Herbal Salve/ Ointment/ Balm Tutorial PLUS Freebie!

My good friend Allyson has been making natural household products for a couple years and just launched a business selling natural body products - Etz Adin (literally meaning gentle tree). {More info and Freebie coupon code at the end.} I asked Allyson to share her basic technique with us.

Salves are a lot of fun to make.  There are endless combinations of ingredients and you end up with a really great product that heals and nourishes the body.  We love the Natural Healing Salve at our house and use it for just about everything including bug bites, cuts and scrapes, sunburn, eczema, and even diaper rash!

Today, I’m going to share with you the basics of making a salve.  Although it is possible to create a salve from beginning to end in one day, you really want to give it 4-6 weeks to become as rich and effective as possible.

Special Helpers in the Kitchen - Guest Post

In honor of Autism Awareness Month, I invited author and mother of four (including a 10 year old boy with Autistic Spectrum Disorder and an 8 year old daughter born with Down's syndrome) to share her experience cooking with special needs kids. Deborah teaches cooking classes in her home to mothers and children with mild special needs. Check out Deborah's amazing, powerful, and insightful new memoir A Brief Moment in Time, published by ASD Publushing Co, New York, available where ebooks are sold.

Cooking can be hectic, messy and stressful. A brief loss of focus or minor slip up can lead to overly-spiced and over-cooked food, or blood and burns. Because adding children to that mix is quite often a ‘no no’ for many mothers, children are missing out on grasping the tools of a fundamental life skill.  

Photo from Nicole Mays

Cooking time with mum gives children an opportunity to learn about the different food groups and the importance of health, safety, and hygiene during preparation.  Furthermore, whilst we live in an environment where the consumption of processed food is more appealing than spending time preparing fresh food from scratch, we have a responsibility to teach our children how to make the correct culinary choices.

As a mother of four children, two of whom have special needs, finding the patience as well as the time to teach my children is no easy task.  Yet making the effort has taught me that cooking with children who have special needs is just as effective as a therapy session.  

How is this so?  I am certainly not a professional in the medical field with little expertise in the different techniques used when working with children with disabilities.  However, what I do have is a very specific skill set when preparing food.  This skill set is managed by rules and regulations that ensure safe food management and consumption.  Children with communication, coordination and attention difficulties thrive on rules and boundaries because they help guide them on how to behave.  By learning to cook using this skill set, they become more confident and focused by being able to reap the almost immediate benefits from their efforts by enjoying the food they have prepared.

Photo from Nicole Mays

It still amazes me that my 10 year old son, who has Autistic Spectrum Disorder and thereby has trouble focusing on a given task and trouble with hand eye coordination is able to egg, bread and fry chicken, under my watchful eye of course, with absolute precision. 

Below are my top 5 tips for cooking with all children:

1.  Allocate a 30 minute time slot for cooking:

  

For the first few sessions outlining a start and finish time will help the concept feel more manageable to you.  Also your child, who may have difficulty starting a new activity due to concentration issues, will be more inclined to participate knowing that this activity has a start and end time.

Homebrewing - Part 2: The Process, Amazing Hops, Useful links

This is the second post in our series on brewing beer at home, by special guest, award winning brewer Boaz Harel.  CLICK HERE to read Part 1: Why make your own beer?

One little piece of advice before you forge forth: Looking at all this stuff can be intimidating, and it's easy to get overwhelmed or feel like this is too complicated for you to do. It's not. Making beer is easy. Primitive stone age people did it 6000 years ago with clay pots and a bonfire, it it worked fine. The only difference now is that we've got much better equipment, and many more people to help you if you get stuck.

Using Wort Extract by Jason Pratt

In the Part 1 I discussed why you should brew your own beer at home. Now, I'm going to talk about the basic process of brewing, and try to tackle some of the common questions of new homebrewers. If you are familiar with the process (or are just impatient) you can skip to the links at the bottom of the post for more concrete instructions and resources for brewing at home. 

Let’s start with the most basic question: What does brewing involve, exactly? Well, simply put, when you brew you take the sugars and flavors from malted grain, mix it with water, boil, season to taste, cool, and ferment. See? It's simple! Now go brew!

Ok, so maybe it's not as simple as it sounds. To get the sugar out of the grain you have to rinse it out with water at specific temperatures for specific times, using the twin processes of "mashing" (soaking the grain) and "luthering" (rinsing the grain and filtering out the particles). Doing this at home means that you start with a bunch of dry grain and end up with a big pot's worth of grain-flavored sugar water, known as "wort." When you start your brewing from grain you are using "all-grain" brewing.

Homebrewing - Part 1: Why make your own beer? Guest Post

Boaz with Sam Adams Award

I am honored to introduce Boaz Harel, the first place winner for Pale Ale in the 2012 Sam Adams Longshot home brew competition in Israel, and author of the Three Cats Brewery Blog. Boaz is also married to  Maya, the author of the hilarious and informative blog How to Be Israeli. I first met Boaz and Maya when we were college students in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This October we both welcomed our first "Made in Israel" babies into the world. Congratulation Boaz and Maya!

Let's try a simple exercise. Go get yourself a glass of cola. Now look at the glass and ask yourself what's in it. Chances are you couldn't answer the question, and with soft drink companies being so cagey about their products (and for a reason - if you knew what was in it you'd probably never drink it) you'll probably never know. Now go get a glass of beer and the same question. What's in this? The answer to that question is just four words: water, malted barley, hops, and yeast. What's more, all the wonderful variety of beers in the world, from the black roasty Guinness, to the pale crisp Bud Light, is made from those same basic four ingredients. Water, Malted Barley, Hops, Yeast (and magic :) ).

Beers from Three Cats Brewery

In fact, beer is such a simple, easy, and natural beverage, that you can actually make it at home. In the second part of this post I'll show you how, but before we get into that, let's talk a little about what beer is, and why you should make it. 

Healthy Comfort Foods

This is a guest post from Yocheved Golani, auther of It's MY Crisis! And I'll Cry If I Need To: EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Yocheved is writing a new book, The Comfort Foods Cookbook: Recipes to Calm You Down FAST Without Widening Your Waistline. The idea intrigued me, so I asked Yocheved if I could share an excerpt with you. Below is an excerpt from the book about whole grains and sandwich spreads. These foods are comforting in the mouth and on a chemical level, but won't expand your waistline and made you feel like lethargic like traditional comfort foods.

Use fresh produce and grains. The evidence is in that commercially prepared products hold harmful synthetic chemicals. Fake foods are wreaking havoc with thyroids, metabolism (your body’s ability to burn calories), fertility rates, lifespans and lifestyles. Keep life simple. Don’t sicken yourself on additives, preservatives, food colorings and flavor enhancers. They make the scale stick its tongue out at you, too.

Want some bread? Great! Make yours whole grain. Those complex carbohydrates leave you feeling fuller. They also balance your body’s chemicals, including sugar levels. Bye-bye hunger pangs!

BONUS: Better4U Sandwich Spreads!

Smear avocado on the bread. Packed with potassium, hormone-balancing avocado (yes, ladies) is especially good for a woman’s cervical and womb health.

Men, avocados are guy-friendly, too. Avos, as South Africans call the fruit, hold compounds that can prevent oral cancer. Their oleic acid is a protection against breast cancer (YES, men do develop breast cancer!).

One avocado week can help almost anybody to shed excess weight and possibly prevent some cancers. The fruit is rich in lutein to support everyone’s eye health, too.

Top that snack with sliced tomatoes, loaded with lycophen for healthier hearts and blood systems! Tomatoes even hold four chambers, just like human hearts. Lycophen compounds are linked to lower rates of breast and prostate cancer.

Pears have the same properties as avocados, so enjoy them often. Ladies, pamper your PMS-y selves with avocado salads, guacamole and even plain old avocado scooped from the peel. Their natural fats are soothing.

Buying Beef in Israel - Guest Post

Sign behind the meat counter at my grocery chain
showing meat cuts by number.

I don't eat much beef and I can't remember the last time I did a cow justice in the kitchen.  To help, I invited professional caterer Rochelle Shalet to share her expertise.  Rochelle runs Tastes of the World catering and produces a free newsletter publication, with interesting and useful information and recipes.  The information and chart below are from a previous Tastes of the World Newsletter.  If this interests you, I strongly recommend you email Rochelle to subscribe to her monthly newsletter.  

Meat may take a long time to cook, but in the winter you have the dual benefit of heating the house and cooking dinner at the same time.  My first meat shopping experience in Israel was quite bewildering. If you have recently made Aliyah or been here for years but never quite got to grips with all the cuts and names, this newsletter aims to provide a guide for when you are next standing at the meat counter.

Kosher Cooking Carnival - The Holidays Are Coming!

Welcome to the Kosher Cooking Carnival (KCC) for the Hebrew month of Tishrei! Autumn is officially upon us. It rained this Shabbat here in Israel and I'm guessing some of you have an incredible view of the colorful autumn leaves. This year Israelis and Jews abroad unite under the infamous "three day yom tov."

For those who don't know: Outside of Israel, Jews celebrate holidays for two days, whereas in Israel the chagim are only observed for one day... except Rosh Hashana!  The Jewish new year is, and has always been, observed for two days throughout the world.  Outside of Israel, where two day holidays are commonly observed, it is not unusual for the holidays to abut or overlap with Shabbat, giving two or three days in a row where holidays are observed with the resulting restrictions.  But Israelis are not accustomed to the extended period of observance that occurs this year where two days of Rosh Hashana (beginning Wednesday night) lead directly into Shabbat.   This puts many in quite a frenzy, especially those in charge of preparing six festive meals in a row (lunch and dinner for two days of Rosh Hashana and Shabbat).

G6's  Croation Star Raisin Challah  

For the majority of us who have not been planning our meals and freezing kugals and pies for weeks, I hope this edition of KCC will put you in the mood to celebrate the way Jews do best... with food!

Food is an integral part of most Jewish holidays.  While Passover seems to be the best known for requiring specific foods, Rosh Hashanah has a rich tradition of food-based symbolism to reign in a good new year.  Sarah Melamed of Food Bridge celebrates Symbolic Foods of Rosh Hashanah with her beautiful photography and explanations of a sampling of traditional symbols.

Cooking With Preschoolers

Check out my guest post on CookingManager.com, titled Cooking with Preschoolers: Distraction or Interaction?

I discuss various tips to both keep your youngsters safely out from underfoot, as well as great ways to involve them including counting, tasting, smelling, and seasoning.  Here's the intro:

Cooking with preschoolers, even a single child, can feel like running a circus.  You have to balance their attention and their safety on top of timing the courses to be cooked, not burnt, at the right time.  First, choose your goal: distract or involve.  Sometimes the choice is obvious.  If you are constantly putting things in and out of the oven, or you have many things boiling on the stove, you will want to distance your child from the action.  Other times the food prep is G-rated, but you simply don’t have time for explaining and teaching.  Read more...

You may also enjoy:
Frozen Fruit PLUS More Ice Pop Ideas
Tehina Health Cookies 
Fruit Leather Flowers 
Kids in the Kitchen
Feeding Picky Eaters 

Alfalfa Sprout Salad

Quick Tip: If you make a non-lettuce salad with sprouts and parsley, you can dress it ahead with no wilting.

My good friend Leor shared this recipe with me.  Her pictures are included.  She says, "You have to triple/quadruple the dressing for a big salad."

Ingredients 
romaine lettuce
alfalfa sprouts
purple onion
cucumber
strawberries
candied almonds

Dressing:
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
3/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
 2 tbls almond oil or canola oil

Did you know that the recent E. Coli outbreak in Germany was traced to organic bean sprouts (not cucumbers)?  Sprouts have been known to be problematic for harboring food-born illness.  If you are worried, grow your own sprouts!  It's easy and exciting.  Check out my post on growing alfalfa sprouts.

Tiramisu Cupcakes

My friend Yael Schuster, of Haifa, Israel, posted this mouthwatering photo on Facebook and I asked her to write a post about it.  Yael is clearly a natural blogger, but has her hands full with two beutiful boys.  She also just completed her PhD in Chemistry from the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.  What caught my attention about this dessert, was the pairing of the ultra-trendy cupcake with the ever-classy tiramisu.  Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people and holiday traditions include eating dairy and staying up all night learning Torah.  Visit Yael's Sweet Shop on Facebook to see her beautiful confections or order treats!

Shavuot has got to be my favorite holiday. It's the one time I don't have to be ashamed of my intense relationship with butter and 38 % milkfat cream. Heck, it's even on sale! It's fun to teach the kids about something that doesn't involve plagues or fasting. I don't even mind the staying up all night- somebody else, of course. Not me- I stay home to "watch" the kiddies. BUT, I am sorry to say, I do not like cheesecake. I don't like the soft, soggy Israeli excuse for cream cheese. I don't like paying 60 shekels [$18 today] to make one cake with said pathetic cream cheese. I don't like making crumb crusts. I don't like carting around ten pounds (sorry, 4.5 kilos) of dessert in one pan. And I just don't like the taste of bland sugary cheese.

This year, when I was asked to bring dessert to a friend's house, I decided that the drown-yourself-in-dairy holiday needed to take a different approach. Tiramisu. In cupcake form. Genius.

Tehina Health Cookies

My friend, Tzippy, gave me the recipe for these delicious cookies.  She sent me the marvelous pictures below from the last time she made the cookies.  Tzippy notes that she always makes a double batch, so I assume that is what the pictures are showing.

Tehina is sesame paste most commonly used to make a mild or savory dip by the same name.  Make sure you buy pure sesame paste (there may be oil on top like natural peanut butter), and not the dip mixed with water, lemon, garlic, etc.  In the U.S you may need to look in the kosher, ethnic, or health food aisle.  Sesame paste is also used to make the dessert halva.  If you appreciate good halva, you will enjoy these cookies.

Pictures of Onion Challah

   Tamar of Petach Tikva, Israel, recently sent me pictures of the Easy Awesome Onion Challah she made on two different occasions.  This is what she said:

Thank you so much for this recipe Yosefa! I've made it twice now...

Chai Tea - Guest Post

Please welcome Rivki Locker of Kosher Cooking for Ordinary People and Healthy Eating for Ordinary People.  Rivki describes herself as "just an ordinary Jewish mother who tries to cook and eat healthy, and who wants to help other people" like herself.  Rikvi is a hard working mom with four children. She says she never seems to have time for any extras, but somehow finds time to cook and photograph food for her blog.  You can follow Rivki on Twitter @ordinaryblogger.

  Chai Tea

It's rare in the life of a full time working mother of four.  But it happens every once in a while. The older kids head off to school or to friends, the baby goes in for a nap, and I find myself with a half hour of quiet time on my hands. Time to read the paper. Time to take out my crocheting. Time to call a friend. Time just for me.

It’s at times like this, so few and far between, that I reach into the spice cabinet for the cardamom, fennel seeds and star anise. Because there’s nothing like a cup of fresh homemade chai tea to complete the feeling of relaxation and luxury.

Here’s my chai tea recipe. I’ve perfected the technique over the years, borrowing from lots of different recipes I’ve seen. It’s my own unique blend, and I think it’s just perfect.