Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Cooking from scratch

5 Winter Immunity Boosters

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Most adults catch between two and four colds a year and the average infant or child catches from six to ten colds a year. That means, in our lifetimes, most of us will have a cold or flu for between two and three years. That’s a lot of Kleenex.

Immune Boosters

The good news is, nature offers some powerful immune-boosters. You may want to have these on hand this winter.

Garlic

Garlic has antibacterial, antibiotic, and antifungal properties. Allicin is garlic’s defense mechanism against pest attacks, and in clinical tests, it also prevents the common cold. In one study, volunteers were randomized to receive a placebo or an allicin-containing garlic supplement every day between November and February. The garlic group reported 24 colds compared to 65 in the placebo group. The volunteers in the garlic group also recovered significantly faster if they did get infected.

You don’t have to buy a supplement. The tastiest way to take garlic is to eat it. Raw is best. But garlic’s active ingredients are also present in cooked food.

Lemons

Lemons are loaded with vitamin C. One lemon contains anywhere from 50 percent to 80 percent of the vitamin C you need in a day.

And if you come down with a cold or virus, one study confirmed that hot lemonaid (or another hot fruit beverage) relieves runny nose, cough, sneezing, sore throat, chilliness and tiredness.

Elderberry

Elderberry is a popular herbal cold remedy in Europe. It’s getting a lot of press this flu season, because in clinical tests its flavonoids compare favorably with the antiviral Tamiflu in treating the H1N1 flu . You can buy over-the-counter elderberry syrup at most health food stores. Or you can harvest your own elderberries or buy them in the bulk section of your local health food store and make your own syrup. (Recipe below.)

Ginger

Ginger increases circulation and brings warmth to the body. It excels at quelling nausea, motion sickness, and dizziness. Many people also insist it can knock out the common cold.

Chicken Soup or Miso

Chicken soup and miso are full of vitamins and minerals. At least one study confirmed that chicken soup mitigates the symptoms of upper respiratory infections, possibly by reducing inflammation. Plus, the taste, smell, and warmth of these nourishing soups just make us feel good.

Herbalist Rosemary Gladstar recommends adding any or all of the following immunity herbs to the broth for a bigger boost of vitality:

  • Astragalus
  • Dandelion root
  • Burdock root
  • Echinacea root

Simple Immune Boosting Recipes

Here are four of my favorite recipes for the cold and flu season. 

Lemon and Garlic Quinoa Salad

(Adapted from Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair)

Salad

1 c. dry quinoa
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 and 3/4 c. water
1/2 c. chopped carrots
1/3 c. minced parsley
1/4 c. sunflower seeds

Dressing

4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 c. freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil
1 to 2 tbl. tamari or shoyu

Rinse quinoa and drain. Place rinsed quinoa, salt, and water in a pot. Bring to boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 15 to 20 minutes until all the water is absorbed. Let stand for 5 to 10 minutes uncovered, then fluff with a fork. Place quinoa in a large bowl. Add carrots, parsley, and sunflower seeds. Mix. Combine dressing ingredients and pour over quinoa. Toss. Serve at room temperature or chilled.

Hot Ginger Garlic Lemonaid

2 cloves garlic
1 tbs. grated ginger root
Juice of one freshly-squeezed lemon
Honey, to taste
Hot water

Put ginger root in a tea ball or tea bag. Place garlic, lemon juice, honey, and tea ball or bag in your favorite coffee mug. Pour hot water in. Cover and steep. Drink very hot.

Miso

(Loosely adapted from Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair)

3 inch piece wakame
4 c. water
4 tbs. light or mellow unpasteurized miso.
2 scallions, thinly sliced, for garnish

Any or all of the following

1 potato
1 carrot
1/2 c. chopped bok choy
5 sliced shitake mushrooms
1/4 lb. firm tofu, cut into cubes
Handful of immune-boosting herbs: astragalus, echinacea root, dandelion root, or burdock root.

Soak wakame in small bowl of cold water for 5 minutes. Put herbs in a large tea ball or bag.

Put water (and potato, carrot, and herbs if using) into a pot and bring to a boil.

Tear wakame into pieces, removing the spine. Add wakame to soup. Lower heat, cover pot, and simmer 15 to 20 minutes, until vegetables are tender. Near the end of the cooking time, add mushrooms, bok choy, and tofu cubes if using, and let simmer a few minutes more.

Remove soup from stove. Dissolve miso in a little warm water. Remove tea ball or bag. Add miso to broth. Stir well. Ladle into bowl and add scallions for garnish.

Elderberry Syrup

(From Rosemary Gladstar’s Family Herbal*) 

1 c. fresh or 1/2 c. dried blue elderberries*
3 c. water
1 c. honey

Place berries in a pan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes. Smash berries. Strain mixture through a fine-mesh strainer and add 1 cup of honey, or adjust to taste. Bottle the syrup and store in the refrigerator. It keeps for 2 to 3 months.

*Make sure you use blue elderberries, not red ones. Never eat uncooked elderberries.

(Editors note: This is an updated version of Stay Well: 5 Winter Immunity Boosters and Winter Wellness Recipes, originally posted in November 2009.)

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Simple-Living Boot Camp

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We’re all familiar with the learning curve – that slow, hiccuping start we get off to when we tackle a new task. The period where we suck at something, which is the necessary preamble to the period where we kick ass at something.

I’ve watched my two-year-old son wobble, fall, and falter hundreds of times already. So I’m sure I’ve been through the learning curve more than a million.

But, for some reason, I didn’t expect a learning curve when it came to simplifying our lives

About a year and a half ago, my husband and I both worked outside the home. We had opposite work schedules, so we never saw each other. We were both working constantly, either at our jobs, or at home caring for our infant son and trying to tame mountains of laundry, dishes, and bills.

By the time our son was one, we were crazy about him. But we were exhausted and miserable about our lifestyles. We knew we had to make a change.

We decided the answer was simple – simple living that is. We would choose to live on less, allowing me to quit my job and be with our son, as well as focusing on my dream job of freelance writing. We’d make bread. We’d garden and compost. We’d ditch processed foods and restaurants and cook everything from scratch. We’d keep backyard hens. We’d make stuff ourselves and heat our house with wood. We’d hang our clothes on the line. We’d ride our bikes and walk more and drive less.

It’s not as though we lived extravagantly before. My husband and I have both always lived fairly simply. I was raised by thrifty freelance-writer parents. I’ve ridden my bike and walked most places for my entire life. I’ve never been into diamonds or spending weekends at the mall. Shopping has always been low on my list of favorite pastimes. And I’ve long been a fan of the voluntary simplicity movement.

So I assumed we’d love our simpler lifestyle. I imagined it would be relatively easy to pare down.

It wasn’t easy.

Recently, a few things made me realize how difficult it was.

  • We went out with friends to a restaurant we used to frequent. (We used to eat out a lot.) The food didn’t taste good. Then the same thing happened at another restaurant. That’s when I realized what had really happened. The food we make at home now tastes really good. We learned how to cook.
  • I started looking forward to heading outside on cool mornings to swing the axe around and realized that I’ve become a master wood-splitter.
  • I have not used a recipe to make bread in eight months.
  • My friend asked me if I missed our car, and I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about at first. Miss our car? Oh, that’s right, we’re not driving our car. I hardly even think about our car, and I usually don’t miss it, at least 95 percent of the time.

The relative ease of cooking from scratch, making bread, chopping wood, and living sans automobile today made me realize that these and so many of our other lifestyle changes were once pretty difficult.

The first few times I made bread felt like conducting a chemistry experiment. And I’m glad you’ll never see my first attempts at chopping wood or taste some of our not-so-delicious attempts at main courses. When my husband first started riding his bike to work, he came home exhausted most days. And I think he probably said, “The simple life isn’t so simple.” at least 50 times last year.

It feels like we’ve been through simple-living boot camp.

We still have a lot to learn. But we’ve gotten physically stronger and more resilient and we’ve honed dozens of skills that serve us well everyday, make us feel better about our environmental impact, and which I hope will help us be more financially secure in the future. As my friend, who’s been on her own journey toward a simpler, greener, thriftier life, quipped the other day, “If I’d lived like this for the last ten years, I’d have $50,000 in the bank right now.”

So if you’re thinking about paring down, trying to save more money, learning to cook or meal-plan, giving up TV, ditching plastic, switching to green cleaners, making your own personal care items, or embarking on some other lifestyle change, I am here to tell you that it may not be easy at first. You will probably have to learn each new skill, just as you’ve learned everything else in your life – slowly and day-by-day.

But you will kick ass at it before you know it.

What new skills have you learned this year? What’s the most difficult lifestyle change you’ve made? What’s the most rewarding?

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Ten Top Chefs Dish Up Local Cuisine

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Travel Oregon is promoting Oregon right now with the Oregon Bounty Wanderfeast:

From the wine crush in Applegate Valley to the chanterelles hiding in the Coast Range to the fish and game that frolic in every nook and cranny of Oregon, ten top chefs will chase after ten of Oregon’s finest epicurean products. It’s ten weeks of foodie bliss, from one end of Oregon to the other.  And you’re invited to come along.

During Week One, a chef visits a farm , milks a cow, picks fruit and herbs, and makes a soft cheese. Week Four features a chef, who harvests heirloom pears near the base of Mount Hood, and prepares a local fish dish with them. And check out Week Five, where my sister brews up a one-of-a-kind “Artisan Spirits” out of juniper, purple thistle, and sage she finds near the Painted Hills of Eastern Oregon.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=r_19rmzSH_M]

Buy Less, Create More, and Transform Your Life

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When you type the phrase “American consumers” into Google, you get 976,000 results. That two-word phrase is mentioned 1,494 times in Google News stories just today. I don’t know about you, but I’m a little tired of hearing about American consumers. I’m all for supporting farmers, booksellers, manufacturers, craftsmen, bakers, and artisans with my dollars – especially those doing business in a fair, sustainable way. I’m just convinced that this meme that Americans are essentially consumers is destructive, not just to the environment, but to our psyches.

Consumption is passive, bland, and boring. Consumption requires little of us. We humans are creative and innovative creatures. Our minds churn with thoughts, impressions, and opinions. We erupt with ideas. We produce symphonies, skyscrapers, bridges, frescoes, novels, poems, quilts, ocean liners, and airplanes. We’re not mindless buyers, purchasers, or consumers. We are producers, inventors … creators.

How can we buck this oppressive notion that our most important role in life is consuming? Easy. We can buy less and get creative. I’m all for art. Draw, paint, sew, knit, crochet, sing, and dance! But what I’m talking about is more accessible. It doesn’t require a paint brush, knitting needles, a sewing machine … or talent. All you have to do is bring imagination to the day-to-day.

Look at your shopping list; think outside the box, bottle, or container; and ask yourself, Can I make this? Sometimes the answer will be no … or the learning curve, labor, or time you’d spend make it a bad candidate for your efforts. But often you can make things.

It may be hard to shift your consciousness from buying to creating at first. Most of us have watched and listened to literally years of commercials selling everything from boxed rice, to jarred baby food, to taco seasoning, to deodorant. Corporations have convinced us we need loads of products. And the government and media have even conflated consuming with civic responsibility. So it may seem strange that a lot of the products and packaged food we buy are unnecessary. Some don’t even save us time; many are inferior to what we can make ourselves; and worse, many (and their packages) are destructive to our health and to the planet.

When you start thinking about what you can make and start practicing that first (and most ignored) part of the recycling mantra – reduce, reuse, recycle, your grocery bills will inevitably shrink. You’ll probably experience an incomparable glow of satisfaction when your creations taste fabulous or nail the job they’re intended for. You might also notice positive changes in your health. But the best part is you’ll begin to see yourself as the imaginative, resourceful, amazing creator that you are.

Four easy ways to start buying less and getting creative:

1. Grow food

Turn your lawn into an edible landscape, put a few containers of tomatoes on your balcony, plant a fruit tree, or just grow some herbs in your kitchen window. When you garden, you and nature become co-creators in a grand project. And fruit, veggies, and herbs are never again something you mindlessly buy at the supermarket year-round.

2. Cook from scratch

You can easily afford some good cookbooks with all the money you’ll save by ditching expensive, nutritionally-deficient, processed food. Cooking is easy. If you’re a newby, just follow the recipes closely. Of course, cooking with whole foods takes more time than heating up processed food or spinning through the drive through. But you’ll save buckets of cash, eat healthier, and the taste difference is nothing short of astounding. Some of my favorite cookbooks: Cooking for the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair, Laurel’s Kitchen by Laurel Robertson, and America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook.

3. Make bread

The authors of Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book insist there are “subtle, far-reaching, and distinctly positive changes that can take place when you begin to bake (bread) regularly.” They claim the process is therapeutic, creative, calming, and can transform a house into a home. I agree. I’ve been making my family’s bread for much of the past year, and I’m amazed by how much I look forward to bread-making day, not just because the house smells delectable and I get to eat slices of steaming hot bread fresh from the oven. There’s also something about the process. It leaves a lot of room for learning and growing. Bread-making undeniably takes time, but you can use a bread machine, stand-up mixer, or food processor to help with the kneading, and for most of the rest of the process, the dough simply rests and rises on the counter, leaving you free to kick back or attend to some other chore. Start with a basic loaf, and you might find yourself moving onto more complicated recipes, like desem or sourdough, before you know it.

4. Mix up green cleaners

Years ago my friend Beth told me she started looking forward to cleaning when she started making her own cleaners, but it took me years to heed her advice. It seemed complicated. It’s not. Trust me, you do not need to be a chemist for this. All you need is distilled white vinegar, baking soda, and liquid castile soap (Think: Dr. Bronner’s). And Beth’s right – homemade cleaners make housework more fun. You can mix up an all-purpose bathroom cleaner with 50/50 vinegar and water. Find more recipes for everything from furniture polish to mildew remover in The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen or Organic Housekeeping by Ellen Sandbeck.

You don’t have to stop there. You can make herbal teas, tonics, tinctures, cosmetics, lotions, salves, yogurt, butter, ice cream, beer, wine, kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, pickles, jams, and so much more. And for the more crafty – of course, you can sew clothes; crochet blankets; knit sweaters; create art for your walls; or build furniture. You may find that the more you create, the more creative you become.

(Originally posted on May 13, 2009.)

Are you already buying less and getting creative? I’d love to hear what you’re doing!

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More Flavor, More Nutrition, Less Food Waste

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For years, making vegetable stock sounded like a good idea, but it wasn’t something I would actually do. It seemed difficult, like something I would need to buy a new pot for. But now I make it on a weekly basis, and I can attest, it is incredibly easy. And it’s a great way to:

  • Waste less food
  • Increase flavor in soups, stews, and dishes
  • Add more vitamins and minerals to your diet.

How to make vegetable stock:

Designate a container in your refrigerator or freezer for vegetable scraps. This is where you’ll put all of your onion and garlic skins, carrot tops, celery greens, outside cabbage leaves, etc.

You can use any kind of large pot for making stock. I love my cast iron dutch oven.

To make the stock:

  • Chop an onion and saute it in olive oil until soft.

Add

  • the onion skin
  • a carrot (chopped)
  • 2 celery sticks (chopped)
  • any other vegetable you have on hand, i.e. leeks, mushrooms, tomatoes, etc.
  • a tablespoon of culinary herbs. I use marjoram and thyme.
  • a teaspoon of salt.
  • the contents of your vegetable scrap container.
  • a couple of garlic cloves (optional)
  • a piece of kombu (Kombu is a savory, mineral-rich seaweed. You can learn more about it here.) (optional)

Cover the vegetables with water. (I usually make about 8 cups at a time.) Simmer for at least half an hour. Taste the broth. If it’s not flavorful enough, simmer it longer. When it’s done, strain it, let it cool, and pour it into jars. (If you’re going to freeze it, leave some space at the top of the jars.)

Stock is not just for soup

You can use stock to puree baby foods or cook rice. Or you can just pour it in a mug and sip it. It’s the perfect nourishing drink for a cold day or to build strength when you’re ill.


Resolve to Save Money

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I’ve heard that most of us forget our resolutions sometime before Martin Luther King Day. But maybe we’re just making it too difficult? Living better often comes down to slowing down and keeping things simple. In that spirit, I’ll tackle a few common resolutions.

My goal is to share the easiest, least expensive, most practical knowledge I’ve gleaned on how we can live better. Share your favorite tips in the comments section, too.

If you’re serious about making positive changes, some experts advise that you focus on one specific, defined, quantifiable goal at a time. So pick one from the list and go for it!

Ten Ways to Save Money


Quite a few of us became reluctant experts on the art of pinching pennies. My husband and I became adept at tightening an already tight budget. Here are the best ideas I’ve come across so far:

1.  Write down everything you spend.

Do you already have a budget? If not, write down everything you buy for a week. It will make you aware of your spending habits. (You may be surprised how much incidental purchases add up.) Then use what you learn about your expenses to make a monthly budget.

2.  Carry cash

Try ditching the debit and credit cards and using cash for purchases. You may find that you’re more conscious of how much you’re spending. Parting with cash can feel more real than swiping a card. And a study suggests carrying large denomination bills makes people much less eager to spend money.

3.  Pay your Savings Account first

Determine how much money you can afford to save, and pay your savings account before you pay any other bills. If your employer offers direct deposit, automatically divert a portion of your paycheck into your savings account.

4.  Give yourself free money

Make sure each member of the household has a designated amount of money to spend on whatever they wish. It will help everyone stick to a tight budget without feeling deprived.

5.  Park your car for a week.

My husband and I recently parked our car for an entire month. We don’t drive much, so we thought it would be easy. It wasn’t. We learned how to be so much more economical with our trips and purchases. When you’re relying on public or human-powered transit, things like going to a box store on the outskirts of town, running out for last-minute take-out, or buying anything big and heavy become less attractive options.

We honestly missed the car a little more than we hoped we would. But we enjoyed riding our bikes everywhere, especially our son. He retrieves his bicycle helmet first thing in the morning and says, “Vroom, vroom.” His zeal for two wheels keeps us riding our bikes nearlly everywhere – even when it’s raining.

6.  Make your own

Stock up on baking soda, vinegar, and hydrogen peroxide, and whip up your own personal care products and household cleaners. These three ingredients are non-toxic, inexpensive, versatile, and amazingly effective.

Start with:

7.  Eat at home

If you eat out just once a week and spend $30, that adds up to $120 a month and $1,560 a year. It’s not hard to see how dining at home can save you lots of cash.

8.  Plan your meals

A meal-planning system can cut your grocery bill by hundreds of dollars a month. It can also help you eat healthier, incorporate more whole foods into your diet, enjoy cooking again, stop those last-minute “let’s just get a pizza” nights, and even help you get along better with your spouse. Want to learn more? I wrote about the art of meal-planning here.

9.  Cook from scratch

You can save a lot of cash by giving up processed and packaged food and preparing your meals from scratch. I’ve cut our food budget by at least $300 a month this way. But more importantly, I love it. It’s more labor-intensive, more time-consuming, and more general effort. But cooking from raw ingredients is creative work. Our house smells of fresh-baked bread; or of garlic, oregano, or basil; or of soup slowly simmered, and it just feels a lot more like home. Want to learn more? I wrote about cooking from scratch here.

10.  Eat local foods seasonally

In Eating Close to Home, Elin Cristina England writes, “We seem to have collectively succumbed to the myth that a green lettuce salad with a tomato should be part of every dinner from January to March.” She argues that we should eat seasonally, with our winter meals consisting of mainstays like carrots, parsnips, turnips and rutabagas. If we eat this way, she writes:

Over the course of a year, we end up eating a varied diet, from a wide range of the plant kingdom, which nourishes us with a full complement of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients.

Imagine how much money you might save on food by letting go of the idea of eating like it’s the peak of summer year-round.

Do you have any tips on saving money to share?


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