I saw this parody of a phone meeting when the Passive Guy featured it on his blog, The Passive Voice.
Made me chuckle so much I had to share it with you all. 😀
My husband – who works for a large international corporation, is home-based here at Casa Ney-Grimm, and attends many phone meeitngs – assures me that this video is true to life in every respect. 😉 He has witnessed all too many of the depicted incidents.
Meat and fish stocks have been a staple of traditional cuisines for a long time. Consider the Japanese breakfast of fish broth with rice. French onion soup. Korean sol long tang (beef broth and thinly shaved beef brisket). Russsian chlodnik (shrimp soup).
Yum! I want some right now! 😀
No question that a homemade soup based on homemade stock is delicious. Makes me wish for a do-over of my winter cooking this year. I didn’t make nearly as much soup as I’d intended.
But homemade soup stock is great for a bunch other reasons too. Most of which I didn’t know before I read the book Nourishing Traditions.
Broth Is Super Nutritious
Okay, I “knew” soup was nutritious. You hear it all the time. But I didn’t know why. And, honestly, most commercial soups aren’t, because they’re made with cheap hydrolyzed vegetable protein as a base instead of actual beef stock or chicken stock.
So why is meat and fish broth so good for us? Two reasons.
All the minerals present in bone, cartilage, and marrow are present in the broth, especially the biggies of calcium, magnesium, and potassium.
These minerals, plus those of any vegetables you’ve included in your stock-making, are present as electrolytes, a form that is particularly easy for the body to assimilate – that is, your body will take in more of them, more easily.
Broth Is Hydrophilic
“What?” I hear you say. I said it too!
Hydrophilic means it attracts liquids. Most raw foods are hydrophilic. When we eat them, the particles attract the digestive juices present in the gut, causing the food particles to be rapidly and thoroughly digested.
But most cooked foods are hydrophobic. That is, they repel liquids. And repel the digestive juices. Which means your body has to use (and make) more enzymes to accomplish digestion, and it takes longer.
The gelatin in stock possesses the unusual property that even after heating it is hydrophilic. It attracts liquid. So all those lovely vegetable chunks and meat pieces in your soup? They’re coated in broth and thus become far easier to digest.
When I was a young thing, the emphasis placed by my elders on digestibility seemed incomprehensible. You swallow your food; it’s digested; end of story. After I’d experienced indigestion – ouch! – their concern made more sense. And after I’d experienced years of a painful gut from eating soy products such as tofu, digestibility seemed paramount! (All better, BTW, now that I’ve been avoiding soy for nearly a decade.)
Broth Is Protein Sparing
I said “what?” to that one as well.
Here’s the thing: all living cells are composed of protein. Or, put another way, protein is essential to life.
Proteins are assembled from amino acids. And our bodies can build many of the amino acids we need. But not all. There are eight of them that must be supplied by our diet. All essential eight are present in their most assimilable form in meat.
But meat is expensive. Plus, we now know that cooked meat is hydrophobic, which reduces the bio-availability of those amino acids.
So how does this protein sparing thing work?
It has to do with the protein in broth gelatin. The protein in broth gelatin is not complete. That is, it does not contain all eight essential amino acids. In fact, it’s mostly composed of two: arginine and glycine.
But meat broth (and fish broth) gelatin has another special property. It allows the body to more fully utilize the complete proteins that are eaten with it.
In other words, the chunks of beef in a beef stew (with its broth) will give you much more protein than the same amount of beef sliced from a roast. For those of us on a budget, soup with homemade stock is our friend. 😀
So how do you make soup stock?
I’ll confess that I make more chicken stock than any other, because it’s the easiest. Here’s how I do it.
Chicken Stock Recipe
bones & necks from 2 free-range chickens
4 quarts cold, filtered water
2 tablespoons vinegar or whey
1 large onion
6 whole cloves
1 bay leaf
2 large carrots, peeled
3 celery sticks
Put the chicken bones into a large pot, fill it with the water, and add the vinegar (or the whey – the liquid that runs off yogurt). Let it sit for an hour. This allows the acidic water to draw the minerals, especially calcium, out of the bones and into the liquid.
Stick the cloves into the onion.
Bring the soaking bones to a boil. Skim the foam that rises to the top. Reduce the heat, put the onion and the bay leaf in, cover, and simmer for 4 hours. Add the vegetables and simmer for another 2 to 6 hours.
Remove the chicken bones and wilted vegetables with a slotted spoon. Let the stock cool. Strain it through a seive and pour it into jars to store. It will stay good for 5 days in the fridge, several months in the freezer.
Use as a base for soups and sauces. Plain broth with some salt added makes a great breakfast addition.
For more about nutrition, see:
Grass Green
Handle with Care
For more about food chemistry, see:
Electrolytes iin Solution
Essential Amino Acids
Mercurio, the protagonist of Devouring Light, tends the planet closest to our sun.
I envisioned Mercury as a heat-scorched ball of rock, but I hoped to report on some of its interesting quirks as I told my story. “Does it possess any?” I wondered. Somewhat dubiously, I must admit.
I needn’t have worried. The universe is a quirky place, and Mercury is no exception. It abounds with quirks.
One of the coolest things is its huge, liquid iron core. For a long time astronmers assumed Mercury was a solid ball of rock, like our moon. Nope. Mercury’s core is not only molten, but large compared to the size of the planet.
Why is it so large?
While the sun was forming out of a giant whirling cloud of dust and gas, the planets were forming, too. But the dust cloud traveled around the sun a little more slowly than the coalescing planets. The cloud, particularly dense near the proto-sun, dragged away many of the lighter elements in Mercury’s orbit, leaving it with lots of heavy iron.
Why is it still liquid?
Tides caused by the sun!
Just as Earth’s moon causes a bulge of water to travel around the globe, the sun causes a bulge of magma to travel around Mercury’s core. But the sun’s tides on Mercury are 17 times stronger than the moon’s on Earth. Not only do they pull the molten core, they also flex the crust, causing it to bulge.
Additionally, Mercury’s eccentric orbit is very eccentric. At perihelion, the planet’s closest approach, the sun is 29,000,000 miles away. At aphelion, the sun’s 43,000,000 miles away. The eccentric orbit makes the tides particularly vigorous. It’s almost like Mercury’s core is being stirred by a giant egg beater!
Its core has cooled a little bit over the billions of years that have passed since the planet’s birth, however. How do we know? Mercury’s surface is striped by numerous narrow ridges called rupes. They were created when the core cooled just enough to shrink a little. The crust – already solid – wrinkled.
Okay, three more cool things about Mercury.
Mercury has magnetic tornadoes!
It’s that molten core combined with the close proximity to the sun that again creates an unusual phenomenon.
The large, liquid iron at the core – spinning as it does – means that Mercury possesses a strong magnetic field. Strong enough to protect the surface from the solar wind, just as Earth’s magnetosphere protects us.
But! Mercury’s magnetic field is so strong that it actually captures pieces of the low-temperature plasma that is the solar wind. And those plasma tendrils possess their own magnetic field. The plasma’s magnetic field clashes with Mercury’s magnetic field to produce magnetic vortexes – “tornadoes” – up to 500 miles wide!
At the center of the tornado is a window open to the full force of the sun’s blast.
Apparently Earth has these magnetic tornadoes as well, but those on Mercury are bigger and happen ten times more often.
Okay, second cool fact.
Mercury has ice at its poles!
With surface temperatures between 530º F and 800º F, how is this possible? And, if it has polar caps, why don’t we see them?
Well, first of all, not all of Mercury is hot.
The planet doesn’t have the axial tilt that Earth does. It spins nearly straight up and down. (At a tilt of .027 degrees, it has the least tilt of every planet in the solar system. Uranus, with a tilt of 98 degrees, has the most.) The angle of the sun is steep at the poles. And there is no atmosphere to spread the heat around.
So the poles are cold at -135º F. It’s even colder at the bottom of the craters at the poles: -276º F. And that’s where the ice is. Not a lot of ice. About enough to cover a square that’s 8 miles per side with 2 or 3 miles of ice. But ice nonetheless! And it’s shiny. Reflecting light that’s visible from space, when you use a big enough telescope.
Now for that third cool fact.
Mercury has hot spots!
But they’re not volcanic. In fact, Mercury’s volcanic days are long gone, a billion years in the past. So how does it have hot spots?
Mercury’s slow rotation on its axis combines with its quick journey around the sun to produce them. Here’s how.
Mercury spins 3 times on its axis for every 2 times that it travels around the sun. It’s got one heck of a long day! And at perihelion – when it’s closest to the sun – high noon lasts 16 Earth days.
At perihelion, Mercury is traveling so fast around the sun (faster than at the most distant point in its orbit, aphelion) that its own spin can’t keep up. The sun burns down on one spot – high noon – for more than 2 Earth weeks! That makes a hot spot. And one Mercury year later, the opposite side of the planet receives that 16-day high noon. Another hot spot!
I still have trouble wrapping my brain around that one, but wow!
Merucury features yet more cool quirks. Its exosphere. The Assyrian and Babylonian astronomers who first observed it. Why modern astronomers before 1965 thought Mercury spun once on its axis for every one circuit around the sun.
I wish I could have crammed them all into Devouring Light! But story comes first when I’m writing fiction. The hot spots made it in. The magnetic tornadoes and the polar ice did not. Nor any of the other fun facts. But I’m sure glad the story prompted me to learn more about our inmost planet. I’d no idea it was such a fascinating place.
For more about Mercury, see these articles at Wikipedia:
Mercury
Mercury’s Exosphere
Exploration of Mercury
For more about the world of Devouring Light, see:
The Celestial Spheres of Sol
What Do Celestials Wear?
The Graces
Roman Dining
The Heliosphere
The Oort Cloud
Draco the Dragon
The Simiae
Calico. Little House on the Prairie. Pioneer women.
These were the things that came to mind when I considered the domestic accomplishment of home canning.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
(It still amazes me how easy it is to be wrong about things. Does that happen to you? Thinking you know, and then finding you don’t?)
So if canning is not a creation of the American West, where did it come from?
Napoleon.
Yes, Napoleon Bonaparte of the Napoleonic Wars. And, indeed, war was the inciting factor. The Napoleonic Wars saw the advent of mass conscription. With 800,000 soldiers in the field for 12 years, the French needed a way to feed their armies.
The government offered a hefty prize to the inventor who could devise a way to preserve large amounts of food. Nicolas Appert – a confectioner and chef – rose to the challenge and won the prize.
His method?
Place the food in wide-mouthed glass jar. Force a cork tightly into the jar mouth using a vice. Seal it with sealing wax. Wrap the jar in canvas to protect it. Then dunk it in boiling water and boil it long enough to thoroughly cook the contents.
This was long before Pasteur and an understanding of microbes. But it worked.
Appert’s method was adopted by the British armies, but transposed to wrought-iron canisters, which were cheaper to make and less fragile. Unfortunately, the can opener was not invented for another 30 years. The soldiers opened the cans with their bayonets!
Although canned foods spread into civilian households across Europe, they remained more a novelty item than a staple. The process was too industrial and expensive for home use.
That changed in the 1860’s when a tinsmith named John Landis Mason invented the Mason jar. It was a threaded glass jar with a matching threaded ring or band, a flat lid (held in place by the band), and a rubber ring that went under the lid for an air-tight seal.
People all over America and Europe started canning fruit, pickles, relishes, and sauces such as ketchup. These high-sugar or high-acid foods could be safely canned without the pressure canning that we know today.
(Vegetables and meats must be pressure canned to kill the deadly botulinum bacteria which thrives in low-acid, anaerobic conditions.)
When the 1880’s ushered in the widespread use of the cast iron stove, home canning reached new heights of popularity. The denizens of small towns were especially well-placed to take advantage of the new technology. They were close to the farms that produced the food, as well as possessing space for home gardens. And they had the cash to afford the jars.
Strawberry preserves, dill pickles, and apple butter abounded.
Home canning was a widespread practice by 1900 and rose to great prominence in America during both World Wars. By planting Victory Gardens and canning the harvest, citizens allowed the industrial machine to be aimed more efficiently at the war effort.
But, as you can see from this short history, canning is a relatively modern development.
So how did people preserve food before before the advent of canning?
And why did I delve into the history of food preservation in the first place?
Well, I’ve been interested in one method of food preservation ever since I read the book Nourishing Traditions. The author, Sally Fallon, introduced me to the concept of lacto-fermentation. And it fascinated me.
(You can read about my discovery in the blog post here.)
Even though I’ve eaten yogurt for decades, I’d had no idea that yogurt is technically lacto-fermented milk.
And I certainly didn’t know that you could lacto-ferment other foods besides milk.
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ve probably seen me write about this before. 😀
But if you’re new here, you might be asking, “What is lacto-fermentation?”
Lacto-fermentation happens when certain benign micro-organisms convert the glucose, fructose, and sucrose in food into lactic acid.
The micro-organisms are named – fittingly enough – after the substance they produce: they are lactobacilli. And they are present on the surface of most living organisms.
All they need to produce lactic acid is an anaerobic environment (a finger-tight jar) and a moderate “climate” (temperatures between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit).
And the process itself is really pretty nifty.
As the lactobacilli produce lactic acid, the acidity of the food rises. As the acidity rises, most other bacteria, including those that cause spoilage or disease, are killed.
The lactic acid curdles milk, to make that nice custardy texture of yogurt.
The lactic acid combines with the molecules of cabbage (and other vegetables) to form esters, which gives sauerkraut its unique flavor.
The lacto-fermentation process increases the bioavailability of vitamins and other nutrients, making lacto-fermented foods more nutritious than the original raw vegetable.
Plus the live cultures present in lacto-fermented foods help keep the human gut well-populated with beneficial micro-flora.
Bottom line?
Lacto-fermented foods are safe. They store unspoiled for a long time.
Lacto-fermented foods are delicious. Lacto-fermented cabbage is so much tastier than cabbage pickled in vinegar!
And lacto-fermented foods are good for you.
Why did we ever forget about them? I don’t know. But I do know that my new knowledge came in handy while writing stories set in my North-lands!
I wrote Troll-magic before I learned about lacto-fermentation. Since the technology level in Troll-magic is roughly equivalent to our own Steam Age, I assumed home canning was the norm in most households. I didn’t delve into the details of Lorelin’s kitchen, but she did pack up dried meat and dried pears, when she left home. (Drying is a very, very old method of food preservation.)
The technology of her culture undoubtedly could have supported home canning. And she lives in a time of peace following an extended time of warfare and mass conscription. (The wars in which the Giralliyan Empire gobbled many of it’s smaller neighbors.)
But, now that I do know about lacto-fermentation, I like to think that the people of the North-lands never abandoned it. I feel sure that Lorelin’s mother had shelves of lacto-fermented cabbage and turnips and greens and onions in her pantry. Yum!
Luckily, I had discovered lacto-fermentation before I wrote Sarvet’s Wanderyar. Because I was very clear that the Hammarleeding culture did not have the technological sophistication to support home canning. They would have had to get by with drying food, freezing it (during the winter months), salting it, curing it with smoke, and eating cooked dishes quickly, before they could spoil.
I was very happy to know they had another option! And we see that option pretty promptly when Sarvet teases her friend Amara with a platter of gundru – lacto-fermented greens.
So why did I read up on the history of canning?
I was mulling over my writing good luck a few weeks ago, and I got curious. Given that lacto-fermentation is so handy and yummy, how did the canning process get started?
I did some investigating. And you know the rest: I had to share! I hope you found the journey interesting. 😀
For more about lacto-fermentation, see:
Amazing Lactobacilli
Lacto-fermented Corn
For more about Lorelin and her world, see:
Character Interview: Lorelin
North-land Magic
A Great Birthing
For more about the world of the Kaunis-clan, see:
What Is a Bednook?
The Kaunis Clan Home
Hammarleeding Fete-days
Why Did the Three Goats Cross the River?
Livli’s Family
Ivvar’s Family
Pickled Greens, a Hammarleeding Delicacy
And for more about the history of canning, see these external links:
A Brief History of Home Canning
Commercial Canning
Nicolas Appert
John Landis Mason
Draco is the personification of the dragon constellation in my story Devouring Light.
He’s old – ancient, really – jaded, and cynical. Inspired by a visit from Mercurio, the guardian of Sol’s first planet, Draco decides to make trouble merely to entertain himself.
In the course of his adventure, he leaves the solar system, flying through the Oort Cloud toward the closest star, Proxima Centauri.
As I wrote of his flight, I had some ballpark time intervals in mind, based on his speed.
Draco is a “celestial,” and I’d posited two modes of travel for my celestials in Devouring Light.
The planetaries (such as Mercurio) and other beings associated with celestial bodies “translate” from sphere to sphere, a slow sort of teleport in which they evaporate while departing one location and congeal as they arrive at their destination.
The constellations and more metaphysical beings must “fly,” physically traversing space rather than wormholing through it.
However, both travel at roughly the same speed: one astronomical unit per hour.
A quick refresher note for anyone who’s forgotten what an astronomical unit is. It’s the distance from the sun to our Earth – 1 AU for short.
Thus when Mercurio visits Haden on Pluto, it takes him about 48 hours to get home to Mercury. (And he’s tired!)
Now the solar system’s a big place, and the Oort Cloud beyond it, even bigger.
I figured that since my celestials took many hours in their travels between planets, traversing the Oort would surely take weeks.
Boy, was I wrong!
Luckily, I decided to do a little research before I continued writing my story. I discovered my mistake before I tangled up my plot line!
Naturally, I want to share some of what I discovered. 😀
So, what is the Oort Cloud?
It’s a vast collection of ice chunks forming a sphere around our solar system.
I say chunks, but they’re big compared to an ice cube. And small compared to a planet. What size? Between 1 kilometer (.62 miles) and 20 kilometers (12 miles) in diameter.
And, I say ice, which does include water. But methane, ethane, carbon monoxide and other frozen substances also compose these icy clumps.
It is thought that the Oort Cloud was formed in the early days of our sun’s birth, when a bunch of young stars were popping into being in this neck of the galactic neighborhood. The tides between the stars played tug-of-war with the interstellar gases, creating ice balls, some of which stayed with our sun after things settled down.
The stellar neighborhood is quieter now, but the outer Oort remains a fluid place. The sun’s gravity is weak that far away, and passing stars still nudge ice balls out of their orbits. Some get kicked away from the sun altogether. Others come streaming in as comets.
The inner Oort, named the Hill Cloud, is more dense than the outer and shaped like a massive donut. Most of our comets come from the Hill.
So what about Draco and his flight? If not weeks, how long did it take him?
Here are the numbers! And they amazed me. I knew the universe was big, but these boggled my mind.
The Hill Cloud’s inner edge is 2,000 AU from our sun. Which meant it took Draco 83 days to get there. Okay, 83 days equals roughly 12 weeks. So I guess you could say his flight was a matter of weeks.
But that’s just the beginning.
The outer edge of the Hill Cloud is 20,000 AU. By the time Draco exited the Hill, he’d been flying for two years and 3 months. Yikes!
And the outer edge of the outer Oort? At 50,000 AU, Draco passed through it after 5 years and 9 months. Quite a flight!
Good thing Draco is an immortal with vast reserves of strength. He needed it all!
But my story worked fine with these time frames, and I enjoyed exploring our solar neighborhood along with Draco. It’s a fascinating place!
For more of the science behind Devouring Light, see:
The Heliosphere
Mercury the Planet
For some of the mythology behind Devouring Light, see:
The Graces
Draco the Dragon
The Simiae
For more about the milieu of Devouring Light, see:
The Celestial Spheres of Sol
What Do Celestials Wear?
Roman Dining
And for the book itself, see:
Devouring Light
A light sprinkling of snow.
Just enough for winter beauty.
Not enough for winter inconvenience. 😀
For more photos:
Blossom
Wild Garden
I just reviewed my notes from a workshop I attended in 2012.
And there in the section on visibility – making it easy for my readers to find me and my work online – was a poser.
For heaven’s sake, don’t put your blog on the landing page of your website!
Erm. Yes. Precisely.
:: squirms a bit ::
So…my blog is, in fact, the landing page for this website.
:: squirms some more ::
After the squirming, I thought about this particular advice, given by a writer with decades of experience in publishing. A writer who is also in the forefront of the new indie publishing world.
Here’s the thing.
The vast majority of the people who search “J.M. Ney-Grimm” online – or who search Troll-magic online 😀 – have no interest in me, the author.
They just want to know if my newest book has released yet.
Or, maybe, what some of my older titles are, because they discovered my newest work and now want more.
For these folk…landing on my blog is a nuisance, a distraction, even a bore. Yikes!
Thank you, all of you, who like reading my blog. I appreciate every single one of you very much!
But what of the folk who feel that Shakespeare was right. “The Play’s the Thing…”
Luckily, there’s a simple solution: create a new landing page.
That is what I’m going to do.
So why am I telling you all about it? Why not just get the job done and go quietly forward?
Because I am not a tech whizz! And I’m concerned that those of you who have my blog bookmarked or those of you using an RSS feed for reading my blog may have your arrangements disturbed.
My hope is that nothing will be disturbed. Your bookmark will bring you here as usual. Your RSS feed will carry my weekly post as normal.
But if that is not the case…if your bookmark lands you on my new landing page…if your RSS feed suddenly displays only my new landing page…
My blog is still here. You’ll see the word Blog in the navigation bar. Click on it and then update your bookmark (or your RSS feed), and the status quo will return.
I do apologize for any inconvenience. I’m hoping there won’t be any, but…we shall see next week, when I make the change!
Update: I’ve made the switch! The moment I clicked the “publish” button was nerve-wracking. What had I done? Ack!
Once I examined what I had wrought, I felt better. The RSS feed seems not to have been disrupted. My blog appears on my Amazon author page and on my Goodreads author page via my RSS feed. And it’s still there! Yay!
The blog URL has changed. It used to be JMNey-Grimm.com. Now it is JMNey-Grimm.com/blog/. So, those of you with bookmarks…please update them! I appreciate you very much, and hope you’ll continue to visit here frequently!
For more about blogging:
Copyright Statement for My Website
Why Create a Site Map?
Slow Blogging and Other Variations
SPAM Deluge
I started this story with the idea it would go into an anthology of short stories – all with roots in a zoo theme.
In my mind, I labeled this story Star Circus, so it was a little off from the theme. But I was longing to tell it, so I figured: “Close enough!”
As I wrote, Star Circus veered further off course and got long, too long for the anthology.
Since I’d dreamed up another idea for my “zoo” story, which I was also aching to tell, I let this one, Devouring Light, have its way with me. All the way to its glorious conclusion.
And now it’s ready for you to enjoy! Devouring Light, in a bookseller near you! 😉
Can one small good deed offset ultimate destruction?
Mercurio stands watch over the first planet, guiding it through the perils of the void. Part messenger, part prankster, he cocks an eye for danger, but not from afar. Close to home lurks the real risk that his festival for Sol’s 25th anniversary will be a bust.
Failed negotiations with constellations and his fellow guardians send him to the brink of complete frustration…when a beautiful celestial wanderer fetches up at his domicile, seeking refuge.
Her form beguiles. Her mystery intrigues. And Mercurio’s fascination with his visitor poses yet another threat to Sol’s celebration.
Will Mercurio recognize his role as cat’s paw soon enough? Or will a looming menace – more lethal than any of the guardians imagine – threaten the solar system’s very existence?
Devouring Light is available as an ebook in electronic bookstores.
Amazon.com I Amazon UK I Amazon DE I Amazon ES
B&N I Diesel I iTunes I Kobo I Smashwords I Sony
Visiting family over the holidays, I encountered the most scrumptious soup. Flavorful. Satisfying. Delicious.
I had seconds. Maybe even thirds. And begged the cook for her recipe.
I tried that recipe at home to great success. Yes! Mine tasted almost as good as hers.
When I asked her if I could feature it on my blog, she said, “Yes.” 😀
So here it is!
Ingredients
2 butternut squashes
1 medium onion, chopped
3 short stalks celery, chopped
(about 2/3 cup)
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
tiny pinch of ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
4 cups chicken broth
(vegetable broth works fine,
if cooking for vegetarians)
1/4 cup heavy cream
Directions
Bake the squashes whole at 350°F for an hour and a half. Let cool.
Sauté the onion, celery, and garlic in olive oil. Add the spices and continue to cook until the celery and onions are softened. Remove from heat and let cool.
Cut the squashes in half. Scoop out the seeds and discard them. Scoop out the squash flesh. (Discard the outer rind.) Purée the squash in a food processor (or blender). Pour the purée into a large pot. (Or a large bowl.)
Purée the onion-celery mixture in a food processor (or blender). Add this to the pot.
Add the broth and stir. Warm the soup on the stove top for a few minutes. (Or store the soup in two 2-quart bottles in the fridge. And heat later in the microwave by the bowl-full.)
Add a generous spoonful of cream to each bowl, when you serve it.
Makes 4 quarts.
For more recipes, see:
Coconut Salmon
Baked Apples
Oatmeal, Rice, & Granola
The first pie crust cookies were frugality run amok.
I was baking an apple pie with my son and enjoying it. We tried a new recipe for the crust, based on pecans. The recipe was intended for a custard pie that didn’t require a top crust. But apple pies need them, and ours was mounded super high with apples. We made more than a double recipe to be sure to have enough dough. Which yielded too much, of course.
Not wanting to waste it, we made the extra into cookies. And they were melt-in-your-mouth delicious. Yum!
The next time we baked together, we made pie crust cookies on purpose!
Here’s how we did it.
A Note on Ingredients
This recipe will work with ordinary whole wheat flour, instead of sprouted whole wheat flour. You may also use raw pecans, rather than crisp pecans. But I urge you to use the sprouted flour and the crisp nuts.
Grains, nuts, and seeds contain phytic acid. Phytic acid prevents the seed or nut from sprouting until it is in contact with the moist earth that will permit the plant to flourish. Which means it prevents enzymes from working. But you want the enzymes in your body to work! You’ll digest your food more completely and receive more of its nourishment. Plus phytic acid is an irritant. Properly preparing seeds, nuts, and grains neutralizes phytic acid. You can read more about this important principle of nutrition here.
Many health food stores carry sprouted whole wheat flour. I buy mine at Whole Foods. Some health food stores carry sprouted nuts. Sprouted nuts can safely be used instead of crisp nuts. The recipe for crisp pecans follows the one for the cookies below.
Ingredients
2 cups crisp pecans
1-1/2 cups sprouted whole wheat flour
1/2 cup evaporated cane juice
1/2 teaspoon Celtic sea salt
3/8 cup butter
3/8 cup unrefined coconut oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
Directions
Put pecans, flour, sugar, and salt in food processor and process until nuts are ground and all ingredients well mixed.
Add butter, coconut oil, and vanilla.
Process until the mixture forms a ball.
Place half of the dough on a sheet of wax paper.
Use a rolling pin to roll out dough between 2 sheets of wax paper. Be careful when you pull the top sheet up, since the dough is both delicate and sticky.
Use a cookie cutter or a small glass to make small round cookies. You may form the leftover dough into small cookies. The dough is delicate, but will not suffer from this extra handling.
Place cookie rounds on cookie sheets covered with baking parchment.
Bake in pre-heated 375º F oven for 10 minutes. Cool cookies on cookie sheets for about 2 minutes.
Remove cookies to cooling racks and cool completely. The cookies are fragile, but they truly do melt in your mouth.
Crisp Pecans
Use these as a topping on oatmeal, in the cookie recipe above, or as a snack.
Ingredients
4 cups raw pecans
2 teaspoons Celtic sea salt
filtered water to cover nuts
Directions
Mix the salt with the filtered water and soak the nuts in it overnight (at least 7 hours).
Next day, drain the nuts in a colander.
Put baking parchment on a baking sheet. Spread the nuts evenly on it. Place in oven, turn on to 150ºF and “bake” for 12-24 hours, until completely dry and crisp. Stir the nuts with a spoon and re-spread them occasionally. (If you have a food dehydrator, use that!)
Store the nuts in an air-tight container.
This crisp nut recipe may be used for walnuts, almonds, or macadamias. Do not use it for cashews. Cashews are not raw when they come to us. They contain a toxic oil that must be released and removed by two separate heatings before humans can eat them safely. This means that they’ll get slimy and nasty if soaked too long or dried too slowly. Soak them at most 6 hours. Dry them in a 200ºF oven.
Note: Walnuts, alone of all the nuts, must be stored in the refrigerator. Their unique composition of oils will go rancid at room temperature. The other nuts may be safely stored at room temperature.
For another dessert recipe, see:
Coconut Chocolates
For more on nutrition, see:
Butter and Cream and Coconut, Oh My!
Test first, then conclude
