Food Plan for December 2021

  What is star anise? It's one of the many spices I keep here in this old house. I find it in supermarkets that have racks of clear cellophane bags with loose herbs & spices at the end of their aisles. You can find unusual spices reasonably priced. It has many health benefits and one that helps during flu season. It grows on a tree in Viet Nam & China & is the dried fruit from the Asian evergreen tree (Illicium verum. It's one of the 5 spices used in Chinese cooking that includes cinnamon, fennel, peppercorns, and cloves. I'm steaming steel cut oats in the rice cooker and I can already smell the pungent licorice like flavor aroma wafting in the rooms. The Five Chinse Spices A household staple that I always keep in a jar with many other medicinal spices like turmeric rhizomes, ginger, cumin, coriander, etc. It can inhibit yeast infections like candida and thrush. It has shikimic acid, and the star anise oil contain...

 PINEAPPLE weed  - Wild Chamomile  Wild chamomile is edible and is a wonderful medicinal with uses similar to “traditional” German chamomile.  The genus name,  Matricaria , comes from the Latin word for uterus, referring to some species use in relieving cramps. The flowers have been used in traditional and folk medicine for centuries to aid digestion, promote relaxation and sleepiness, and as a mild pain reliever.   Pineapple weed This came to my property many years ago and somehow thrives being run over and trampled next to the driveway and where the mailman drives every day to deliver mail.  I believe it deserves a place in the back garden where other herbs are growing.  It is delightfully fragrant.  I love it.   CHAMOMILE NOBILE - ROMAN When I travelled to Cornwall, I visited a garden in Covarack, a gorgeous coastal village in the southern part of Cornwall, and discovered the lawn herb, chamomile "Nobile" and brought some se...

  On my birthday, 4/11, I watched the young doves struggle to re-build their nest from prior years. But they had broken the security light, and no sticks would stay up there. Repeatedly failing, I saw them sitting on the purple & green table nearby resting. I decided I had to help them. So I spent an hour thinking, searching in the basement, and finding a small straw basket, an old shoelace, and then opened a ladder underneath the security light. I managed to tie the basket around the light, then made a few more trips up the ladder with handfuls of small broken twigs, sticks, and soft long grasses and leaves. And I walked away. It's been 2 days, and when I looked up, there they were. Both of them. Now they both can fit inside the nest and one doesn't have to perch in the nearby tree to watch over the nest. I've never seen both up there, together. I feel this was a timely effort and the new nest has given them a great start in beginning their new family in Apr...

 I'm feeling a little better each day, now.  I started this life changing venture on Thanksgiving day. 11/26/2021.  Since my concussion, I have been unable to calculate food intake on paper, and slowly the pounds came back on.  It didn't take long to begin eating foods that were available and easy to prepare, and all the weight I'd lost was back. 25 miserable pounds over 4 1/2 years.  It doesn't seem possible that on 10/27/2017 I suffered a traumatic head injury, and still suffer with blurry vision, imbalance, some memory issues, and have a gait abnormality. I can only stand 15 minutes before the legs hurt so badly and I have to sit. It takes a longer time to get my head wrapped around figuring out projects and guaranteed, I have not finish anything I start. But I've finally lost 22 lbs. and will hopefully continue to lose another 20 lbs.  Gardening will help move the pounds.   Yest I try.  It's more difficult to write, type, and read.  ...

Fresh organic Peruvian beans ground in my Hamilton Beach grinder make for a healthy, delicious morning beverage. And I always use an unbleached coffee filter in my old Corningware ceramic percolator to absorb oily substances in coffee called diterpenes. The two main types of diterpenes found in coffee are cafestol and kahweol, according to Harvard Health Publications. These oily substances escape into your morning cup through coffee grounds floating in the coffee or oily droplets accumulating on the surface. And when consumed, these oily compounds block a cholesterol-regulating receptor in the intestines. Because of this obstruction, the intestines can no longer properly regulate the amounts of cholesterol absorbed and excreted -- resulting in elevated blood cholesterol levels. Since coffee filters trap cafestol and kahweol, they significantly decrease the risk of coffee-related cholesterol increases. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9022539/ Instead of doctors just blindly putting the...