I rarely toot the horn of a site if I haven't used their services but I'm going to make an exception. Recently, I found this site and I'm kind of excited. I have been checking out their blog also.
The only reason I ever found Food to Live (FTL) was because my doctor has warned me to get a bit more serious about eating healthier things. I'm not eating super-junky stuff but I need to go harder at the fiber and nutrients than I have been.
The first change I made was to cut out the sliced garlic and herb turkey deli meat I so love for sandwiches. I switched up and kept everything else except for the meat and bread. Yeah. I now use high-fiber bread instead of brioche or Italian white bread and I just enjoy it with the avocado, tomato, and yellow onion. It's a tasty sandwich. Because of the delicious bread and the avocado, I almost don't miss the turkey.
This Aldi's Ancient Grains is the bread I started to fall in love with:
I need to be able to control that sodium level...
It's pricey though. Like around 5 a loaf. I wanted to try Ezekiel Bread or Dave's Killer Bread but their prices make the Ancient Grains look like nothing.
I've switched over to eating a lot of cabbage and other greens, white meat, and using good oils. When I was going over my budget, I realized I need to find a way to afford really nutritious bread. So...
My family has asked what I want for Christmas. My answer: bread machine. I picked out one that will let me add nuts and seeds or just prep the dough so I can finish the rest myself. Then, while looking for affordable seeds and grains, I found Food to Live.
FTL recipes are heavily vegan and I am not interested. I just want to be able to make my own sprouted grains and seeded bread. It has to be less expensive than keeping Killer Dave in business. Those prices!...
Normally, I am not a big eater of bread. However, I would rather get full from eating a highly nutritious bread than eating a ton of veggies and fruits. I can only take so much of salad and chicken. With the right bread - seeded with tasty nuts - I could go from breakfast to dinner on just that with some butter.
In case any of you are interested, here are some links I have found to recipes. Enjoy.
Easy Dutch Oven Bread this one not only looks good but I can't wait to use my Dutch oven for bread
This all has me very excited to get my hands on that bread machine! In the meantime, I am going to start trying some of these recipes by hand. Pictures (good or bad) will be coming up...
Pantene has been showing up and showing out for me the past year or so.
I never paid much attention to the Pantene brand before last year, but I loved a sample of their foam conditioner I got in some sub box or the other. I loved it so much that I actually bought some and still use it on an alternating basis with another conditioner. But I never thought of shopping Pantene specifically for my kinky-curly hair needs. Then I happened to see this pop up on Amazon:
Pricewise, most of the products run about $7 to $9 each if bought individually. I see that there are some sets of products for sale. I am happy with the shampoo I use and I already sometimes use Pantene's foaming conditioner so I don't need to go broke buying an entire line of products. What I always need though is daily moisture. So I gave this a try:
That's the Hydrating Butter Creme. It's "infused with argan oil" and supposed to have moisture that lasts 17 hours. I wanted to see about that.
The texture is a creamy oil that has a slightly watery melt-down.
I haven't tried it on my freshly washed and conditioned hair but I did test it out today. My hair is 3 days post-wash/condition/twist. It's decent but was still a bit dried out from not being wrapped every night. Also, I ran out of the Hydrasteam products that were so good for my hair.
Anyway.
This morning, my hair was dry - not crunchy-dry but in that thirsty-need-some-moisture-quick kind of mood. I've been using other products very lightly every day but it's that time of year when the air is getting drier and cooler. My hair always has trouble adjusting to seasonal changes.
Just so I wasn't applying this product to bone-dry hair, I fine-misted it with some water beforehand. I applied about a teaspoon's worth of product to each of four sections of my hair.
First impressions - immediate impression? This stuff smells SO good. It smells a tiny bit like the Marrakesh oil that is so popular. Not as sensual but it has that slightly amber scent that gets stronger with any kind of warmth. Most of the smell abates quickly, but my hair still has a really pleasant scent for anyone who gets close.
The next impression is that this is very moisturizing. Once I tried just running a small amount through the sections of my hair, I knew I was going to want to use it the next time I twist my hair. So... I did.
That's water-spritzed & the product
It takes an amount of about half the size of a dime for each twist. The tube is a nice 6.8 ounces so that's fine.
Basically, yes, this does a fabulous job of moisturizing very dry hair. Because of that, I don't care about anything else, but some people will be happy to hear that it is "sulfate-free".
Best of all, it produced a nice twist-out that was moisturized without being greasy.
Girl, yasss...
I have to admit that this just makes my hair feel better than the Shea Moisture I had been using. My hair felt smoother and had some shine - and shine is not something my hair easily does. But I think that everyone's hair is different and responds differently to products. This just happens to be something that my hair likes apparently.
I started writing this post, as always, several days ago. The update is that my hair does love this. It dried out a bit after a couple of days but I was able to twist again with just a water-spritz and, voila, the moisture revived. Remember what I said about the size of the tube? That's going to last longer than expected because some water will re-boost the first application.
Since I can afford this so much better than I can the HydraSteam products, I will probably use this as a staple and use the HydraSteam when I can.
**UPDATE** I have CKD stage 3b. I have learned that that I have to be careful using this coffee product. As always, you should check with your medical care team before adding or trying anything new in your diet. Every healthy thing is not healthy for everyone.
So, way back about this time last year, I was talking about coffee and some of the brands I like drinking black and sugar-free. Luzianne was my favorite for that but I haven't been able to find it lately. Well, I can find it all over Amazon but only if I want to use my entire grocery budget to pay for it.
Anyway. I'm not here to talk about regular coffee.
I might have mentioned it in that coffee post or in another of my rambles but the product I am talking about today is cascara - also known as coffee fruit and coffee fruit tea. So, coffee but not coffee the way most of us are used to it. Actually, cascara is the husk of the coffee bean. It kind of looks like extra-dry raisins.
It's an interesting thing, cascara. Nothing like coffee and nothing like any tea I've had. The taste of it is more of a fruity-syrupy-tasting beverage. As a matter of fact, I just realized that the taste reminds me a bit of raisin. Hmmm.
Hot or cold, the taste is about the same but I do prefer it cold. If I drink it hot, I am tempted to add honey to it for some reason.
As a beverage, it's referred to as cascara tea. Odd, right? Since it's the husk of the coffee bean. The husk is actually considered a "waste" product. Eat Cultured is more concise and precise, saying:
"Cascara, which translates as "husk" or "peel" in Spanish, refers to the outer husk of the coffee cherry that wraps around coffee beans. Since it's essentially the "fruit" of the coffee tree, it's also a valuable source of fiber and antioxidants." (source)
I am drinking the tea because of those antioxidants. I've been talking about ORAC values again recently and I am happy to say that cascara tea is the best-tasting thing I've tried from that list.
They do have a Facebook page and they were super-responsive to questions and requests for info.
I think it's a shame that cascara has been getting tossed away all this time. We all ingest a lot of silly foods and beverages and we've been trashing something as ORAC-packed as cascara. Makes me wonder what all else has been going to needless waste...
Anyway, I have been replacing about half the daily coffee I drink with the cascara. I will either drink it cold and solo or add it to one of my sparkling waters. Last week I had a dry night-time throat so I sipped on some of the hot tea with raw honey before bed. It didn't keep me awake and it was soothing to my throat.
One of the benefits I heard the tea offers is a mild laxative effect. I have not found myself with a huge change to my, er, movements but I do feel a bit more regular. I also pee a lot. That's because I tend to drink a lot of clear or sparkling water with the tea or after having some. I've read reviews where other people feel more of an energy boost.
I am always fairly fatigued, even on the best of my days, and I haven't noticed a prolonged boost of energy but I do seem to be a little more focused for a few hours after drinking a couple cups of tea.
Now that I am used to having the tea as a staple, I am learning that the best way to prepare it is by soaking some beans overnight so that I have the drink on hand for the next day. This is not a brew-and-go tea. Even when steeping in hot water, it takes a while to get a decent cup. It's just easier for me to always have some soaking and ready to either heat up or drink cold.
It didn't come in that tacky jar. I just wanted to show what it looks like
If I start noticing any better energy effects over time, I will update this post. Keep in mind that the drink might be more energizing to someone with more normal health.
The price of the tea is reasonable and I am sure that as I shop around, I will find even better prices. One thing I plan to do is to dry the remains of the used husks and dry grinding them to add to smoothies. I want to get every last bit of use from the tea.
Until I have an update, that's it for now.
Peace
--Free
P.S.: Since I wrote the draft of this post a few weeks ago, I do have an update. I have been baking a lot of bread and have a couple of times added the liquid from the tea in place of water. Results are not bad.
I hope the post makes sense. I went back in and added a little info and photos just now so. Please forgive any errors.
When I get stressed, baking helps calm me. Stress seems to send signals to my sarc to join the party so my brain might not be functioning well enough to do anything complicated. But I can almost always bake.
October was not good for my life. As if 2020 doesn't suck hard enough, it doesn't want to go out without dragging down as much joy as it can... Can I get an amen?
Anyway.
I spent about 3 days on the couch, not able to move or care. I watched YouTube videos hour after hour after hour. When I started getting sore from laying there, I decided to get up and maybe bake something - bread or rolls from scratch. Then, at some point, I got it into my head that I wanted to find a video on how to make brioche.
Most videos on making brioche are either too talky. All I wanted was a recipe. I found one and... What a mess. I basically wasted a lot of flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. I should have looked at the comments before trying the recipe because there were a lot of people wondering just what the heck the baker was doing.
Also, I don't have a stand mixer. That seemed to be a must-have for kneading brioche dough. I was discouraged until I found the more awesome YouTube channel ever for baking recipes. The. Most. Awesome. Ever.
The host/baker/cook in the Savor Easy videos ticks all the boxes for making great instructional videos. The entire focus is on the ingredients and procedure. Tomorrow, I will be trying a new batch of brioche.
Isn't that the best baking video? No frill, no life stories told, just right-to-the-point instructions. I need to learn from her! I'm hoping she has a recipe for babka. I've been wanting to bake one of those since forever.
I don't have the energy to start baking yet. I'm still mostly confined to the couch because, on top of everything else (cue the violins), I have a cold I can't shake.
Like I said, baking/cooking is a stress reliever. I go through cycles of liking either baking or cooking, one more than the other. Winter seems to bring out my inner baker chick. I don't like complicated baking challenges. You won't ever see me doing anything that involves preparing more than one dough or pastry for a finished product. I will never, ever qualify for The Great British Bakeoff. I like simple things that I can share with family or neighbors.
how satisfying is that?
There is nothing more simple in the baking world than bread, right? Well, I was always kind of terrified of making bread. A couple of years ago, I found a recipe from the Big Family Homestead channel and I made their recipe for Amish Sweet Bread. It was fun and easy and made the apartment smell fabulous. This is the recipe and it's actually called just "Amish White Bread". My bad. They actually have a good playlist of recipes very worth checking out.
I have talked about making Japanese Milk Bread for the longest. I just never felt comfortable with the recipes I found. Welp, Savor Easy has me covered. Theirs doesn't look the exact same as other recipes I've watched, but I think it will be good enough for me. I learned a while back that the secret to softer bread is to add a water roux. Say what???
The Water Roux Method
aka
Tangzhong
Apparently this "water roux" is a bread starter known as Tangzhong and is what makes Hokkaido Milk Bread so yummy soft.
look how soft & fluffy...
The roux is a simple bread flour and water mix that is cooked to thickening. The tricky part is knowing ratios and when to add it. Here is a video I found that best explains the procedure and answers basic questions:
Her instructions are great but I still had questions, like what about how much to add to various recipe amounts? Thankfully, commenters had answers. This one is the most helpful of all:
"The Tangzhong roux should use 5% of the original recipe flour amount, by weight. The amount of water used should be 5 times the weight of the flour used in the Tanzhong roux. The water amount used in the Tanzhong roux should be taken from the original amount of water in the recipe. You are not adding an extra amount of water or flour to the recipe, just using some of the original ingredient amounts in a different way."
The same commenter also had this to say:
"I make the roux in a microwave. Use a pyrex cup. My microwave is 1100 watts. With room temperature water, 25 gm flour and 125 gm water I microwave for 20 seconds. Stir will with whisk. Take temp. Microwave 10 more seconds. Stir, take temp. Microwave a final 5 seconds. Stir and take temp. The roux is at about 65 C / 150 F. This is enough for a 450 gm / 1 lb loaf of bread. Cool to below 55 C / 130 F and add to bread maker."
The only answer I couldn't find anywhere is to the question of when to add the roux. I have decided that, since the roux can be stored for later use, I can add it to a dough before I prep it for the first proofing. I dunno. I will try it that way. As soon as I get back into the swing of things, I will be getting my Tang-zhong. Get it?
If any of you have used or plan to use the Tangzhong method, let me know how your bread turns out.
.png "English"){kind=small}
