Refrigerator dough

This is a slight alteration to a recipe my mom gave to me. It is really a convenient way to have home-made rolls freshly baked out of the oven. I use about 1/2 unbleached organic white flour and 1/2 organic whole-wheat flour.

Mix in a bowl:
1 cup flour, 3 Tablespoons sugar, 2 teaspoons dry yeast, and 1/2 tsp salt.

Place unbroken egg in cup of hot water to warm egg.

Heat in pan:
1/4 cup milk, 1/2 cup water and 1/4 cup butter.
Heat on medium heat until butter is almost melted. Remove from heat.

Add egg and 1/2 cup warm mashed potatoes to butter mixture.

Add this mixture to the dry ingredients. Use mixer to blend on low speed just to moisten. Then blend for 3 minutes on medium speed. Add 2 to 2 1/4 cups flour, first add little bit at a time and blend with mixer till dough is semi-stiff. Then add by hand kneading in flour. Knead for about 5 to 10 minutes. Place in bowl and cover with plastic wrap let rise until double about 45 minutes to an hour.

Punch down and cover closely with plastic wrap. Put in refrigerator until ready to use.

Shape into rolls and let rise for an hour. Bake in 350 degrees oven for about 10 minutes.

Invitation to eXfuze Event

Next Wednesday October 14th at 7pm Eddie Freeman, ExFuze's most dynamic presenter, will be in Minnesota. This is your special invitation to sample the Exfuze SUPER SEVEN+ and learn from the foremost educator about ExFuze and it's benefits. The event will be held at the brand new Mediterranean Cruise restaurant at 12500 Nicollet Ave in Burnsville, MN.

There truly are people out there who do want to make the best in God's creation available for others. eXfuze is one such company. I believe the ExFuze line of products are highly strengthening and fortifying to everyone that uses them including being very affordable.

When I first took Seven+ as directed by the 7 day challenge it gave me calm, focused energy. My husband Mike and I also were losing weight each week. At that time I was taking 2 doses; about 1 1/2 ounces a day. I then went down to 3/4 ounce once a day. So for about a month I was taking it just once in the morning. I then realized that I needed more energy, so I decided to go back to doing it twice a day. The results were exponentially better.

It costs me $2.47 a day. Which is well worth it.

These multi-botanical extract products have also helped my sister-in-law Kathy in many ways by:

-answering the glycemic problem of juice drinks

-giving her a caffeine free energy drink that feeds the body and brain for high performance

-helping her husband Kevin get the endurance to go back to work full time after 9 months of healing crisis that kept him unable to work.

I am encouraging people I know to give this product a try to see how it will benefit them. I truly believe it will improve their overall health. As a person who has been using and looking into health and nutrition for 10 years; I have seen a lot, but nothing like this. God created our bodies to be self-healing. I believe that the extract drinks from eXfuze, Seven+, Seven+ Pro and new Super Seven+ gives every cell in the body the tools it needs to carry out the functions they were created to perform.

If you rsvp to my sister-in-law Kathy she can put your name down for a door prize.
Kathy Joy Grove 612-272-8332

http://www.bluegreenreverie.com/

Butter is better

I've been reading Michael Pollan's book in defense of food.

Even when growing up on margarine I knew it wasn't quite right. And yet as a young adult I couldn't freely make that break to butter because of the overwhelming indoctrination against butter. I wasn't aware that this campaign has been going on since the 70's and even though there is evidence to the contrary no one wants to admit it was a failure. At least not publicly. It wasn't till after I read from Sally Fallons book Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats that I made a complete change and chose butter over margarine and avoided processed goods made with hydrogenated oils.

My overall health improved and I lost weight. I had also started taking a super-antioxidant supplement with grape seed extract.

I recently purchase sour cream that doesn't contain guar gum or carrageenan. How simply delicious a naturally unadulterated product tastes. How wholesome and good.

The reason for the addition of such things as guar gum has been done under the supposed idea that this would make the sour cream more nutritionally better. This is based on the lipid hypotheses but as Michael Pollan states in his book such hypotheses as proven to be quite lacking in evidence.

"The lipid hypothesis is quietly melting away, but no one in the public health community, or the government, seems quite ready to publicly acknowledge it. For fear of what exactly? That we'll binge on bacon double cheeseburgers? More likely that we'll come to the unavoidable conclusion that the emperors of nutrition have no clothes and never listen to them again."

Coffee Cake

This coffee cake turned out so good. I had to post the recipe.

Cake:

Blend together 1/4 cup butter, 1/4 applesauce, 1/3 cup sugar, 1/2 cup sour milk or yogurt, 1 egg beaten and 1 tsp vanilla(I didn't have any vanilla).

Mix together 1 cup flour(today I used 1/2 white, 1/2 whole grain rye flour), 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/4 tsp salt.

Add butter mixture to flour mixture. Blend thoroughly.

Topping:

Mix together 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 4 tsp melted butter, about 1/3 cup to 1/2 cup oats. Or you can add 1/2 cup chopped nuts instead.

Spread cake mixture in 8 x 8 pan, sprinkle on topping. Bake in 350 degrees oven for about 20 minutes.

Butter, something good for your health

I've been meaning to post more on the nutritional goodness of butter.

Check out this article by Dr. Mercola.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/09/22/7-Reasons-to-Eat-More-Saturated-Fat.aspx

bluegreenreverie

Well, my website http://www.bluegreenreverie.com/ has been up for one week now.

A real food dinner

I have found several things helpful in my quest to eat real food in America. One is having a brother who has an organic garden. And of course who kindly shares much of the nutritious produce. I've used cabbage in several meals. Tonight I made a dish I learned from my mother another person who has been a help. I saw my mom cook and bake many things from scratch. So, I made chicken divan crepes with broccoli from my brothers garden. I was thinking of a website regarding the same thing and the domain name was taken. So I thought I'd check it out http://realfoodchallenge.org/ . The focus is to bring real food to college campuses and a greater understanding about local, sustainable and organic.

Education is definitely the key, because when you understand more about what real food is and what a food product is - you are more likely to make an effort to eat real food. Instead of eating the subsidized american food products that are so cheaply and abundantly available. I suggest reading these books by Michael Pollan, The Omnivores Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eaters Manifesto. And also the book by Joel Salatin, Everything I Want to do is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front. There are currently 35 requests for Omnivore's Dilemma at my local library. I have yet to read In Defense of Food.

Another Cabbage Dinner

Tonight I made stuffed cabbage. I could have cooked the cabbage a bit longer but, it still turned out pretty tasty. I served it with fresh home-made bread. I usualy mix white, whole wheat and oat flour. I decided to use rye flour instead of oat flour. It turned out really well. I'm not getting any better at slicing bread though. I'll be getting a good bread slicer this month.

This quote was in the cryptogram I did today.

"The time has come the walrus said to talk of many things. of shores and ships and sealing wax of cabbages and kings." Lewis Carrol

Cabbage Kuchen

My brother Kevin has quite a garden this year. I took home half a large cabbage the other day. I had some left-over meat loaf. So, I thought I'd make some Cabbage Kucken. The recipe is from a vegetarian cookbook Laurel's Kitchen by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flanders, and Bronwen Godfrey. I've had this cookbook for years and remembered how I liked this recipe

Cabbage Kuchen:

Topping: 2 onions, 4 cups shredded cabbage, 2 T butter, 1 cup yogurt, 2 eggs beaten, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/8 tsp black pepper, 1 T caraway seed.

Dough (Kuchen): 2 cups whole wheat flour, 2 tsps baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 egg beaten, 1 cup milk, 2 T butter melted.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

To make topping , slice onions thinly and saute with cabbage in butter. Mix in other topping ingredients and set aside.

Stir flour, baking powder and salt lightly with a fork. Combine egg, milk and butter and stir briefly into dry ingredients.

Spread in greased 8 x 8 pan. Spread with topping and bake for 35 minutes.

I varied this recipe slightly. I like to add in other flours so I also used rye and oat flour. I used only 1/2 cup yogurt and 1/4 water in the topping. Next time I'm thinking to adjust the recipe to have less kuchen and use only 1 1/2 cups flour. I made it in a 9 x 6.5 inch glass baking dish. It was surprisingly good just like I remembered.

Tonight, I warmed it up and we had it with pork chops and hashbrowns. I had fried onions with mine. I made a mushroom sauce for Mike.

Baking

I believe one of the best ways and challenging ways to make a difference in your diet is to bake your own, cookies, cakes, breads etc. One reason is to avoid unhealthy ingredients like processed white flour. The other is to incorporate ingredients not usually found in store bought baked goods. I like to use a variety of flours including adding buckwheat flour into some of my baked goods. I have found the more you bake and experiment the better results you will have. Below is my peanut butter cookie recipe. My friend Deb raved over these. She thought they looked pretty good too.

Peanut butter cookies
1/2 cup oranic peanut butter, 1/2 cup butter, 3/4 cup sugar - 1/2 organic white, 1/4 sucanat or rapadura

1 egg well beaten, 1 1/2 tsp milk
1 cup and 4 T flour - 1/3 whole wheat, 1/3 white + 2 T, 1/3 oat flour and 2 T buckwheat

2 T ground flax seed, 1/4 tsp soda

Roll into a ball and make criss-cross marks with a fork.

Bake in 325 oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

Happy Together

This is turning out to be quite a year so far. My husband, Mike, and I are enjoying doing more things together. I've done crosswords for years and now after around 3 1/2 years of marriage my husband is doing them with me. Oh, and I've tried fishing, something he's done since he was young. I was surprised at how much I actually liked it. But, this is to me the biggest surprise. We are going in on a business adventure together. It's a networking company, so I understand the challenges. But, I'm really excited about doing this with him. The company is Silver Mania and they sell purchasing power to buy high quality silver. Well, when a friend of ours told Mike about the possibility of getting silver coins for free that caught his attention. Our website is www.silvermania.net/mjg. Check it out if you get the chance.

Times in life

As a young teenager I can remember being bored in the summer looking for something to do. Now at the age of 49 there are so many things I would like to do. I want to really get back to doing more painting. Thankful I have a good friend to encourage me in this. I couldn't imagine back then how I would feel at this age. As a teenager 30 seemed old. And actually 49 would have felt much older if at the end of my 30 years I hadn't made some healthy changes. I'm really feeling good at 49. I'm really focused on maintaining good health because there is so much to do and enjoy in life.