Coconut Elvis Granola and Evil Canola Oil

You may already know this, but I am not a superfan of cereal.  Most of the time I feel like it is a little bit of a worthless thing, but that is because it is mainly marketed as something you eat for breakfast and it is (usually) loaded with sugar.  I am a strong advocate for eating something savory in the morning (after your 16 ounces of water, obviously) as it sets the tone for your palate for the rest of the day.

But.

Sometimes you hear something that just inspires you.  I used to eat cereal.  Growing up, that was breakfast.  If I was lucky, it was going to be Lucky Charms (with as many marshmallows as I could possibly get).  As I got a little older, I thought I would refine my tastes with muselix or granola.  You know how that is - it's the fight in your mouth.  The challenge of the hard clumps that cut the top of your mouth - really, I've heard it said that there's nothing like it to wake up to (except maybe a good set in the chlorine).

Because I never buy it, my children think that it is Christmas, their birthday, and Superbowl Sunday all in one if we have cereal in the house and they end up acting like they are some kind of deprived and starving animals and eat it for dessert and the $6 box is gone in a day and a half.  (Well, that was worth it.  Not.)

Today is some sort of snowpocalypse and everyone is out of their minds.  People aren't going to work; children aren't going to school.  Instead, they are playing video games, skiing, and going to trampoline parks. 

This was the day that the granola was destined to be made.

I had a recipe from a friend that was called "Elvis Granola".  Out of all of the people I know, this friend is the all-time world champion of granola eating, so I knew that it was going to be legit.  This "Elvis Granola" contained peanuts and chocolate, so even though it was basically dessert, I figured it was worth a try, even if that try was going to actually be dessert and not breakfast.

There was only one problem.

The original granola recipe called for canola oil.  Excuse me?  Canola oil?  No.  No way, José.  As if I would use poison in my recipe! 

What's my problem with canola oil?  Well, first of all, approximately 90% of canola oil is made from genetically modified ingredients and sprayed with Roundup (glyphosate - made by Monsanto).  Glyphosate is a known carcinogen.  That looks like a bunch of cancer all over the place.  I'll pass, thanks.

The other problem that I have with canola is that it is inherently modified.  Canola oil wasn't invented until the 1960s in Canada, and it was invented because of a demand for a cheap oil (olive oil had a price point that was too high for manufacturing of faster foods).  It was derived from the rapeseed plant (within the mustard family).  Using it as rapeseed oil without hybridization led to a host of issues mainly because of its toxic levels of erucic acid (which can also be found in other members of the Brassica family, but has high concentrations in rapeseed and canola), like blistered lungs and skin. 

Good news, though.  It is used to make paint because it will adhere to wet metal, which is great for ocean vessel applications.  Mmm, practical AND tasty.

By 1978, chemical companies figured out how to get the erucic acid levels lowered a bit so that we could escape the pesky business of lesions on lungs and other problems, and so they could market it to manufacturing as a cheap alternative. 

In 1995, the brilliant scientists found a way to inject the DNA with a bacteria so that it could be resistant to Roundup, making it possible for farmers to spray mass amounts of Roundup on their fields, killing all of the weeds, but the canola plant would survive.  Genius?  Yes.  Diabolical?  Probably.

Canola oil is highly processed and also very reactive to heat, light, and pressure, causing oxidation.  (That means rusting in your body.  That means premature aging and degenerative diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, dementia, and WRINKLES.)  When canola oil is heated, it produces high levels of butadiene, benzene, acrolein, formaldehyde and other related compounds.  Have you heard of any of those?  Yeah.  Poisonous carcinogens.  Awesome.

This study shows the unfortunate side effect of how canola oil decreased levels of vitamin E so drastically that some animals died.  (They supplemented vitamin E to see if and how that would help.)

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, I decided that I would sub out the toxin for coconut oil so that when my offspring saw homemade granola and decided to go on a wild binge, I wouldn't be contributing to their early deaths.

Here is what I did instead.

Coconut Elvis Granola

Preheat oven: 275 F.

 Mix these guys in a pan: 1/4 cup organic coconut oil, 1/3 cup maple syrup, 1/4-1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter,  1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon.  Stir.  Cook a few minutes until you think it isn't going to do anything different.

 While that is simmering, get a big huge bowl (Pyrex for vintage feels) and dump in: 4 cups organic oats, 1/4 cup ground flaxseed, 1/2 cup unsalted peanuts, 1/2 cup sunflower seeds.  Mix it all up.

Dump the warm liquid into the dry crunchy.  Mix all over until everything looks so happy.

Pour onto two stainless steel (seriously, do not give yourself Alzheimer's with the aluminum baking pans) baking sheets and spread out.

Bake for 20 minutes, rotate pans, bake for 20 more minutes.  You may need a little longer than that, but check it at the 40 minute mark.

Let it cool.  Add a bunch of non-soy dark chocolate chips.  I like Enjoy Life brand because they don't have any allergens.  This is how I made it the first time, but I would add shredded coconut to the final mix because dark chocolate and coconut are bae together.  It would benefit the overall flavor to double the peanut butter and make it 1/2 cup instead of a wimpy 1/4.

I did not eat this for breakfast, and I won't because I am an egg and toast kind of girl, but it is an amazing dessert.  I poured it over my organic, grass-fed, whole milk plain yogurt and ate it until I thought I might make myself throw up.  Moderation?  I doubt it.

If you try it, let me know how you like it.

Peace, love, and actual granola,
Ms. Daisy

 

 

Hair = A Salad. Naturally.

Yes, folks.  I said your hair is a salad.  Let me explain.

I know.  Sometimes I say wacky things, but the title isn't to make you want to eat your hair (oh, so gross.  Do you remember kids who would do that in elementary school?  They'd suck on their hair?  I'm GAGGING just thinking about it.).

No.

The correlation is simple.  Your hair wants you to put some dressing on it.  Same as your mesclun mix with some delicious paper thin radish slices and fenugreek sprouts...mmm..I want a carrot.  

Dressing?  Yes.  Of course.  Don't be silly.

Let me explain how I came to this astute conclusion.

As you may (unfortunately) know, last May I did a very crazy and unwise thing.  I attempted to get my hair blondified.  Why?  Because, duh.  Blonde hair is AWESOME, that's why.  I don't really think of it that way so much anymore.  I should have listened to my hippie self that went on spouting about chemicals and toxic death painted on my head, but I was so SAD!  Sad with that brown hair.

I used to get highlights and people described me as one who had blonde hair.  Then I swore off all that bad hair crap and let it all grow out until it was all brown and boring.  It did have a little bit of auburn in in, so it wasn't a flat color, but it was just so ...brown.  People would say to me, "Oh!  Your hair is so...dark!"  Yeah, tell me about it.

So in a fit of spontaneous will one night, I looked up organic hair color.  I determined that I would find a place that would do organic blonde on me.  This would solve my dilemma!  I would be able to have blonde hair without dreadful carcinogens and toxic death going into my scalp pores directly to my brains!  Perfect!

Yeah.  So I did it.  I went in with silky brown hair and came out looking like Ronald McDonald with a serious accent on the orange and afro style.  Except even HOTTER since when everything was failing, Mr. Hair Man decided to try to "save" it by adding in bleached highlights (so much for organic, eh?), so it would be more accurately described as an orange afro with yellow stripes.  Too bad it wasn't Halloween.  The whole tiger outfit was all ready to go.

After a little suggested that I shave my head and a little bit of hysteria, my friend saved my FREAKIN LIFE.  Now this whole thing is bad enough, but my dears, I had to go to a wedding two days hence from the whole horrid situation.  This is not a wedding I could have showed up wearing a cowboy hat, a baseball hat, a bandana or a head scarf.  I was either going to get the mop fixed or borrow my friend's wig.

Frantic ended when my sweet friend paid for me to look like a human again.  Maybe some of you are not as horridly vain as I am, but when I looked like a frizz clown, I just could not stand it.  It was shocking at every mirrored surface.  When I woke up in the morning and sat up in bed, I would look over at the mirror and jump back and my brain would say, "Who in the heck is THAT?!"  It was disturbing as it repeatedly went back to orange, no matter what I did.

All this to say, I got 6 (count them, 6) processes done on my hair in 24 hours.  (2 all over dyes, 1 highlight, 3 toners)  My hair was what you may call slightly unhappy.  A week or two later, I tried to dye it back brown.  It went back to orange.  I tried walnut husks.  It went back orange.  Coffee.  It did nothing.  Orange, orange, orange.  Finally, some hendigo worked.  Mostly.

Oh!  And I swim, as you know!  So let's add some chlorine to that pile.  (Do not tell me anything about chlorine.  I know.  But I ain't givin' it up.)  My hair looked and felt like plastic Barbie hair.  When it was wet it was dry.

I read that this was because my hair's cuticle (um, okay) was open and I likely had split ends.  So I read up on how to close your hair's cuticle (isn't that weird.  You hair's cuticle.  It's like nail time.).  The most common thing that I read (after reading the pH levels of hair, etc.) was that I ought to use apple cider vinegar.

Are you thinking what I thought?  Well, check.  Did you just say, "OH GROSS!"?  Cuz I did initially.  Actually, I thought, "Weird dirty hippies!

But as you can now understand, I am quite desperate and will pretty much try anything to fix this hair, and since it was in the cupboard, heck, why not.  I followed Crunchy Betty's  advice (boil 4 cups of water, add dried rosemary and some apple cider vinegar, cool down, dump on head - at least that's my version anyway).   

My darlings, this is a good thing.  Yes, you do smell like a bit of a vinegar head for a moment while it is wet, but it does go away.  It also brings your hair back to a good pH.  This means you don't look quite as much like a frizz head.  

Last week I added more drama to my hair by redoing the hendigo.  Now hendigo is total rock star, unless you have previously orange and bleached hair...in that case, your bleached stripes will just turn a nice awesome mud green.  I think it really sets off the orange stripes next to it nicely, though.  People say, "You don't have green hair!"  And then I show them.  Then they say, "Oh.  Well, um, I mean, uh, well, it will grow out."  

Awesome.

T-minus two years and counting.  

Have you been tempted lately to dye your hair?  Let me be a lesson to yas!  If, however, you want to give your hair a helper, give it some rosemary infused apple cider vinegar.  I also have infused olive oil and rosemary to tame it.  My twinge of green makes for a very lovely salad head anyway, so get that dressing going.  

Delish.  

Peace, love, and radishes do sound really good right now, 
Ms. Daisy

The best pretend chocolate pudding ever (it's even GF!)

I am about to give you a recipe that is so delicious but yet sounds so utterly horrifying, I am sure you are going to give me every weird eyeball, nose crinkle, and mouth wrinkle face there is.

Sounds GREAT ALREADY, DOESN'T IT?

Actually, a lot of you won't think it's that crazy, but at first glance it seems like an odd pairing.

I came up with this crazy sauce one day when I had a craving for chocolate but wanted to restrain myself a little bit and not go bonkers on the homemade magic shell (that would be melted coconut oil with chocolate chips - pour it over ice cream and it hardens...consider this as your warning if you plan on trying it - you will eat the entire batch.  In fact, sometimes I just want to eat that hardened magic shell so much that I get this pathetic tiny scoop of ice cream - a 1 tbsp. kind of tiny - and repeatedly pour magic shell on it over and over again to get that wonderous chocolate magicness.), especially since I think it was something like 10:30 in the morning.  

So I thought I'd make myself a smoothie and add some cocoa powder or something into it to see if I could get my fix.  I have to say, it was quite a hit. I struck upon a wonder.  Eureka!  Even the littles begged for more.

Here's the gluten-free, dairy-free, good fat filled, potassium, magnesium and omega-3 rich, healthy amazeballs dealie: with your blender, mix a ripe banana, half of an avocado, golden ground flax seed, a scoop of cocoa powder and some water.  The avocado thing initially sounds weird, but that crazy little avocado makes your smoothie as smooth as pudding.  It is so creamy soft delish, you won't believe it.  Now if your avocado has turned to stink with black spots on it, don't use it.  It will funktify your wonder and make it putrid.

Bonus:  If you want to pretend what you're doing is even more delicious, you can freeze it in a mold (unfortch mine is plastic - yuck) and make yourself some pudding pops.  I just ate one.  It was amazing.  

Only thing that could have made it better would have been to dip it in some magic shell...
  Peace, love and take that, Skinny Cow!
Ms. Daisy

Healthy and homemade summer treats, want s'more?

It seems that the world cannot get enough of sugar, and summertime is no exception.  Just think of the High Fruc Truck as it slings its crack down the street to those nice innocent tunes while all of the little sugar-high babies come running out of their homes, waving their $5 bills, begging to be bestowed with high fructose ADHD brain damage and Red #40 in those rocketship patriotic red, white and blue pops.

Ah, such lovely pictures of summer in America.  It must be Independence Day.

Another thing that all the peeps love to dive into in the summer is s'mores.  You know, the litmus test for cavities or gum recession?  You take one bite of that and you will know if you have a direct opening to your root as you climb the wall and die of pain (may I recommend Standard Process Bio-Dent for that situation?).  If you have no idea what a s'more is, it is a graham cracker sandwiching a toasted marshmallow with a piece of chocolate (it makes the chocolate melt on everything and goo goes everywhere). The name is from people crying out, "some more!"

But if you go on down to your favorite store, you'll see that what is sold in those baking aisles is exactly not food.  In fact, maybe it is more like rocket fuel.  It contains GMO corn syrup (would you like a taste of infertility, little one?), artificial flavors, artificial colors, dextrose (in case you didn't get enough GMO corn in the  corn syrup, you can have more in the dextrose), tetrasodium pyrophosphate, and the mysteriously listed ingredient: "a whipping aid" (what the heck?!  I am totally positive that MUST be good for you.).

So sad.  How are you going to enjoy delicious s'mores with that kind of poison list?  You aren't.  Well, I won't.  But all this to say there is a solution to all of this.

You can make your own marshmallows.

Totally.

And I don't mean some ridiculous 3 hour process with complicated ingredients, either.

Do you have a Kitchen Aid mixer?  If you do, it is going to be crazy easy for you.  If you don't, well, neither do I, and I make it work with a hand blender anyway.

Ready to do this?

Ya Need:
a candy thermometer
a large stainless steel pot (not like giant, just like regular large)
an 8x8 or so glass dish
3 packets of gelatin, or the equivalent in Great Lakes Gelatin out of your container
2/3-1ish cup of water (maybe a little more)
1.5 cups of organic sugar
a pinch of salt
a splash of vanilla
coconut oil (for your pan and your hands)
organic confectioners sugar (a cup would be enough)

and...either a hand blender or a Kitchen Aid mixer.

Get It Started:
1.  Pour 1/3 cup of water into either the bowl of your Kitchen Aid or into a large bowl.

2.  Sprinkle the gelatin on top of the water.  It will ooze in after a few minutes.  Don't touch it, just let it be.  Unless it is making you totally crazy, then poke it with a fork to mix.

3.  Slather your 8x8 glass dish with coconut oil everywhere.  No.  Everywhere.  (On the inside at least.)  If you miss one centimeter, you will lament it.  Dump some confectioners sugar in and bang it around to cover all of the coconut oil.  This step is vital for you not poking your eyes out with blowtorches later.

4.  In your stainless steel pot, pour the 1.5 cups of sugar.  Pour 1/3 cup of water over the top.  If it doesn't cover the sugar, add just a little more water until you get it just over.  You're going to be making a goo here, so don't worry that it looks like you have not a plethora of water.  Clip your candy thermometer into the pot so you can watch the temp.

5.  Add a pinch of salt into your cauldron.

6.  Turn that heat on to about medium (you are using a gas stove, right? Oh I love gas stoves.).  Watch that puppy bubble.

7.  The very second it hits 240 degrees (soft ball temp), turn the heat off and carefully pour your boiling sugar into the bowl where you have the gelatin/water goo.  If you are using the Kitchen Aid, start to mix VERY slowly.  Can you imagine the pain of that splash?  Yeah.  If you're using a hand mixer, I'd put it down in the sink.  Start it on low and increase speed.  While it is on low, you can add the vanilla.

8.  Stand there and dream about your dream kitchen.  Or farm.  Or picture what workout you're going to do next.  Plan your week.  You're going to stand there for about 8 minutes whipping this goo up.  You'll know 100% when your goo is ready because it will look like a giant thing of marshmallow fluff.

9.  Slather your hands in coconut oil and dig the goo out into your 8x8 glass dish.  Press it down flat-ish.  Cover the top with confectioners sugar lightly.

10.  In a very few minutes, you will see that you have a gigantic whole marshie square.  You can pop it out if it is room temp.  Cut whatever shape you'd like (usually people do square-ish things) and dip each blob into confectioners sugar so it doesn't stick to every single thing in your entire life.  If you want to roast them, I suggest making them slightly larger to make sure they fit on your pokey stick.

You can store them in a large jar or a gallon resealable bag.  They're sugar, they keep well for a couple weeks.

Get yourself some dark soy-free, fair trade chocolate and some organic soy-free graham crackers and go to town.

Yes, these are not what I would consider a health food by any stretch of the imagination, but at least they aren't filled with infertility and poison.  (It just contains the narcotic of sugar.)

Peace, love and fluffy puff marshmallows, they're dot com!
Ms. Daisy

    

Silver Polish, version 2.0 - the easy way

 I wrote a post a long time ago wherein I found a recipe for silver polish from the Compendium for Cookery (circa 1890) - it's here.

I am glad for that recipe, but it is a paste.  And you know, with pastes, you must slather and slop and blaggle (I just made that up, but you get the idea) it all over the silver items in all of their nooks and crannies while scrubbing.  And your hands have to touch the stuff, which gets you all silvery smelling (do you know what I mean?  Its that sort of sulfur smell, sort of unpleasant, but not completely overpowering?) and all dirty.  

If it is between that recipe and the general run of the mill toxic chemical stuff made in factories and sold to you at your favorite retailer, I will choose the sloppy blaggle every single time - both for the reason of cost (to make a paste it costs about five cents - well, okay, I don't know, but I'm just guessing.) and for the toxic exposure.

BUT!

Oh, my lovely friends.  You have to try this.  I have something that is homemade, cheap, and you DON'T HAVE TO TOUCH OR SCRUB!  Wooo!

So, I'm having a tea party tonight and I looked at my china cabinet and was like, um yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, people are going to be choosing their tea cups today and alas, there, beneath the tea cups, is the silver tea set which looks like it was in a soot fight with Mary Poppin's friend, Bert, who cleans fireplaces.  So.  I tried to dig out my old paste recipe and didn't have it on a 3x5 card in my handy-dandy 3 ring binder, so I went online.

What did I find there, m'dears?  A very simple recipe for a silver dip.  No, not like you're going to eat the dip with chips, a dip to dip your stuff in.

(Just in case you were wondering.)

It looked so easy I had to do the science experiment.

You need to try this.  For real.  It's cheap, quick and did I mention there is NO SCRUBBING?

Yes.  Ahem.  

I am partial to those kinds of things, especially when I am in a hurry like today.

Here's what you do:
1.   Get your disgusting looking tarnished silver and marvel at how utterly horrid it looks.
2.  Fill up your sink with the hottest water you can.  Make it deep enough to put your silver items in so that they will be submerged.
3.  Put a piece of aluminum foil on the bottom of your sink.  I just made it about the size of the sink.
4.  Sprinkle salt and baking soda into the cauldron sink.  I don't know how much, maybe 2 teaspoons?  Maybe 2 tablespoons?  Whatever.  You don't need to measure.
5.  Stir it up with a wooden spoon.
6.  Place disgusting looking tarnished silver items in the water.
7.  Wait.  It may lay in there for up to 5 minutes.
8.  Watch as before your very eyes it turns from black to shiny silver.
9.  Cheer.
10.  Figure how to get it out of there without touching it (this is a Ms. Daisy thing.  I suppose you could touch it, but I don't know how toxic it is.  I used tongs to lift it out and the wooden spoon to balance it.).
11.  Dry it with some paper towel.
12.  Marvel at how shiny it is and you didn't even have to do anything difficult.  Wow.  Yeay!

I believe the last time I actually polished my silver was that last post, so you can imagine that it was quite oxidized.  If this is all it takes to clean silver in the future, I may actually be inspired to keep it clean.

I had to tell you.

Now, go on, try it!

Peace, love and party, party, tea party,
Ms. Daisy

Baking Up Deception: Beet Brownies?

Ha-llo, lovies!  I have crossed the line today, my dears.  There was the line.  Here am I.  One hundred miles past.  Do you have any idea what I have done?  Let me tell you.

I have just made beet brownies.

Yes.  I know.  When I read the title of the recipe at first, I also threw up in my mouth.

But here is what happened - last week or so ago, I purchased some very dirty beety looking bunch of beets from my favorite local health store because I was absolutely DETERMINED to figure out something to do with beets.  It would be so wonderful to like something about beets!  I decided to do something.  This is because beets, to me, are something like a foreign language.  Something tremendously exotic, wild and foreign.  I never had them growing up (I had never had guacamole either until I was probably 30, nor an avocado - those things were wild Mexican flavors and the family of origin's idea of going tremendously food party wild is using salt and pepper on hamburger.).

I looked on some websites for beet recipes and most of them came back to me in the form of pickled beets (gag), beets with arugula and goat cheese (barf my intestines out - not only do I hate beets, I think goat cheese smells like rotten diseased feet with yellow chunky fungus growing on them), and beet tartlets with goat cheese (more barf in the mouth).  I hate beets.  I know very often people describe them as "earthy".  I consider this the most laughable understatement of the entire world.  Eating a bit of beets to me is something akin to me going out to the backyard in the spring, opening my mouth wide as can be and thrusting my whole face into the garden dirt while shaking my head back and forth in an effort to apparently find worms and compete with the local robins.  I don't taste the "sweetness" that people talk of.  I taste 100% straight up dirt.

I also feel the same about feta cheese.  Well, not the dirt part.  It's more like the sentiment I feel for goat cheese (= chunky rotten yellow foot fungus).  But wouldn't it be so sophisticated to like it?  I think so.  However, alas, I have failed at all attempts.  Add it to the pile with lamb.  Sad.

So, more than my hate for beets is the absolutely disturbing nature of the thought of wasting anything.  I couldn't waste the beets.  I had to do something.

And then I came across the recipe for beet brownies.  After my initial reaction of yelling at the computer and telling it how absolutely horrid and disgusting it was, I decided that if I could hide beets in chocolate, maybe people would eat it.  Maybe I would even eat it.  Maybe.  And if I couldn't, my littles would.

I mean, can you even THINK of a weirder thing to put in your brownies?  I had my hubby guess "what is the weird ingredient I put into the brownies" game and he came up with some also disgusting things, namely onions (wow, yep, that would be gross), broccoli (also hideous) and squash.  Worse, worse and WORSE, I cried!

When I told him, he said beets were not worse.  I suppose that may be in the eye of the beholder?

Anyway, I made this recipe with my littlest little who didn't know what beets were, so when we added this red puree to the mix, he merely said, "Mmm!"  (Although, I must warn you - oldest little jumped for rejoicing joy at the sight of my hubby bringing home cereal - I never buy the stuff.  Do you know what treat caused such great delight and spaztastic overwhelming titillation?  Erewhon Buckwheat and Hemp cereal.  No, I am not kidding.  He asked if he could have it for dessert after dinner.  We may have realized at that time that perhaps our children have either a very advanced palate, or are a teensy bit food sheltered.  Must be advanced palate.)  

At any rate, This is the very adorable, fantastic website I found this creative recipe on: The Way To My Family's Heart blog.  (Obviously she's creative - she made beet brownies! )

I tweaked it just a teensy bit,  Ms. Daisy style.  Here it is:


3 organic beets, peeled
3 free-range, large eggs
3 tbsp. organic molasses
1 cup organic cane sugar
1/2 cup organic coconut oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup cocoa powder (Now organic brand, GMO free)
3/4 cup freshly ground organic spelt berries flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp kosher or sea salt
1 smashed up bar of dark chocolate (72%), without soy lecithin

In a medium saucepan, cover the beets with water by an inch.  Place the pot over medium high heat and bring the water to a boil.  Reduce the heat to medium and simmer the beets until they are soft enough to easily be pierced through the center with a knife, about 25 minutes.  Drain the beets and puree them (I used a blender).  You may need to add a tablespoon or two of water to the beets to get them to puree smoothly, add only what you need.  Set the beet puree aside to cool.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl whisk together the eggs, oil,  and sugars.  Add the vanilla extract and beet puree and whisk to fully combine.  Mix the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt into the wet ingredients.  Stir in the smashed bits of chocolate bar.

Pour the batter into a 8x8 inch baking pan.  Bake for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the brownies comes out clean but still moist.  There you have it.

She is a genius, for sure.  I ate beets.  (Yes, never mind that they were hidden inside of brownies.)  And I can only barely think of the garden (it may not help to continually repeat the words, "There are beets in these brownies, there are beets in these brownies..." while you chew.) and it's dirty dirt flavor.  Seriously, you should try them.  Even you, Julie D.  They don't beat your G-brownies, but hey - can you think of any other way to trick your family into consuming beets?  Exactly my point.

Peace, love and make sure you're wearing your patchouli while consuming these,
Ms. Daisy

When Life Gives You Extra Kombucha...

...make kombucha fruit jello, of course!  

There are so many amazing benefits of kombucha and fermented goodies that it should perk your ears up just thinking about it.  What's that, you say?  Did you just ask, "What benefits?"

My, my.  Well, before I bowl you over with piles of goodness, let me just ask you this - did you know that traditional diets consisted of a bit of fermentation at every meal?  Our Standard American Diet (catch that acronym, lovies) is packed full of things guaranteed to mess up your mind, your body, and yer guts.  (Yes, I did know that was a part of your body, I just wanted to emphasize it for good measure.)

White sugar, white flour, cooked to death fruits and veggies, fake foods, genetically modified corn all up in all a ya'lls junk, beef from cows who don't even eat GRASS anymore, and everyone's favorite endocrine disruptor, soy - fill the foods in the grocery stores to the sky whilst people get cancer, allergies, diabetes, and a laundry list of issues up the wazoo.  

GOOD THING IT AIN'T RELATED, EH?

(Remember that whole "you are what you eat" thing?  Now that couldn't be true, right?)

Come on, my friends.  Let's get real here.  Take any one of those on the list and think about it.  When people stopped grinding their own wheat berries into flour and started gobbling up what was given to them from Mrs. Pillsbury and Mr. Swans Down, do you know that infertility spiked?  There isn't enough nutrition in their stripped flour to keep flies alive, let alone make humans thrive.  

Do yourself and your family a favor - see the Standard American Diet as the fad it is and get back to some real food.

Are you familiar with anyone who has trouble digesting milk or milk-products?  Maybe they can eat yogurt, but straight milk gives them gut problems?  May I suggest that the milk that is sold without the necessary enzymes that help you digest it?  Now I know that if you're going to be a grand-scale milk farmer, you can't risk something going wrong and since you can't keep your eye on all of those cows, you are going to have to pasturize it - but the better way is to drink it how it was made.  If everyone had their own cow, I can bet there wouldn't be much in the way of milk issues (and there would be many more happy cows).

The whole point of this is that we greatly benefit from enzymes and probiotics.  (Which is why a lot of people who can't drink milk can have yogurt.)  Our gut needs happy friends to dance around the maypole with.  If your gut ain't happy, your body isn't going to be either.

So I say do it the easy way - kombucha!  (And kombucha jello!)  Or do it the creative way - sauerkraut, dilly pickles, miso, tempeh, kimchee, kefir (water or milk), or make your own yogurt.

(But kombucha jello is pretty durn easy and fabulous.)

Now I told you I'd let you know the benefits - so, without further ado...

1.  Kombucha is a liver-lover.  It helps you detox your liver so it can do its job well.  No wonder it is called the "Elixir of Immortality"!  When your body has a toxic load, you better figure a good way to detox before you multiply the baddies.  Kombucha does just that.  It has glucaric acid - the cancer preventer.  

2.  Kombucha is your gut's best friend.  Ever heard of the benefits of probiotics?  Kombucha is delicious liquid probiotics straight to your belly.  I have personally had several times where my gut just didn't feel right and I walked over to the fridge and chugged a tall glass of kombucha and within the hour I felt 100% better.  Gut clarity helps mental clarity.  Giddyup.

3.  Kombucha wants to be on your immune system's team.  It's packed with antioxidants and boosts your energy.

4.  Kombucha may help you get rid of your sugar cravings.  Are you a sugar-holic?  Get on the kombucha train and toss the Snickers bar overboard.  

These are only a few of the benefits of kombucha!  It is an amazing thing.

Want some jello?  

Here is the basic recipe, but you can find a fancy and cute blog about it with pictures http://dirtyfloordiaries.com/fruity-kombucha-jello-bites/

And I must say, that website is pretty hilarious.  If you can't be bothered with looking at great websites, the quick and fast version of kombucha jello is this:

100% juice (pomegranate is a good one) - about 2 cups
some smashed fruit (optional) - however much you want
gelatin (I prefer Great Lakes brand) - about 2 tablespoons
1 cup or so of room temperature kombucha

Warm up the juice (not too hot) and put the gelatin in - mix until it dissolves.  The kombucha has to be room temp so that when you mix them together, the coldness doesn't make the gelatin blob up.  In your jello dish, let your kombucha be chillaxing while you gently add the warm juice/gelatin mix.  As you pour it in, stir like a fiend.  Plop the fruit in.  Stick in the fridge.  Peek at it more often than you should.  It will be done somewhere near an hour-ish.  You don't want to make the juice too hot either to kill the good enzymes in the kombucha.  Save the enzymes!  (We should get t-shirts that say that...)

Anyway.  Go on now.  Go get yerself some delicious fruity kombucha jello!  It's a great way to get your kids to get that probiotic goodness into their bellies.  (And yours, too!)

Peace, love and jiggidy jello,
Ms. Daisy

Zits: the joy of all joys

Lovely title, isn't it?  Oh, yes.  Well, let's get real.  Zits are a fact of life.

Pop that thing, girl!

Some people get loads of them while they go through their teenage years and then are relieved when they hit their twenties and the zits seemingly stop.  I, however, think I had four zits from the time I was 13 until I was 21 and then get them now more frequently in my thirties.  It's a wonderful life.


But now - as of these last three or so months, I have almost eradicated the nasties from my face completely!  I don't know exactly all of the causes, but I did only one thing dramatically different.  This caused me to wonder if this change was indeed quite helpful.

At any rate, I thought I'd share it with you so that if you'd like to try it out, you may.  Perhaps it will bring you a measure of success (and I hope it does!).

Now, most of you know that I already make my own eye makeup remover and facial cleanser.  They're both simple recipes - the eye makeup remover is nearly 50% witch hazel and 50% organic extra-virgin olive oil.  Pour those into a little container, shake 'em up, squirt on a cotton round.  The facial cleanser is witch hazel steeped with thyme leaves.  (Thyme is a natural anti-inflammatory agent, thus a zit-shrinker.)

Until a few months ago, I was using a store-bought moisturizer.  I need a moisturizer because I slather my face in chlorine every other day and without it, I have that feeling of your skin being ripped to shreds if you attempt smiling or speaking.  It's lovely.  I hope you've experienced such loveliness to know what I mean.  Now, the moisturizer was labeled 100% natural (which, you know, means totally nothing), but I was using it anyway - mostly because it was somewhat inexpensive ($17, not $70) and I could pronounce the ingredients.

Store-bought 100% natural moisturizer.

But I think there was something in there that just bugged my face.  I would get a zit like clockwork (girls, you know what I mean) and I chalked it up to hormones.  (Indeed, I think it was.  But the other half of the story is that I don't think I was helping myself any with what I was putting on my face.)

So I ran out of my moisturizer and as I went to the store to get more, they didn't carry the item anymore!  What the heck!  I went to a couple other stores and they didn't have it either.  Usually this means it's time to go find it on ebay or amazon, but I went a different direction.  I thought, "Well, what the heck.  I already make the eye makeup remover and the facial cleanser, what if I try making a moisturizer?  It's worth a shot."  

I didn't really know what to make it out of, so I went to my favorite crunchy granola hippie health store and looked at their $70 facial moisturizers.  I read their ingredients.  Some of them contained questionable ingredients that I wouldn't really want to put on my face, especially since I would have been paying ridiculous amounts of money for it.  I noticed a thread of ingredients and decided I would just go with simple and try mixing up the basics.

I used three ingredients: coconut oil, jojoba oil and shea butter.  If you know anything about these ditties, you know that two of them are solids at room temperature.  That is all good and grand, but it makes it a bit more difficult to combine with an oil and rub on your face in any good way.  So, I did the Crunchy Betty thing and melted them up and mixed them together.

I wish that I could remember the exact proportions, but I never even use exact proportions for baking, so I lament to you that you may be out of luck for this if you're into the precise.  I can give you an idea, though.  I would say I went about equal measures of the coconut oil and the shea butter and then did a few squirts of the jojoba at the end.

I used a stainless steel pot to melt the coconut oil first and then added in the shea butter.  I remembered from a Crunchy Betty recipe once that she said if you let it go too long, you can get weird grainy results with your shea butter, so I just mixed it all together until it was a liquid and then took it off heat.  This was when I made a hopeful squinty face and squirted in the jojoba oil.

I put it into a glass facial moisturizer bottle I cleaned out for just that purpose and stuck it in the fridge to get it to solidify.  (Now it lives in my makeup bag like a good little moisturizer.)

If you're used to having white colored facial moisturizers, then you may be a bit weirded out that this puppy is yellow (due to the shea butter), but I can assure you that your face does not turn yellow.

And dudes.  I totally don't get zits anymore.  It was just what my face needed.  

(Is this so ironic?  Wasn't your first reaction to "put oil on your face" the exact opposite?  I'M GOING TO GET A THOUSAND ZITS!  I know.  But I haven't.  And it was in all of those expensive mixes, so maybe it's just cheeseburger oil you don't want to rub on your face.)

If you want it to come out liquidy, you have to heat up your bottle under hot tap water and then squirt it out (which I did initially because I was brainwashed into thinking this is the only way to get moisturizer on your face).  I switched over after about two weeks of doing that to just opening up the bottle, lifting the straw-like thing up and wiping a little blob onto my finger.  Works like a charm.  The warmth of your hands and face turn it into a liquid anyway (since coconut oil is a liquid above 76 F).


It's really lovely!  I say if you're out of yours and you're up for mixing it up in the kitchen that you give it a try.  It sure is a heck of a lot cheaper than $70, $17 or even $7.  I haven't figured the price, but I'd say it cost under $2 to make that batch, and even perhaps under $1.

Knowing your ingredients, knowing how to do it, saving money - what's cooler than that in the world of facial moisturizing!?

Peace, love and let us always bond together to fight the good fight against the attack of the zits,
Ms. Daisy

Making Grape Jam

Yesterday I stirred up something like a cooking project tornado.  I must have been energized by my glass of kombucha or something, but I decided I was going to experiment with fruit. 

I love experimenting with fruit!  

So - the first fruit batch I got my hands on was a bowl full of apples that I had foraged (I foraged!  Theoretically, I feel like that should be filed under Indiana Jones.  However, I was more like a dressed in pink girl wearing cowboy boots standing on a dirt road getting bitten by bugs while throwing apples from a wild apple tree into a bag.).  No, I did not steal them.  These were wild apples out in God's country and I finally got to see why on earth those orchard people love to spray their apples with pesticides - mine looked like they went through a war.  But they tasted fine.  And I'd rather have non-perfect looking apples than those that look perfect but contain poisons (apples top the pesticide list, now you know why!)...even ask Snow White how she feels on that one. 

I didn't know how much it would yield, so I just decided to go for applesauce instead of apple pie or something more complicated.  And plus, it is relatively difficult to mess up making applesauce.  

It was yum!  The offsprings were making passes through the kitchen to sneak bites.

It was easy, it was done.  So I thought, what's next?  What could I possibly get my apply hands on now?  I need a bit more of a challenge!

Violá!  Applesauce!

A spattering, staining, deep purple challenge I got!  The lightbulb went on...ah!  Yes!  The concord grapes!  I could make jelly or jam!

Why not?  After all, the offsprings decided it was too much effort to eat these grapes (that is seriously pathetic), what with all the bittery sour skin and then spitting out the seeds that were the size of half the grape in the first place.  That delicious goo was stacking up short compared to the challenge of eating them.

I looked online and found something I liked very much.  Here's why.  Almost all of your jelly/jam/preserves recipes are going to have two things that I HATE in them.  The first thing is 9,285 gallons of sugar and the second is artificial pectin.  It seems like a fruit massacre when you do stuff like that.  I can't be bothered to participate in such fruit murdering nonsense.

This recipe, however, had neither one of these disgraceful things!  Glory and hallelujah.

Here is the basic gist of it:

You need - concord grapes, sugar (but not 9,285 gallons), a stainless steel pot, a bowl, a strainer, a wooden spoon and a little bit of time.

What you do:

1.  Wash off your grapes.  Duh.
2.  Squeeze the grape inside out of its skin.  Put the skins in one bowl and put the grape insides into the stainless steel pot.  This can become rather fun if you get into a good fast pattern.
3.  Warm up the mushy gooey insides over medium heat.  Meanwhile, stare at the bowl of grape carcasses in amazement.
4.  Bring your mushy gooey grape insides to a boil and watch as they turn into a total pool of gush.  This takes about five minutes.
5.  This is the challenging part: when it becomes goo, now you get to figure out how to get the seeds out of the puddle.  This is done by mainly burning your hands on boiling goo when you realize your strainer is completely useless and the technique you are using with your wooden spoon is made for someone else who is a whiz-bang in this area.  This is when I poured the goo into a cheesecloth folded over doubly and then I began strangling it into the pot.  I hoped that I could make the seeds stay in the cheesecloth, and some of them did, but mostly they shot out like bullets.  Hot bullets.  And boiling hot goo.  I ended up fishing them out mostly with my fingers for the ones I could not manage with the cheesecloth.
6.  Stare at your new puddle of goo.  Think, "Oh crap, is this all it makes?!"
7.  Put it back on the heat anyway.  Add in the grape skin carcasses to the mix.  Squash everything up like one big happy family.  Boil it again for about two minutes and notice how everything looks a very stainingly dark color now.  Kinda like grape jelly.  Oh wait, it is  supposed to be something like that.  Good.

Would you get a load of that fabulousness?!

8.  Add sugar.  I used 1 cup.  I don't know how much fruit I started out with, though.  It filled up a large bowl.  The original recipe said 3 cups of sugar.  I never do that.  That would be over the top.  I like the taste of fruit more than I like the taste of sugar, anyway.
9.  Mix it up again and try to get it to 220 F.  This is pretty much impossible since it boils way before that and spatters all over everything in your kitchen within a twelve foot radius.  My kitchen isn't even twelve feet long, so you can imagine.  And remember the color of it?  Yeah, don't worry, you won't be forgetting it any time soon.
10.  Put that pot of preserves into your handy-dandy jar that you were just waiting to use for such an occasion.  I popped it right into the fridge to use asap, but I suppose if you're into complicated next steps like using the pressure cooker, go right ahead and can it properly for long-term storage.  Mine was for short-term eating. 

It made about a cup and a half of preserves.  And the color was very delightful.  You could paint your kitchen with it.  You may need to after you get done with the spattering.

It was all worth it in the morning, though, when I had it on homemade toast with scrambled free-range eggs and cracked black pepper and pink salt while I sipped my new favorite tea (no thanks to you, Typhoo, you pesticide-laden naughty pants!), Higher Living organic English Breakfast.

Peace, love and if I find a good way to get the purple out of the cracks of my fingernails, I'll let you know,
Ms. Daisy