Virtual Coffee {33}

Hello dear friends, welcome to coffee.

I’m finally, slowly, starting to get back in the swing of things… kind of. Although I still can’t get my mind to wrap around the idea of all that snow out there. And yes, I know it started snowing late this year, and I avoided most of winter due to my month and a half long vacation in Houston, and I also shouldn’t complain since I just wrote the words “month and a half” and “vacation” in the same sentence, but seriously, enough with the snow. I’m pretty sure my friend Bridget, who lives in Alaska and can be found writing an extremely funny blog under several feet of snow for at least five months out of the year, definitely thinks I’m a wimp. But I have had enough. Enough.

This whole weather antagonism I’m feeling right now is likely due to the fact that our entire household was felled by the flu this weekend. The kids started it (don’t they always?!) with vomit-fest 2012  last Tuesday, then inexplicably high temperatures, an ear infection, then the nanny and the husband started feeling ill and by Friday I threw in the hatchet and declared our house officially a plague zone.

Of course the kids are feeling better now, and have recovered all of their energy, which means they will no longer sit quietly in front of the tv all day whilst I nurse my sinus infection and fever so my wonderful mother in law came down from Milan yesterday and has officially taken over child entertainment and general care duties. This warrants a big round of applause for mother in laws. Thank you.

So, if we were really having coffee today… well luckily we’re having it over the internet so I’m not spreading any germs.

Oh, and Happy Valentine’s day! I’m not feeling very Valentine-y myself today, though I did get some nice red roses from the Husband. He got some Ugg slipper/shoe type moccasins. And that’s as far as we’re going in the “celebration of our love” today since we’d just be sneezing all over each other and generally spreading cooties otherwise. Though we do have tentative plans to go out to dinner this weekend sans kids, cause that’s what Valentine’s day is really all about for parents, just a good excuse to have a quiet meal with no children in the vicinity.

Valentine’s day also means that the Boy’s birthday is right around the corner… and this means that I have to figure out what to do about it. We have tentative plans for a small party on Saturday, which will probably be a costume party as carnival time is here and it’s a pretty big deal in Italy. In fact tomorrow there’s the carnival party at their preschool and daycare but they’re both going to miss them due to the plague that has befallen us. Although the Boy’s been wearing his Spiderman costume non-stop for the past week, so he’s fully in the carnival spirit already.

That’s all the news from here, I’m going to go play dead in bed for a bit now cause I just poured all the meager energy reserves I had left in this sorry excuse for a coffee post. Thanks for stopping by, and for ignoring the tissues strewn all over the place!

And don’t forget to stop by and visit our hostess Amy! 

Got milk?

I’ve been on a quest of sorts lately, one with no clear path or objective… basically I’ve been running around with no rhyme nor purpose, trying to find something to make me feel better and I ended up fixating on food. Food to make me feel better, food to help the husband get better and food to make us all healthier – a tall order one would say. 

In my typical haphazard manner I landed on the concept of “real food”. Real food is a terrible moniker if ever there was one, in my opinion, but it’s established, recognizable, and easily searchable if you’re so inclined so that’s how I will refer to it henceforth. So, to give you an idea of what in tarnation I’m talking about I’m going to borrow the words of one of my favorite blogs on the subject: Cheeseslave in answer to the question “What is a real foodie?”: “A “real foodie” is someone who cooks “traditional” food. We cook stuff from scratch using real ingredients, like raw milk, grass-fed beef, eggs from chickens that run around outdoors, whole grains, sourdough and yogurt starters, mineral-rich sea salt, and natural sweeteners like honey and real maple syrup.

We don’t use modern foods that are either fake, super-refined, or denatured. This includes modern vegetable oils like Crisco and margarine, soy milk, meat from factory farms, pasteurized milk from cows eating corn and soybeans, refined white flour, factory-made sweeteners like HFCS or even refined white sugar, or commercial yeast. We believe in eating wholesome, nutrient-dense foods that come from nature. So we shop at farmer’s markets or buy direct from the farmer, or we grow food in our own backyards.”

I’m not exactly a “real foodie” according to the definition above, but I already had a tendency towards this way of eating and now I’m simply looking into it more deeply and trying to apply it more thoroughly. I’ll delve into the subject better in the future but instead of proselytizing (there are many blogs who do so far better than I ever could, so I’ll start listing them here and in future posts for your reference) I’ve decided to just jump right in and talk about the practical aspect of it from my point of view.

It took me awhile to wrap my head around the concept of real food, and I’m yet learning a lot about it, but it makes sense to me, and though I’m not proposing foregoing junk food in my life forever, I am now, at least, making a conscious effort to recognize it as such and to make a cursory effort to avoid it as much as I possibly can.

In any case, today what I really want to talk about is milk. I’ve always been a milk hater. Until recently I hadn’t drunk milk since… well I don’t remember, but a very young age. Milk - the smell, the texture of milk has always pretty much disgusted me. If you’re heating milk on the stove I have to leave the room cause it makes me gag. Yes, that bad. But then Nina Planck turned me onto the wonders of raw milk (from grass-fed, free to roam and pasture, happy and contented cows) and I had to test it because, seems that raw milk is to pasteurized milk what a cow is to outer space. So I went searching for it, thinking it would be a long and arduous quest as apparently in the US it’s frowned upon, much like marijuana is frowned upon. Not so where I live, one not only need not search very far it’s perfectly legal (unlike, alas, marijuana) and quite conveniently sold in places such as this:

Just a regular storefront.

Where you are greeted by them:

(just in case you where wondering exactly where it comes from and what it’s primary purpose is)

All manner of informative material awaits you:

What cows eat, do and become.

The sign on the left shows some of the things you can do with raw milk.

As apparently does a fair savings as a liter of milk costs about one euro (not the lowest price out there but on the lower spectrum of supermarket prices).

You can bring your own glass bottles or buy the plastic ones there for 0.20cents (shown above). And next to the milk dispenser there's a sign stating when the cows were milked and when it expires. (There's also a sign that encourages you to boil it before drinking it, but we drink it raw - except for the husband who's immune system is suppressed)

The process is easy, convenient and unbelievably sanitary:

milk dispenser

you stick your bottle in and close the door and the blue light apparently keeps things sterile, though, of course, you're responsible for the cleanliness of your own bottle.

you put in the amount of money you want depending on how much milk you need - 1€ for 1 lt,  50cents for half a litre, 20cents for 200ml - doesn't matter how much, and then you press start and the milk starts a'flowin'.

a-flowin'

and a-flowin'

then you take your bottle out

cap it and admire the results of your labor.

They also serve other raw milk products like yoghurts (which are objectively much tastier than anything I've ever bought at the grocery store), mozzarella, ricotta cheese and the like.

cheeses and stuff

lovely yoghurts

And it all comes from a farm near here, I haven't visited it yet, but I will soon. So now we’re hooked. I even drink the stuff myself though I still prefer it in other forms (like butter, cream, yoghurt, and cheese), and, just in case you were wondering, it tastes and smells nothing like pasteurized, homogenized milk. 

Would you ever consider drinking raw milk?

Just a few of the many, many resources to learn more about real food (in no particular order):

Weston A. Price Foundation

Modern Alternative Mama

Cheeseslave

Food Renegade

Nina Planck

Jewish Penicillin (aka Chicken Soup)

Apparently chicken soup will cure all your evils. Seriously, I’ve been reading up, colds, flu, stomach ailments, bad skin, bad moods, chicken soup will solve them all. Of course I won’t be declaring this under oath or anything, but still, it’s known as “Jewish penicillin” (though why that is is beyond me, it should really just be known as Grandma’s penicillin, everybody’s Grandma makes chicken soup, right?).

Anyway, there’s a catch (of course there is!) for it to work its magical powers you can’t use ready-made store-bought chicken soup, no ma’am. You done have to go out and get yourself a real bird.

I used to make chicken broth all the time when I was weaning the kids and I used it instead of just plain water for the purees (not the fruit ones, do I need to say it?), but it always smelled chicken-y and was too bland and, well, blah, so when I used it for soup I always had to add bouillon, which sort of defeats the whole purpose, you know?

So I’ve been experimenting and what I’ve come up with is divine. For optimal health I’ve read one should have a cup of “real” chicken broth a day, every day (kind of like the apple, it keeps the doctor away), I suggest you just make large quantities occasionally and freeze it. So if you want soup, or catch a cold, or a stomach bug, or just need comfort food, it’s there for you. Although, I do suggest you heat it in a pan, not the microwave, to preserve all the nutrients and stuff.

Please don’t pay too much attention to my pictures, they’re kind of crappy and there’s just no way to make chicken pieces boiling in a pan look good, just trust that the end result will be worth it!

As with most recipes this continues after the jump so click on the link!

Achoo!

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of researching. Random researching, about a lot of different things. I look stuff up on the internet, I read site upon site, I look at actual books on whatever subject interests me at that specific moment but then, I’ve realized, I don’t actually use all this research that I do. After a few weeks (or, more rarely, months) of research I’ll declare myself satisfied with my expertise on the subject and I’ll promptly allow myself to forget everything without ever having tested my knowledge in the real word. All this is basically a colossal waste of my time.

So now I’ve decided to try and put this research compulsion of mine to good use, or at the very least to some use, I’m going to share it here so that I at least have a reference to go to when invariably I start wondering about that thing I researched six months ago and forgot about.

So some of the things I’ve been researching a lot recently are home remedies to common ailments. Luckily, I caught a cold the other day so I actually managed to put some of this research to good use, and generous soul that I am I’ve decided to share my knowledge with you!

First of all, the disclaimer: I’m not a medical professional. I figured I had to specify it in case it wasn’t clear from the first paragraph. All the information written here comes from the internet, or my grandmother, or folk knowledge, it could be true or it could be total hogwash I have no idea so proceed at your own peril.

Another important thing to note, once you catch a cold, you’ve caught a cold. There are no miraculous cures. All you can do is allay the symptoms and speed up your recovery, and here’s me helping you to do just that, so this is what I do if I catch a cold:

1.    Take a pain reliever. Do I even remotely look like a martyr? I like ibuprofen, it gets rid of my headache and relieves the muscle tension that always accompanies my colds.

2.    Cayenne Pepper is my BFF. When the cold is accompanied by a sore throat I gargle with a cup of warm water, 1tbs salt and 1 tsp cayenne pepper. I won’t lie, it burns your tongue and lips but the sore throat goes. I promise. I don’t know if the pepper anesthetizes my throat, if it scares the bacteria from reproducing, if my immune system goes into overdrive as a defense mechanism from the burning torture, but it works I’ve tried this repeatedly. I usually start gargling as soon as I get that scratchy throat feeling and I do it as often as I can, like every half hour for at least two hours. And the sore throat disappears. It helps to eat a tsp of honey when you’re done gargling cause it gets rid of some of the heat in your mouth.

3.    Steam. I boil water and stick my head under a big towel over the steaming bowl until it stops steaming. It clears my sinuses right up, and my sinuses are assholes. I’ve tried steaming with a variety of different things in the water: baking soda, eucalyptus oil, tea tree oil… but what works best in my opinion is a splash of apple cider vinegar (or just regular vinegar) it’ll get you breathing through your nose in no time. Beware: it stings your throat and eyes at first, but stick with it your nose will thank you.

4.    Drink. Not alcohol, but tea. My go to recipe for a cold is this:

 ½ lemon & ½ lime (rind and all, just wash them well), 1 cinnamon stick, 1 inch long piece of fresh ginger, 1tbs honey and a some fresh herbs, like fresh mint and fresh lemon-thyme, or herbal tea if you don’t have the herbs. Add a generous amount of honey and drink up! It’s yummy, and it helps, it just doesn’t keep, the lemon and lime rind make it really bitter if it sits around.

5.    Vit C and zinc. Some research says this works, some says it doesn’t. I always have some sitting around and figure it can’t possibly hurt, though I don’t take mega-doses as some docs suggest I usually try to keep it around a 1gram capsule of vit c twice a day. I’m pretty sure that too much of any vitamin can’t be good.

6.    Hot shower. In my opinion there are few ailments a hot shower or bath can’t improve. Just forgo the hair washing unless it’s really necessary and stay warm after.

7.    Honey and garlic. Yeah, I know, this sounds really gross. Mix 2 cloves minced fresh garlic and 3 tbs raw honey and let it sit for a couple of hours. Take a teaspoonful three times a day, and try not to breath right in anyone’s face for a few days.

8.    Gargling. I’ve mentioned gargling with cayenne, but if you can’t stomach that just plain salt will do just fine. In fact, I was reading that even gargling with plain water everyday reduces one’s chance of getting a cold.

9.    Nose flushing. I use these saline sprays from the pharmacy but I don’t know if they sell them everywhere. I’ve also heard Neti pots are easy to use as well as a simple bulb syringe filled with saline (or plain salt and water, just don’t make it too salty). It’s important to be gentle, but regularly flushing out the nose helps sinus infections from occurring (supposedly).

10. Sleep. So now you have an excuse to sleep more, it’s for your health!

11. Real chicken broth. And by real I mean homemade, with chicken bones and stuff. I now always have some ready in the freezer, I’ll post the recipe for this within the next few days. But seriously, it’s so worth the effort it takes to make, because it’s good for so many things. And I promise, mine doesn’t smell gross and it won’t take you forever to make!

12. Lots of fluids. (And you know I don’t mean soda and alcohol, right?)

There ya have it. I used to get colds ALL THE TIME, now I don’t so much. Or maybe the cayenne kills them before they have time to get annoying, I don’t know, either way I've had plenty of chances to test this stuff. Plus all the stuff I mentioned has no side-effects (other than possibly your friends or partner staying away from you cause you smell garlicky or getting annoyed at you for sleeping to much). So it’s worth a try, right?

Do you have any tried and true natural cold remedies? What do you do when you get sick?

Also, if you don’t start feeling better soon or have a high fever, call your doc, don’t listen to me!!

Last thing, I just realized that number 1. isn’t really a natural cold remedy. Oops.