Home Remedies: DIY Raw Apple Cider Vinegar

It's apple cider season, and you know what that means, right? Well, for one thing, it means drinking tons of apple cider. But it also means making apple cider vinegar.

That's what I have brewing in that gallon jug right there.

You may wonder why I have it listed as a home remedy instead of a cooking ingredient. While this makes for a delicious cooking or salad vinegar, we started consuming (and now making) raw vinegar for health reasons.

The health benefits of raw vinegar are numerous, but the thing we were most impressed by is its effect on blood sugar.

Home Remedies: For Mosquito Bites

Mr. Scrimp and I spent quite a bit of time outside over the last few days. He was clever and used bug spray. I was not.

We both ended up with a truly ridiculous number of bites--although I admit, Mr. Scrimp got far fewer than I did. I started counting them and got bored after bite number 33 just on my legs.

Fortunately, my front yard is a source of an excellent bug bite cure, one which I learned about years ago: plantain.

That's right. I'm talking about the ubiquitous, find-it-everywhere annoyance that is the second most-common turf weed after dandelion. If you are responsible for yard care, I imagine that this little plant makes you tear your hair out.

But don't mow it down! If you have a yard full of plantain that hasn't been contaminated by commercial fertilizers or pesticides, there are a lot of useful things it can do.

Surgery

It's been an exciting time at Casa Scrimp. I had to have emergency surgery yesterday to take care of an issue that wasn't immediately dangerous but could have become dangerous if not taken care of asap.

Home again now, feeling tired and sore, but good. Look for a new post later today.

Why Organic?

One question I've never been asked is why Mr. Scrimp and I make an effort to eat organic, local, and/or unprocessed food whenever possible. I think that's because, particularly amongst our 20-something age group, eating organic and local has become a very fashionable thing to do, which makes it a very unfashionable thing to question.

But, I think it's worth discussing our reasons, because I know there are so many people out there who aren't doing it, and I believe it's very valuable.

So, here's a list of the reasons we changed our lifestyle like this.

Product Review: Yogi Tea Cold Season

This morning, when the alarm went off and Mr. Scrimp shook me awake, there was only one thought in my head:

Blllllllleeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh.

That is what I groaned into my pillow as I shoved my face in it and tried to hike the covers up over my head even as Mr. Scrimp insisted that I had to get up and start getting ready for the day. I whimpered. I pouted. I whined. I coughed pathetic little coughs. When the lights went on, I clutched my poor aching head and winced in pain like a hungover vampire.

I has the sick.

There is some illness that has been making the rounds amongst our friends. Mr. Scrimp was the most recent one to have it, and so it was only a matter of time before I, too, fell prey to it. I feel miserable. I'm still dragging myself to work, but I admit that I am doing it with bad grace, because my head hurts.

I started feeling sick yesterday morning, and so I made myself a cup of the tea that I'd bought for Mr. Scrimp when he got sick--Cold Season, by Yogi Tea.

First of all, this stuff is delicious. Delicious. It has a great blend of herbs and spices in it, including just enough black pepper to warm it up and give it a little kick without actually being spicy.

Second, it actually works. I am a big believer in medicinal herbs and this tea combines all the ones I otherwise would have had to take separately into one delicious beverage. I found it, mixed with a little honey, to be very soothing on the throat, and very relaxing to drink.

I recommend this stuff without caveat. It's excellent. I will warn you, though, that the Cold Season formula has valerian root in it, which is an herbal sedative. Some people are fine drinking that throughout the day, but some aren't. I drank some with my lunch yesterday and it knocked me right out. I fell asleep at work, in spite of my best efforts to stay awake.

That can also work to your benefit, though. Mr. Scrimp and I each drank some right before bed last night and both fell asleep almost as soon as our heads hit our pillows. No being kept awake by coughing, no lying awake feeling uncomfortable. Just warm, delicious sleep.

Drink some. I promise, it'll be great.. until the alarm goes off and you have to get out of your nice warm bed again.

Note: This is an unsolicited and unsponsored review, reflecting my opinion and experience only. I was not compensated in any way for providing it.

Mini-hiatus

Blogging has been light for me these last few days, I know. Partly this is a money issue--we had some car trouble, so we don't have extra funds this month for buying the items I need to complete craft projects, leaving me with less to blog about.

It's also a health issue. While I am generally healthy in the sense that I'm rarely sick via contagion, I do have a chronic illness (endometriosis) that frequently leaves me tired or in pain. We've just started dealing with a new issue connected to that, so I spent a lot of time at the doctor's yesterday and was so emotionally exhausted by it that I didn't do anything last night except curl up in bed with Mr. Scrimp and watch TV.

Tonight is our weekly game night with friends, so I expect I'll be ready to go back to regularly scheduled blogging tomorrow morning.

In the meantime.. leave a comment and give me one link to YOUR blog and at least one link to another blog you read so I can have some fresh inspiration!

Gym

It's been over six months now since Mr. Scrimp and I stopped eating processed foods or using plastic for food storage. I'm really happy with how well it's gone, and I feel like it's a habit now deeply ingrained in each of us that it's time to take the next step.

So, today, I signed up at a gym.

On Food

I am a big fan and proponent of eating healthy food. It's part of why I started this blog, in fact. Food is, to me, one of the most important facets of our lifestyle. But I realized today that, apart from posting recipes, I've done very little talking about food and what we feel it ought to be.

Put very simply, it's this--we don't eat "health food," we don't eat processed food, we do our best to eat local and/or organic, and we try not to eat a lot of fat or sugar. We've been doing that for six and a half months now, and we've both lost weight. More importantly, though, we have more energy, fewer aches and pains, I sleep better (I used to have terrible problems with insomnia), and we both feel just generally better.

I spent about two hours walking around the grocery store today. It normally only takes me about 30 minutes to get all my shopping done, but Mr. Scrimp was at work, and I didn't have a list with me, so I took the time to browse and really enjoy myself.

Normally I shop with a list, but even when I don't, I try to be guided by a few simple and easy-to-remember rules:

• Don't buy pre-made food. It will almost always be better if you buy the separate ingredients and make it yourself, even though it will be more time consuming. You will also have the benefit of knowing exactly what you're eating, all the time.
• Don't buy food with ingredients you can't pronounce or find at the grocery store. Chemical additives in food are a relatively new addition, and are mainly present (or have been up until recently) in American diets. There aren't enough data yet to solidly lay the blame for the terrible health of Americans on chemical food additives yet, as far as I know, but the circumstantial evidence continues to mount up, especially as highly processed food begins to make its way into Europe and previously healthy countries experience similar spikes in their rates of certain health problems. I am simply tired of putting things into my body that have only been eaten by humans for the last 20-40 years. It strikes me as folly.
• Don't buy foods that are artificially low-fat, fat-free, or "lite". This is especially true of things like "fat free half & half" or "fat free sour cream". Half & half is half milk, half cream. Sour cream is, well, sour cream. By their very nature, those products have fat in them. What that means is that in order to make them fat-free, they have to be so chemically tweaked and altered that what you're really eating or drinking is asoup of seaweed, starches, sugars, thickened skim milk, chemicals, and sugar, sugar, sugar. Fat is one of the things that makes food taste good. Sugars are one of the others. Diet food products might be low in fat, but they almost always have huge amounts of added sugars and sodium to make up for it--otherwise you'd be able to taste all the chemicals you're eating. 
• Don't buy imitation foods. This is sort of an addendum to the last rule--margarine, tofurkey, American "cheese product", and all those other bizarre foods are terrible for you. They are unhealthy. They are heavily processed. They are full of sugar and chemicals that are probably someday going to turn out to be toxic. And they don't even taste good. 
• Don't buy canned when you can get fresh or dried. There's evidence coming out that food stored long-term in aluminum cans gets chemicals leached into it. I was actually advised away from canned foods and beverages by my doctor a few years ago because most of the cans are lined with soft plastics in order to keep the food from developing a metallic taste, and the plastics can leach into food over time. Instead of canned beans, buy dried. Instead of canned tomatoes, buy fresh. Or at least buy foods canned in glass, or frozen.
  

 It's been long enough now that Mr. Scrimp and I can both tell the difference. Maybe not every day, but when we have occasion to eat processed foods or foods that contain a lot of chemical additives, it takes him about 30 minutes and me about 2 hours to start to really feel unwell as a result.

During some of my Christmas vacation, we didn't have time to go grocery shopping and so ended up eating a lot of pre-made, restaurant, or even fast-food for a few days. By the end of it, I felt terrible.

"Did I used to feel like this all the time?" I asked Mr. Scrimp, staring in the mirror at my puffy eyes and wan face as I downed a couple of Advil to kill the headache that I couldn't seem to get rid of. "Why did it take me so long to stop?"

He shrugged. "We were just so used to it that we didn't notice anymore, I guess."

You might read this and think, "You know, that's true for you, but I feel fine eating processed food. I don't feel like it's affecting my health or my sense of well-being. I've lost weight on my lite-foods diet and I think it tastes delicious."

I challenge you to cut those foods out completely for two months (it takes about that long to get over the food cravings and feeling constantly hungry), and then tell me you don't feel better.

Maybe you're just so used to it that you just don't notice how you really feel.

Food for Thought, addendum

I've got some work to do this evening, but then it's blog, blog, blog until bed--I'll finally get caught up! I'm not entirely over being sick, but I went back to my job today after two miserable days at home and a weekend of sleeping and moping.

I grabbed lunch at work today--Jif peanut butter on processed potato bread and a slice of American cheese, because that's what was there. Then I spent the whole afternoon trying to figure out why I suddenly felt so sick to my stomach, and it didn't hit me until this afternoon that it's been long enough now since we started trying to eat organic/nonprocessed et cetera that maybe I just don't tolerate processed foods very well anymore. Is it possible that I used to feel like this all the time? What a horrifying thought.

Whoops

Well, between one thing and another, I'm two days behind on posting, which is terrible. Poor little blog--I haven't abandoned you, I just have been too sick to be very creative.

But a lot of sleep and an intense antibiotic regimen have done their work. Mr. Scrimp and I are on our way out to hear an Advent sermon at our church, but when we get home, I will have time to post.

Food for Thought

Well, I'm happy to announce that after 24 hours of intense antibiotics and a day in bed being tended by the saintly Mr. Scrimp, I'm starting to feel human again. The blog will be moving to a new domain this weekend so posting may (or may not) still be fairly light.

It's been a week or two since I talked much about the Scrimp household's food choices. We try very hard to eat as little processed food as possible. This saves money in the long run, and it is far, far healthier.

Found this article yesterday. Even if you still eat processed food, this is worth considering. Small changes in your eating habits can lead to big differences. It's been about six months since Mr. Scrimp and I started making a real effort to avoid processed food and we both feel much, much healthier and generally all-around better.

News articles about things like this are often sensationalized, so take it with a grain of salt--but it's very true that food is less nutritious than it used to be, and modern farming and food storage practices are part of that. My doctor long ago recommended against storing food in plastic, or in aluminum cans, which are lined with soft plastics to keep the aluminum taste out of the food, because of chemicals that can leach from the plastic into the food. 


The 7 Foods Experts Won't Eat - Yahoo News (via Fark)

Plague

Scrimpalicious will be taking a break for a day or two while I cope with being so sick that I am almost physically incapable of getting out of bed without Mr. Scrimp's help. I've been meaning to post this all day, but making the effort to sit up and pick the laptop up long enough to get it where I could reach it just felt like too much.

Pathetic? Yes, I guess it is, but I am sick with two things at once, am running a fever that Advil isn't bringing down, and know I'm dehydrated but feel sick and dizzy every time I try to drink anything. I'll blog again tomorrow. Or the next day.

Snips and Sniffles

I am indeed staying home sick today. The problem with staying home sick from work is that if you're sick enough to stay home, you don't really feel up to doing all the things around the house that you ought to do.

I'm trying to decide which projects I'm going to attempt today. I've got to sort through some clothes, and if I find any appropriate t-shirts, I might try to make this re-usable shopping bag from Cut Out & Keep, which is made from a t-shirt sewn into the shape of a plastic grocery bag.

(Found via a five-page list of t-shirt mods at HideYourArms. Go read all of them.)

Another Delay

It's sleeting outside and the Scrimpalicious household is under siege from some sort of flu-like ailment... again. Instead of crafting, I've put on my favorite flannel pajamas and settled into bed with Mr. Scrimp, some seedless green grapes, a dose of elderberry extract and ginger ale every four hours, and Season 3 of Survivorman. I sense hot chocolate in my immediate future.

The downside is, I feel pretty miserable and I might have to miss work tomorrow. The upside is, if I have to miss work tomorrow I'll have a whole day to putter around my house, take photos, and do crafty things.

What are your favorite things to do when you're sick?

Neat Link

I came across this link on Facebook today, and it looks like a great resource. If you try to be pretty assiduous about keeping track of your calories, it can be really frustrating when you make the switch away from processed foods. The only thing I really miss about them is being able to get an exact calorie count per serving off the back of the box.

That's where SparkRecipes comes in. It's got a free recipe calorie counter, where all you need to do is enter the ingredients in your recipe and the number of servings it makes and it will give you a full (if somewhat approximate) breakdown of nutritional information.

Like AllRecipes, it also has many recipes submitted by users of the site, and if you register you'll be able to save recipes of your own in your "cookbook." Definitely worth checking out.

Flu Season

The holidays are almost upon us, and with them come aches, pains, headaches, and upset stomachs. And, in addition to that, you might get the flu.

Don't get me wrong, I love the holidays, but in the Scrimpalicious household this year, they are kicking off with something that I'm watching anxiously in case it becomes the flu. My husband is pathetically sick in bed with a fever and all the above mentioned aches and pains, although so far he's only got a mild cough and moderate congestion.

But it struck me that now would be an apropos moment for mentioning my favorite health discovery of this year: Elderberry extract!

For those of you who don't know, there was a study done in the 90's that showed that elderberry flavonoids compare favorably (yes, that means they're better) to Tamiflu in the treatment of Influenza. Now, I would never say not to take Tamiflu if you're diagnosed with the flu, especially H1N1, but you can take them together with no ill effect, and there's evidence that regular doses of elderberry every four hours will actually shorten the duration of your illness more than Tamiflu will.

Because my beloved is sick, I stopped by Whole Foods to inspect their selection and I was fairly shocked, to be honest, even though I'm aware that there are certain areas in which Whole Foods is prone to price gouging. (I checked CVS too, but they had nothing.)

The actual extract, as in a liquid with a dropper, came in at about a dollar a dose, and there were only 11 doses in the bottle. I kid you not. Being that we are into the saving of money, I kept combing the shelves until I found (and this is worth digging for) a bottle of elderberry extract supplements. These were $8-ish for a bottle of 100, and it's a standardized dosage of elderberry, which I feel like is preferable anyway because it means no messing around with droppers.

Recommendation is that once you start to show symptoms of being ill, take a dose every four hours. If you're not ill but have been exposed, take it three times a day. I have family members who have done this with good results.

What you're looking for is black elderberry extract, or sambucol.  It may be labeled differently depending on where you buy it.

And here, because you should never take the Internet's word for things, and I want to give you some more statistically significant evidence than "it worked for my family", is a link to the PubMed abstract of the study I mentioned.

Hummus

Well, it's Monday. The weekend always ends too soon. We had a party over the weekend for the husband's birthday, so this week's recipe will be for the hummus that I made.

I have a lot of goals for my life. One of those goals is to stop eating processed food, if not completely, then at least no more than once or twice a week. Obviously, "processed food" is a pretty big catch-all term, so I check food labels and don't (as a rule) buy things that have ingredients I can't pronounce or find at the grocery store.

Eating this way often costs us a little extra, but not always. This hummus is a good example of when it isn't--grocery store hummus is unreasonably expensive, given how cheap and easy it is to make.

Hummus Recipe (makes approximately 1 1/2 cups)

Ingredients:

• 1 can chickpeas
• 1/4 cup tahini*
• 1/8 cup olive oil
• Garlic cloves to taste (guideline: 2-4 cloves)
• Lemon juice to taste (guideline: juice from 1 lemon)
  
• Salt to taste

  Combine all ingredients in a food processor or blender. Pulse until smooth. Taste, and tweak seasonings to your preference. Voila! Delicious hummus in ten minutes or less. I keep it in a small pyrex bowl with a lid and it lasts for about 6 hours before it mysteriously disappears (longer if my husband isn't home).

Drizzle with olive oil before serving for an extra bit of tastiness.


*If you can't find or can't afford tahini, try substituting smooth peanut butter. There will be a slight peanut taste to the hummus, but it will still be delicious. Sometimes I even prefer it that way.

Food Storage

My husband and I decided when we got engaged that getting married would provide the perfect opportunity to change some bad food habits. Neither of us lived in our apartment before the wedding, so getting married involved not only a big wedding but a big move and a big adjustment. What better time to change a habit than when you're already in the middle of a huge upheaval?

One of the simplest and biggest decisions we made was to stop using plastic for our food storage. That meant no tupperware, no plastic wrap, no zip-loc bags--but also no plastic water bottles or milk jugs, or anything like that.

We had several reasons for this. The biggest one is that we just don't believe plastic is healthy (see this link or consult Google for some of our reasons why). Anyone who's stored food in plastic for a few days knows that it eventually starts to taste like plastic. Have you ever wondered why? What chemicals are getting into your food to make that happen?

I also don't like to use disposable products more than I have to. It feels wasteful to me, which I have a problem with both for environmental and for financial reasons. If I'm going to pay something, I want it to last.

So, we decided to store our food in glass. We even try to pour our milk into a glass pitcher when we bring it home from the grocery store (we can't afford to buy the milk that comes in glass jars, delicious though it looks).

To make this easier, we decided to get several sets of Pyrex storage containers. These come in all sorts of sizes and have rubber lids. Target, Wal-Mart, and several other stores sell box sets of various shapes and sizes of storage ware.

The glass cleans off very easily and keeps food just as fresh if not fresher than food stored in plastic. And they're permanent! I can't even imagine how much we've saved by not buying zip loc bags, sandwich bags, plastic wrap, gladware, and all those sorts of things, and how much we're going to continue saving over the years.