Mint Extract

  I have two different types of mint growing in the yard, and I don't do much with them. This year I decided to make some homemade mint extract. I used a recipe I found on the Mommypotamus blog as a rough guide. I bought some cute Fido jars at TJ Maxx that have a small chalkboard paint label area on them.  I picked about a cup of mint leaves and washed them up. 

    Then I laid them out on a paper towel, covered them with another towel to dry them gently.

   Then I put them in the jar and covered them with rum. Vodka is what was in the original recipe, but I didn't have any. You can use bourbon too. The ratio is roughly 1cup leaves to 1 1/2 cup alcohol.

  
 Close the lid and leave it alone for about a month. You can test it then, and if it's minty enough strain out the leaves. It should last indefinitely. 
  I plan to use it in hot chocolate, whipped cream, and brownies. Yum!

Acupuncture

   So, I had a session of acupuncture. I was a little nervous, as I didn't know what to expect. All I knew was there would be needles!

We pulled up to the building and Corey and Peyton dumped me out and went shopping. 
  The door to the center for healing and wholeness offices had a sign asking that people take their shoes off when they entered. The man at the front desk was a 40 something white guy with long hair pulled back in a ponytail. Sure enough, he was the acupuncturist. He actually has a masters degree in acupuncture so I trusted that he knew his stuff. We went back to a room and went over what I wanted treated and how my health was. This was the cot I'd lay on. My knees rested on the foam roll, and I didn't get a pillow.

    He stepped out for a minute while I hopped up on the cot. I got to leave my clothes on, thankfully. I was wondering what you wear when you get acupuncture. I just pulled my shirt up enough to expose my abdomen and rolled my jeans up to my knees. 

     This is a picture of the supplies he had ready. Needles.

  The actual placement of the needles wasn't bad at all. I didn't even feel most of them, and the ones I did feel were just a mild pinch. After he had them all in he put a heat lamp over my abdomen, turned on some music, and dimmed the lights. He told me I needed to lay there for about 20 minutes and he'd come check on me in about 5 minutes. So...as soon as he left I took stock of where all the needles were. I had one in the top of my head. One in each ear. eleven in my abdomen, five in each leg/foot, and three in each arm/hand. I laid there and tried to relax. I found myself taking very shallow breaths. He came back and asked me if I felt any warmth or tingling around any of the needles. Nope. Evidently that's an indication that you are getting increased energy and circulation to those points. In an effort to make me feel better he said sometimes it takes a couple of sessions to get that sensation. He told me to take very deep breaths and left me alone for the rest of the session. Its hard to breath deeply when you feel like you have a porcupine pressing on your belly. 
    
   During his assessment he felt my neck and said I had a huge knot on the left side and he'd do a muscle release after the acupuncture. He took out the needles in my head and ears and a few on the upper belly. Then he put some oil on my neck that was a blend of camphor, peppermint, and cinnamon to help my muscles relax and began the muscle release. It was seriously uncomfortable. He applied strong pressure to my neck, asked me to exhale, and pressed in and down toward my shoulders. With each exhale he'd move down about an inch. Then he started at the top and did it again. My neck did feel much better after he was done. 

    So, when it was all said and done I paid, made another appointment, and he gave me a bottle of water and said to push fluids. I didn't really feel much different after the acupuncture, I guess I was hoping to hear angels sing or something. They recommend getting about 5 treatments a week apart, but It's hard for me to wrap my head around making the 6 hour round trip every week. I'm going again this week because Lauren has another Cross Country meet at a town not too far from there. I'm also getting an integrative assessment by another practitioner while I'm there. They assess your health and diet and make recommendations for dietary changes and supplements. I am already avoiding wheat and sugar, and I've been drinking kombucha and water keifer soda so it will be interesting to see what else they suggest. 

Kombucha

     In the past few weeks I've become very interested in probiotics and increasing my gut health. I had to go on a 10 day course of two different antibiotics and I need to repopulate my gut! I remember my grandma brewing kombucha when I was little. She had containers of tea with these huge gelatinous things on top all over her kitchen. I did a little research and learned that kombucha is loaded with probiotics, enzymes, and amino acids. I wanted to get a bottle and see if I could tolerate the taste before I committed to buying a SCOBY and brewing my own. I was lucky enough to find a local store that carried raw, organic kombacha. It tasted like fizzy vinegar. Hmmm. Not great, but I could tolerate it. I joined a Facebook group called Kombacha Nation and did a little digging to see if I could grow my own SCOBY from this bottle of store bought. The other option was to have a member of the group mail me one, or order a freeze dried one from a retailer like Cultures For Health. You can even buy them on Ebay!
     It sounded to me like it could be done, so I brewed some plan black tea, added a half a cup of sugar, let it cool, and poured in the kombucha. I covered it with a coffee filter and rubber band to let air in but icky things out, and covered it with a dishtowel as it does better in the dark. I expected it to take about three weeks to grow a SCOBY.
    I asked on the Facebook group about starting my own, and they directed me to a you tube video. In the video she sterilized a mason jar with boiling water, let it cool, poured in a bottle of kombucha and let it work. 
     The SCOBY is the organism that creates the kombucha. It stands for Symbiotic Colony Of Bacteria and Yeast. It lives on the sugar in the sweet tea and as it eats it it ferments the tea. This process is the first fermentation. After a few days you pour off the liquid and put the scoby and a cup or so of the kombacha into a new batch of sweet tea to start the process again. With the kombucha you made you can do a second fermentation. you add juice or fruit and put it in an airtight container for a couple of days. It becomes a carbonated, flavored drink that is actually pretty good! I tried one from the store that was blueberry ginger and it was delicious. 
     My mason jar of plain kombucha grew a beautiful SCOBY
 in 10 days.

     My jar with the tea and kombucha mixture is also growing one, but it has a much more yeasty, bubbly appearance and isn't so solid. I'm going to give it another week or so. 
     In articles I've read kombucha is supposed to help with everything from colitis to arthritis, so we'll see. I've also been brewing water keifer soda, but that's another post for another day!  I'll do an update as I get a little more experience and try a few flavors.
 

Blueberry Picking

     There was a fantastic crop of wild blueberries this year. The bugs did really well too, so going berry picking was not on the top of my to-do list. Corey, Peyton, Nora and I went south of town a few weeks ago though, Peyton was trying to earn enough money to buy a lizard so she wanted to pick some to sell.

     It's not easy to pick a gallon even when the berries are good.

     The berries in the purple bucket Nora picked all by herself. Then she spilled them, and ate all the rest.

     It really is beautiful out in the woods.

    All cleaned. That's the worst part of the whole experience. Peyton and I pick pretty clean, but Corey puts the whole blueberry plant in his bucket.

The Chickens are nearly grown.

   The chickens are getting so big. They are so fun to watch. If one finds a bug or blade of grass, it takes off running and all the rest chase it. They are so entertaining.

  This one had just pecked at Nora's face. That's what the weird expression is for.

   All the colors of the rainbow.......Sort of.

     These two found a little depression in the dirt and used it for a bathtub.

     There was lots of scratching and fluffing the dirt. 

 

     They get to be free range during the day now, and they love it. 

 

    He's avoiding the photographer.
 

     They are pretty independent now, and don't much care to be held and petted, but they can still be lured close with food. 

 

     Since we have mostly roosters, there are quite a few stand-offs every day. Everybody's a tough guy....

 

    She loves her chickens.

     The turkens are getting cuter, they've grown a patch of feathers on the front of their necks.  I don't really know how much bigger they need to get before we butcher, I guess a few more weeks. I'm really dreading that part of this experience.

Tea for...Ewww....

  My Mom and Dusty have a huge mint patch in their garden, so one day Peyton and I decided we should try to make some homemade mint tea. We picked a bunch and washed it up. 

    

    Then we picked the leaves from the stem and put them in a regular coffee filter.

     We tied it up with dental floss.

    Popped it in a cup..

     And used our single serve coffee pot to get hot water.

     We let it steep for about 10 minutes..

 
  And it was gross. Even after adding a liberal amount of honey it really had no flavor. I thought maybe the leaves have to be dry first so I took the leaves we had left and put them on a cookie sheet on the deck where the hot sun would hit them.  The strong wind also hit them, and when I went to check on them all but a few had dried up and blown away. This experiment was pretty much an epic fail all the way around. I'm going to try to make homemade mint extract at some point, hopefully with better success!!



 

Freezing Tomatoes

    Organic tomatoes are expensive, and hard to find in our area. I would love to be an expert canner, but I struggle with it. I've dumped out more jars of food that I ruined than I like to admit. Therefore, my preserving method of choice is freezing. One year I froze my tomatoes whole, but then you have big chunks of peeling in whatever dish you prepare, and your uses are limited. Last year I used the following method and it worked great. It is really quick, today it took me less than 20 minutes start to finish. I put a pot of water on to boil and went to pick tomatoes. I washed the tomatoes and put them in the boiling water for about a minute, just until the skins started to split.

    Take them out and let them cool for a few minutes or you'll regret it.

    I planted Romas and another kind that I didn't keep the tag for, so I can't remember the name. Any kind will do.

     Cut the tomatoes in half and remove the stem.

     Dice.

  
     I added all the tomatoes to a bowl and mixed the two types together.

     I labeled quart Ziploc freezer bags and added about two ladles to each bag.

  Press as much air out of the bags as you can. You can either freeze them flat or have all the tomatoes at the bottom. I like to put them all in a container together in the freezer for better organization.  Happy preserving!