Make your own "Craisens"

We love Craisens (dried sweetened cranberries) and eat them on cereal, salads, I even put them on my glorified peanut butter sandwiches. I'll put that recipe at the end of this post.

Craisens are expensive and since this is the time when fresh cranberries are plentiful, I decided to try drying my own. I figured I'd stir some fresh ones up in a little sugar and toss them in my dehydrator...not! I dried those things for days and they still are fat round berries for the most part. Well, I guess it's time to Google dried cranberries! I found the following from the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Association. I figure those guys would know their stuff. Heat them first - who knew??? Then put in freezer for a couple of hours! I would never have figured that out on my own! So read on...

Servings: 12 ounces Ingredients: 1 (12 oz.) bag of cranberries 2 quarts boiling water 1/4 cup sugar or corn syrup Method:In a bowl, pour boiling water over the cranberries or submerge them in a pot of boiling water with the heat turned off. Let them sit in the water until the skin pops. Do not let the berries boil or the flesh will turn mushy. Drain. If desired, coat the berries with either a light corn syrup or granulated sugar. Transfer the berries to a cooking sheet and place them in a freezer for 2 hours. Freezing the berries helps in breaking down the cell structure promoting faster drying. Put the berries on a mesh sheet in the dehydrator and dry for 10 to 16 hours, depending on the make of the dehydrator, until chewy and with no pockets of moisture. Another method of drying is to turn on the oven for 10 minutes at 350 F. Then place the cranberries on a cookie sheet in the oven, turn off the oven, and let them sit overnight. Store dried cranberries in the freezer. Keep in mind that dried cranberries can be used in place of raisins in recipes! Source: Mary Bell 's "Complete Dehydrator Cookbook"

Now for my Glorified Peanut and Banana Sandwich:
I make these "open Faced"  - one piece of Honey Nut bread or other wholegrain loaf bread. I get mine at Wally World and it's Arnold brand bread. I cover the bread with creamy peanut butter mixed with a teaspoon of whipped honey. An alternate method is to drizzle the whole concoction with honey at the end. Now I add craisens, chopped walnuts, a teaspoon of chia seeds, sometimes raisins sometimes not, I sometimes sprinkle wheat bran on top too. A sprinkle of ground Ceylon Cinnamon is good on top! This one is definitely not gluten free.  It is my husband Bill's favorite sandwich. I served it one night as a sandwich bar to my girlfriends who meet regularly at my house - they were dully impressed!

Coconut Oil and Vitamin E for Your Skin

When women get together the subject of fat, wrinkles and complexion usually come up in the conversation at some point in time. A few weeks ago my friends and I were discussing the food  benefits of coconut oil. One of my friends whom I have known since high school - trust me that's a long time - anyway, Kay said, "I put coconut oil on my face, especially around my eyes, my elbows and knees too." I had noticed that she was looking pretty good lately. Well, I'm no dummy, I tried it. It has been about two months since that conversation and I have noticed a definite difference for the better! I put it on every night right after I wash my face. I actually use a generic cleansing cream that smells like my old fashioned Noxzema. I wash this cleanser off with a warm wash cloth and then apply a little Coconut Oil to my whole face.

The vitamin E has been amazing. I wish I had done before and after pictures of that one. I tend to get little mole-like bumps on my face and even my legs. I had one come up on my forehead that was pink and ugly! I wondered if vitamin E oil might work to reduce it. I put some on this place and also my age spots twice a day. That mole is gone! It took about 2 months but honestly, I woke up one morning and it was not there! It had slowly gotten softer and flatter until it disappeared all together.

Age spots are still there but I think they may be geting lighter. My husband had double knee replacements six weeks ago and here's how the scars look today. They were wide and angry looking when he came home. Vitamin E every day has significantly reduced them. I can't believe he actually let me take this picture. He said, "You know, I don't drop my pants for just anybody"! Got to love him!

Foot Soak Recipe

I found this awsonme blog and recipe on Pinterest. I just had to share it here as well as my pinterest page! here's the Garden Therapy recipe blog link http://gardentherapy.ca/gardeners-herbal-foot-soak-recipe/

Wonder Weed - Dandelion

A friend gave me a box of dandelion tea the other day. She can't drink it because she is nursing her baby and the tea box warned not to use if nursing. I read the label. It's good for your liver and a natural detox. It tasted pretty good too - I added honey and drank it hot.  

Funny thing was that when I opened my email today there was a post about the benefits of Dandelion. I think someone up there is trying to tell me something. 

I have been adding Dandelion leaves to our salads this spring and they are really good. Here are a few other things that I read about this often despised weed:

• The leaves and flowers contain Vitamin C

• The root contains potassium

• The leaves contain iron - helpful for anemia

• The entire plant is high in B complex

• The leaves contain more protein than spinach - who knew!

• The root can be made into a tea, which can help to inhibit 
• bacterial growth in the urinary tract

• All parts of the plant are rich in antioxidants and don't forget about that Dandelion wine!

So instead of trying to kill the Dandelions, eat them or make tea! My mom said she started picking off the flowers when she was walking around her yard - she has much fewer plants than before. makes sense - no flowers - no weeds! So eat a few and pick off the flowers.  

Drink a Cup of Thyme Tea Instead of Coffee and Promote Good Health

Drink a Cup of Thyme Tea Instead of Coffee and Promote Good Health  This links to a very informative post about Thyme: what it's useful for, how to make tea, using it in cooking ... lot's more. I've sold all sorts of Thyme in my little back yard nursery. In fact, I started some cuttings of variegated lemon Thyme under the mist in the greenhouse yesterday.

Things Your Mama Didn't know!

This freaked me out! I always was told to rinse the chicken before cooking - wrong! Oh my Goodness - read this post - I never knew this about flushing the toilet either!

http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/washing-chicken--do-i-really-have-to-do-that--162045546.html

Medicinal Uses for Herbs

I found this helpful little chart on twitter. Thanks @TommiEL67 for giving me permission to use your picture.

The Great Granola Experiment

Now that I'm not working as much,  I have more time to play in the kitchen as well as in the garden. Saving money where ever I can has become more important too. With all that in mind and the fact that we eat granola and yogurt almost every morning, I decided to make my own granola again. I had a really good granola recipe from back in the 70's and I guess if I had wanted to wade through a ton of old recipes I could have found it. But heck, life is an adventure so I figured I could recreate it from memory.

What I came up with turned out pretty good but there were a couple of things I will do different next time. I remembered that the old recipe called for apple sauce, of course oats, nuts and cinnamon. I decided to add brown sugar, raisins, dried bananas and apples (that I had dried last fall) dried cranberries, flax seeds and I used English walnuts instead of the pecans that the original recipe had called for.  The applesauce was cinnamon applesauce so I didn't add extra cinnamon. I started with 8 cups of old fashioned oats and added about half of a 48 oz. jar of apple sauce - this turned out to be too much. I had to cook it way too long to get it to crisp up. Next time I will use one 12 oz. jar instead. I also put mine in baking dishes to cook - ended up taking it out of the oven and spreading out on cookie sheets to finish it up.

I waited till the oat, applesauce, brown sugar and nut mixture was browned and cool before I added the dried fruit. Even with the extra cooking and  too much applesauce the finished product was real good! So here is the recipe I will use next time.

8 cups of old fashioned oats
12 oz. cinnamon applesauce
1/2 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup of chopped walnuts
2 Tablespoons Flax Seeds
Mix all the above in a large mixing bowl until moistened. Spread this mixture onto cookie sheets covered with parchment paper or lightly oiled with vegetable spray. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until lightly browned, stir a couple of times during cooking to keep the bottom from burning.  Cool mixture on the baking sheets. After oat mixture is cool put back into large bowl and add any or all the following:
1 cup raisins
1 cup Craisins
1 cup dried apples (cut into bite size pieces)
1 cup dried bananas
Dried cherries would be good too as well as dried mango or pineapple pieces.

I put enough for us to use for a week in a plastic container and stored the rest in vacuum sealed bags and put them into my freezer to eat later. For less than $10 I made enough preservative free cereal for us to eat for a month; bearing in mind that we normally go through one $3.00 box of store bought granola a week.

Give it a try. It actually doesn't take much time and the results are yummy!