Health & Wellness Investigations

Because I am a lovely human being, I decided to spend my evening making mulberry jam for my boyfriend, who is obsessed with mulberries. Look! Mulberry jam! Yes, those are old spice jars. And an old mayo jar. Sue me, I like reusing stuff. Some background information: Boyfriend is obsessed with mulberries. And I mean OBSESSED. We can't walk by a mulberry tree without him wanting to stop and eat as many as possible, or least as many as he can before I pull him away. Although I enjoy mulberries, I like other summer berries - like raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries - much better, so I don't usually eat a lot of them. But Boyfriend loves mulberries. And I love boyfriend. So I decided to go ahead and make him some mulberry preserves for him to have on his pancakes in the winter, during not-mulberry season. What I Did: 1) Gather mulberries. This was the fun part. I picked about 2 cups of berries - I didn't want to make a lot of jam because we have 9 ...

When I was planting my herb garden a couple of weeks ago, there happened to be big rhubarb plant for a good price that I just had  to get. After all, I have fond childhood memories of eating my grandma's strawberry rhubarb cobbler and had visions of making the same cobbler with strawberries and rhubarb fresh from my garden....so I got the rhubarb But alas, you can't harvest rhubarb until it's 2nd year, so it's sitting in my garden sucking up tons of water and tempting me with it's red stalks that I know I'm not supposed to pick until next summer. Thankfully, the local farm market was selling big bundles of rhubarb this past Saturday. Not so thankfully, when I called my mom for the rhubarb cobbler recipe, she informed me that my Grandma hadn't written it down and so - since my Grandma is long passed away - it was lost in family history...which explained why I didn't remember having it since I was a child. Well, crud. I set to comparing a wh...

Hello! May has been incredibly busy, as I am trying to put in my first vegetable garden, work on my kitchen remodel, go to work (SIX WEEKS UNTIL SUMMER BREAK!), and worry about my new kitty who gets into everything, including cupboards and drawers. One thing that has gotten neglected is the whole cutting-the-grass things...which gave the gobs of dandelions plenty of time to flower! I was picking dandelion leaves to go in my salads all spring, and one warm day when I got home to work, I saw a sea of yellow flowers. My yard backs up to an empty field, so most of my neighbors have sort of given up the weed battle - although a few spend hours working on their carpet-like manicured lawns. Personally, I think manicured lawns are boring. They’re pretty enough, I guess, with the lush green grass...but do you know what I think is prettier? A field full of wildflowers. EDIBLE wildflowers, like dandelion, clover, and violets. I probably don’t belong in the suburbs. But for now I’ll ju...

Whew! I've been super busy lately with an insane amount of yardwork (and training people at work, where I usually do these things), so things have been a little slow on the medical-research front. However, since my jalapeno plant is currently producing an insane number of jalapenos, I did take a break to make some absolutely delightful salsa, which I will share the recipe for! Ingredients: ~4 small-medium, fully ripe tomatoes, sliced (large slices fine) 3 jalapeno peppers, with seeds, cut in large chunks*. 1/2 medium sweet onion**, diced (large chunks fine) Cilantro - I used about 2/3 of a bunch from the grocery store, but use to taste Salt & Pepper to taste - I added about 1/2 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper but do to your own taste!! *I left the seeds in to create medium-spice salsa. You can remove the seeds for a more mild version, or use a hotter pepper - like an habanero - for a hot version. **you can use Vidalia onions instead, but don't use red, yellow, or cooki...

A family member has a stellar  honey lime dressing recipe that uses mayonnaise, and - since I had a butt ton of lime and lots of fresh salad ingredients, I decided that I wanted to make it. One problem: I threw out my mayonnaise because traditional mayo is basically vegetable oil in a jar, mixed with a few egg yolks. And remember, I quit using vegetable oil. Now, yes, there are mayo brands that use olive oil, and if you really like to use mayo, you should totally buy some ! But I have, like, three recipes that call for mayo. In fact, the nearly full jar of mayo that I threw out for containing soybean oil was also over six months expired. Whoops. Sidebar: Just because it says it's made with olive oil doesn't mean it doesn't have vegetable oil - Hellman's Olive Oil Mayo and Kraft Olive Oil Mayo, for example, are still mostly soybean oil. Read your labels. My point is that I didn't buy the vegetable-oil-free mayo because I use mayo so seldom. But of co...

With all my talk about leaving out vegetable oils (canola, soybean, corn, etc), I thought I’d share an olive oil Italian dressing that is easy, inexpensive, and very convenient. Store-bought dressing usually use vegetable oil, and many home-made recipes get complex and/or use vegetable oil anyway, so I’m sharing mine! It uses the flavor of olive oil to make a great dressing, and – bonus – there’s absolutely no sugar . I will usually make enough to last 2-3 weeks at a time; you can scale the recipe to make as much or as little as you want. Basic Italian Dressing w/ Olive Oil ½ c. olive oil ½ c. white wine vinegar 1 tbsp Dijon mustard 1 tsp oregano Salt & Pepper to taste (I usually use quite a bit of pepper) [I usually just make the base dressing listed above, but sometimes I mix it up by adding one or more of the following] Optional: Scallions (minced)* Optional: 1 clove garlic, crushed Optional: ¼ c. Parmesan cheese Whisk all of the ingredients t...