What about healthcare?

My husband has been looking for work for some time. During this time we have experimented with some creative solutions to periodic health challenges. I thought that I could share some of the things that we have done to help us in this time that we have been uninsured. I hope that this might help someone else too.

Here is the short list, I may think of other things later to add on:
Prayer, fasting, scripture study, priesthood blessings, paying tithing
Essential Oils
Energy Work
Poultices
Eating as healthy as we can afford to, especially avoiding sugar
Garlic-olive oil foot rubs
Lemon with chlorophyl and raw honey--I put this in water and make a drink for my kids or myself if starting to get sick or just need a boost.
Herbal teas (herbs like red raspberry leaf, chamomile, etc. Not black, green etc that actually come from a tea plant.)
Herbs, in general
Home Birth
Vitamins
Kefir, and other cultured foods
Gardening

Books:
Feelings Buried Alive Never Die
 Joel Fuhrman's book,Eat to Live
The Emotion Code

Websites/Blogs
Doctor Yourself
Tied to my apron: this is from my friend Allison, be sure to look at the different tabs.

Movies
Fat, sick and nearly dead

Healthy Muffin Mix

Another staple breakfast at our house are homemade healthy muffins. I make some sort of muffin at least once a week so I created my own muffin mix to have on hand. My family loves these healthy muffins. We have our favorite variations, but you can easily adapt this recipe to use something you have on hand.

Here is the basic recipe:
2/3 cup oil (I have used canola and coconut oil, use what works for you)
1 1/2 cups honey (or sugar or sweetener of your choice. I have used less honey and added some stevia.)
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup oatmeal
2 tablespoons flax
1/2 cup sunflower seeds

Choose a variation for your muffin recipe:
Peach Muffins: add 1 1/2 cups mashed peaches. This tastes really good with the sunflower seeds!

Pumpkin Muffins: add 2 cups pumpkin and some chocolate chips. I love to used home grown butternut squash!

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins: add three or so mashed bananas, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and chocolate chips. If you want to, you can leave out the chocolate chips and just have banana muffins. (These are also yummy with bran. I like to buy bran at Good Earth, pour hot water on the bran to soften it up while you mix up the rest of the ingredients.)

Blueberry: 1 cup of blueberries; you can add a crumble on top, with butter, flour, cinnamon and sugar.

Apple Cinnamon Muffins: 1 cup chopped apple (or applesauce), 1 teaspoon cinnamon; also yummy with a crumble on top.

Zucchini Muffins: Grate 1 1/2 cups of zucchini and add 1-2 teaspoons of cinnamon.

Directions: Mix up and bake in greased muffin pans for 17 minutes at 375 degrees. This makes about 24 muffins, depending on the variation.

Can you really eat healthy without spending a fortune?

Sometimes it can be a challenge to eat healthy on a budget! This morning I came across a couple of wonderful resources that dispute the claim that you have to spend a fortune to eat healthy. These come from Karen Urbanek's website naturesgardenwellnesscenter.com.

Here are the links:
Tips for healthy family eating, even with a blended family!
Healthy Lunches
How to eat cheap and organic!

Mayonnaise Recipe

Making homemade mayonnaise is super easy if you have a blender. The only trick is figuring out which oil to use to suit your tastes. I have played around with homemade mayonnaise for some time. I have tried canola oil, extra virgin olive oil, vegetable oil and various spices. The combinations are endless!

Here is the recipe for our favorite simple mayonnaise:
1-2 eggs
1 cup light olive oil (surprisingly, extra virgin tastes too strong here)
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt

First crack eggs in a blender, add lemon juice and salt. Start blender and slowly add half of the oil through the feed tube or hole in the top of the blender. Watch for the mayo to thicken and then slowly add the rest of the oil. Voila! You have homemade mayonnaise!

Try this recipe and let us know what you think. Later, you may want to experiment with adding a tad of dry mustard or other spices. I love Mark Bittman's cookbook, How to Cook Everything that is where I first learned about homemade mayonnaise. How to Cook Everything is one of my staple cookbooks in the kitchen. It also has other recipes for mayonnaise to try.

Yogurt Cookies!

I am always on the look out for more ways to use yogurt and the other homemade milk products that we have on hand. So the other night when I was craving a sweet treat and found an easy recipe on All Recipes, I decided to make yogurt cookies! They turned out wonderful and they are more healthy!

  Here is the basic recipe:

1 cup of sugar

1 tablespoon of molasses

1/4 cup of palm shortening

1/4 cup of regular shortening

1/2 cup of yogurt, (I used Greek)

2 teaspoons of vanilla

2 cups of whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

1/2 teaspoon of salt

semi-sweet chocolate chips

I really liked them, but next time I won't use regular shortening. I used this recipe from All Recipes, and hadn't made them before, so I followed the recipe pretty closely using what I had on hand.

 I really like the idea of this recipe because it makes eggless chocolate chip cookies and uses less fat in general. I love to cook with coconut oil and butter as my favorite fats/oils, but I also try to conserve them since we are living on our food storage. Palm shortening is something new that I have been learning about. It is a healthier alternative to regular shortening and butter. It is a solid at room temperature and is excellent in biscuits.

Homemade pizza

Who doesn't love homemade pizza? You can make the crust as thin or thick as you like. Appease everyone with their favorite toppings. You can make it healthier and for less money than store bought pizza. Plus, it is amazingly delicious!

My husband and I made it together. When I asked him what he put in the pizza crust recipe, he just said, "flour, water, olive oil, salt, and yeast." That's my husband!

Yummy Italian Carabonara!

Last night I had a meeting and came home to a most delicious carabonara pasta my husband Nate made! If you have never had pasta carabonara you are in for a treat. He used a new spaghetti that we have never tried before, it is "De Boles organic spinach spaghetti style pasta made with Jerusalem artichoke flour." First he cooked the bacon and boiled the pasta. Meanwhile he mixed 6 eggs and about a cup of homemade cream cheese (this is a first for us, usually he uses parmigiano), salt, pepper, and basil. Then he combined the bacon, egg mixture and the cooked pasta and cooked it further on a low burner. Delish!

What to do without eggs

One of the most important things I have learned living off our food storage is what to do without eggs. What is an egg substitute you might ask? There are two egg substitutes I like to use in baking, flax seed or non-flavored gelatin. These are also excellent egg substitutes if you have an egg allergy.

For the flax seed egg substitute, you just blend up several tablespoons of flax seed with one cup of hot water. Then you add one tablespoon of the flax mixture per egg you are replacing. I like to be very generous with this mixture, so I add more. Put the extra in a jar and put it in your refrigerator.

The flax egg substitute will look something like this.

You can also use non-flavored gelatin as a substitute for egg. Use 1 tablespoon of the dry gelatin for each equivalent egg you need. This is a wonderful replacement because you don't need a blender and can do it when your power is out. You can buy the Knox unflavored gelatin in the Jello and pudding section of your grocery store. If you have successfully used something else, leave a comment and share what you have tried.

Both of these egg substitutes really work! You can use them in cookies, cakes, brownies, pancakes, and anything else you are baking.

Peanut Butter Breakfast Bars

I wanted to make something a bit sweet but also healthy and came up with this, peanut butter breakfast bars. We started eating before I remembered to take a picture! To make this into dessert peanut butter bars, leave in all the sweetener, and bake in a cookie sheet for 12 minutes and add chocolate chips on top and spread while it is hot. I love the combination of whole grains with the seeds!

Peanut Butter Breakfast Bars:

3/4 c. sugar or honey

3/4 c. brown sugar (you can leave this out 

if you like less sweetener)

3/4 c. peanut butter

2 eggs

3/4 c. butter or coconut oil

1/2 t. salt

1 t. vanilla

3/4 t. baking soda

1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour

1 1/2 c. rolled oats

2 T flax seeds

1/2 c. sunflower seeds

Bake at 350 for 22-25 minutes in a 9X13 pan. Enjoy!

Buttermilk

Making buttermilk is super easy! You do need to start with a buttermilk culture from the store. Buy the smallest size container of buttermilk from the store. Pour 1/2 cup of the cultured buttermilk in a jar, fill it up the rest of the way with milk. Leave it out over night on the counter to culture all the milk. You now have buttermilk! Now you can use it or refrigerate it. I like to have 2 quart jars available in my refrigerator because I use it all the time! When one jar starts to get low from making pancakes, biscuits, muffins or anything else, I just fill it up again with regular milk and leave it out over night. Just be sure that you always leave about 1/2 cup of the start/culture in the jar before adding the milk. You can do it with dry milk that is reconstituted, 1%, 2%, or whole milk. Of course wash your jar every couple of times too!

                        The jar on the left has buttermilk. The jar on the right is the regular milk.

Now the jar on the left has the milk added to it and I will leave it out overnight to culture all the milk into buttermilk. This is so easy! Give it a try and see what you think. It is so fun the next morning to see how thick and creamy it is! You will love to make all your favorite buttermilk recipes with buttermilk that you have cultured yourself! Some recipes to try are: buttermilk pancakes, waffles, biscuits, buttermilk syrup (see my recipe), buttermilk scones (recipe to follow soon), buttermilk garlic mashed potatoes, homemade buttermilk ranch dressing, muffins, cornbread, buttermilk fried chicken is amazing, and don't forget desserts with buttermilk caramel, etc. Now you will never need to make fake buttermilk with lemon juice or vinegar again!

Cooking from Scratch: Making Pancakes

Learning to cook from scratch is super important if you want to start saving money in the kitchen. One of our favorite things to make from scratch is pancakes. Plus, it is one of many frugal recipes I will share with you on this blog. This is a healthy pancake recipe with whole wheat flour and blended flax seed (or eggs if you prefer. Don't forget that this makes an easy dinner on those nights when you have no idea what to make. Breakfast for dinner is yummy!

How to cook pancakes from scratch:

(for my family of 6 eaters):

4 cups of flour (I used freshly ground whole wheat)
1 teaspoon of baking soda
2 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
3 1/2 to 4 cups of buttermilk (see recipe for this)
1/2 cup of oil
4 eggs (or 4 tablespoons flax mix substitute)
2 teaspoons vanilla

Preheat your griddle to 350 degrees F. Next mix all the dry ingredients together.

Then add your wet ingredients on top. I was out of eggs so I used my flax mix substitute.

Mix it all together and then scoop onto the griddle.

When you see the edges start to dry out and the tops start to getting bubbles, then the pancakes are ready to flip.

Like this! Then flip them and wait a minute or two, depending on how thick your batter was, and enjoy! Now you know how to cook pancakes from scratch!

The Widow's Barrel

I love the story from the Old Testament about Elijah and the widow's barrel:

8 ¶And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying,

9 Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee.

10 So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, the widow woman was there gathering of sticks: and he called to her, and said, Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.

11 And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her, and said, Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of abread in thine hand.

12 And she said, As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.

13 And Elijah said unto her, Fear not; go and do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son.

14 For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth.

15 And she awent and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days.

16 And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Elijah. (1 Kings 17:8-16)

 

I have reflected on this story for some time now because of my own circumstances. My husband and I have followed the counsel of prophets that we have a year supply of food. Throughout the years, we have had many situations arise that have required us to use our food storage. I have been so thankful for a loving God who has guided and blessed us to be able to gain food storage in the first place, and also blessed us to learn how to use it. This blog is my attempt to share provident living. I will post things related to cooking from scratch and frugal recipes, as well as other items related to food storage and emergency preparedness. I also will share how the Lord blesses us so that our 'barrel of meal [wasteth] not.'