Milk Tonic for good health

Tiger’s Milk, an old naturopathic convalescent tonic for a perfect breakfast. A convalescent tonic was traditionally used to build people back up after an illness or stress, including childbirth.

Per person
2 x raw egg yolks (from free range eggs
½ - ¾ cup of milk, yoghurt or kefir
2-3 tablespoons of blueberries (fresh or frozen)
1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon of coconut oil

First blend the yoghurt and berries until smooth, then add the egg yolks and coconut oil and blend until combined. It’s important to not over process the egg yolks so always add them last.

If you or a family member is allergic to dairy, you can replace the milk with almond milk or rice milk. To make either of these even more nutritious, culture them using Kefir grains or culture first. A less ideal option is to replace the milk with fresh or frozen orange juice – this works best as an afternoon snack rather than breakfast. You can also add some frozen banana for children (or fussy adults).

Matt and I love it. We find that the coconut flavor stands out the most. The shake has a beautiful purplish color, so quite appealing. We can hardly tastes the yolk. The natural yogurt and kefir give a tarty taste. If you like it a bit sweeter, adding some banana will do the trick, and I can imagine it going very well with the coconut flavor.

Lacto Fermentation-The Microbial Family

After months of research and personal success with the experiment, I've come to the conclusion that we should include a lot more lacto fermented foods in our diet. Now, I keep a microbial family going at home. The members include Water Kefir, Milk Kefir, cultured yogurt, Kombucha and other lacto-fermented veges especially cabbages.

For years, I suffered from severe constipation. Once I was packed for 8 weeks. Believe me not, it was nasty. I thought I was dying. In a nutshell that was the beginning of my health journey in search of a cure for my constipation. It then took me another 6 years before I stumbled over the answer (Thanks to Tara who introduced Nourishing Traditions to me). From juicing to consuming tonnes of fiber, taking probiotic tablets, and herbal laxatives, the answer for me is finally found in lacto fermented foods.

It has been six months, and I hardly needed the usually herbal laxative to get things moving. Since, I've also found a few things that are especially hard on my digestive system. Too much carbohydrates will pack me up too. At the moment, I'm experimenting with sourdough recipes as I would like to enjoy carb without the side effects.

We're planning for a family, and I'm confident these lacto fermented foods will
help with easing constipation during pregnancy. Yes, these lacto fermented foods are safe to consume during pregnancy.

Why Raw Milk?

We drink RAW MILK these days and use it to make yogurt. Why Raw Milk?

Pasteurization destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins C, B12 and B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer. Calves fed pasteurized milk do poorly and many die before maturity.

Raw milk sours naturally but pasteurized milk turns putrid; processors must remove slime and pus from pasteurized milk by a process of centrifugal clarification. Inspection of dairy herds for disease is not required for pasteurized milk. Pasteurization was instituted in the 1920s to combat TB, infant diarrhea, undulant fever and other diseases caused by poor animal nutrition and dirty production methods.

But times have changed and modern stainless steel tanks, milking machines, refrigerated trucks and inspection methods make pasteurization absolutely unnecessary for public protection. And pasteurization does not always kill the bacteria for Johne’s disease suspected of causing Crohn's disease in humans with which most confinement cows are infected.

Much commercial milk is now ultra-pasteurized to get rid of heat-resistant bacteria and give it a longer shelf life. Ultra-pasteurization is a violent process that takes milk from a chilled temperature to above the boiling point in less than two seconds. (Sources are listed on www.realmilk.com.)

Do you still want to drink pasteurized milk?

June's Urban Permies meeting

The meeting fell on a cold and wet winter afternoon. Judith did a short presentation on the ram earth house that she visited in the Kapiti at the soil and earth meeting.

Next, we talked about closing the loop in the permaculture garden, in the sense of preserving excess vegetables from the home garden for a later date.

In earlier times, people knew how to preserve vegetables for long periods without the use of freezers or canning machines. This was done through the process of lacto-Fermentation. Lactic acid is a natural preservative that inhibits putrefying bacterial. Starches and sugars in vegetables and fruits are converted into lactic acid by the many species of lactic-acid-producing bacteria (read more about this at this link).

We made Korean sauerkraut (kimchi) with an organic cabbage that I bought from the local organic shop – cabbages in the garden aren’t ready yet!! This is the first time I’m trialing with purple cabbage and with whey. The cutting and bounding and bottling came up to less than an hour. It will take about 4- 5 weeks before it’s ready. The flavor gets better over time. But in my household, a bottle doesn’t last more than a week. We’ll be able to do some sauerkraut tasting at the next meeting – exciting.  Overall, we had a lovely time despite the wet and cold weather.

Whole Grain Bread (Breadmaker)

Matt loves bread and he can finish a loaf of vogel bread in one sitting, and that is pretty expensive to maintain! Fortunately, my good friend, Tara came to the rescue with a whole grain bread recipe that comes pretty close to achieving the same texture as vogel bread.

This recipe uses breadmaker cups & spoons for all measurements.

Cover 1 ¼ cups kibbled wheat with water and soak overnight. Drain in a sieve for a few minutes.  This should give about 2 cups softened wheat grains.

Place the following ingredients in a breadmaker:
2 ½ tsp breadmaker yeast blend
2 1/2  cups wholemeal flour
2Tbs gluten flour
2 Tbs cream
1 ½ tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
2 Tbs butter or oil
300 ml water

Add the drained wheat, and use a standard white loaf baking programme of about 4 hours (the wholemeal programme seems to make the bread too dry).

Childhood and Chicken Feet

During my childhood days when mum and dad were doing pig farming in Singapore (yes, in Singapore), we used to have all kinds of food served up on the dinner table.

One of them was chicken feet stew. Mum would deep fried the chicken feet and throw into a pot with Asian spices ( star anise seed, cloves, Chinese five spice, cinnamons, soy sauce) to stew up the chicken feet with Chinese mushrooms, hard boiled eggs and cabbages. This dish would be eaten over a few days. The flavor got better each day. I would gobbled down bowls of rice flavored with the galantine gravy and suckle on those flavorsome chicken feet, and mushrooms and cabbages. One of my favorite dishes for sure. The children were always fighting over the feet, for real!!

Tara has suddenly reminded me of those yummy chicken feet, and got hold of numerous kgs of it for me, and sparkled lots of nice childhood memories. I’ll now do a bit of enquiries with my mother and grandma to hopefully collect a list of my family favorite recipes.

As a starter, I’ll probably make some delicious stock with I kg worth of it. I’ll put it in a slow cooker on low for a day or two with a few onions, carrots, leeks and apples. Then, I’ll freeze the stock in small containers to use it for later. It’s so good to be able to reach into the freezer for stock to cook fast food that’s delicious and nutritious.