Play a Song for Me Apple Jack, Apple Jack....

I simply love homemade Apple Jack!
It's super easy, doesn't take a lot of special supplies and it carries a wallop at 15% alcohol. At about $2.50 per half gallon, it is also one of the cheapest alcoholic drinks, too. In Washington it is perfectly legal to make you own beer and wine, so here is the cheapest way to do it.

Supplies:
Large size party balloon or 1 regular(dry) condom
1 package of dry yeast 1 cup of sugar, honey, or corn sweetener
1 1/2 gallon bottle of pure apple juice. Make sure the apple juice is real 100% juice. This recipe will not work using the fake juices or punch. Let the juice warm to room temperature.

Measure out about 2 cups and reserve it for the end. Pour your sweetener into the juice and shake it until it is dissolved in the juice. Add the package of dry yeast. Add the reserved juice back to the bottle until the level is about the same as when you started with a full bottle.

Use a pin or needle to poke a hole in the balloon or condom, then stretch the rubber over the mouth of the 1/2 gallon bottle. Run your sink full of hot water and stand the half gallon jug in it until the yeast begins to foam(about 30 minutes).

Once it is foaming you can set it to work in a dark fairly warm(65-75 degree) place. Check on your Apple Jack once a week or so. After 2 weeks give it a good gentle shake to knock some of the bubbles out of it. At 3-4 weeks the Apple Jack should be a pale yellow color and nearly clear. Carefully, pour the wine into another container. Be careful not to disturb the sludge at the bottom any more than you have to. Refrigerate and enjoy!

This recipe makes a very dry apple wine. You can sweeten it to taste with sugar or honey.

Forget the Lettuce! Pass the Stinging Nettles!!!

Sorry for not blogging recently, but the fine spring weather means many extra chores at my house. My garden is in and doing well by providing about 50% of our needed veggies. I expect to be veggie-independent sometime next month as the tomatoes and peppers start ripening. One of the things that people have noticed and commented on is that I am "letting my garden be overrun with weeds!" Then I must explain that not all "weeds" are undesirable and that the ones in my garden are well tended and welcome guests. I have about 10 square feet of Stinging Nettles (and nearly as much Dandelion as I have lettuce.) Why?? Because both Dandelion and Nettle contain more food value than ANYTHING ELSE I could possibly grow. So, early this morning I was out in the yard picking Stinging Nettles. This is the best time of the year to replenish lagging vitamin and mineral levels by munching on the potentially itchy plant.

In folk medicine nettle plants have been used as a diuretic, to build the blood, for arthritis and rheumatism. Externally it has been used to improve the appearance of the hair, and is said to be a remedy against oily hair and dandruff.

The stinging sensation of the leaf hairs is caused by several plant chemicals including formic acid, histamine, serotonin, and choline, that are deactivated by boiling. In addition to these chemicals, nettle leaf is rich in minerals, chlorophyll, amino acids, lecithin, carotenoids, flavonoids, sterols, tannins and vitamins.

You can read more about the benefits of Stinging Nettles Raintree Nutrition

To gather fresh nettles....SUIT UP! Long sleeves and gloves are a must for this project. I prefer Atlas gloves for this chore and all yard work because the rubber palms get a good grip but do not make your hands sweat like other rubber gloves.

I use a plastic grocery bag to gather the nettles so that I can toss it afterward.

Take your Atlas glove and slide your hand up the stem of the Stinging Nettle, stripping off the leaves as you go. Near the top the stem will snap off too. It tends to naturally break at the point where the stem becomes soft enough to eat. Like most greens, Nettles are mostly water so pick 3-4 quarts of leaves and tops to get about 2 cups of edible greens.

Keep your gloves on while you rinse the Nettles!

To cook Stinging Nettles use a large pot with 2 quarts of water. Stuff the Nettles into the pot and bring to a boil. Dispose of the plastic bag. You may now remove the gloves. Allow the Nettles to boil for at least 5 minutes, stir and turn the nettles to insure that it all gets the boiling temperature. This will kill the stinging cells. Allow the Nettles to cool to room temperature.

I use a stick mixer to grind the greens and release more of the water. I can't imagine a kitchen without one of these handy tools!

Strain the greens but reserve the liquid for Green Tea. Squeeze as much liquid out as possible. The Stinging Nettle now looks exactly like cooked spinach and tastes very similar. Serve as is with butter and pepper or cook it into your favorite recipe in place of spinach.

My Favorite Recipes:


Zeljanica (Spinach Pita)

This is a traditional Bosnia fast food. Think of a hot dog cart, only in Bosnia, you would get this instead. Very yummy and very nutritious, especially when made with cooked stinging nettles, a common herb with huge amounts of vitamins and minerals.

2 cups cottage cheese
1 cup cooked, drained and squeezed dry Stinging Nettles
1 egg
2 Tsp of fresh ground black pepper
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24 Sheets of Phyllo
2 tbsp Butter


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Mix cottage cheese, greens, egg and pepper together.

Spread butter on 3 stacked sheets of phyllo dough. Place 1/8 of cottage cheese mixture in the center of one end. Fold the dough length ways to enclose the filling, brush with butter. Roll up the dough to form a square packet. Brush top with butter. Continue this until you have made 8 packets. Arrange on a dry cookie sheet leaving a space around each one. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes until browned and bubbling. Allow to cool nearly to room temperature. This should be accompanied with kiefer (liquid yogurt drink).

Nettle and Navy Bean Soup

4 cups navy beans (soaked 10 hours)
1/2 pound of cooked nettles
3 quarts water
Seasonings to taste

Put all ingredients in a kettle and boil slowly for about 2 hours. Pass through a sieve. Boil for about 1 minute and serve.



Split Pea And Nettle Soup Recipe

5 cups dried peas (soaked 6 hours)
1/2 pound stinging nettles, washed, cleaned, stemmed
1 onion, peeled
3 quarts water
Seasonings to taste


Boil slowly all ingredients together until peas are cooked. This will take about 90 minutes. Pass through a sieve. Bring to a boil and serve with fresh homemade bread rolls.


Nettle Wine

2 quarts Nettle tea (reserved from cooking Nettles)
3.5 lbs granulated sugar
1/2 oz thinly sliced ginger root
7-1/2 pints water
2 lemons
1 tsp yeast nutrient
wine yeast

Thinly peel the lemons and place nettle tea, ginger slices and lemon peelings in 3-quart pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 45 minutes. Juice the lemons and put sugar and lemon juice in primary fermenting vessel. Strain nettle tea mixture and pour over sugar. Stir to dissolve sugar and add remaining water. Cover with sanitized cloth and set aside to cool. When room temperature, add yeast nutrient and yeast. After four days of vigorous fermentation, stir well and transfer to secondary and fit airlock. When wine begins to clear, rack into clean secondary and refit airlock. After 3 months, rack into bottles. This wine is drinkable immediately. [Adapted from C.J.J. Berry's First Steps in Winemaking]

Learn to enjoy what you are given by trying at least 1 recipe using one of Mother Nature's most nutritious freebies!

Let's Create Guest Worker Vacations!

Concerning immigration and the labor shortage: http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?SectionID=67&SubSectionID=619&ArticleID=32041&TM=48183.9

It has been my experience that anytime a problem is converted to an asset, then everyone concerned wins. An example of this is the bio-diesel industry. A waste product is turned into a desirable commodity and everyone benefits. Maybe it is time to change the way we think about Migrant Workers and farm labor.

Basically, farms have a labor shortage and wage issues. Cities around the country and especially Seattle have a gold mine in bored, middle income, people looking for diversion and exercise outside their usual life. These two issues could be brought into one program that allows city people to do farm labor while calling it a vacation.

I estimate that about 4 million people per year drive from Seattle to the cities of Ocean Shores, Westport and Long View to spend $1000 for a weekend. Given the right options many of these vacationers could be diverted into the farm work force.

I read with interest an article on the impending labor shortages in the food production industries due to crack-downs on illegal immigration. I will not address immigration directly in this message, but I want to put forward an idea that could help farms find a new kind of "Guest Worker".

In the 70's and 80's my parents spent the summers picking fruits and vegetables in Eastern Washington. During that time we lived in a tiny travel trailer and parked at the various farms as we picked our way through the harvest season. As a child, I hated the summers we spent in the dusty, dirty camps, often we were the only gringos working in the area. Compared to the families that lived in the "bunkhouses", our little trailer was a mansion. My friends in Western Washington thought my family was insane to spend the summer working this way, but they all loved the truckload of fruit and vegetables my family brought back with them to split between the neighbors. The last 2 weeks of the summer were spent in a home canning frenzy that would provide food all winter long.

Looking back at the time with more wisdom and a bit of nostalgia I realize that the summers we spent as Migrant Workers offered something that is very hard to come by these days: A job with specific goals and the satisfaction of a job well done.

The average American works a job that typically means repetition and vague goals spread over a large group of workers. There is very little chance to start a project and see it through to a successful end. This 9-5 type of career leads to job and financial security, but doesn't fulfill the basic need to create and grow.

Other industries are taking advantage of this basic unrest by offering working vacations and volunteer vacations, the basic idea being: anyone can enjoy hard work for a week or so and then return to their "real" jobs mentally and physically rested.

I would like to point out a typical website that features working vacations:

http://vocationvacations.com/search/results.php?country=4&state=&general=136789&category=&days=&sPrice=&ePrice=

NOTE: These working vacations cost $599 per person and up for 2 days!

Raising wages is not the only way to attract more workers. I believe that farms could attract workers by taking the focus off the wages being offered and concentrating on the other benefits of being a "Guest Worker" for a week or two each year.


I would love to get feedback on this idea and I would love to brainstorm with anyone who is capable to actually making this possible.

Real Changes You Can Make to Lower CO2 Emissions.

Forget fluorescent bulbs, forget lowering your heat settings. These two things are listed as the "easiest ways to lower your carbon footprint", but really these are a drop in the bucket compared to making lifestyle changes.

Change your lifestyle to make a real difference:

1) Move your household to within walking distance of your work. Make sure there is a decent school, grocery store, and transit access also within walking distance. Save the car for long trips or get rid of it entirely.

2) Get rid of lawns, lawnmowers and ornamental landscaping and replace with food crops. An area of garden space 8 feet square can produce all the vegetables needed for a family of 4. Food gardens are tended by hand rather than mowed, saving tons of CO2 emissions per year. If your home doesn't have a lawn, you can still make use of balconies, parking spaces, and roof tops by using the raised bed method of food production. If you are replacing a large lawn then replant with fruit trees, asparagus and other space hogging produce.

3) Support local farmers and learn to do without foods that must travel great distances to reach the market. Pineapples, mangoes, bananas, and oranges are examples of carbon expensive foods. Choose locally grown produce instead, such as apples, kiwi and cherries.

4) Buy fewer electronic toys and shut electronics off by unplugging them or using a power strip rather than leaving them in "Stand-by mode".

5) Reuse materials first and then recycle what is left. Refuse to buy items that are over packaged. Use cloth shopping bags. Take plastic bags back to the store where you got them, many stores will be happy to re-use them. Re-use plastic food boxes rather than buying tupperware. Refill juice bottles with homemade iced tea.

6) Stop buying bottled water. Get a good filter system and re-use the bottles you have.

7) Put up a clothes line and use it as often as possible. Use gray-water to water your garden. Use less detergents and soaps.

8) Donate usable items to charity and shop in charity stores first for items you need.

9) Take care of items so that they will last longer.

10) AFTER you have mastered the first 9 items on this list, then you can worry about fluorescent lighting and turning your heat down 1 degree.

Fruit and vegetables no longer eligible for Vegan label.

Fully 80% of all fruits and vegetables appearing in American grocery stores and markets are pollinated by CAPTIVE BEES. The philosophy of Veganism prohibits the ingestion or use of ANY product that is made from animal (including insects) flesh or is the result of animals being held captive in order to gather products at their expense.

Captive bees are subjected to same types of unethical treatment that is common for all livestock including feedlot situations(hives are moved from orchard to orchard), robbery of their biological food(royal jelly and honey), and substitution of lower quality foods(sugar water and high fructose corn syrup). Recently, more than 25% of the bee hives in the United States have died due to an unidentified problem that has been labeled Colony Collapse Disorder. The disorder only seems to affect captive bees.

Of course all meat products are Non-vegan. Products such as honey, milk and eggs are also considered non-vegan, and now in light of the widespread use of CAPTIVE BEES in all facets of fruit, vegetable and soy bean production, those products are no longer truly Vegan. If a Vegan can't eat honey, then that person should also reject the other products made possible by the captive bee's efforts.

The TRUE Vegan's diet should now consist of ONLY grains and rice(which do not use bee pollination) and water. No other fruit or vegetables qualify unless the grower is certified to be using wild bees exclusively in crop pollination.

Cats, Dogs, and the Vegan Movement.

I have seen a lot of information on Vegan diets for cats and dogs and I think that whole idea is just WRONG! Vegan's shouldn't keep "pets" at all. Holding a dog or cat hostage is no different than holding a chicken or cow hostage. Why not keep chickens for "pets" and then you can justify eating eggs as a by-product of having pet chickens around.

If you think your cat or dog is better off as a pet, you are wrong. In their natural idea of a life, they would have as many babies as possible and eat everything that they could catch. You probably get your pets fixed and feed them "Science Diet"....at least until it was recalled. This is not what nature intended for cats or dogs so it doesn't jive with the Vegan philosophy.

Using the arguement that dogs and cats are "domesticated" is no excuse for keeping them as pets. Sheep are so domesticated that they cannot survive in the wild in most parts of the world. To right that wrong, each of us should keep one as a pet to insure that it is well looked after. If each Vegan did that, then it would be ok to use the wool, since shearing is a requirement for a sheep's health and well being.

Picking and choosing which animals to use and which animals to abuse is part of the over all pattern of denying animal rights. Using 10,000 years of domestication as an excuse to continue the pattern doesn't make it right. Veganism is a choice to stop using and abusing all living creatures, whether the animal is a cow or a cat. Keeping either one as a pet denies that animal a natural and self-directed life.

Keeping a cat or dog and forcing them to exist on corn, rice and vegetables is just plain wrong. Part of being a good keeper is being prepared to feed that animal the food that is most natural and healthful. If you can't do that, then don't have pets. Or, if you must have pets, then pick pets that are naturally vegetarian.

No Vegan can justify owning another creature, period.

A Sad Funeral Announcement.

Dear friends,
It is with the saddest heart that I pass on the following. Please join me in remembering a great icon.

The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71.

Doughboy was buried in a lightly-greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, and Cap'n Crunch. The grave site was piled high with flours as long- time friend, Aunt Jemima, delivered the eulogy, describing Doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded. Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers. He was not considered a very "smart" cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times, he -- even still, as a crusty old man -- was considered a roll model for millions. Toward the end, it was thought he would rise again, but alas, he was no
tart.

Doughboy is survived by his wife, Play Dough; two children, John Dough and Jane Dough; plus they had one in the oven. He is also survived by his elderly father, Pop Tart.

The funeral was held at 3:50 for about twenty minutes.

;-)