Self-Reliance Expo: The School of Natural Healing
The director of The School of Natural Healing, David W. Christopher, along with his team will be attending the Self-Reliance Expo in Mesquite, Texas this weekend in booths 306-308. He will be lecturing on “Self-Reliant Health” at 4 PM on Friday, and also 3 PM on Saturday.
Having been raised in the simple ways of natural health, David’s interests grew beyond his university study and in 1974 he focused on the discipline of Herbology. In 1979 he became a Master Herbalist and the director of The School of Natural Healing.Today, thousands safely apply the Christopher methodology thanks to his directorship.
David is an international lecturer and was instrumental in establishing England’s College of Herbs and Natural Healing. He is the author of An Herbal Legacy of Courage and various articles on herbs and nutrition have been published in many magazines. David and his wife Fawn host a weekly radio program, “A Healthier You“.
The School of Natural Healing has five college which offer courses:
- College of Aromatherapy
- College of Herbal Medicine
- College of Homeopathy
- College of Iridology
- College of Reflexology
David W. Christopher is pictured in the blue polo on the right.
Cast Iron Collection Contest, Inspired by Backwoods Home Magazine Article: Cast Iron Loaf Pans from Breakfast to Dessert
The following article from Backwoods Home Magazine has inspired a contest over this next week. We are looking for pictures of your cast iron cookware. Please post your pictures to the Self-Reliance Expo Facebook Fanpage. The winner will receive a FREE year subscription to Backwoods Home Magazine. The article is available online and in the print edition, and was written by Matt & Linda Morehouse.
“Cast iron loaf pans are not just for bread. Nearly as versatile as the cast iron 10-inch (#8) covered skillet, the venerable cast iron loaf pan will truly see you from breakfast to dessert — and all points in between.
“Want proof? Here are four recipes ideal for cast iron loaf pans. One is for breakfast, one for anytime bread, one for a dinner entrée, and one for dessert.
(Click on the images to visit the original article at Backwoods Home Magazine)
Quick Video-Tips for the Urban Homesteader
The following clips are from Christropher Nyerges‘ appearance on National Geographic’s “Doomsday Preppers” show. He’s a smart guy who is also extremely resourceful…he should be, considering he’s living in Los Angeles, California! Christopher also attended the Self-Reliance Expo in Salt Lake City, Utah last fall, promoting his School of Self-Reliance.
Meet Christopher Nyerges Video
Make a Survival Bag
How to Start a Fire
How to Forage
Using Nature to Heal
You will be able to watch this season’s new series premiere of Doomsday Preppers on the National Geographic channel Tuesday, February 7, 9 PM ET/PT.
Self-Reliance Expo’sed Radio Show, Friday, January 28, 2012
Join Colorado Ron & Bubba Davinci on their show tonight 8 pm Central on the Preparedness Radio Network. (Click the image for the link or click HERE.)
This week 1/27/2012, on Self-Reliance Expozed, the official Self-Reliance Expo radio show, your hosts Colorado Ron and Bubba DaVinci will be introducing themselves and discussing what the future brings for both the Self-Reliance Expo and Self Reliance Expo’zed.
Tonight they’ll have a special guest who is a long time supporter of the Self-Reliance movement and creator of one of the best solar back-up power units on the market The Humless Sentinel. We will also be introducing a segment called “Radiation Watch”.
BHM Radio and Self Reliance Exposed will alternate weeks in this time slot, Friday at 8pm Central. Please join us again next week for our BHM Radio Show!
Featured Product: The Doom and Bloom™ Survival Medicine Handbook
I, for one, am super-excited to pick up Dr. Bones & Nurse Amy’s new book: 
Check out the trailer for the new book:
We look forward to reviewing this book & posting that review here…Stay Tuned!
-David SafeWater
Dallas, Texas Self-Reliance Expo: WIN FREE Tickets!!!
With the Dallas’ Self-Reliance Expo right around the corner February 10-11, we want to give individuals and families the opportunities to win FREE tickets to the Self-Reliance Expo! (It’s actually gonna happen in Mesquite, just east of Dallas). What we are looking for:
- Entertaining videos which highlight/demonstrate your most innovative Self-Reliance Creations, Contraptions, or Inventions (this can include modifications to products that you use or a tool that you created to fit your needs)
- A brief & entertaining instructional video that teaches a Self-Reliance Skill or Short-Cut
- A 2-3 minute silent video on anything Self-Reliance themed:
- Comedy/Parody
- Educational
- Entertaining/Creative
- Product Review
- A humorous video that features a song you write & perform on:
- Self-Reliance
- the Benefits/Joys of being a Prepper
- Buggin’ Out
- Things Preppers Say
- Life on the Homestead
We have plenty of tickets to give away for the most creative, fun, and entertaining submissions, so have fun & be SAFE! Only selected submissions will win tickets to the event. Winners will be selected by judges from the Self-Reliance Expo, based on creativity & entertainment. We look forward to seeing your content!
It almost goes without saying, but please remember that the content should be appropriate for families to share & we will be featuring the winners on the Self-Reliance Facebook fanpage, an interview, and will likely be featured on other websites online. By submitting the content, you are allowing the Self-Reliance Expo to use that content in a promotional manner, with the opportunity to win a prize of tickets for admission to the Self-Reliance Expo referenced above. You must be the original producer of the content that you submit. Any prizes awarded for selected & featured content do not hold cash value, void where prohibited, winner must confirm contact, blah, blah, blah…
Several Ways to Submit Content:
- Upload your content to your YouTube account & Email the link to david[at]selfrelianceexpo[dot]com, or
- Upload your content to your Facebook account & share it on the Self-Reliance Expo Facebook Fanpage, or
- Send an Email to: david[at]selfrelianceexpo[dot]com with a link to your content outside of Youtube & Facebook
Winning submissions will be notified via email and announced here & on the Self-Reliance Facebook Fanpage. Content will be accepted until February 6, 2012, with the earliest announcement of Ticket winners beginning this Saturday, January 28, 2012. We are accepting submissions from anywhere and everywhere. Remember: be safe, have fun, and be creative!
I’m thinking that if we get enough submissions…we can open it up for a grand prize winner to be announced at the February’s Self-Reliance Expo…the Grand Prize will be awarded to the winner there. The Grand Prize is yet to be determined….but it’s gonna be GOOD!
-David SafeWater
Featured Post: Recycling a Glass Bottle Pantry Paratus Style
Our friends Wilson & Chaya at PantryParatus.com wrote a great article, and we are featuring it here with their permission. Enjoy!
Convenience is pretty expensive. The just-in-time logistics system has changed our shopping experience in the Industrialized world. If you pick up the last bottle of ketchup on the shelf, there is no such thing as “the back room” for someone to check to see if there is more.
I have bargain hunting in my genetic makeup. I come from a long line of blue-collar immigrants who worked beyond modern imagination and were determined to get ahead in this great country. My grandmother lived through the Great Depression in a family of ten children. Her pantry was stocked deep at any given time. She gardened actively throughout the summer and always had food in the refrigerator. To her credit, I would put that below the fishes and loaves miracle when you consider how many grandsons she had. If you left her house hungry, it was your own fault. Her basement could have been a Cool-Whip museum for all of the washed, dried, sorted and organized-by-size containers that she kept down there.
So when I passed by this bottle in the break room at work, my upbringing kicked in and I reflexively picked it up to examine it and see what other purpose it might fulfill. After all, the price was right—it was being thrown away. Here is a short list:
- Lightning bug catcher—it is winter in Montana, bummer
- Soil sample container—see conclusion number one
- Yellow jacket trap— see conclusion number one
- Seed sprouter—cool
- Head bonker—as seen on the movie, The Gods Must be Crazy
- Food storage container—yes, my grandmother would be proud!
Then the idea hit me that this bottle had a capacity in fluid ounces, but how much food could it store for me?
Great thoughts often sneak up on you, and it eventually came to me that frozen vegetables were on sale at the local grocery store. We dehydrate with our Excalibur 9 Tray pretty much all the time. Bananas were on sale this week and so we have banana chips in process as I write this.
First of all, why glass? As fantastic as plastic is for space exploration, medical devices or fishing line—not all food plastics are the same. We typically reuse all of our glass jars in our house. A spaghetti sauce jar is on a one way trip when it leaves the store. With this experiment, I wanted to reclaim something from the waste stream that can be used for our profit. A post-consumer glass bottle can be taken to the dump or to the bank.
Secondly, why fill the bottle with dehydrated food? I have seen some interesting experiments done with commodities such as rice, oatmeal and wheat in post-consumer bottles before, and I do like the idea. Storing food in a five gallon pail is great, but if you want oatmeal do you really want to break the seal on a five gallon pail for one or two breakfast servings? Ditto for wheat or rice in a spaghetti sauce jar.
There are lots of great posts on the internet telling you how to store water–slightly chlorinated in a two liter soda bottle under the bed is great peace of mind. And it is mighty cheap insurance if you are in earthquake country.
Lastly, why frozen vegetables? Anything that goes into the dehydrator with as much cellulose and fiber as a carrot or corn kernel needs to be blanched first. If you are not familiar with blanching, here is a great article on it from our friend Sharon Peterson at simplycanning.com. Basically you dip the item in boiling water to soften the outside so that you avoid “case hardening” in the dehydrator. You would have to look long and hard to see the down side to something that is blanched (dehydrator ready), pre cut and on sale!
- Step one: wash and dry bottle.
- Step two: dump frozen vegetables on dehydrator tray.
- Step three: set time for dehydrator.
- Step four: put dehydrated vegetables in the bottle.
- Step five (optional): add oxygen absorber
Here are the vegetables at 12 hours:
Here are the vegetables at 24 hours:
Done!
Later, when frozen vegetables are not on sale, you can still enjoy them in a soup or stew anytime. They will always be on sale to you because you preserved them minus the risk of freezer burn.
I managed to get two one-pound bags into the bottle. As you can see, 2 ½ pounds would have easily made it in there. These will go on the shelf without any further cost to store them.
Wilson
Pro Deo et Patria
Shelf Reliance Consultants @ Dallas, Texas Self-Reliance Expo, Feb. 10-11, 2012
Texas Shelf Reliance®
For those of you out there who enjoy the free samples given out at Costco, Farmer’s Markets, or In-Home Presentations, you’re in for a treat at the upcoming Self-Reliance Expo just outside of Mesquite, Texas in three weeks. A team of select Independent Consultants from Shelf-Reliance® & Thrive™ Foods will be there, coordinated by John & Diane Runnells. The Runnells are based out of North Richland Hills, Texas and are excited to share their experience and knowledge of their products.
Shelf Reliance® Consultants will include (click on any one of the links to visit their independent sites):
- John & Diane Runnells, serving North Richland Hills, Texas area
- Vicki & Emmett Koen, serving the Canton, Texas area
- Krystal Windham, also serving the Canton, Texas area
- Carrie & Michale Folsom, serving the Forney, Texas area
John & company will have fresh samples available as well as a display of their practical shelving options for storing & rotating home food storage cans. They look forward to answering your questions & arranging free consultations for individuals as well as families. Having tasted tons samples of the Thrive™ Foods, I can vouch for their quality and goodness!
Please be sure to visit their websites where there are many valuable tools available to guide your food storage. Some of the free online tools available through Shelf Reliance® include:
- Their online store of course!
- Food Calculator- calculate your family’s food storage needs
- Shelf Reliance® University- learn about food storage & becoming better prepared
- Recipes- get tastefully creative with your food storage!
- How to host a Food Storage Party in your Home
- The Thrive™ Q- develop your own personalized food storage solutions
- & Many more…
We look forward to seeing you all in Dallas! Please visit www.SelfRelianceExpo.com for details. To order discounted tickets, please visit the Self Reliance Expo Fanpage on Facebook & be sure to Like it.
-David SafeWater
Featured Video: How to Plant Sugarcane Stalks
This is a great & simple video on planting sugarcane stalk from an experienced farmer. These are the kinds of basic skills that we need to preserve in order to foster greater self-reliance for generations to come.
The Benefits of Cinnamon
Cinnamon serves uses beyond bread pudding, french toast, and tea. In fact, Pliny the Elder referenced an unknown native people’s guarding of a pricey cinnamon by “a terrible kind of bats,” circa 77 AD.1 Both bark and flower have their practical application. Following are some important facts about cinnamon which should prove useful to you.
Both cassia and true cinnamon come from the genus Cinnamomum (C.), and the Lauraceae family. Although related, cassia (Cinnamomum aromaticum or Cinnamomum cassia) is not to be confused with true cinnamon, Ceylon cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum or Cinnamomum verum). Cassia identifies cinnamon originating from Southeast Asia and which is the commonly available ground cinnamon here in the States.
Constituents of cinnamon include coumarins, gum, mucilage, sugars, tannins, and volatile oil.1
Bark
Ceylon cinnamon and cassia are easily distinguished by their unique roll structures, texture, and colors:
Ceylon cinnamon have an identifiable single roll, are thin, brittle, and tan in color.
Cassia rolls look like scrolls (double-roll), are thick, hard, and dark brown.
Typically, the bark of cinnamon is used orally. My copy of Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database 2 cites the following ailments/conditions associated with its oral application, as a(n):
- anthelmintic- used in addressing parasitic intestinal worms
- antidiarrheal- used to treat diarrhea
- antiflatulent- used to reduce intestinal gas
- antimicrobial- kills or inhibits the growth of microorganisms
- antispasmodic- used to suppress smooth muscle spasms within the gastrointestinal tract
- appetite stimulant
Twigs
The Chinese name for cinnamon twigs is gui zhi.
Traditionally, the Chinese use the twigs (gui zhi) to stimulate circulation in the hands and feet, enhancing warmth. Its ability to promote sweating assists in caring for individuals with colds.1
Essential Oil
Cinnamon in the essential oil form is often produced via steam or water extraction from the inner bark of the tree.
References
1 Ody, Penelope. The Complete Medicinal Herbal. 1st ed. New York: DK Publishing, Inc.; 1993: 192 p.
2 Jellin JM, Gregory PJ, Batz F, Hitchens, K, et al. Pharmacist’s Letter/Prescriber’s Letter Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database. 5th ed. Stockton, CA: Therapeutic Research Faculty; 2003: pg. 358.
3 EverythingDoTerra, n.d. Cassia Cinnamomum cassia. http://www.everythingessential.me/Oils/Cassia.html. Accessed 2011 November 1.
4 Abundant Health. Modern Essentials: A Contemporary Guide to the Therapeutic Use of Essential Oils. Utah: Abundant Health; 2011: 235 p.
Beekeeping 101…A Sweet Resource
Kate Ferry is a beekeeper in Custer, Washington. Her blog is SacredBee.net and offers great information about beekeeping, as well as many matters focusing on self-reliance. She writes:
- Are you fascinated by the honeybee?
- Do you have access to a bit of land? Anything over about 20 feet by 20 feet will do just fine.
- Are you interested in reaping the benefits of a well-pollinated, seasonally rounded garden?
- Do you have a spare hour every two weeks or so?
- Do you have a sweet tooth for honey?
And, last but not least…
- Can you check off the “no” box on the doctor’s information form that asks “Are you allergic to bees”?
If you can answer yes to these questions – any or all of them – then beekeeping might just “bee” the thing for you.
I first became interested in honeybees while studying anthropology in college a few years ago. The social structure of the honeybee is unlike any other living organism and the level of organization, community and work ethic is second to none. Inside the hive, they are truly remarkable creatures. Outside the hive, they are both critically beneficial and incredibly fascinating to study.
After graduating from college, I enrolled in a six-week course at a honeybee learning centre just outside Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It was an intense learning environment and it only fueled my interest and determination to bring honeybees into my life.
That next spring I jumped in headfirst and haven’t turned my back on them since. For the past seven years, I have enjoyed keeping bees at my homestead in northwest Washington. And, through trials and tribulations have managed to keep the honeybee a sacred part of my life and that of my family.
But, back to you and keeping YOUR bees…
1 - First things first – Read up on honeybees. Get familiar with the terms and the level of time involved. Start to understand the basics and what you will be tackling when you make the commitment.
My absolute favorite book on beekeeping goes by a somewhat embarrassing moniker, but it’s loaded with quality information that is presented in an easy-to-follow format – whether you are a complete novice or well-practiced beekeeper.
Beekeeping For Dummies by Howland Blackiston and Kim Flottum
The second and third book worth taking a peek at are Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture by Ross Conrad & Gary Nabhan and The Backyard Beekeeper – Revised and Updated: An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Keeping Bees in Your Yard and Garden by Kim Flottum.
Still ready to keep going? Good, because you’re gonna have fun!
2 – Find your local beekeeper’s association and check it out. And, if you are lucky enough to find one or get to a meeting and meet one – try, try, try to hook up with a mentor that you can observe in the field and go to with question after concern after inquiry.
3 – Get your ducks, er bees, in a row. Find that plot of land to keep your hives. Order your gear through a local supplier or a number of online retailers including Mann Lake and Glory Bee. Start-up cost for one single hive and all brand-new gear is going to be about $200 to $300. Be on the lookout for used beekeeping gear (hat, suit, smoker, etc…) but, be wary of used equipment (hive boxes, frames, tools). Hive parts can harbor diseases and parasites that may have infected the previous colony and transfer over to your new, healthy bees.
4 – Scout out sources for acquiring your bees. A box of bees is going to run you about $80 and a nucleus colony is around $100.
- Order them online through a retailer of choice
- Get in with your local beekeeper’s association and join in on their group order
- For the brave at heart – capture a swarm (a.k.a. FREE BEES!!)
5 – Enroll in a formal course. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, check out the Honeybee Centre in Surrey, B.C., Canada. Otherwise, you can check out your nearest university and ask to speak with their agriculture department. Most state universities offer extension courses at the very least, but a number of them have an apiculturist on staff, too!
Well, if you know you aren’t planning on keeping honeybees, thank you for sticking with me and reading the past 600 words. The next bit pertains to those interested in welcoming honeybees into the garden and providing a safe haven for an endangered insect.
The past five years have seen an enormous decline in honeybee colonies.
The honeybee population is vanishing at an apocalyptic rate and keepers are opening the hives in spring to find them empty. The fate of the honeybee is particularly worrisome when considering that over one-third of the food on our table is the direct result of honeybee pollination.
So, even if you aren’t interested or can’t keep honeybees, you would doing a world of good to educate yourself on how to help keep them relatively safe and enjoy the benefits of their industrious work ethic.
How can you help?
Keep that garden natural – a bonus for the honeybee, your home, your health and your environment! Avoid pesticides at all costs and work with natural, environmentally friendly products. Or, embrace the weeds.
Try to have a variety of flowers and plants in your yard that are in bloom all year round. Think early spring to harvest time – work with the dandelions in April and finish with some sedum in late fall.
Get those wasps. Wasps are carnivores that feed on honeybees. A hive can be severely incapacitated by a wasp attack and the only evidence for the keeper is the body remnants after wasps have dissected the abdomens of the bees. Wasp queens are all that live over winter and are responsible for starting the entire hive on their own come spring. So, each wasp you kill in late winter or early spring (you know those sneaky slow movers that come out of the wood pile?) is one wasp hive down. An affordable and effective organic bait for wasps is half orange juice/half water in any sort of trap. If you use a sugar bait – you are going to be killing honeybees, too (a big no-no).
Host a hive. Contact your local beekeeping association and let them know you are interested in hosting a hive. Your provide the land and an experienced beekeeper provides and cares for the bees and gives you a portion of the honey harvest for your support and participation. Can you say win-win?!
Keeping bees is a wonderful hobby, but is understandably not for everyone. Even if honeybees are not an integral part of your life, they can find nectar and pollen from organic sources in your yard.
Give beekeeping a whirl – it’s truly a delightful pastime and a special stewardship to the honeybee.
Featured Post: How Much Land To Survive?
Today’s featured post comes to us courtesy of Dr. Bones & Nurse Amy from Doom & Bloom! He has wonderful articles full of practical information for homesteaders, preppers, and the rest of open-minded folk!
“Have you ever wondered how likely it is that you’ll be able to produce all the calories you’ll need on the piece of land you have? How much land for livestock? How about those solar panels you were thinking about? How many square feet of panels will provide you with the electricity you’ll need? The folks at one block off the grid, that’s 1bog.org have figured this out for you.
Let’s start by talking power.
In a collapse situation, you’ll probably be able to rely on the sun and wind and not much else, unless you’ve built a watermill. The best answer might be installing some solar panels on your roof. This is a commonly available option that many people are considering nowadays.
Let’s say part of your roof is facing South (the best place for a solar panel) and you get 7 hours or so of sunlight, on average. To get the amount of power that an average home uses in a year, you’ll need 375 square feet of panels. These things aren’t cheap, and that much hardware is going to be beyond the average family’s financial reach. This means that you’ll have to make decisions regarding how to ration the power you ARE able to produce.
Look around the house, and you’ll probably see lots of things that are plugged in that you can eliminate if the you-know-what ever hits the fan. This is part of the planning you’ll need to do now, so that you’ll be better prepared for times of trouble.
How about food? If you have a family of four, you’ll want to provide at least 2000 or so calories per adult, more if you’re a big guy, maybe a little less for kids. The formula is simple: At least 30 calories per kilogram of body weight. One kilogram equals 2.2 pounds, so an 80 kilogram adult would weigh 176 pounds. 30 x 80 = 2400 calories/day. Less for kids, of course. You’ll need to provide 8000-9000 calories a day to maintain your family’s weight.
One block off the grid separates your garden out in three categories: fruits, berries and vegetables, then wheat, then corn. If you went totally vegetarian, you would need a little less than half an acre per person to provide all of those calories. That means a family of 4 needs almost 2 acres of farmable land! If you stock up on wheatberries and use your handy dandy Wondermill, you can cut that down a bit. Corn isn’t a very land-efficient crop, but you might need it for your livestock. An alternative if you need to trim that acreage more is to stock up on bushels of corn feed; that’s about 56 pounds of feed for about $8-10. This is a good idea, but you’ll use a lot of it. It takes 10 bushels of corn to get a hog from weaning to slaughter. Btw, corn prices are going higher, they were less than 5 dollars a couple of years ago.
Don’t forget, you’ll need some land for hog wallows, goats, rabbits and chickens. All of these animals can be raised in relatively small amounts of space. A good 200 square feet for 3 hogs, more if they have piglets, less for each of the other animals. You might have to forget about cows, they aren’t land-efficient. If you want milk, think about goats, especially Nubian Goats. This variety can produce 1800 lbs. of milk a year, according to 1 block off the grid. That’s a lot of milk! How about eggs? The average family of four will eat 1000 eggs a year or so. To reliably get this quantity, you’ll need about 13-15 birds in your henhouse, depends a lot on the breed.
You could probably squeeze this all in with an acre and a half of land. If you don’t have that much property, now you know you’ll need that much more food storage to make up for the difference. This is information I thought was important for me to know, and now you know it too.”
Colorado Aquaponics
Colorado Aquaponics is one of our newest exhibitors of our upcoming Self Reliance Expo. They offered us a tour of their facility. Here is a brief video showing their setup. Check them out! I am seriously close to pulling the trigger on setting up my own aquaponics setup.
DELICIOUS Chicken and Pasta Salad Recipe, How To Cook Healthy For $10 or Less
This looks soo good!
www.thecasualgardener.com – - Shawna Coronado andChef Ryan Hutmacher, “The Centered Chef”, prepare a healthy meal for four with a Moroccan Chicken and Pasta Salad Dinner for $10 or less. Each meal in the Living Lean & Green cooking series is prepared utilizing fresh, sustainably grown, organic vegetables from Shawna’s front lawn vegetable garden. In today’s difficult economy, one of the most challenging things to do is to feed our family good, nutritious, chemical-free food for a reasonable price. This need has inspired a video series called “Living Lean & Green; How To Cook Healthy For $10 or Less”. Chef Ryan Hutmacher, The Centered Chef of Centered Chef Food Studios (http cooking with me (Shawna Coronado – www.thecasualgardener.com) in my front lawn vegetable garden. Together, we are creating meals which cost a family of four $10 or less to prepare and features organic vegetables I have grown myself. Our goal is to show the everyday person that it is possible to grow your own vegetables sustainably, then use these vegetables to feed a family of four on the cheap utilizing Chef Ryan’ Hutmacher’s healthy recipes. Sponsored by Aquascape Inc., this ten recipe video series shows vegetables watered with a rain-water cistern and grown at my home in the front lawn of my Chicagoland suburban community — something any family can do to help feed themselves in this down economic time. To learn more about the rain-water cistern go here – http Today’s Moroccan Chicken Pasta Salad …
First Watermelon
I don’t know if they taste sweeter when you grow them yourself, but this one tasted great! This was our first watermelon from the garden. It had some separation, or splitting, inside but tasted great nonetheless. Oh yea, the kids had fun spitting seeds all over the back yard. Warning: Best eaten outside!
Shucking Corn
Corn is a great product and can easily be saved on the cob or off. You can also freeze or can it. We prefer freezing ours as its alot less work plus I prefer the taste over canned.
One of the time consuming tasks is removing the corn from the cob, but we have an easy way that can save you time and cleanup!
Place your corn in a bunt pan like below. Not only does the middle hole hold the cob, but the pan catches all the corn you cut off saving a huge mess. Below are a couple of pics from our last batch:
Fresh Corn
Our family went out a little while back and picked fresh sweet corn at our local church farm. We had alot of fun and the kids really enjoyed the experience. It was also a great opportunity to get our one year supply of corn! In a future post I’ll show you a cool way my wife got the corn from the cob.
Eggplant Parmesan
Eggplant:
3. Combine flour and 1 teaspoon pepper in large zipper-lock bag; shake to combine. Beat eggs in second pie plate. Place 8 to 10 slices eggplant slices in bag with flour; seal bag and shake to coat eggplant. Remove eggplant slices, shaking off excess flour, dip in eggs, let excess egg run off, then coat evenly with bread crumb mixture; set breaded slices on wire rack set over baking sheet. Repeat with remaining eggplant.
4. Remove preheated baking sheets from oven; add 3 tablespoons oil to each sheet, tilting to coat evenly with oil. Place half of breaded eggplant on each sheet in single layer; bake until eggplant is well browned and crisp, about 30 minutes, switching and rotating baking sheets after 10 minutes, and flipping eggplant slices with wide spatula after 20 minutes. Do not turn off oven.
5. FOR THE SAUCE: While eggplant bakes, process 2 cans diced tomatoes in food processor until almost smooth, about 5 seconds. Heat olive oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes in large heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring tomatoes. Bring sauce to boil, then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened ansd reduced, about 15 minutes (you should have about 4 cups). Stir in basil and season to taste with salt and pepper.
6. TO ASSEMBLE: Spread 1 cup tomato sauce in bottom of 13 by 9-inch baking dish. Layer in half of eggplant slices, overlapping slices to fit; distribute 1 cup sauce, leaving majority of egg;lant exposed so it will remain crisp; sprinkle with 1/4 cup Parmesan and remaining mozzarella. Bake until bubbling and cheese is browned, 13 to 15 minutes. Cool 10 minutes; scatter basil over top, and serve, passing remaining tomato sauce separately.
How Much Food Can I Grow Around My House?
Peak Moment 87: In summer 2006 Judy Alexander embarked on an experiment to see how much food she could grow, and how many neighbors could benefit, from the garden around her house. Check out her homegrown rainwater collection and irrigation system – watering her 60+ edible crops. Meet the bees, the chickens and the worms. And catch her joy in producing so much food for so little effort.
Strawberries!
Here is a pic of our strawberries. We are getting a bowl full about every three days. They are on the small side, but taste delicous! They are about the size of a large rasberry or blackberry. Not sure why, will have to research. My wife loves making freezer jam out of these. Recipe will be put up in a couple days.
