So as of my last post you can see that I finally got some sense and started drinking my ginger tea from the root. I love ginger AND I love ginger. SO I took some ginger root to my good friend Mary Moses shop in commerce. HRMagoo and turned her on to drinking the ginger tea from the root. It’s new to me and I really like it. Well while I was there I saw a little packet of something that looked like candied pineapple and she told me it was candied ginger and the little wheels started spinning in my head. So guess what comes next! Let me first say that I have never had candied ginger until I had my own so I don’t have anything to compare it to but the idea of it screamed at me to MAKE IT. And soooo and sooooo and WOW! I’m in love …..I’m sorry! ….did forget to tell you that I love ginger?
The first thing I did was to research some sites and try to condense the recipe to something very straight forward. This is what I found.
It was recommended to use a spoon to scrape the skin off and it took me a couple turns to get the spoon to act right but it was more simple than using a knife and you scrape only the skin and not the root.
1lb ginger peeled and sliced thin, cover and simmer in water till tender.
I had a little over a lb and I boiled about an hour maybe a little less.
Now this is what I have learned. One recipe had you boil it in water twice as in boil once for 20-30 min drain the water and refil and boil again for 20-30 min.
The thing is if you boil it in the same water then the liquid as well as the finished product is very strong. (Too strong for my liking) Next time I will boil it twice in fresh water.
Drain the water but keep it. (If you like ginger tea, this stuff is potent and great to open your sinus too I might add.)
You either want to measure your ginger or weigh it; you want approx the same amount of each ginger and sugar.
Throw both into pan and add about 2 tablespoons of the liquid back into the pan.
This is where the fun comes in. You need to simmer this liquid until there is just a wee bit of liquid left. I think when working with sugar you need to be on guard, so you will be watching and stirring this luscious bowl of exotic scents and tastes for about an hour. Cook it slow and on the lowest heat that will give you bubble.
Now, while stirring and stirring and smelling, I want you to look deeply into the dark brown eyes of the juice that boiled off those roots and think to yourself how good that must taste. Go ahead….....take a swig! ……………..A careful swig! I may be a wimp but I got more fire off of that tiny swig than I thought I would get. That’s good because it means it will make more tea for me..
Have a bowl of sugar ready to coat your slices in. Once the liquid has cooked down to next to nothing, tilt your pan and drain the yummy goo to one side and with a slotted spoon pull out your slices and toss them in the sugar. I did not have any issues with the slices sticking together. Everything came out wonderful. After tossing pull them out and place on a pan to dry out a little bit. That’s it all done.
I’m going to place these in some little bags and give some as gifts, I said some! Not all!
I’m thinking now that it’s a good thing that my husband doesn’t like ginger. Yippy skippy!….It leaves more for me!
So there is really no science involved just a lot of standing and stirring but it is soooo worth it.
Almost forgot! After I took out the slices from the pan I was left with crusty, sugarcoated sides. So I took the liquid root juice and added it back into the pan and warmed till I melted all the sugar off the side and then placed in a jar. I can seal and use it to make tea. You just need hot water and root juice to taste.
I’ve already showed you the benefits that I found on ginger and if you like the taste of it as much as I do then you will love it candied. So, give it a try and tell me what you think!
Namaste
Merilee
Well its almost Christmas 2011 and I am sure there are a bunch of you getting sick with the change in the weather. So let me tell you what I added to my garden last spring. Ginger! Easy peasy too, I got a root from the grocery store and put it in a pot and now at the end of the growing season I have doubled what I started with, so next spring I will add to it, Yes I think I will have a very large patch of ginger because I have fallen in love with the tea I make from the root. I have tried many ginger teas but they all have pepper in them which makes them bitter after using the tea bag a 2nd or 3rd time. With fresh ginger I not only don't have that issue, I know that what I'm getting is fresh and not processed in any way I know exactly whats in it.
This is a copy from another site that will explain the health benefits of ginger. I did not write it and am only borrowing it to spread the knowledge,
http://www.boost-immune-system-naturally.com/health-benefits-of-ginger.html
Ginger and the Immune System
•strong antioxidant
•Antimicrobial (kills bacteria - including salmonella) - internally and topically as an antiseptic
•two natural antibiotics are found in ginger
•contains anti-inflammatory agents
•helps eliminate congestion
•contains zingibain that dissolves parasites and their eggs
•ginger root tea eases some throat pain
•kills cold viruses
•inhibits production of cytokines which cause pain and swelling
•combats chills and fever
•ginger inhibits 5-LO enzymes, the only food for prostate cancer cells , prostate cancer cells die in one to two hours without this enzyme
•gingerol (an extract of ginger) inhibits pancreatic cell growth
•beneficial to prevent constipation-related cancer
•an effective ani-tumor agent in leukemia cells
•an extract of ginger causes lung cancer cell death
•gingerols inhibited the growth of Helicobacter pylori associated with dyspepsia, peptic ulcer disease and the development of gastric and colon cancer
•ginger extract raises significantly the thymus index, spleen index, percentage of phagocytosis, and thus improves the immunologic function relating to tumors
•gingerol inhibits cell adhesion, invasion, motility and activities of breast cancer cell lines
•gingerol induces viability reduction (killed) gastric cancer cells
•a ginger extract causes apoptosis (cell death) of breast carcinoma cells
•ginger inhibits cell growth and modulates angiogenic factor in ovarian cancer cells
•6-shogaol (component of ginger) induces cell death in colorectal carcinoma cells
•compounds of ginger inhibits proliferation (stops growth) of ovarian cancer cells
•a component of ginger suppresses metastasis (stops the spread) in any type of cancer cell including leukemic, skin, kidney, lung, and pancreatic cancer cells - one of the most exciting and powerful health benefits of ginger!
Ginger and Circulation
•stimulates circulation
•may help prevent heart attacks
•has natural blood thinning properties
•lowers blood cholesterol levels
•cleanses and stimulates blood
•prevents internal blood clots
•may prevent TIA’s (mini strokes)
•therapeutic properties for hypertension
Ginger and Digestion
•cleanses colon
•reduces colon spasms and cramps
•helps clear gas
•relieves indigestion
•excellent for nausea, vomiting and motion sickness
•stimulates production of digestive juices
•helps bowel disorders
Ginger and other Body Systems
•lungs: helps with respiratory problems, eases asthma symptoms
•helps eliminate hot flashes
•relieves headaches
•promotes menstrual regularity
•helps with morning sickness
•helps reduce inflammation of arthritis
•supports kidney health
•topical gingerol provides protection against UVB-induced skin disorders
•reduces the severity of post chemotherapy nausea
Ginger and its Nutrients
•high in potassium
•manganese which builds resistance to disease, protects lining of heart, blood vessels and urinary passages
•silicon which promotes healthy skin, hair, teeth and nails
•helps assimilate calcium
•also contains Vit. A, C, E, B-complex, magnesium, phosphorus, sodium, iron, zinc, calcium, beta-carotene
Other Facts and Health Benefits of Ginger
•was listed in U.S. Pharmacopoeia from 1820-1873
•British research has found ginger to be as effective as drugs at relieving nausea after surgery
•Patients with rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis studied at Denmark’s Odense University got relief from pain and swelling after taking ginger daily for three months
•gingerol promotes healing of inflammation and minor burns
•may prevent transient ischemic attacks (TIA’s) know as mini strokes
•Israeli researchers found that standardized ginger extract has dramatic effects on cardiovascular health, lowering cholesterol levels and preventing oxidation of LDL which contributes to cholesterol deposits on artery walls
Ginger Recipes/Uses
•Suggested use is 1/3 tsp. ground ginger or 1 tsp. fresh ginger root in food or drink up to three times daily
•Motion Sickness - drink tea or juice mixed with 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger one-half hour before traveling
•Add in juicer to fresh raw fruit or vegetable juice
•Add to smoothies - See My ‘Ginger Berry Smoothie’ Here in Easy Healthy Smoothie Recipes
•Add fresh to Asian stir fry dishes, marinades, fruit salad dressings
•Add ground ginger to breads, cookies, spice cakes, pumpkin pie.
This is my system for making tea with ginger root. Like I said its easy and oh so yummy. Get a root from the grocery store and keep it handy this season for emergencies or grow it or use it every day.
Stay well this season and Merry Christmas
Namaste
Merilee
Gardens are magical aren’t they?
Having a good gardening system is working so well for me, everything just seems to flow at the moment. I walk out in the morning with a nice cup of hot joe and look around at everything going so right!
I am greeted first by a little wren that has quickly made a nest in one of my houseplants. Seems they found it the very day I set it out. She gets upset when my 19-year-old cat comes out for some sun, not knowing of course that Basil (the cat) is not so interested in her at all. Yet she still sits in a tree screaming at the cat until the cat falls asleep and then the little wren will quietly go back to her nest
I walk thu the veggie garden and look around for vole holes which now I have a remedy for that I think is sure to work. No holes, that’s good! I grab a little bit of some greens to take out to the chickens and tell them good morning. I watch them a while as they are such good entertainment and I wonder to myself, why I left the chair in there with the birds. (poopy chair)
With the price of soil amendments I am especially glad to have this wonderful system of awesome soil making in place.
Grass clippings to the compost pile and some to the birds
Bolted cabbage and other greens go to the chickens a little everyday
Indoor kitchen waste is split up between the worms and the compost
In the meantime the chickens are making up my nitrogen compost that I can retrieve at a later date.
I really like the use what you have method that applies to so many things, such as; I have lots of trees, lots of trees = lots of leaves. So I grab my big bed sheet and rake up about 4-5 big sheets full of leaves and they go in the coop for the birds. The birds get so excited to have something new to pick thru looking for bugs, and they do find a lot of them. In about 3-4 months I will have all that poopy enriched mulched up leaves and that will end up in the garden.
The worm bin is going full steam ahead. I actually think I have too many! So every now and then I will add a chunk of them to the garden. Say I have 4 plants square. I will dig a hole and throw in a chunk full of worm filled worm poo and cover it back up and then water it in real good.
The best way I have found to make worm tea is to put a spade full of worms and casting into a screen bag and dunk it in your bucket of water a few times. You will see it turn a darker shade and that is the good stuff. Pull the bag out and put anything left in the bag back into your worm bin. Don’t leave the bag in the water long enough to drown the worms! Please!
I use that water to give my veggies an extra boost.
So I don’t have to buy straw for the chickens as often cause I use a lot of leaves.
I don’t have to buy fertilizer at all!
Supplement the chickens’ diets with greens and grub specials I dig up and they don’t eat as much store bought food.
Out of all this I get fresh eggs and organic veggies and herbs
The best thing about having this system in place is that things are moving more smoothly everywhere in the yard. I have more garden space to have to work but its not taking as much time as before to do things. Some of the smoothing out I had to do was to get the chickens closer to the garden side of the house. This way I have my garden 3 steps away from my compost pile and the worm bin and the chickens’ house is only a few more steps away.
We have one rain barrel at the moment but are working on getting more. I do love my rain barrels.
I was going in this direction anyway as far as growing what I eat but I was on youtube and looking over peakmoment videos and there was one on a lady that said how much food could I grow on my land. And then I said to myself, “self, How much food can we grow on our land?” AND THEN…..AND THEN….. I decided that at least for this year I’m not planting anything unless I can eat it
So anyway, the whole point of this blog, is just to profess my happiness in this beautiful day and to share the feeling of things going right for a change!
If I get too old to garden ? OH NO!
Ok this is really simple. Take a nice hot long shower and when you get out take a rag and wipe down your bathroom. You can also use some nice smelling essential oils like lavender, peppermint ect.... diluted so it doesnt harm the paint. Throw a rag over a mop head to reach to the top of the walls. Make sure to get the outside of the toilet and bathtub.
The steam will loosen up the grime and make it so much easier to clean.
Now I dont claim to be a skin expert, although I make some skin care products such as body butters, bath teas, and cocoa butter bath melts and soaps. I do know when something is not right!
I have a problem with smokers’ patches. They work and I don’t want a cigarette but they irritate my skin so bad that I can’t wear them long enough to ever stop smoking.
The start of October I decided to try again with the intention of using them no matter how much they made my skin itch. I was using them mainly on my arms as they irritate my back worse than my arms. About the middle of oct I had a spot on my back that just itched like the blazes and wouldn’t go away. So once again I stopped the patches.
Now I must tell you that around that time I had been pulling 100 ft briars out of the trees on my property where there is also poison ivy and I have chickens and a garden that both needed straw. On top of that I feed the birds regularly, so I could have gotten these critters from any of these places.
Now back to the patch on my back. I stopped the patch and this little itchy spot kept creeping, spreading to cover more and more of my back.
So I’m thinking briars that I got poked with or poison ivy. It had now grown to be a patch about the size of my palm and an itch from hell. Because it was growing it led me to believe that it was poison something as I am not allergic to anything and I had never had poison ivy so I sprayed it with alcohol thinking it would dry it up but all it did was dry my skin out.
My husband is so sweet he gives me back rubs now and then and after a back rub it spread to encompass more of my back. It had also moved to my left elbow and a day or two after that to my right wrist then to my right elbow and slowly up my arms.
In the mean time after scouring the web and learning more about contact dermatitis and the possibility of bugs I used straight peppermint oil on my back and arms which I DO NOT RECOMMEND and I don’t recommend any more than a few drops in your bath water EVER. This may have actually done a little good but not sure. After the peppermint a few days later I tried tea tree oil and that may have helped also. The reason I say it may have helped is I was still itching and I didn’t know until 2 and ½ months of having this that you will still itch like crazy for 2-4 weeks after you have killed these little buggers. Now after the tea tree oil I still didn’t know it was bugs. I used a steroid pack that my husband had after scouring the web and collecting information on it. First day 6 pills I woke up and my back felt like it had cleared quite a bit. That night I got another back rub. Now my husband rubs from the base of my back up to my shoulders and across my upper arms, that is his MO. The steroid pack is a 6 day pack and at the end of the 6 days my legs were itching very bad and you bet I was scratching. This is the kind of itch where you want to get a wire brush and just rip your skin to shreds. (Yes it is that bad)
Now with a steroid pack come the ability for your skin to bruise very easy and after scratching my legs with my jeans on I noticed when I took them off that I had BLACK bruises, GIANT I might add, the size of the palm of my hand right where I had been scratching.
It just so happened that I had to make a doctors appointment for my thyroid meds and showed it to my doctor who wanted to send me to a dermatologist at $60.00 a shot after I have to pay her $30.00 (OH HELL NO) I cant afford it so she prescribed permethrin cream which is a topical insecticide. By the time I got home from the doctor I noticed that the stuff had spread all up my back, my shoulders and around my neck but had stopped right at my hair line. Remember that last back rub? As Oprah says that was an ahhh haaa moment! I never thought they were scabies as the only person I have come in contact with was my husband and he was not afflicted with them. Also I had been sleeping in the living room by the fire cause he snores loud enough to wake the neighborhood so he wasn’t getting them from me, as they are contagious. So the last place they were hiding now was my upper back and neck and not as bad everywhere else but I was still covered in them and I was still itching everywhere.
You can only keep this cream on for 8-10 hours so I waited till I was going to bed and had him do my back and OMG the only way to explain how that felt was to say, I have been attacked by fire ants everywhere! After a few minutes it subsided and I took benadryl so I could sleep and washed it off the next morning. Took all my sheets, pillowcases and blankets and washed them AGAIN in hot water. Sprayed the futon with some high-powered bug stuff having to be careful with the cat, as this stuff will kill a cat.
About a week after I used the cream I did use some more on my neck and chest and bra line as I felt firmly that I didn’t do a good enough job the first time. It will still itch like crazy for 2-4 weeks after you use it as the mites are dieing off. Personally I think you just piss them off so bad that they are in there digging at you and laughing, yea that’s it, they are laughing at you!
It has been 14 days now since I used the cream and I had a long bath this morning that I loaded down with DEAD Sea salts colloidal oatmeal and a dropper full of tea tree oil. After which I used olive oil on my skin and I can tell you that I feel better than I have in weeks.
This has been a hard road and I never want to experience it again. My husband has gotten to the point where when I start scratching he starts making fun of me by scratching too and I never know if he is joking or serious. I pray to god he doesn’t have to experience what he is has found as a way to make fun of me.
A look back at what I tried and because of the time it takes to actually stop itching I don’t know if any of these things may have worked alone or if it was the cream alone.
I must tell you that each female carries eggs and hatch out approximately 300 full grown adults which in turn do the same thing, so it is very important to find something that works quickly.
I did the peppermint oil, the tea tree oil which either are recommended but like I said before don’t do the peppermint straight, tea tree oil is ok straight. I went to earthclinic.com where I did a borax and peroxide bath, well I showered and then put the mixture on. It worked for the dog a while back and that may have worked. I just really wanted a natural cure but, as it takes so long for the itch to go away I can’t say if any of the previous worked or not. I guess what it comes down to is to not wait. It was the waiting and thinking it was poison ivy or stress or dermatitis that gave the little buggers time to make their way all over my body and I guess you don’t know until you know.
I do know I didn’t get it from the animals, as they were not scratching. I have decided that they were straw itch mites, which is in the same family as scabies. After looking at pictures of infected skin and learning that they don’t like hair, which is where they stopped that is the only conclusion I can come up with.
A friend told me that there is a lotion called kwell lotion that is basically the same as the permethrin and may or may not save you money.
If you know me then you know I don’t like pharmaceuticals and I don’t like pesticides. I think that both are just a way for someone else to get rich off of our own ignorance. I don’t believe it when they say that certain herbs have not been studied because that would constitute ignorance on their part and like I have said before, drugs have to be made of something that is already on this earth. Pharmaceutical companies will take something simple heat it up and then give it a different name that we don’t understand!
Just try to keep it simple and stay away from the junk offered to us and if you have an itch that wont go away and continues to grow, get it checked out. It could just be bugs but it could also be cancer. Our skin is our largest organ of our body, so take care of it! Our outsides love olive oil as much as our insides and a good bath with a teaspoon of olive oil as well as using it as a moisturizer can never hurt. Take care of you and till next time! Namaste!
