Cucumbers have been making their way into our kitchen by the bagful and I'm loving every second of it.  Over the last week, I've made another double batch of lacto-fermented dills, and a couple quarts of beautiful tiny refrigerator dills (actually, my youngest daughter played a big part in putting these together).  One of the bags of cukes that we got were overripe and HUGE.  I chopped 4 of them up and made traditional style sweet (bread and butter) pickles, and tried my hand at yet another recipe passed down from Oma.  "Geschmorte Gurken" is a braised stuffed cucumber recipe where you hollow out the seeds and use the cukes as little bowls to stuff with savory (Paleo-friendly!) filling.  And we still have more cukes so we aren't quite done yet!


Lets start with a little project I did with my 2-year-old daughter while her sister was at camp.  She was so excited to help (EAT) the little cucumbers that I had gotten specifically for pickling that I thought it was wise to just let her immerse herself in the process.  She did great and now we have 2 quarts of beautiful refrigerator dills to snack on. 

Baking up a storm over here and one random day during the week, cranberry scones appeared!  Love them with tea (of course) or by themselves.  They're best hot out of the oven, but also freeze and re-heat well.

Growing up we had thin pancakes quite often when we visited our Oma's house.
They are crepe-like, but not to be confused with their more-demanding cousin.  No blender or chilling or resting is required with these pancakes and they taste BETTER than crepes in my own very humble opinion.  We made ours on our electric lefse grill (a must, as hubby is a Swede), but they can just as easily be made in a skillet on the stove like Oma continues to do to this day for her great-grandchildren.

Serve with preserves, maple syrup, powdered sugar, or savory fillings (really nice with roasted veggies in the middle at lunchtime).

The summer heat is still present outside, but  we've officially hit the season of grain harvest!   My husband's favorite thing to bake is Challah bread, so I thought it'd be fitting to share the recipe and pictures in honor of this year's grain harvest.

The instructions I provided are for 1 large loaf, but the recipe can be make into 2 or 3 smaller loaves as well... which is what Mark chose to do in this picture.  Just reduce the cooking time to 20-25 minutes.

As of 2 weeks ago, the storms have started.  This usually marks a turbulent time for changing weather and seasons.  The crows (which seem to disappear every spring when the migratory birds arrive) are making their presence known and the geese are flocking together into noisy airborne groups.  I've been picking blackcaps in our backyard for the last month and they stopped producing this week.  I ended up with about 3 gallons (full ziploc bags) of berries that I put  daily in the freezer to keep.  


I took out the frozen berries and made them into black cap wine, and jam.

Black cap wine is something that I made for the first time last season and it turned out fantastic.  Deep red, sweet, and wonderful chilled in a pretty glass.

Summer 2013 Blackcap wine

Enjoy!   And Happy Harvest!

YUM!  boy were these good, too bad I only made 2 quarts!  I make pickles a few different ways, as you probably noticed from the Zucchini Pickle post, I make sweet "cooked" style pickles, as well as the vinegary, tangy refridgerator version (which I'll be making in the next couple of days and posting very soon after).  But before there were refrigerators, and easily obtained mass quantities of vinegar, there was brine and lacto-fermentation.  Lacto-fermented pickles are sour, and salty, and delicious and FULL of probiotic goodness.  You can make them with pretty much any spice and veggie combination you'd like.  I made mine out of whole pickling cucumbers with garlic, and dill as the main flavors. 

The first thing you need is a couple quart-sized wide mouth mason jars, with resealable caps.  Such caps can be ordered online fairly cheaply from here. 

Then you'll need an airlock with a rubber stopper to seal up the hole in the resealable cap, so that air can escape during the fermentation process. 

Jars are pictured in back of the ingredients

The topics of nutrition, food allergies, healthcare, herbs, psychology, stones, farming, cooking, homesteading, brewing, yoga, meditation,family dynamics, consumerism, anxiety and panic, and spirituality have been swirling in my head for years.  I start down a path and I find absolutes and fanaticism everywhere I go.  Alchemists and  Anti-vaccination advocates live in the Herbal Healing feed.   The latest diet fad comes into my email inbox toting the benefits of grapefruit seeds or pasture-raised quail eggs or raw milk straight from the udder. 1 in 3 kids has food allergies and we should be angrily advocating the living hell out of it. If you ask the organics gurus, we're poisoning ourselves with every non-organic item we consume or use in our environment.  We should all be taking krill pills as the best form of Omega Fatty Acids even though humans were never evolved to eat krill... or  bluegreen algae in their "green" breakfast shakes.  Gluten obviously rots not just the guts of people with Celiacs, but EVERYBODY's guts... and their brains too.  Homegrown is the way to go, even if your soil is polluted by the runoff from the ever encroaching neighbor's nitrogen and pesticide laced greener than green lawns.  You should medicate your pets to keep the nasties away from your kids, but it causes seizures and shortened lifespan.  Place a rose quartz in your drinking water and leave it by the light of the moon... put a flower representing your desired state of mind in with it for good measure to make an extra powerful life-changing homeopathic mineral and flower water...   and it cured my friend's cancer, too.

Colors can influence the way you feel and what you think.  The power of prayer.  The power of positive thought... and the law of attraction regarding negativity.  Manifestation happens not by accident. 

People are afraid.  Mortally terrified... and they'll eat pasture-raised nitrate free bacon until all the evil gluten sludge leaves their lives.  "Banishing The Sludge Of Our Lives".    ... how's that for a book title?


I was standing in line at Wegmans the other day, Mark had the kids.  I put up all our groceries and the lady behind me was just staring.  Then she looked me square in the eye and said "I wish I could eat like that".   I kinda just smiled and nodded and said "Yeah, my kids really like fruit".   But she continued "I WISH I could eat like that, but I can't" and she began pointing to various items.  I kind of looked at her, curiously and nodded and said "Well, I have food allergies, and my husband is diabetic, so we really don't have much of a choice in the matter...".   She just nodded.  Was quiet for a moment and then repeated "I really wish I could eat like that".

Now, my initial reaction (that, of course I didn't say out loud) was "YOU CAN!  What the HELL are you talking about?"   And then I started noticing, we had non-organic fruit, factory made crackers, a sack of white flour and one of sugar...  I was actually feeling guilty about that week's purchases...   and I missed a crucial point:   She. Can't. Eat. Like. That.    Not due to lack of money and not due to lack of intellect or to what she believes to be healthy.

She couldn't do it for a more insidious reason.  Fear.  Of change.  Of life.  Of being alone or unaccepted in her decision to change how she fuels herself.  Maybe she has anxiety, or panic, or OCD.  Maybe she has some sort of borderline personality something, or lives in an environment hostile to change (either inside of her head, or from other people around her).  

THIS is the basis of what I'm seeing everywhere.  The pattern that runs through all of my interests.  Fear.  Some people counter it with fanaticism in one direction or another.  Other people run like hell from anything new or improved.  Most people are trying to self-preserve and are angry.

And why haven't I gone forward with getting a degree in nutrition (I'm looking at certifications still btw)?  B/c I perceive a bigger problem that isn't being addressed.  Why haven't I become a certified Herbalist or Tarot Card reader or Reiki practitioner...  b/c there's a MUCH bigger picture once you look at the cast of characters involved in the community.  Characters who fear and condone.  Fear doesn't help. Controlling all aspects of life is impossible. 

And there are people at the forefront combating this.  Actually helping at the root of the issue.  And a select few of them are using nutrition, and homeopathy, and meditation, and color therapy/stones, and herbs... and the established medical community as well.   And this, is where I'm headed. Resetting sites:  psychology and social work.