do get some strange looks in the office kitchen from people who wonder why I’m standing idly at the counter, staring into space with a half-full mug of tea in my hands!

In any case, it’s a trick that definitely comes in handy!

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How to Make Your Own Cat Food

February 4, 2010 / Lindsey / 42 Comments

Ingredients for raw cat food, ready to be mixed.

Several months ago, as I dug deeper into researching nutrition and nourishing foods for myself and my family, I started getting suspicious about the bagged cat food we were feeding the family cat. Feeding her dried kibbles day after day seemed similar to feeding someone nothing but breakfast cereal (high-heat processed “meal-in-a-bag”), and I wondered how much nourishment our precious Liz was really getting.

As I began my research, I realized that the pet food industry has done a really great job of tricking us into thinking that all we need to do is buy bags of their “nutritionally complete” food and our pets will be set for life.

But as you might imagine, optimum nutrition cannot be obtained from something in a bag, no matter how good the brand may be. And although there are some good, responsible manufacturers out there, much of the pet food sold is made from very low-quality (read: “scary”) ingredients including animal parts that are left over from the meat packing industry, and sick animals that are not fit for human consumption. It’s garbage, really, that they are hawking to us…under the guise of “complete nutrition” for our precious animal companions. Just do a google search on “what’s really in pet food” to read all the gory details. (Or not! 🙂 )

Pets need real food, just as the rest of the family does. In the wild, the ancestors of today’s cats and dogs ate raw meat, gnawed on bones, and ingested the stomach contents of their prey (which rounded out their diet with small amounts of plant matter). Bagged/canned pet food is a new invention; elderly members of my family remember simply feeding their pets “scraps from whatever the family ate.” Many people out there (including myself) feel that processed pet foods cause disease in our pets, just as processed foods cause disease in humans.

And while some premium brands of pet food might list some wonderful, whole-food ingredients on the label, the fact is that the food has been highly processed with heat, which kills or denatures many of the beneficial components of each ingredient, such as enzymes, amino acids, beneficial bacteria, and heat-sensitive vitamins.

So after realizing that Liz probably wasn’t getting a whole lot of health-promoting benefits from her food, I began experimenting with raw, homemade cat food. Admittedly, I was a little reluctant to do the whole homemade pet food thing, and there were some rough patches of trial and error while I was getting the recipe just right so that Liz would be excited about eating it. Right now, half of her diet is homemade raw food, and half is kibbles-from-a-bag (we usually feed Katz-n-Flocken brand, purchased at the local health food store). Even with just half of her diet being the homemade food, we have seen definite improvements in her energy level (she is 9 years old, but has gotten that kitten energy and playfulness back), and her coat is also more lustrous. Now that I’ve finally gotten her “custom recipe” ironed out, I would like to ease her into eating a 100% homemade-food diet.

And yep, it’s more work, and if your cat only tolerates straight meat and doesn’t like the addition of grains or eggs (which are much cheaper than meat!), it will probably be a little more expensive than a good quality bagged food. However, I really do believe the benefits are worth it.

Here’s my cost breakdown for Liz’s raw-meat-only diet:

The supplements and vegetables add a small cost, of course, but in terms of the main ingredient (turkey) … 2lbs of turkey (mixed with 10-20% vegetables) makes about 43 rounded tablespoon-sized biscuits. Liz is a 10-lb cat, and if she were eating a 100% home made diet of turkey (and other meats & fish), she would eat about 3.5 – 4 biscuits a day. This means that the 43 biscuits would last about 10-14 days. I stock up when the natural, antibiotic-free turkey is on sale for $3/lb, but normally it is $6/lb. This means that it could cost anywhere between $3 and $6 a week to feed Liz a 100% raw turkey diet. At most, that would be less than a dollar a day! Of course, variation in meats is highly recommended, but this is just to give you an idea. And if your cat likes grains in their food, then you can certainly stretch your meat further and the meals would be less expensive. To me, though, this is actually not expensive — and besides, Liz is SO worth it! 🙂

If you’d like to read further, this is a good article to begin with: Trends in Home-Prepared Diets for Pets.

Of the books I read on this subject, these were my two favorites:

Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats, by Richard Pitcairn, DVM, PhD

Herbs for Pets, by Mary Wulff-Tilford & Gregory Tilford

This is also a very interesting book:

Pottenger’s Cats, by Francis M. Pottenger, M.D. (For a concise synopsis of the book, click here.)

Here are two other books that have information on feeding a homemade diet:

Cat Care, Naturally, by Celeste Yarnall

The New Natural Cat, by Anitra Frazier

Armed with information and ideas from the books mentioned above, I have finally developed a recipe that Liz really likes. Each cat is different and each one will have likes and dislikes. Liz doesn’t like grains or eggs added to her food. Her stomach, like mine, doesn’t do well with overly rich foods. She enjoys beef but barfs it up immediately, so she doesn’t get beef anymore. She tries to like lamb, but just can’t bring herself to eat it, so we pretty much feed her just raw turkey and chicken (frozen for at least 2 weeks to kill any nasties), as well as fresh and canned wild salmon. Of course, a variety of meat and fish is recommended, but if your cat is picky, do the best you can! Luckily if your cat won’t eat a particular meat concoction you’ve developed, you can enjoy it instead! (Thus my recipe for Italian-Style Lamb Meatloaf!)

One trick I’ve learned is that replacing about 1 teaspoon of the fat in the recipe with bacon grease is a great way to make the raw food more appealing, if your cat is having trouble loving it.

Also, if you decide to “go homemade” then that’s wonderful! But if you don’t, that’s okay too. If you decide not to go homemade, one thing you CAN do is give your kitty some healthful table scraps that s/he really enjoys: meat, fish, eggs, cream, cheese, fruits, and vegetables. (Liz loves corn and edamame, and can never have enough cantaloupe!) I think that our modern-day veterinarians have led us astray in telling us not to give table scraps to our animals. I think it’s a wonderful treat for them, and also much more nourishing to their bodies than kibbles or canned food. And it’s what household pets have lived on for hundreds of years!

How To Make Your Own Cat Food, (c) The Herbangardener

Liz

Here’s my recipe:

Lindsey’s Basic Homemade Cat Food Recipe

1 lb ground turkey or chicken or a 15-oz can of salmon with juice. (You can feed the meat either raw or cooked, but raw is definitely the preferred choice. I buy organic or at least humanely-raised, no-antibiotic meat. It costs me about $5 to $6 a pound, but if it’s on sale, I stock up! I also freeze mine for at least 2 weeks to kill any bacteria.)

1 1/2 tsp KAL brand Bone Meal (comes from bones of New Zealand cattle)

1 tsp Healthy Powder *see end of post for Healthy Powder recipe

1 or 2 Tbsp fat (I use olive oil, coconut oil, butter, or a mix. Replacing about 1 teaspoon of fat with bacon grease will often make biscuits more appealing to your kitty!)

300-400 IU vitamin A, crushed to a fine powder

1/3 of the contents of a Taurine capsule (optional if feeding raw meat, but I usually add it anyway)

Contents of 1 vitamin E capsule

10%-20% vegetables (optional). I just eye the amount, compared to the amount of meat that’s in the bowl. For Liz, I use very finely shredded raw zucchini (frozen works too), or steamed & mashed winter squash or carrots, or cooked organic corn (since she loves corn). Vegetables aren’t actually necessary, if the cat won’t tolerate them. Unless your cat loves veggies, you’ll probably have to chop them very finely or puree them in order to sneak them in. Other vegetable ideas are potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, peas, green beans, etc.

Fish Oil: No matter what kinds of meat I’m using, I also squeeze in a few capsules of good quality fish oil (Carlson’s brand is nice) or add about 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon of Blue Ice Royal Fermented Cod Liver Oil/Butter Oil blend flavor-free gel (I definitely prefer & recommend Blue Ice brand Fermented Cod Liver Oil/Butter Oil blend. The Weston A. Price Foundation website has good information about that, here.)

I mix all this up (with my hands…it’s easier), and drop by tablespoon-sized scoops onto a cookie tray, and freeze. Once frozen, I transfer the “biscuits” into a freezer bag.

Each day, we take a couple biscuits out of the freezer and put them into a small tupperware container in the fridge. By the next morning, they’ve thawed and are ready to eat. We generally feed one biscuit in the morning, and one later in the day (although if we were feeding her 100% on the home made food, we’d likely feed 3.5 – 4 biscuits a day). At the morning feeding, we then transfer a couple more biscuits from the freezer to the fridge, so they’ll be ready for the next day.

Meat "biscuits" ready to be put into the freezer

My recipe above does not include grains or eggs because Liz doesn’t like those in her food. But your cat might! Below is one of the actual recipes from Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats:

Dr. Pitcairn’s Poultry Delight

1 cup dry millet (3 cups cooked) (cook in chicken broth for more flavor)

2 large eggs

2 lbs (4 cups) ground turkey or chicken (or lean chuck, lean heart, lean hamburger, liver, giblets, fish, or other lean meats)

1 Tbsp Healthy Powder *see below for Healthy Powder recipe

1 Tbsp Animal Essentials Calcium, or a rounded 1 ½ tsp of powdered eggshell, or 2 tsp KAL brand bone meal

4 Tbsp fat: butter, lard, olive oil, virgin coconut oil, or a combo

10,000 IU vitamin A

100-200 IU Vitamin E

1 tsp fresh vegetable with each meal (optional)

500 mg taurine (optional)

Bring 2 cups of water to a boil. Add the millet; cover, simmer 20-30 minutes or until the water is absorbed. You may need to add a little more water during cooking. When millet is soft, stir in the eggs to let them set a bit from the heat. Mix in the remaining ingredients. Yields about 8 cups. Each day, feed Small cats about 2/3 cup…Medium cats, 1 cup..Large cats, 1 2/3 cups.

*Dr. Pitcairn’s Healthy Powder

2 cups nutritional yeast

1 cup lecithin granules

1/4 cup kelp or alfalfa powder

1/4 cup KAL brand bone meal or 5 tsp eggshell powder

1,000 mg ground vitamin C

Mix together and store in the fridge or freezer.

One final word — if your cat doesn’t seem to like the homemade food, don’t despair. In Dr. Pitcairn’s book, there’s a great chapter (“Helping Your Pet Make the Switch”) about introducing homemade food and what to do if your pet turns up its nose!

I do hope you’re inspired, as I have been, to incorporate some nourishing foods into your pet’s diet — or if you already feed home cooked meals, please leave a comment and tell us more about that! I’d love to hear feedback from people who have made the switch!

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From Trash to Treasure: Chocolate-Dipped Candied Orange Peel

January 27, 2010 / Lindsey / 8 Comments

Chocolate-Dipped Candied Orange Peel, (c) The Herbangardener

First of all, I have to say that since I made these chocolate-dipped candied orange peels over the weekend, I have NOT been able to stop eating them — they’re just the perfect combination of chocolate and orange, a flavor combination which I love. They are just SO GOOD!

And I can’t get over that they’re made with the orange peels that you’d normally toss into the trash or compost heap! Besides that, the fact that they’re dipped in chocolate means that you stretch your chocolate further, while still getting your chocolate fix! All in all, a delightful & unusual treat that can be made for not much money at all.

Chocolate-Dipped Candied Orange Peel, (c) The Herbangardener

Don't toss 'em...Eat 'em!

Start by saving your orange/mandarin orange/tangelo/clementine peels. I store mine in a sealed container in the fridge for a few days while collecting enough to use. You can store them in the freezer, but if they’re in there too long the texture suffers and the peels become mealy; I like to stick with the fridge.

Also, I use peels from organic mandarin oranges. I feel it’s important that the peels be organic, since the highest concentration of pesticides is present in the peels of conventionally grown fruit.

First you’ll cook your orange peel in boiling water for about 15 minutes. This seems to mellow out the bitterness. Then you’ll candy it with a honey-water solution (takes about an hour), let the orange peels cool (10 minutes), and then dip them into melted chocolate and refrigerate for about 10 minutes until set. Easy!

Here’s the recipe:

Chocolate-Dipped Candied Orange Peel

2 -3 cups of orange peels, cut into pieces (I used mandarin orange)

1/4 cup water

1/3 cup honey (or 1/2 cup regular sugar or rapadura)

About 2/3 to 3/4 cup chocolate chips (I used basic semisweet chocolate chips, but another idea is to chop up a special bar of chocolate)

First, put the orange peel into a pan and cover with cold water (you’ll use the 1/4 cup of water & honey a little later). Bring to a boil and boil gently until the peel is soft, about 15 minutes. Drain.

Now, bring the 1/4 cup of water and honey to a boil. Add the peel. Boil gently on low heat, uncovered, stirring occasionally. This takes about an hour. When the peel is sodden and the syrup is almost gone from the bottom of the pan, take the peels out and put them onto a cookie sheet to cool.

When the syrup is almost gone, the peel is done.

Transfer the wet peel onto a cookie sheet to cool.

While the peels are cooling, put your chocolate into a double boiler to melt over hot water. (Don’t melt chocolate over direct heat because it tends to burn. I don’t have a double boiler, so instead I just use a metal bowl set over a small pan of simmering water.)

When the chocolate has melted, dip the lower half of each orange peel into the chocolate and set on a cookie sheet. (You can line the cookie sheet with wax paper, but I didn’t.)

Chocolate-Dipped Candied Orange Peel, (c) The Herbangardener

Put the cookie sheet into the fridge for 10-15 minutes to allow the chocolate to set. After cooling in the fridge, the peels will come off just fine with a flexible metal spatula. Though, if you don’t have a flexible metal spatula, you may want to use the wax paper so that you can just peel them off. If they don’t come off very easily, allow the cookie sheet to sit at room temperature for several minutes; they should peel right off then.

I found that storing them at room temperature was just fine, as long as you don’t put a lid on the container; I noticed that they got a little soggy if I kept the lid on. But if having an open container of chocolate orange peels on your counter is just too tempting (uhh, yeah!), you can put them in a sealed container in the fridge — they don’t seem to get soggy then. You can also just as easily store them in the freezer (I have some in the freezer right now), and snack on them directly from there.

Since this recipe produces a large tray full of decadent treats made with what would otherwise be trash…I feel that it deserves a place in this week’s Pennywise Platter Carnival over at The Nourishing Gourmet.

How to Make Snow Ice Cream

December 2, 2009 / Lindsey / 10 Comments

Having been born and raised here in Colorado, I’ve had lots of wonderful experiences in the snow over the years. I love the snow! Sledding, shoveling the sidewalk, cross country skiing, building snowmen, and getting excited when the really big storms hit. And…making snow ice cream! That’s a sweet memory from all the way back to early childhood. It’s awfully easy, and the main ingredient is free! But it’s also a special treat that can only be made when it snows enough! This is how my mom and I have always made it:

Snow Ice Cream

Fresh, clean snow

Milk (Whatever you have. Whole milk is nice, and some cream is even nicer.)

Maple syrup (or sugar)

Vanilla extract

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First, set out your ingredients. You’ll want to work fast once you bring the snow inside.

Once it has snowed at least a couple inches, go outside with a large bowl or pan. Scoop up the cleanest snow you can find, being careful to not scrape along the grass…and avoiding dog pee, if applicable!

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Now, there aren’t any measurements for this recipe. You just sort of eye it, mix it up, taste it, and adjust. Into the snow, pour some milk, add some sugar (any sugar will work, though I especially like maple syrup for making snow ice cream), and then add a little vanilla.

Mix it together with a spoon and taste. Add more snow, milk, sugar, or vanilla if needed, until it tastes good to you. You’ll get a feel for the ingredient amounts once you make it.

Serve it up and enjoy immediately before it melts. It doesn’t really hold up in the freezer since it will pretty much freeze solid. Enjoy this ephemeral, wintertime treat!

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Make Your Own Bubbies Pickles

November 15, 2009 / Lindsey / 370 Comments

Have you ever had Bubbies? It’s the brand against which all other pickles are judged, at least in our house! My hubby is a huge fan. And if you like garlic, you’ll probably appreciate Bubbies, too. They’re not made with vinegar, but rather are made the old-fashioned way, though lacto-fermentation in brine. (I have a Bubbie’s Bread & Butter Chips pickle recipe too, which is made with vinegar.)

So for my very first attempt at homemade pickles, I turned the Bubbies jar upside down, identified which spices were in there, selected what looked like a good lacto-fermented pickle recipe, and hoped for the best as I sacrificed a couple of humongous garden cucumbers for the Great Pickle Experiment.

The results were shocking…in that I was shocked I had made something so tasty and convincing on the very first try. I certainly had expected the worst. In fact, I thought Hubby was being sarcastic when he tried the first one and told me they were awesome. He couldn’t stop talking about them! I was skeptical until I tried one, too. YO! Later, I did a taste test of my pickles compared to Bubbies; I actually liked mine even better! In the photo above, I used my large garden cucumbers, but to get the true Bubbies experience, go for the really small cukes; I find these at the farmer’s market, or at ethnic grocery stores. Go for organic if you can (which would be an upgrade from Bubbies, since theirs aren’t organic). Of course the really big cucumbers are fine to use, but because of their size, their insides won’t be quite as firm and crunchy as a smaller cucumber would be, and their skin will be a little tougher.

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Lindsey’s Bubbies Pickle Recipe:

1 gallon glass jar or ceramic crock

1/2 a gallon of warm water (tap water is fine)

A handful of fresh, clean grape leaves, oak leaves, or cherry leaves (optional — they supply tannins to keep the pickles crunchy) (UPDATE: raspberry & blackberry leaves work too, but have a stronger flavor than grape leaves)

3-4 lbs of cucumbers (small to medium is ideal, but if all you have is large, cut them into spears)

5-6 Tbsp non-iodized sea salt. I use Redmond RealSalt brand unrefined sea salt. (I usually prefer 6 Tbsp. Using 5 Tbsp of salt will yield a less salty pickle that my hubby prefers, however you may have to contend with more white film, or “kahm yeast,” on the surface of the brine during fermentation. More about kahm yeast in the instructions.)

2 – 3 heads of garlic, separated into cloves, peeled, & roughly chopped

3 Tbsp whole dill seed

2 Tbsp whole coriander seed

1 tsp whole mustard seed (brown or yellow, doesn’t matter)

1 tsp whole peppercorns

1 tsp fennel seed

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

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Ingredients for Homemade Bubbies Pickles. My homegrown garlic was a little small, so I used 4 heads.

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Directions:

Rinse the cucumbers, making sure the blossoms are removed. Soak them in very cold water for a couple hours (if they’re not straight off the vine).

In a separate clean jar (not the one you’ll be using for the pickles), dissolve the salt into the 1/2 gallon of warm water. Set aside — this brine will be one of the last things you’ll add.

Into the clean, gallon jar/crock you’ll be using for the pickles, drop in the garlic, dill, coriander, mustard, peppercorns, fennel, and red pepper flakes.

Then, put the cucumbers into the jar. If you’ve sliced large cucumbers into spears, pack the spears vertically into the jar.

Pour the salt water solution (a.k.a. the brine) over the cucumbers.

Now, place the cleaned grape/oak/cherry/raspberry/blackberry leaves into the jar. My jar has a somewhat narrow mouth, so the grape leaves form a nice plug at the top of the jar so the cucumbers (which will rise to the top after you pack them in) don’t go above the brine.

You want your cucumbers (and leaves) to be completely submerged in the brine at all times. If they’re sticking up above the brine, they’ll get moldy. If your jar has a wide mouth, you may need to use a couple of plates to keep everything submerged. Another idea is to nest a smaller glass jar into the opening of the larger jar to keep everything down. Or, use a scrubbed & sterilized rock.

Homemade Bubbies Pickles, (c) The Herbangardener

Using nested jars to keep everything submerged.

Fermentation rock, Homemade Bubbies Pickles, (c) The Herbangardener

Another idea: use a rock to keep everything submerged.

If the brine still doesn’t cover the cucumbers, make more brine solution using: 1 scant Tbsp sea salt to one cup of water. Cover your jar with its lid (loosely), or with a cloth to keep bugs & dust out. If you see a thin film of white scum growing on the surface of the water, just skim it off as often as you can, but don’t worry if you can’t get it all. This is “kahm yeast;” it won’t harm anything, but do try to keep up with it otherwise it can affect the flavor of your pickles.

Sometimes, during pickle making, some of your garlic cloves will turn blue. This is not a problem. The Colorado Extension Service website says this about blue garlic:

Blue, purple or blue-green garlic may result from immature garlic or garlic that is not fully dry, from copper pans, or from a high amount of copper in the water. Garlic contains anthocyanin, a water-soluble pigment that under acid conditions may turn blue or purple. A blue-green color also may develop in pickles made with stored red-skinned garlic. Except for blue-green color resulting from an abnormally high copper-sulfate concentration, such color changes do not indicate the presence of harmful substances.

Your pickles will be ready after 1-4 weeks — depending on the temperature in your house. Our pickles are usually ready after 10 days on the counter in our warm apartment (average of 80-85°F) in late summer. Every couple days, do a taste test of your pickles. They’re ready when they taste done to you! Once they taste done, transfer the jar into the fridge to slow fermentation. Once they’ve fermented and are in the fridge, you can remove the grape/oak/cherry/raspberry/blackberry leaves and you don’t need to worry as much about the pickles being completely submerged in the brine.

Enjoy! These will last months and months in your fridge. I once kept a batch around for 9 months and it was still good.

And the brine is good stuff too; I like to drink it straight. It’s full of beneficial bacteria and good for your digestion! Since it’s salty, it would be especially good after a workout.

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