Exploration 1: Probably the Best Vegetable Stew - EVER*
There are many things I detest about winter. I hate that Christmas is unavoidable. I hate that it's cold (I am thankful that I'm now in the South where it's not as cold, however.) I hate that the days are shorter. I hate that the fruit available doesn't taste as good. And I hate that it becomes cold and flu season. I can't think of one person who enjoys getting and being sick.
Before leaving to New Mexico I developed a dry cough. Because it was a dry cough I wasn't much worried about it. It was just annoying. While in New Mexico, one some nights it got slightly worse. The air was super dry there and I think it contributed to it. Regardless, I still put in a 4 mile run one afternoon. I hated myself for that afterwards. Let me rephrase, my body hated me for that afterwards. I don't like running outside, it tears up my throat. Although it wasn't cold, it was cold enough for my lungs to get angry.
When I was a baby I nearly died from pneumonia so I have weak lungs as it is. I've developed pneumonia three times as an adult.
It wasn't until my first day back in Georgia that my chest felt heavy. My cough was no longer dry. I was now, officially, fighting off a cold - if not the flu. Even my energy levels sunk. What felt like the entire month of November and December everyone in our house hold has been sick and I tried to be as proactive as I could to NOT get sick. For three days I even ran around wearing a surgical mask. I know it may seem a tad paranoid, but by gully, it worked. I also washed dishes using bleach, wiped off the counters and table with happy dedication and sanitized my room frequently - near hospital status.
During that time my sister administered to her daughter's cough syrup for obvious reasons. My last relationship was about four years ago and once, when he got sick, I remember him loading up on cough syrup and decongestant. I don't know where I picked it up, but I try not to use such over the counter medicines. A friend once said, "They suppress coughs, they don't help you. In fact, they might slow recovery." His thought process, if your coughing up gunk, it's not good for your lungs - it's trying to get it out. Cough it up, spit it out be patient. If you down cough syrup, all you're really doing is preventing your body from doing what it naturally can do for itself.
Makes sense to me. This also holds true for a fever. Up to a certain point, a fever isn't all that bad. It's uncomfortable, I know, but it's not bad if within safe perimeters. What your body is trying to do is fry whatever it is that is not good within you. When anyone automatically reaches for Tylenol or anything else that is designed to stop a fever - guess what? You're letting your body's defense rest and what it is that is actually making you sick win. Royal epic fail if you ask me. Either way, with our without medicine, after your body reaches like 103 or something, get your butt to the ER.
I soon found myself on the web researching at home remedies. Herbal tea, honey and lemon - this is something I was familiar with from my youth. It's my grandmother's go-to for coughs and sore throats. I put a pot of water on the stove to heat up.
Then I stumbled upon pineapple. Strange and unexpected, I know. According to what I read, it has the same thing cough syrup does, but it's not engineered in a lab. It's natural. Instead of only suppressing a cough, it helps to break up mucus (so you will still cough) while giving your body a boost of vitamins. Hey, what could it hurt? If push comes to shove, I could still guzzle down some cough syrup.
I marched to the local grocery store to by what ingredients I needed for today's recipe and a pineapple to slice up.
You might have heard it's been cold lately - yes, even in the South. When I arrived into ATL, I was surprised to experience how cold it was. After 10 minutes of waiting outside of the airport for my shuttle, I had to put my phone in my pocket because I couldn't feel the tips of my fingers anymore. I couldn't hit the right buttons. It was that cold.
Stew was a great choice and something I haven't tried since cutting out meat. I heard that if you place the words "best ever" in any Internet search for food, the chances of you getting decent recipes are better than if you just use whatever you're looking for (i.e. Best Ever Vegetarian Stew.) I don't know if it really works or not, but I do it constantly. Hey, that's how I found the lasagna recipe. It's also how I found this stew. Spoiler alert, it is a Tyson Nugget's 5.
It smells good and tastes better. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't skeptical. I don't know why I was, but I was.
If you didn't know, I'm Native American - of the Shoshone and Paiute Tribe of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation. I believe it's shared among most, if not all, tribes that one shouldn't prepare or eat food if angry, sad, or angry. Well, if you're feeling any negative emotions at all, you shouldn't prepare of eat food. The teaching behind this is we believe thoughts are powerful. I mean, they kind of are, everything in the universe was created from a single thought. By handling food with negative thoughts, emotions you're essentially polluting your food. Then people, either you or others eat it and all that negativity enters them. It has the potential to make people, if not yourself, sick.
I wanted to share this because this recipe did the exact opposite. Not long after the onions started to fry, my two nieces who just arrived home from their Christmas break adventures, came into the kitchen and started being silly. Through the cooking process, we bantered, we teased, we laughed, and we shared small stories with each other. My oldest glued to my hip asking an array of questions ranging from, "What do you like cooking?" to "Why do you like cooking?"
What I didn't realize was a jar of Hershey kisses were sitting behind the butter, next to the wall. The younger sister asked me, at one point, to give her a kiss. This resulted in me turning around and laying a kiss on her head.
"No! Not that!!" she laughed.
The other sister found it hilarious. Soon they both, repeated interrupted my cooking to ask for a "kiss" only to dodge my attempts to give the a kiss, before actually giving them their candy. It was funny. At some point I heard them go into the living room and ask their mom, "Do you want a kiss?"
Kids.
Sometime ago you might remember me writing about homemade vegetable broth. To recap, a friend of mine from Southern New Mexico went me a video via Facebook outlining how to make your own vegetable broth. It's really not hard, but I'm a novice so everything is a new discovery. I believe it was black bean enchiladas that asked for vegetable broth, but all I had was chicken broth so that's what I used. Then something else asked for vegetable broth, I ended up by store bought broth for that one. Through these past two months I have been faithfully saving all vegetable scraps for homemade both. Well the day came when my zip lock bag was full. It took about two months.
Before I started to cook the stew, which required it, I made my homemade vegetable broth. It didn't smell the greatest, not like frying onions and green bell pepper, but what do I know. I've never done this before.
It gave me about 10 cups, estimated.
The stew recipe calls for low sodium. Since it's home made there isn't any sodium. So I took the liberty to add some more salt to the recipe that called for. I may have over done it. In the future, I think I'd leave out the sodium and just do it according to bowl. It was good and completely edible - just a small thought.
I took the left over broth and placed it in jars (leaving room for expansion) and froze them for later use. Immediately, I grabbed a new zip lock to start the process all over again. The vegetable scraps that were boiled, I tossed them into the compost. Yes, it's still going strong.
What I liked about this stew recipe was how much onion was used. I'm a big believer in the power of onions, so load me up! Not even going to lie, I even sliced onions and slept with them in my socks. My bed smelt pretty bad the next day so I did have to do some laundry, but I didn't feel worse than I did. I even felt a tad better. Still fighting it, but my body feels optimistic. I'm happy with that.
I'm certain this recipe tastes AMAZING with red wine. I however didn't have any on hand and knowing that I wouldn't use the entire bottle and wasn't much in a drinking mode (mostly because of the cold) I couldn't justify buying then wasting a nice bottle of wine. I would have gave it to my sister, but I've never seen her drink anything besides beer and whiskey.
I ended up using 1/4 of red wine vinegar then supplementing the rest with more vegetable broth.
The house smelled wonderful. Despite how cold it was outside, it turned into a night full of laugher, togetherness, and happy hearts and spirits as we ate, watched "Boss Baby" as a family and then all cozied into our beds for the night.
There's a spirit in food and within us, make sure they always align when cooking. As a lady who used to be my step-mother once said, "Remember to pray good when cooking."
Pray good.
Before leaving to New Mexico I developed a dry cough. Because it was a dry cough I wasn't much worried about it. It was just annoying. While in New Mexico, one some nights it got slightly worse. The air was super dry there and I think it contributed to it. Regardless, I still put in a 4 mile run one afternoon. I hated myself for that afterwards. Let me rephrase, my body hated me for that afterwards. I don't like running outside, it tears up my throat. Although it wasn't cold, it was cold enough for my lungs to get angry.
When I was a baby I nearly died from pneumonia so I have weak lungs as it is. I've developed pneumonia three times as an adult.
 |
Vegetable scraps that I've saved. Making my
own vegetable broth. Yes, Hippie status advances!!
Whoo-hoo!
|
During that time my sister administered to her daughter's cough syrup for obvious reasons. My last relationship was about four years ago and once, when he got sick, I remember him loading up on cough syrup and decongestant. I don't know where I picked it up, but I try not to use such over the counter medicines. A friend once said, "They suppress coughs, they don't help you. In fact, they might slow recovery." His thought process, if your coughing up gunk, it's not good for your lungs - it's trying to get it out. Cough it up, spit it out be patient. If you down cough syrup, all you're really doing is preventing your body from doing what it naturally can do for itself.
Makes sense to me. This also holds true for a fever. Up to a certain point, a fever isn't all that bad. It's uncomfortable, I know, but it's not bad if within safe perimeters. What your body is trying to do is fry whatever it is that is not good within you. When anyone automatically reaches for Tylenol or anything else that is designed to stop a fever - guess what? You're letting your body's defense rest and what it is that is actually making you sick win. Royal epic fail if you ask me. Either way, with our without medicine, after your body reaches like 103 or something, get your butt to the ER.
I soon found myself on the web researching at home remedies. Herbal tea, honey and lemon - this is something I was familiar with from my youth. It's my grandmother's go-to for coughs and sore throats. I put a pot of water on the stove to heat up.
Then I stumbled upon pineapple. Strange and unexpected, I know. According to what I read, it has the same thing cough syrup does, but it's not engineered in a lab. It's natural. Instead of only suppressing a cough, it helps to break up mucus (so you will still cough) while giving your body a boost of vitamins. Hey, what could it hurt? If push comes to shove, I could still guzzle down some cough syrup.
I marched to the local grocery store to by what ingredients I needed for today's recipe and a pineapple to slice up.
 |
Gosh, I even LOOK sick in this photo.
Bleh!
|
You might have heard it's been cold lately - yes, even in the South. When I arrived into ATL, I was surprised to experience how cold it was. After 10 minutes of waiting outside of the airport for my shuttle, I had to put my phone in my pocket because I couldn't feel the tips of my fingers anymore. I couldn't hit the right buttons. It was that cold.
Stew was a great choice and something I haven't tried since cutting out meat. I heard that if you place the words "best ever" in any Internet search for food, the chances of you getting decent recipes are better than if you just use whatever you're looking for (i.e. Best Ever Vegetarian Stew.) I don't know if it really works or not, but I do it constantly. Hey, that's how I found the lasagna recipe. It's also how I found this stew. Spoiler alert, it is a Tyson Nugget's 5.
It smells good and tastes better. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't skeptical. I don't know why I was, but I was.
If you didn't know, I'm Native American - of the Shoshone and Paiute Tribe of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation. I believe it's shared among most, if not all, tribes that one shouldn't prepare or eat food if angry, sad, or angry. Well, if you're feeling any negative emotions at all, you shouldn't prepare of eat food. The teaching behind this is we believe thoughts are powerful. I mean, they kind of are, everything in the universe was created from a single thought. By handling food with negative thoughts, emotions you're essentially polluting your food. Then people, either you or others eat it and all that negativity enters them. It has the potential to make people, if not yourself, sick.
I wanted to share this because this recipe did the exact opposite. Not long after the onions started to fry, my two nieces who just arrived home from their Christmas break adventures, came into the kitchen and started being silly. Through the cooking process, we bantered, we teased, we laughed, and we shared small stories with each other. My oldest glued to my hip asking an array of questions ranging from, "What do you like cooking?" to "Why do you like cooking?"
What I didn't realize was a jar of Hershey kisses were sitting behind the butter, next to the wall. The younger sister asked me, at one point, to give her a kiss. This resulted in me turning around and laying a kiss on her head.
"No! Not that!!" she laughed.
The other sister found it hilarious. Soon they both, repeated interrupted my cooking to ask for a "kiss" only to dodge my attempts to give the a kiss, before actually giving them their candy. It was funny. At some point I heard them go into the living room and ask their mom, "Do you want a kiss?"
Kids.
Sometime ago you might remember me writing about homemade vegetable broth. To recap, a friend of mine from Southern New Mexico went me a video via Facebook outlining how to make your own vegetable broth. It's really not hard, but I'm a novice so everything is a new discovery. I believe it was black bean enchiladas that asked for vegetable broth, but all I had was chicken broth so that's what I used. Then something else asked for vegetable broth, I ended up by store bought broth for that one. Through these past two months I have been faithfully saving all vegetable scraps for homemade both. Well the day came when my zip lock bag was full. It took about two months.
Before I started to cook the stew, which required it, I made my homemade vegetable broth. It didn't smell the greatest, not like frying onions and green bell pepper, but what do I know. I've never done this before.
It gave me about 10 cups, estimated.
The stew recipe calls for low sodium. Since it's home made there isn't any sodium. So I took the liberty to add some more salt to the recipe that called for. I may have over done it. In the future, I think I'd leave out the sodium and just do it according to bowl. It was good and completely edible - just a small thought.
I took the left over broth and placed it in jars (leaving room for expansion) and froze them for later use. Immediately, I grabbed a new zip lock to start the process all over again. The vegetable scraps that were boiled, I tossed them into the compost. Yes, it's still going strong.
What I liked about this stew recipe was how much onion was used. I'm a big believer in the power of onions, so load me up! Not even going to lie, I even sliced onions and slept with them in my socks. My bed smelt pretty bad the next day so I did have to do some laundry, but I didn't feel worse than I did. I even felt a tad better. Still fighting it, but my body feels optimistic. I'm happy with that.
I ended up using 1/4 of red wine vinegar then supplementing the rest with more vegetable broth.
The house smelled wonderful. Despite how cold it was outside, it turned into a night full of laugher, togetherness, and happy hearts and spirits as we ate, watched "Boss Baby" as a family and then all cozied into our beds for the night.
There's a spirit in food and within us, make sure they always align when cooking. As a lady who used to be my step-mother once said, "Remember to pray good when cooking."
Pray good.
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