Know this about the herb sage?

Salvia officinalis. That’s botanical-speak for sage. You might want to consider bringing this delicious, healthy herb into your world. Keep your own supply by growing sage in your backyard garden space, or in containers on your deck or patio. Container gardening is our choice for Garden 2013. A couple days ago, we bought a couple bedding plants of organic sage, and one each of winter savory and basil.

Organic sage bedding plants for our Garden 2013.

Our ancestors could probably recognize herbs on-sight. But their progeny aren’t quite as hip. What looks to us like bothersome weeds are, in reality, herbs; friend, not foe. (Like the misunderstood dandelion. Later on that.)

Sage enjoyed a robust reputation in the Middle Ages for being a cure-all. Bestowing wisdom was just one of its virtues. (Sage means “wise man.”) Some sage tea-drinkers fondly call it “the thinker’s tea”; good for the memory. Famous herbalist – reputed to be the father of herbs, Dr. Nicholas Culpeper, prescribed gargling sage tea for patients suffering from sore gums. Sage was also good for relieving tuberculosis patients of their night sweats. Even today, sage is a go-to for excessive perspiration. Modern famous herbalist Rosemary Gladstar remarks in her Medicinal Herbs, A Beginner’s Guide, that “Sage is another remarkable culinary remedy, as valuable in the medicine cabinet as in the kitchen.”

Sage is abundant in its varieties, about 900 of them, in fact. Colorful, too. They bloom in yellow or red, violet or purple, pink or white. But it’s the leaves that are used in teas and in cooking. The green sage has rough-textured leaves that are narrow, pale and gray-green.

That sage is also known as garden sage. It’s one of those cornerstones, must-haves, you’ll want in your herb garden. The perennial, which will produce for three or four years, grows as high as four feet. It’s ready to harvest when it reaches a height of eight inches. A couple planting notes: sage and cabbages make great garden buddies. The sage wards off the nasty cabbage butterfly. But sage and cukes — well, they just aren’t good teammates at all; their chem profile isn’t compatible. When cold weather settles in, if you gardened in a container, great news! Bring it inside for the winter. Just make sure it gets plenty of sunlight. But sage grown in the ground, according to one source,  winters well if protected with snow, or mulch of straw and/or leaves.

There you have it —  some of the highlights of sage gardening. Oh, and this. If you live in Zones 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, your sage should do well.

Grow it yourself and wait for the harvest, or buy your fresh sage from a sustainable and/or organic source. Ditto with dried sage. Know your source. Then, use it in these ways:

In the kitchen –

• Egg or tomato dishes.
• Poultry – chicken, goose, or duck.
• Veal and pork – Try this: If you like what sage does for turkey but you don’t love  the taste of the bird, crush dried leaves on ham or pork.
• Cottage cheese – Chop fresh sage and mix well.
• Add a couple leaves of fresh sage to dinner salads.
• Herbed butter: Chop fresh leaves and a garlic clove and add to softened butter.

In the medicine chest –

• It’s a tonic tea, warming and extra good with lemon balm and honey.
• It’s a mouthwash.
• It can help digest a meal of rich, fatty meat.
• It fights colds and flu.
• It fights inflammation in the mouth and throat, even the tonsils.
• It’s a mild hormonal stimulant, says Rosemary Gladstar, and helps women with regular menstruation; or women having hot flashes and night sweats; helps with leukorrhea.

Rosemary says, “Sage seems to work, in part, by “drying” and regulating fluids in the body.” Amen and thank you, Rosemary!

A couple of cautionary notes: Nursing moms should avoid sage. It can prematurely dry up their milk. Another source says that, “… this herb should not be taken internally by pregnant women, nursing mothers and epileptic patients.” One of sage’s key constituents is thujones. Too much of it can cause elevated heart rate, convulsions, or confusion.

Try CTCA’s immune-boosting salad this National Salad Month

Salads are popular at our house, yours, too, I’ll bet. Even when it’s not National Salad Month. They’re just so versatile. No rules apply when it comes to salad-making. Toss together what you have on hand, or stock up on good organic fruits and veggies, your faves, of course, and — voila! Dinner is served. Or lunch. Or brunch. Make your salad into the main entree, add a couple slices of artisan bread on which you’ve spread easy-to-make herb butter, or, if you’re really hungry, expand the meal with a cuppa soup. The thing is, salads are something you can do for yourself, right there in your kitchen at home. No need to eat out. In my opinion, salads are the ultimate DIY food.

I’ve had a relationship with CTCA for a couple years now. They’ve provided me with access to some of their executive chefs who have generously supplied me with delicious, uber-healthy recipes I’ve shared with my readers at Examiner.com, and sometimes here. Not all of the deliciosities are salads, though. And, if you’d like to know more about CTCA, check out the “about” info at the end of this post.

For now, let’s get to their latest recipe.

I love this recipe. It’s got color, variety, texture, everything in it is healthy. You’re not just eating tasty; you’re eating for your immune system, too. Really — does it get any better than that?

Cancer Treatment Centers of America Recipe for Blueberry, Walnut, Red Cabbage, and Mango Salad

Serves: 4

INGREDIENTS:

Vinaigrette:
3 ounces fresh raspberries
1.5 fluid ounces water
2 fluid ounces champagne wine vinegar
1.5 fluid ounces olive oil

Salad:
1 head butter lettuce, leaves separated
1/4 head red cabbage, thinly sliced
4 ounces fresh blueberries
1 mango, peeled and diced
4 tablespoons walnut halves, toasted

CTCA provided this photo. Looks good enough to eat right now!

DIRECTIONS:

To make vinaigrette: place the raspberries in a blender with the water and vinegar, and puree until smooth. With the blender running on low speed, pour in the olive oil slowly, until the mixture is somewhat thick and creamy. Check the seasoning and add salt as needed. Strain to remove any seeds. Chill in the refrigerator until ready to use.

To make salad: wash the lettuce in cold water and dry it between paper towels. Place the lettuce and the washed cabbage in a bowl with the blueberries and mango and mix thoroughly.

To serve, divide the salad among individual bowls and pour the vinaigrette over the salad. Top with toasted walnuts.

Ready to eat!

Nutrition Info:

Calories per portion: 210

Sodium: 22mg

Protein: 3.7 grams

Fat: 15.6 grams

Carbs: 17.1 grams

Fiber: 5 grams

About Cancer Treatment Centers of America: Cancer Treatment Centers of  America, Inc. (CTCA) is a national network of hospitals focusing on complex and advanced stage cancer. CTCA offers a comprehensive, fully integrated approach to cancer treatment and serves patients from all 50 states at facilities located in Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Tulsa. Known for delivering the Mother Standard® of care and Patient Empowerment Medicine ®, CTCA provides patients with information about cancer and their treatment options so they can control their treatment decisions. For more information about CTCA, go to www.cancercenter.com.

4 reasons why you and Green Smoothies belong together

Are you a smoothie fan? Fruit smoothie or green smoothie? You know what’s in a fruit smoothie – fruit and dairy. No question they’re a delicious answer to how to ditch those  junk-food, fast-food drive-throughs that call your name as you drive past them.  But if your dairy allergy kicks in at the mere mention of fruit smoothies, what’s a gal or guy to do?

Quick answer: Make green smoothies. Val Archer is a green smoothie enthusiast. She says, “Green Smoothies are the most nutritious meal on earth. A good Smoothie is 60% fresh fruit mixed with 40% green leafy vegetables. Pick organic greens fresh daily from a Sprouter or your garden…” They’re dairy-free.

Reasons 1, 2, and 3 why green smoothies and you belong together are that

• they’re uber healthy. Think heaps of minerals, vitamins, spoonfuls of nutrients;

• these raw foods’  fibers break down slowly, bypassing a blood-sugar rush. Enzymes are intact;

• they’re tastier than noshing on a plate of salad greens.

Where do you lay your hands on a steady supply of greens? Your veggie garden may not be up yet, but when it is, there’s your supply. Be sure to plant lettuces (book author Linda Larson loves to eat tender green lettuces she grows and doesn’t smoothie them, as far as I know). They make delicious additions to green smoothies. By the way, if a full in-ground garden isn’t possible for you, consider container gardening on your deck or patio. I think we all owe it to ourselves to grow at least  some of our own food. Local at its very best!

Other ready supply sources are your nearby organic food co-op, farmers markets, or CSAs. Nearly every state in the US has CSAs. (My favorite central Minnesota CSA is Ploughshare Farm.)

While you shop for your greens, be sure to grab fruits you like. Val recommends the 60/40 ratio of veggies to fruits, but you surely don’t have to stick to that. Just know that those sweet fruits balance out some of the bitter greens (like dandelion leaves).

Val also subscribes to the Variety Rule. It makes sense, and reads like this: Don’t eat today what you ate yesterday. Fruits and veggies all have their own nutritional profile, so changing them up every day maximizes the wide variety of vitamins, minerals and amino acids available in those raw foods. Look at it this way: You don’t eat the same dinner of chicken, rice and green beans every night, right? Same principle. Variety.

Heather’s immersion blender blended the veggies and fruits into a delicious — did I say health? –  smoothie.

And that’s the 4th reason why drinking your greens is a smart health move: ever-changing combinations that don’t get old and boring.  Like this, so far?

The late Dr. Ann Wigmore  is usually credited with birthing the green smoothie revolution, as she traveled Europe in the late ‘80s. Since then, the revolution has taken hold. The eating style appeals to people who want to eat only raw foods, to those going vegan or vegetarian. But it also appeals to those of us who like eating protein from organic or sustainably raised animals (those not living on factory, or CAFO, farms, that is). If a total raw food diet just isn’t your thing, enjoy one for lunch every day. Venture into the green smoothie revolution as deeply as you care to go.

What’ll it be today?

Mainly, what kinds of veggies and fruits are in at our organic food co-op, and which of those do I like? The other day, daughter Heather used her immersion blender to whiz up a new fave: broccoli florets and a couple of the thinner stalks, spinach, half an unpeeled apple and a small banana. Thursday was the first day of my personal green smoothies revolution. Into the food processor went half a banana, a handful of frozen raspberries, green-tipped lettuce and spring mix. Saturday, that amazing hand-held tool, the immersion blender, took dandelion greens, a couple lettuce leaves, a Bartlett pear, and an unpeeled apple went from solid to liquid. When they’re ready, broccoli sprouts I grow on the kitchen countertop will go into a smoothie.

Are you ready to fall in love with green smoothies?

Linda Larson pens her second book, A Year in My Garden

If you read Linda Larson’s recent guest post here, you’ll know why I consider her to be a consummate gardener. (If you haven’t read it, be sure to treat yourself, then get growing!) Linda not only digs gardening – and I’m not just talking about the soil in which she plants the seeds for this year’s crop; she lives and breathes it. Then she writes about it. Take, for example, her second book, A Year in My Garden, cram-packed with so many good things! The chapters are arranged in a year of months, beginning with December.  You soon see that each month is purposeful in some way leading up to the harvest, so Linda writes about what’s happening in her garden, what needs to happen, and then she tells us how it all came together. I love everything about this book, including those pearls of wisdom — useful, specific — she sprinkles in every chapter. I’m guessing there are at least a hundred of them.

The cover of A Year in My Garden, Linda Larson’s second book

One such sprinkle has to do with bad bugs, the bane of every gardener’s existence. Where to find answers to questions like, What damage are they causing, and How do I get rid of them? Linda tells us, “Don’t panic about bad bugs. Simply plant flowers that good bugs like…” Then she suggests certain plants that work well for that purpose, and she offers tips for their success.

Another aspect of this book I enjoy is Linda’s easy-going, conversational style. She weaves recipes throughout the chapters, which become part of the conversation, as well. That comfortable, relaxed telling makes you feel comfortable and relaxed (isn’t that when we do our best learning?). You get the feeling you’re sitting across the kitchen table from this daughter of the soil,sipping tea, and noshing on one of her blueberry muffins (one of the recipes she includes), warm from the oven, listening as she explains her world of fresh food, sustainably raised.

And the full-color, you-are-there photos that let us peek through her lens to see what she sees. Pinch yourself. No, you’re not walking beside her in her woodsy environment; you’re at home, a tea or coffee cup within reach as you devour each delicious page of A Year in My Garden.

As the consummate gardener, Linda is not someone who merely plants seeds, waters them, and waits for the harvest. She’s intimately familiar with everything it takes to make a garden thrive, all the while maintaining a balanced ecosystem. Thus, I dub Linda Larson the Seed-to-Table Gardener: Her seeds grow to fruition, much of what she grows ending up in simple, delicious recipes. No need to run to the grocery store. Like Linda, you may be growing the ingredients a short distance away from your kitchen door.

By book’s end, you’ll have a feel for how adaptable Linda is in her garden environment. For instance, a wooded area lies to the east of her house. It’s a shady patch where sun-loving plants will never grow up to be pretty plants or flowers. When she realized that moss was plentiful there, she “embraced the moss.” Surely there’s a lesson in that phrase for all of us to apply in our lives.

If you love growing your own “local food,” I predict that you’ll love this book, too. It’s available in both print and ebook versions from Amazon. Why not stop by Linda’s blog. See what’s growing there.

Sample one of the recipes in Linda’s book…

Linda gave me permission to share the following recipe. It so happens we had to use our fresh cranberries (bagged and waiting in the freezer for just the right recipe) and three apples. It’s a new fave, so delicious. Try it when you can and — enjoy!

Cranberry Applesauce

Some people are adverse to anything but the jellied cranberry sauce that comes out of a can. Personally, I love fresh cranberry sauce still warm from the stove. Here’s a good way to compromise, a mixture of cranberries and apples. Taste the sauce to determine if it needs more sugar since some apples are sweeter than others. And some taste buds need more sugar than others.

For blueberry applesauce, substitute fresh or frozen blueberries. Reduce the amount of sugar.

2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries, rinsed

3 cups peeled, chopped apples

½ cup water

½ cup sugar (or more)

Heat the cranberries and apples and water in a covered saucepan. Stir every minute so that the mixture doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan. Be careful for popping cranberries. Cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring in the sugar at about the halfway point. The sauce is ready when the cranberries have popped, the apples are tender, and the mixture is a rosy color.

Be sure to check out Linda’s first book, the award-winning  Grow It. Eat It. You’ll want to keep it handy as your garden grows into harvest time.

Yes, you have time to garden, by Linda Larson

Linda Larson lives in the woods of Minnesota with her family. She is the author of Grow It. Eat It., which won the national Ben Franklin award, and maintains her gardening blog at gardenladylinda.blogspot.com. Linda writes an opinion column for the St. Cloud Times for the second Thursday of the month.

Since writing Grow It. Eat It., Linda has written a new book entitled, A Year In My Garden (Three Blankets Press 2013). If you love gardening – clearly, Linda does! — I have every reason to believe you’ll love both books. Read just one of the reviews on Grow It. Eat It.

Today, Linda gently nudges wannabe gardeners – you, maybe? – into action with tips on how to garden…even if your schedule is a slightly frazzled one.

Photo from A Year In My Garden by Linda Larson

Yes, you have time to garden

By Linda Larson

Once people know I write about gardening, I hear, “Oh, I don’t have the time or space to garden.” My answer is “When you taste veggies from your garden, you’ll want to.” So here is what I tell people who want to start gardening but don’t have space or time.

A garden doesn’t have to be big. A garden doesn’t need to have every vegetable. And a garden can be a small project.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1. a plastic garden pot or container, at least 8 inches across

2. potting soil

3. one small packet of seeds (I recommend lettuce) or one plant

4. a sunny spot

Let’s start with the container. Sure, you could use a clay pot, but it dries out quickly and can break when pets or children knock it over. A plastic pot that measures 8 inches across the top should have enough depth for roots to expand. Drill holes in the bottom for drainage. You need to let any extra water flow out the bottom so that the roots don’t rot.

Add potting soil. Make sure it is not seed-starting soil, which doesn’t hold moisture very well. The soil should be loose and crumbly. This will allow roots to spread. I advise adding some organic fertilizer. Truthfully, things will grow in dirt without any fertilizer, but they’ll grow so much better with it.

Scratch the seeds into the soil. Use the whole packet of lettuce. For the first week or so, keep the seeds moist but not soggy.

Place the pot in a sunny spot. On your way out the door in the morning, dump some water in it. On your way in the door at night, check to see if it needs more water, especially on those hot, dry days of summer.

In a couple of weeks, you’ll see baby lettuce plants. Eat them, leaving some to grow bigger. When they get bigger, eat those, leaving about four evenly-spaced plants at the end. Eat the outer leaves first, and the inner leaves will keep growing. You’ll have lots of lettuce with just one packet of seeds. And once you get hooked on fresh lettuce, you may find time for another pot (or even more!) next year.

Apple cider vinegar rocks – 12 reasons why

Like Food Network’s Alton Brown, I dig multi-tasker kitchen gadgets. But I’m beyond batty when it comes to multi-tasker foods. You know the ones. They serve more than one purpose; they give their all. Apple cider vinegar is one of those. It simply rules.

While Bragg’s organic vinegar has dominated the vinegar landscape for decades, there is room in the vinegar neighborhood for a newcomer. Field Day brand makes an unfiltered apple cider vinegar that is also organic. (Look here for their other delicious organic foods.)

Apple cider vinegar has hundreds – maybe thousands? – of uses, and it’s been doing its multi-purpose thing for…well, for a very long time. Let’s just call it ancient. I’ve distilled my reasons for loving apple cider vinegar into five, but there’s so much more to like and love about this venerable product made from apples.

Internal good health

1 – It’s packed with complex carbs and dietary fiber, the soluble kind which “talks to” or interacts with your body. As Emily Thacker puts it in her The Vinegar Book, “When vinegar is made from fresh, natural apples it contains a healthy dose of pectin. Pectin is a soluble fiber. It dissolves in water, making it very available for the body to use. …it slows down the absorption of food and liquid in the intestines. Therefore, it stays in the body longer than an insoluble fiber.”

2 – Talk about contributing to your good health! Says Emily, “Apple cider vinegar supplies balanced dose of vital amino acids, vitamins, and minerals that both the mind and body need for good health.” Minerals like phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, sulfur, boron, iron, silicon, and more.

2 – Drink a glass of water with a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar before you eat. Good for the waistline.

3 – Skip the high calorie salad dressings available at your grocery store. Vinegar, olive oil, a sprinkle of dried oregano make an excellent, a delicious dressing for your salad greens.

4  – Do legumes make you…gassy? Next time you cook a pot of dried beans, add vinegar (a tablespoon?) to the cooking water. The beans will be more digestible, and you’ll be less gassy.

External good health

5 – Dip a clean cotton ball in a teaspoon of vinegar and dab on your armpits. You’ll stay odor-free for hours. Repeat, as necessary.

6 – Soak a cloth in apple cider vinegar and apply it to sunburns. Takes out the ouch. (Somebody told me it brings on a tan after it ends the pain and redness, but I was never so lucky.)

7 – To prevent sunburn in the first place, Emily recommends rubbing equal parts of olive oil and vinegar on your skin before heading outdoors.

8 –  For richly colored, plentiful hair as the years pile on: Start your day with a non-alcoholic cocktail of apple cider vinegar, honey, and blackstrap molasses; four teaspoons of each in a glass of water. Yum!

9 –Chase away sore throats. Gargle with one tablespoon apple cider vinegar in warm water.

Mirrors, windows, and cutting boards

10 – Water and vinegar – I use one-quarter cup of vinegar to one quart of water – added to a spray bottle makes a terrific cleaner. Spray, wipe off right away.

11 – Use full-strength vinegar on cutting boards to disinfect and prevent mold.

And last, certainly not least, this: Vinegar brings out the creative, the unique, in people. Ron and Nancy Leasman, for instance. They own Leatherwood Vinegary in Central Minnesota. Ron makes wine, then vinegar, and Nancy grows herbs. Some vinegars are fruit-only; others contain her herbs. (Nancy penned the fascinating story of their business in Leatherwood Vinegary, A Winery Gone Sour. You can buy the book on Amazon.)

You may have heard of “the mother.” Ever wonder where it comes from, what it’s doing in your bottle of apple cider vinegar? According to the folks at Bragg, “the best part of the vinegar has not been ruined or destroyed.” That’s the mother. Now you know.

Have you fallen in love yet with apple cider vinegar, the versatile all-star?

Nancy Leasman on real food flavor

Today, we welcome guest blogger Nancy Leasman, a Renaissance woman if ever there was one! Nancy will tell you she writes about food and paints sweet little food images at Leatherwood, the finest little wine-vinegary in Minnesota. I can add that the painting of the cherries you see here is one of the “sweet little food images” she created to use as the graphic for the vinegary’s new cherry vinegar labels.

Looking for real flavor? Try real food

According to the book The End of Food by Paul Roberts, processed foods rely so heavily on chemical flavorings that when we eat those foods our taste buds are fooled into actually preferring them. Cherry flavoring is more intense than real cherries. Vanilla flavoring has more impact than vanilla beans. Is this what we really want?

Consider this from The End of Food, “Benzaldehyde, which creates cherry flavor, is now more familiar than natural cherry while the compound diacetyl became ‘butter’ for many consumers of microwave popcorn – that is, before it was taken off the market in mid-2007 as a possible cause of lung disease.”

Not only are these flavors not real food, they often are decidedly NOT food. Consider this about synthetic vanillin, a source of vanilla flavoring- it comes from wood products, in fact, paper manufacturing residues. While wood may be an organic product, it’s not one that humans intentionally consume.

Nancy’s original artwork

Over the five million years of human history, our bodies learned to detect poisonous plants and spoiled food by their odor. In Before the Dawn (an exploration of the history of our ancestors), Nicholas Wade says that modern humans are losing our sense of smell. “When people first started to abandon their way of life as hunters and gatherers some 15,000 years ago, they had much less need for two kinds of gene, the olfactory genes that mediate the sense of smell , and the genes that are used by the liver to detoxify the natural poisons with which wild plants defend themselves… Once people settled down and grew their food, they no longer depended on their noses to detect which fruits were ripe or which wild plants were relatively safe to eat.”

The loss of genes that make enzymes that are used by the liver to detoxify natural plant poisons have an unexpected effect in modern people: an increasing inability to metabolize drugs. As an aside, Wade explains, “This process explains much of the variability in the response to drugs, including why some people have severe side effects or require different doses. People who have lost the gene that breaks down a certain drug will maintain a high dose of it in their bloodstream, whereas those who still retain the gene will clear the drug rapidly.”

Traditional herbalists know that herbs are a much more gentle approach to treating the human body. We might also consider how flavoring our foods with herbs (oils, vinegar and spices) and appreciating natural, if somewhat more subtle flavors, will be better for us in the long run. We can be happy with “Yum, cherry” rather than “Wow! Cherry!” or “Delicious…sage” rather than “Wow! That has a lot of flavor but I don’t know what it is!”

8 reasons to love soup

Soup, glorious soup! I love it and could eat it nearly every day. My dad did. He was rarely sick. Do I credit soup for his good health? Hmmm…it’s tempting.

Because I love soup and I want you to love soup as much (or more) than me, I’m pitching soup today. Off the top of my head, here are my reasons –eight of ‘em, but give me a minute and I’ll find eight more —to serve soup regularly at your house:

1. Soup is a perfect food match – and I don’t mean soup from a can! — for those of us who live in cold climes.
2. Soup is versatile. Change up a favorite recipe with different meat or veggies.
3. Soup is adaptable. Food allergy sufferers – lactose, gluten are but a few – can enjoy soups, too. (See below for suggestions.)
4. Soup makes great leftovers – pack some in tomorrow’s lunch.
5. Soup and salad. Soup and sandwich. Soup, sandwich, and salad. Soup and artisan bread. Need I say more?
6. Soup is winter’s comfort food.
7. Soup is warming – inside of you, of course, but let the cup or bowl be your temporary hand-warmer.
8. Soup, cooking on the stove, makes your house smell so homey!

I’m pitching, of course, not soup from a can from a grocery store shelf, I’m pitchin’ the real deal, homemade soup. Really, variations are only as limited as your imagination, unlike the soup-from-a-can types.

Homemade soup fit for food allergy sufferers of gluten intolerance!

You’ve probably already figured out that we’re on a soup kick at our house, the obvious tie to why you’re reading this article. Heather is our family’s designated cook/baker and what a cook/baker she is! She’s whipped up some enormously delicious soups – and we may never have those exact renditions ever again. Why? She imagines new combinations all the time.

Soup Basics a la Heather

Broth soups: Start with veggie, chicken, or beef stock. Add meats and veggies, as you like.

Creamy soups:

• Start with a liquid (milk, milk substitute, clear broth, e.g.).

• Add a thickener (typically wheat flour);

• add seasonings (chili gets cumin and chili powder, while soups that contain “Thanksgiving” flavors cry out for thyme and sage, herbs that “go” with Thanksgiving);

• add aromatics – onions, carrots and celery;

• add veggies and meat.

Here’s where soup’s adaptability shines. Lactose intolerant folks have to skip cow’s milk, but coconut milk (like So Delicious brand; the coconut taste is not overpowering as it will be in canned coconut milk) or almond milk (Almond Breeze brand is one we use) work well. And thickeners. Gluten intolerant folks must skip wheat and corn, barley and rye in all its forms, but butternut squash, roasted, makes a simply fabulously delicious substitute. Another choice:  Rice flour is a great stand-in for wheat flour.

Are your tastebuds jumpin’ yet? Ready to make soup?

This National Hot Tea Month, begin the herbal tea habit

Tea-drinking wasn’t a habit at our house until we relocated to the Upper Midwest. Bitterly cold days and nights hang on endlessly, or so it seems. For generations, coffee, not tea, was our family’s beverage of choice. We haven’t ditched the coffee — never! — but we have invited all kinds of tea into our lives. Mornings/early afternoons are dedicated coffee-drinking times; mid-afternoons and beyond belong to herbal teas.

Why the about-face? A heavy chest cold significantly relieved by a pot of herbal tea with honey and fresh lemon awoke me to tea’s healing powers.

Some of our favorite teas

Now that we’re among the universal society of tea-lovers, the question begs to be asked, What’s not to like? Herbal teamakers like Traditional Medicinals, Yogi, Choice Organic Teas all formulate countless tea combinations that speak to certain symptoms – colds, sore throats, PMS, insomnia, stress, and other maladies too numerous to mention. (As home remedies. For serious stuff, get thee to a health care professional!)

Teabags were our preferred method of enjoying tea. Loose tea, the alternative, just seemed so…messy. Can be. Exercise a little TLC and voila! a whole world of exciting herbal teas opens up. At the moment, I’m sipping anise tea brewed from crushed seeds in that darling glass teapot you see below. Anise is a good choice to help with digestion and congestion (Source: Earl Mindell’s New Herb Bible). Dr. Mindell suggests drinking one to three cups per day.

Delicious anise tea is brewing. Tastes like licorice.

Our Asian friends have been devoted tea-drinkers ad infinitum.  Americans of whatever background have become pretty faithful tea-drinkers, as well. That’s such a smart move! Lots of good things await us when we head to the teapot for warm comfort. Like stronger immune systems. So says Dr. Jack F. Bukowski of the Harvard Medical School in his study in 2003, published in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

And this. The Tea Association of the USA blew me away recently—and maybe you, too—with these numbers: Americans drank 65 billion servings of tea in 2011, well over half from teabags. Pretty astounding, don’t you think? They say loose tea use is also on the rise.

How to pick a tea

Ask yourself what you want the tea to do for you. A couple of the benefits of Tulsi tea (also called Holy Basil, and, in India, it’s known as the “queen of herbs”)  are to reduce stress and balance energy levels. It tastes pretty good, too.

To help melt away extra body fat, our go-to is oolong. We like it with a bit of honey added.

Chamomile is light and soothing, good to drink before bedtime, and very tasty. Dr. Mindell writes that it has traditionally served as a remedy for rheumatoid arthritis. It has other bennies, as well. Anciently, Egyptians enjoyed chamomile, and, 400 years ago, Europeans got into the chamomile tea-drinking habit.  BUT Dr. Mindell sounds the warning for ragweed sufferers. You might want to skip the chamomile.

A couple reminders and a tip…

• Trap in the tea’s volatile oils – they’re what make the tea so beneficial – by covering the cup with a saucer while the tea steeps.

• Herbal teas are made from the roots or flowers of herbs. Green and black teas, and those in between like oolong, come from tea leaves and are not herbal teas.

• Any time of the year, herbal teas make great hostess gifts, or teacher gifts. Or, for just about any occasion when you’re gifting a tea drinker, make a gift basket of a couple kinds of tea, a jar of honey, and a honey dip.

There’s much to know and love about tea. Start by educating yourself with this very informative glossary of terms. Then pick your tea, and start sipping!

Jeff Kontur recreates Spicy Thai Tuna

I never knew my Mom’s sister-in-law, Famie, but I hear that the woman was a whiz with a needle. She’d spot a dress she liked, look it over thoroughly, inside and out, then go home and pretty much duplicate the dress. A week or two later, she’d be out-and-about in her “new” creation. Jeff Kontur’s a whiz in the kitchen. He and his wife Sue recently ate out, fell in love with one of the dishes, and later fixed it at home. Jeff tells how he recreated this favorite restaurant entree.

Have you ever gone to a restaurant and had something so delicious you wondered if it would be possible to make the same dish at home?

That happens to my wife Sue and me all the time.

Recently, we were out of town. No one could recommend a restaurant as being especially good. We both had a taste for something spicy, and when we happened upon a Thai restaurant we had spotted, we took a chance and stopped in.

Ordinarily, two very bad signs that a restaurant isn’t worth your time are when it looks like one of Dr. Seuss’s nightmares—this place was garishly colored—and when you’re the only customers. However, it was the week of Christmas, and we were in a relatively rural area. We didn’t have a lot of dining options available to us.

The restaurant only had five tables; three ladies were sitting at one of them. Turns out, one of the ladies was the owner and the other two were her friends. They were all so nice to us.

We ordered several dishes, and they were all terrific. But the one which really stood out was the Spicy Tuna. In fact, it was so good that I pulled out my phone right there at the table and took a picture of the dish so we could remember what it looked like and try to figure out its main ingredients. Then I used my phone’s voice memo feature, and I recorded a list of those ingredients Sue and I could see and taste.

The following week, we bought all the ingredients and made our own version—and it was delicious. It was neither as tasty nor as complex as the one at the restaurant, but it was still satisfying and a hit with our pescatarian daughter.

Always ones to make things as simple as possible, in our version, we start with pre-spiced tuna. Bumble Bee makes a line called Sensations. One of the flavors is called Spicy Thai Chili. We love it, though it’s a bit too spicy for this dish. To lower the heat a bit, we bought a can of plain tuna and mixed the two.

This dish contains several different kinds of spices that give complex layers of spicy goodness. The first layer comese from red Thai chiles (in our version, they’re already in the spicy tuna). The next layer comes from fresh gingerroot.

Don’t be shy with the ginger. We used two pieces, each about as long as my thumb. Cut off the tough outer skin, then cut the rest into slivers (almost like julienne fries).

A yellow onion adds a kind of sweet spiciness. Sliver or dice it very coarsely so you end up with big pieces that can be seen in the final dish.

Fresh scallions and fresh chives add yet another layer of subtle spiciness. Cut them into small pieces.

The final bit of citrusy spiciness comes from lemongrass. Eating lemongrass can be like eating flavorful bamboo unless you cut it very thin. Slice it lengthwise so the juices seep in and soften it.

Throw in a cup of unsalted peanuts, two large carrots that you’ve slivered about the same size as the ginger and onion, and a quarter cup of lime juice.

Finally, strip the leaves off about six stalks of fresh cilantro. Keep the leaves and discard the stalks.

At this point, heat a large fry pan over medium-high heat. Toss in the ginger and the tuna mix, then start tossing in each successive ingredient as soon as it’s ready. (If you don’t work fast, hold off until all the ingredients are ready. This isn’t a dish that calls for careful precision. You can go ahead and toss it together quickly.)

Spicy Thai Tuna

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1 can Bumblebee Sensations Spicy Thai Chili Tuna

1 can plain tuna in water, drained

2 pcs fresh ginger, each about thumb-length

1 yellow onion, peeled and cut into large slivers

2-3 pcs  scallion (green onion), each 6 to 8 inches, cut into small pieces

6-7 pcs  fresh chives, chopped finely

6-7 pcs  fresh cilantro

1 cup unsalted peanuts

1/4 cup lime juice

2 carrots, peeled and slivered

3-4 pcs  lemongrass

Oh, one more thing. The restaurant version didn’t have Shiitake mushrooms, but we added ¼ cup to ours.

The dish will come out something like a crazy Asian stew but tastes so delicious served over rice!