If someone had told me a year ago that I would be spending my Sunday making all kinds of things that I would normally buy I would have told them they were talking to the wrong person. Turns out I would have been wrong!
Today was crazy – in a I can’t believe we’re doing this way. My husband and I spent the day making “Magic Mineral Broth”, doggie “paté” (our name for it), dried apple & pear snacks, homemade apple-pear fruit leather, homemade spicy Italian sausage and fire starters. Seriously!
I’ll start with the Magic Mineral Broth. This is actually my final assignment for one of my masters classes in holistic nutrition. Pretty cool. I’ve made it several times. It’s great. I end up drinking it like Tea in the mornings. I also have some in the afternoons as a snack. I have yet to use it for soup. It’s gone before I get around to needing broth for something. You can find the recipe on Rebecca Katz website.
The first photo is of the veggies all chopped and ready. The second is the broth cooking. Third is the left over veggies after the broth has been drained and the fourth is Doggie Paté! We take all the spent veggies (minus onions and bay leaves) and blend them up for the puppy dogs. They LOVE it.
I do one thing differently from the original recipe. I add the salt at the beginning with all the vegetables. I have made it both ways. Adding the salt at the end and adding it at the beginning (it was a mistake the first time). The broth is much tastier when the salt is added at the beginning. At least we think so.
So, while the broth was in process my husband and I discovered that we could use our kitchen aid mixer to slice up the apples and pears. We haven’t used our kitchen aid mixer in FOREVER. We don’t bake any more so it never makes it out of it’s hiding place. Turns out we have all kinds of fun attachments, including slicers. Perfect and so fun. We sliced up the apples and pears and spread them out on the dehydrating trays. We took all the extra little bits and blended them in the food processor and spread that on the “fruit roll up” dehydrating tray.
The first picture is of the apple and pear slices and fruit puree ready to go into the dehydrator. The second picture is the finish fruit slices. The third is the finished fruit leather. We think we might have over done the fruit leather although it’s really, really good. I have to be pretty careful with the dried fruit. It packs a majorly sweet punch. I’m afraid it could set off my sweet tooth. So far, so good but all of that will be gone by the end of the Survivor Finale!
The reason we found all of our attachments for the kitchen aid was because we were looking for the meat grinder. We didn’t find it so my husband had to make the spicy pork sausage with ground pork. He made six pounds. It looks amazing. No casings because every time I use pork sausage I have to cut it out of the casings. This is much better. That’s awesome husband mixing the meat and spices. Yum. You might be interested to know that I’m the carnivore in the family. This guy used to be a vegetarian! He’s coming around.
The final crafty project for the day was fire starters. My husband read somewhere that putting dryer lint into egg cartons and then pouring melted wax all over them makes for excellent fire starting. Time will tell. We haven’t tried them yet but they look pretty flammable (just tried them, they work great!). Notice all the dog hair in the close up – nasty. We have big dogs.
O.k., I’ve mentioned the dogs several times in this post. It’s only fair to put their furry faces out there.
The first photo is of Tess. She is a 6 year old English Mastiff. She is weighing in at 220 (yowsa). Annie is the little one. As you can see, she thinks she’s a lap dog. She is a 5 years old English Mastiff and only weighs 165.
Next up CHEESE! My sister tells me it’s really easy.
Eat Well, Feel Great!
I’m Amy a board certified holistic nutritionist, certified functional nutritionist and lifestyle practitioner and certified Life Coach. I help women in midlife understand the changing needs of their body so that they can stop dieting and lose weight permanently. At 56 I live what I teach. Don’t believe the story that your best years are behind you. They are not. Your best years are just starting!