I have always loved honey, in all its pure forms – runny honey, solid honey, honeycomb….yum! I grew up in a small English town where most of your produce came from local farmers, including honey so I never knew anything else. The food industry never ceases to surprise me in the ways it tries to…
Mushrooms – merely food, or more?
For thousands of years the people of Asia have eaten mushrooms for both food and medicine. Among them, the mighty Maitake mushroom reigns supreme. Significant research has been done regarding its medicinal benefits and I will elaborate on that later. First of all, know that all mushrooms have nutritional benefits and help us to expand…
Heart Healthy Diets
Let’s start out the New Year with a fresh look at our diets and how we can change them to look after our most vital organ, our heart. Visit http://www.cardiosmart.org/nutrition for more ideas, but, straight from the cardiologist’s desk, these are the key things you should be doing (and we’ll look at each in more…
Air Fryers
With Thanksgiving and Christmas now upon us, we all need to try to eat as healthily as possible. The US diet generally involves a fair amount of fried foods and baked goods in various forms and this season is prolific for both. One solution that allows us to continue to eat these foods while cutting…
Coconut Oil
Like many other foods – eggs and butter to name but two, – coconut oil has had a rather chequered past. Once castigated for its high saturated fat content, coconut oil has in recent years, been given a second life as a healthy fat. And while drinking it by the tablespoon still isn’t a great…
Foraging
Since moving to our 5 acre mini-homestead we are constantly learning about “nature’s bounty”, from the obvious – chestnuts and walnuts falling from the trees, to the more obscure – dandelion, chickweed and plaintain, for instance. I have bought dandelion tea previously, it’s very good for digestion. Now I just make my own. I’ve also…
Ancient Grains
We’ve all heard of them – who could miss them? But who actually uses them, other than buying cereal/bars touting their containment? Amaranth. Spelt. Bulgar. Chia seeds. Farro. Quinoa. Millet. Sorghum. Teff. Freekeh. Kamut. This is not an extensive list, but covers most of the main players. Part of the problem of making such a…
Dem Old Bones
Ok, so we all know that chicken soup – homemade, of course – is purported to have great health benefits, particularly for colds and flu, but have you ever stopped to wonder WHY? Answer – BONE BROTH! The University of Nebraska Medical Center conducted a study to find out exactly what was in bone broth…
