Tag: Health

Cayenne – The #1 Emergency Herb

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By Melody Horst

Cayenne is probably one of the most used herbs. It resides in almost every kitchen, and is used in hundreds of ways. Though cayenne is normally put in food, it is an amazing emergency help. I would like to emphasize that it is really good for the circulatory system. It helps to lower blood pressure, as well as increase it (though not at the same time, of course), it helps to stop bleeding (including very bad nose bleeds!), it stops strokes and heart attacks, helps thin your blood, and even can help colds and sore throats in the winter.

I’ll list out some of the different uses and why it works. But first, let me explain why I reference cayenne as an “emergency herb”. It’s because it works so incredibly fast on so many different things that could possibly severely harm you, as well as keeping you away from the doctor and all his huge bills as much as possible.

I was recently at the Mother Earth News Fair, where I heard Dr. David Christopher talk about the benefits of cayenne. Following are some things that I learned.

Bleeding

For external bleeding you can take cayenne orally or apply it straight to the wound. The cayenne will help your body to form a clot around the new hole in your circulatory system, and stop the bleeding. Back in 2013, several of us were at a fair, and Mom got a really bad nose bleed. The first aid people at the front entrance; couldn’t do too much for her, so someone called 911. When the paramedics got there, they said, “We don’t have anything in the ambulance that will help. We’ll have to take you to the hospital.”

Ridiculous, I thought. Any ambulance should be outfitted for something as common as a nosebleed! By now the bleeding had slowed down. We called Dad and waited for him to come before deciding what to do, so the ambulance left. By the time Dad got there (30 – 45 minutes later), the bleeding had stopped, and he and Mom went on home. If only we’d known about cayenne…

My brother Nathan’s sheep will sometimes hemorrhage while giving birth to their lambs. He puts cayenne in their mouth, and the bleeding stops almost immediately.

Strokes and Heart Attacks

Strokes and heart attacks happen when blood is not properly hydrated, and begins to clump (not clot—a clot is what forms over a lesion in the walls of your veins). When the clump comes to a place in the brain that it can’t fit through, it stops, and you have a stroke. What you want to do is put a dropper full of cayenne tincture in the person’s mouth (if they are unconscious, put it in drop by drop so that they don’t choke) or mix a teaspoon of cayenne powder in a glass of warm water and have them drink it down. If they don’t get better very soon, give them some more in smaller doses. The warm water will help get the cayenne to the blood quicker.  One time, my grandmother began having the symptoms of a stroke and almost passed out. My aunt put two droppers of cayenne tincture under her tongue, and Grandma quickly came back (she said she hardly felt any sting!). By the time the ambulance got there, Grandma was sitting up in a chair. When they asked her how she was doing, she said, “Just fine!”

High Blood Pressure

High blood pressure generally happens when there is a clog somewhere in the circulatory system that is keeping oxygen from getting to all your cells. The cells then sends out an alarm that they are lacking oxygen and your heart begins to pump harder to try to push the clog out of the way and get the blood to the cells. If you take medication for it, those poor cells will probably die. Taking half to one teaspoon of cayenne powder in a glass of water  will naturally increase circulation, taking care of the clog, and get the needed oxygen to your cells. Your heart will then resume its normal rate.

Colds and Sore Throats

Though this may not be everyone’s favorite remedy, it does work to take away sore throats, calm fevers, and take away the achiness of the flu.

Fire Water:

Cold and flu fighter

½ c. boiling water
½ c. apple cider vinegar
1 tsp. cayenne powder
1 tsp. salt

Stir together until the salt is dissolved. Add the vinegar. Take 1 tsp every 15-20 minutes until all symptoms are gone. It is important that you take it faithfully if you want to see the best results Note: taking a bite of bread and half a glass of water afterwards really helps the burning.

Aching Joints

For aching joints in general, mix one heaping teaspoon full of cayenne powder in a half cup of apple cider vinegar and shake well. Let it set for several days and shake often. Apply this to the joint and let it do its job. My brother used cayenne and honey mixed together on his aching wrist. He would apply it each night and bandage it up, and by morning it would feel a lot better.  For arthritis, try mixing cayenne into castor oil until it’s fiery red. You can then apply it to the aching area and bandage it up. There should be a noticeable difference within several days.

Other Uses

– Stomach Ulcers
Take half a teaspoon of cayenne powder in a glass of warm water every day.
– Shock
Put a dropper of cayenne tincture under the tongue, or drink a glass of warm water that has a teaspoon of cayenne powder mixed in.
– Hypothermia
Do the same as for shock.
– Cold hands and feet
You can sprinkle a little cayenne powder in your shoes or gloves before going out in cold weather to keep them warm.
– Headaches
Just this afternoon, my brother, Nathan, had a bad headache. He asked Mom for some fire water, and took it. Five minutes later, his headache was completely gone.
– Migraines
At the Mother Earth News Fair in Pennsylvania this year, we heard about using cayenne for migraines. A couple weeks later, Dad got an eye migraine. Mom put a squirt of cayenne tincture into a half cup of water, and Dad took one gulp. This was a very hot experience, and he wasn’t sure which was worse, the eye migraine or the cayenne! He laid down for a bit, but soon got up saying the eye migraine was gone. Now, I do not suggest that you take same the dosage that he did! About a 1/4 teaspoon to a glass of water should be sufficient. If it isn’t enough for you, then take some more.

Cathy’s Cooking Corner

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Baked Parmesan Chicken

Baked Parmesan Chicken is rich and delicious. It’s great for serving guests or for your own special family.

3 pounds chicken pieces
Salt and pepper
3 tablespoons butter
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
½ cup shredded Swiss cheese
¼ cup bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Season chicken with salt and pepper. In a large frying pan, melt butter over medium heat. Add chicken and cook, turning, until browned, about 10 minutes.

Sprinkle ¼ cup of the Parmesan cheese over bottom of a 13 X 9 X 2-inch baking dish. Arrange chicken in dish.

In the same frying pan, whisk flour into pan drippings. Cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Gradually add milk and cook, stirring constantly, until smooth and thick. Remove from heat and stir in Swiss cheese. Pour sauce over chicken.

Top chicken with remaining 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese. Sprinkle with bread crumbs. Bake for 1 hour or until chicken is tender.

From 365 Ways to Cook Chicken

Cathy’s Cooking Corner

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Oriental Chicken

3 pounds chicken thighs

Sauce:
2 tablespoons butter, melted
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
2 to 4 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons hot pepper sauce
2 tablespoons mustard
1 to 2 teaspoons five spice powder
1 to 2 teaspoons garlic powder

Combine sauce ingredients. For the soy sauce, five spice powder and garlic powder use the lesser amounts and taste the sauce when it’s mixed. Add more of these ingredients if you prefer. Place the chicken thighs in a pan. Top with the sauce ingredients. Bake, uncovered, in a 350 degree oven.

If you want some sauce to put on rice, double the sauce recipe to put on the chicken. Then bake the chicken, covered instead of uncovered. To finish the sauce after the chicken is baked, remove the chicken pieces and keep warm. Put the sauce into a kettle. Skim any oil you don’t want in the sauce. (Save the oil for a white sauce or gravy another day.) Combine 2 to 3 tablespoons cornstarch with 1/2 cup cool water. Add to the sauce in the kettle and stir in. Heat till boiling and thickened. If you prefer using arrowroot instead cornstarch, stir together same amount of arrowroot and water. Before adding the arrowroot, boil the sauce ingredients and remove from the heat. Add the amount of thickening preferred.

Cathy’s Cooking Corner

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BBQ Chicken on the Grill

Summer is the time for grilling. This bbq chicken recipe is our favorite. We sell grilling halves that are great for this recipe. Of course, any piece of chicken is wonderful on the grill!

8 chicken pieces

Marinade:
2 cups vinegar
2 cups water
1/2 cup butter or oil
1 tablespoon pepper (optional)
8 teaspoons salt
4 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon garlic powder

Bring the marinade ingredients to a boil. Remove from heat. Marinade the chicken pieces in the sauce for one hour. Grill the chicken, basting frequently with the marinade.

You can grill the chicken till it’s done and serve it immediately, but there’s something you can do that will make the chicken even better. When the chicken is grilled well on both sides (it doesn’t have to be finished clear through), put it into a crock pot with a little of the marinade and cook it in there for at least an hour or until you want to serve it. This causes the flavors to meld together and the chicken is super tender and absolutely delicious. The temperature of the crock pot depends on how soon you want to serve the chicken and how nearly finished it is when taking it off the grill. Enjoy!

Grass Fed is Best? A Horror Story From our Living Lab

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To hear some people talk, you might get the impression that raising chickens and animals on grass is the secret ticket to success in farming and to health. With grassfed, there will be no more problems and the chickens and animals will excel far beyond conventional farming methods. Any grass is good. All you have to do is get the animals out on the grass, in the sunshine and fresh air.

That is not true.

Before you think I fell off my rocker, I will state that I believe that grass fed is BEST! But, as you will see, not all grass is best or even able to properly sustain life.

I was shocked and very disappointed with the large amount of weight loss that our sheep experienced after only 16 days in the new silvopasture. Two specialists from the Maryland Extension service, had visited the silvopasture just before the sheep were put into the new pasture. They were very impressed with what they called the “high dairy quality” of the grasses and clovers. They were concerned that the forage would be too lush, too rich for the sheep and that they might bloat (their stomachs fill up with gas) . On the contrary, the sheep did not bloat and we were in for a big surprise when we weighed the sheep.
The 54 Adult Sheep : lost (-345.5 lbs.) total in the 16 days between May 14 & 30, 2015. This number included rams (males), ewes (females) with lambs, and year old females that were not bred. Many of the nursing mothers lost 10 to 15 lbs!

The 48 Lambs: gained significantly less than they did the 16 days before they were turned into the Silvopasture:

Gain between 4/28/15 & 5/14/15 (16 days) = 465.5 lbs. an average of .61 lbs of gain per day before being in the silvopasture.
Gain between 5/14/15 & 5/30/15 (16 days) = 209.1 lbs. an average of .27 lbs of gain per day
Weight gain difference = -256.4 lbs.

While these weight losses were very disappointing, they showed how dramatically different pastures can be. Grass fed will not produce healthy animals and poultry if the soil is not built up properly. The main part of our farm, where the lambs gained the most, probably had the same quality of grass as the silvopasture eight years ago when we first moved here. We applied some principles that we learned from Carey Reams and some that we had developed on our own from some of his teachings and it made a dramatic improvement in the pastures. The main concept is that at least 80% of a plant’s nutritional food/energy comes from the air. By building up the soil and foliar feeding the plants with milk and honey, we were able to increase the amount that the plants were able to take out of the air. One of the main things that we did was to repeatedly mow our pastures and let the grass lay on the ground. We have explained this in some of our other articles.

I also need to add that there were also a few other things that likely contributed to the weight loss – over maturity of some of the grasses and grazing too long for the quality of the forage.

What was significant was that on the main part of our farm, the pasture alone, with no grain feeding, produced a weight gain of .61 pounds per day in the 16 days before the lambs went onto the silvopasture. That is exceptional for grassfed only and comparable to grain feeding.

Mike Neary, Ph.D., Extension Sheep Specialist at Purdue University says this about lambs in the 45 – 80 lb range, which was the size of most of the lambs that we put on the silvopasture: “Lambs with high to moderate growth potential that are fed a grain based diet with proper amounts of protein should gain from .5 to .8 pounds per day…
“If lambs are grown on high levels of forage [pasture], then one can expect slower gains than if fed diets with a high amount of grain. Gains for lambs grown on pasture will normally be from .25 to .5 pounds per day.” http://ag.ansc.purdue.edu/sheep/articles/feedlamb.html

During the 16 days in the silvopasture, the lambs averaged .27 lbs of gain per day which is at the bottom end of what Neary said is the expected gain for lambs on pasture. However, the results were actually worse than that. During the time that the sheep were in the Silvopasture, it appears that from the amount of weight that the lactating ewes lost, they gave the fat off their backs to their lambs and that is why the lambs gained and did not lose weight like their mothers.

Last week we weighed a few of the ewes and lambs when we were sorting out the lambs to take to the butcher. We were encouraged that they were gaining weight again. Those lambs had gained about .67 lbs a day in nine days. We do not have the data yet for all the lambs.

The lesson in all of this is that all pastures are not the same and will not give the same health qualities to the eggs, meat and milk that they produce. The same is true of fruits and vegetables in the store. They may look beautiful, but be lacking in the nutrition to adequately sustain life.

Sheep grazing what appeared to be very lush forage in the silvopasture demonstration plot.
Sheep grazing what appeared to be very lush forage in the silvopasture demonstration plot.

The soil in the 8 acres in the silvopasture is about as chemical free as it will get. It has been probably at least 20 years since it had any chemicals or chemical fertilizers put on it. It also had not had any animals on it or any farming activity for at least 10 years before the silvopasture was established; therefore, it did not have the immediate negative affects of chemicals or bad farming practices. The forage specialists had recommended the grasses and legumes to plant to reduce the amount of tall fescue grass that was in the pasture. Tall fescue has a toxin in it that negatively affects sheep and cattle. Those grasses and legumes had been planted and looked beautiful as you can see in the picture.

In spite of the problems, I am looking forward to what we will be able to accomplish in the silvopasture. I feel that we have a solution, by repeatedly mowing the silvopasture to build up the soil. We also will be spraying milk, honey, and egg as a foliar spray to increase the photosynthesis and brix (sugar) of the pasture grasses and legumes. In the next three years, I believe that we will see a very significant improvement in the pasture growth and nutrition in the silvopasture, and a significant growth increase in the trees over the trees planted in the adjacent fields.

For me, the silvopasture gave me a reference point that showed that we had indeed improved our pastures from when we first moved to this farm.

I Love Leftovers!

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I intentionally make extra food when I prepare meals so that I have leftovers. That way I don’t need to prepare everything from scratch to prepare more meals. So what can you do with the leftover chicken and rice? Here are some ideas:

When you have eaten all the chicken and rice you want, take the rest of the chicken off the bones (A large chicken is great for more meat for leftovers). Put the bones back into the crockpot to make bone broth. Add a tablespoon of vinegar, an onion, a carrot, and a stalk of celery. A couple chicken feet would be good, too. Cover with water and add salt to taste. Cook on low for 12 to 24 hours. This makes a nutritious, high calcium broth that you can use to cook more rice, noodles, veggies, etc.

Ideas How to Use the Leftover Chicken and Rice

In any cookbook that has main dishes, you will find recipes that include cut up chicken. Here are some ideas:

  • Chicken Soup. Cut up the chicken into bite sized pieces and put into a pan. Add the rice and enough water to make the soup the consistency you want. Or you could use the bone broth you cooked instead of the water. If desired, add veggies like chopped spinach or kale, peas, diced carrots, onion, etc. This is super easy and delicious.
  • Chicken and Rice Casserole (the second time). Combine the cut up chicken and rice in a baking dish. Cover and heat 30 minutes to an hour at 350 degrees till hot. You could also heat the chicken and rice in a skillet in a little butter or coconut oil instead of in a baking dish.
  • Chicken Salad. Add a little mayo and sour cream to the chicken along with some finely diced celery and onion. A little curry powder added gives some extra pizazz. This is great in a sandwich or on a bed of lettuce.
  • Chicken Enchiladas. Make a mixture of cut up chicken, cheese, sour cream and chilies to your taste. Spoon mixture into the middle of tortillas and place seam side down in a baking dish. Top with a white sauce or salsa . Bake 45 to 60 minutes in a 350 degree oven or till hot. At the end, top with cheese and melt in oven. Serve with sour cream and salsa or guacamole.
  • Add your favorite Bbq sauce to the cut up chicken and heat. Use for a baked potato topping or put into a bun.
  • Chicken can be added to any veggie salad.
  • With the bone broth and chicken, make a gravy to go on biscuits, mashed potatoes or rice.
  • For breakfast, place a fried egg on a piece of toast. Top with chicken gravy. If you add a little mayo to the gravy, it adds interest to the dish.
  • For a one-dish meal, stir fry some veggies with the chicken. Serve over rice or couscous.
  • Add chicken, cheese and salsa and any vegetable you want to an omelet or scrambled eggs.
  • Chicken Pizza. Top a pizza crust with chicken and all your favorite toppings.
  • Chicken Gyro. Inside a gyro style pita bread, place cut up chicken, shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, a little cucumber and some shredded cheese. Top with the salad dressing of your choice.

Use your creativity. Think about what foods you’re hungry for. Try them with chicken. Add some spices or sauces that sound good to you. Taste the food and adjust. You may come up with a new favorite dish. When it comes to cooking, creativity truly is the spice of life. Have fun!

How to Cook a Chicken When You Don’t Know How to Cook

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By Joel Horst

At age 26, I am a member of the Millennial generation. Like many other Millennials, I am busy. I don’t have a lot of cooking skills. I do want to eat healthy, and I don’t just want a TV dinner or a frozen pizza.

Fortunately, most of the time, I don’t have to cook. The three ladies of our home do a very excellent job of making hearty, healthy meals for our family. However, when Dad, Mom and the girls took a trip and left us guys to fend for ourselves in the kitchen, I got the job of seeing that my brothers had something to eat. Luckily, Mom left a menu with cooking directions for me to follow. Most of it was pretty simple, like wrapping egg burritos in parchment paper and tinfoil and sticking them in the oven. (Except that, after wrapping the burritos, I discovered that I needed another 35-45 minutes to heat them in the oven, so I stuck the burritos in the fridge till the next day.)

When Sunday rolled around, it would be my job to make a big Sunday dinner for four guys. Saturday night, I looked at my menu:

Get chicken out of freezer to thaw overnight.

The next morning, after caring for the laying hens, I prepared to make Sunday lunch. The menu stated:

Put 2 cups rice in deep casserole dish.

I finally managed to find a dish that would hold the 4 1/2 lb chicken and the rice, and added 2 cups of rice.

Add 4 cups water. Sprinkle with Lawry’s salt.


Take stuff out of inside of chicken. Cut off leg tuck flap.


Sprinkle chicken with Lawry’s, onion powder, garlic powder and paprika.

I discovered that the onion powder had disappeared (it had gone on vacation with the rest of the family). I substituted minced onion, but I probably should have just skipped it altogether. Oh, well.

Place on rice.

Oops. The chicken was already in the dish. (Moral of the story: read all directions carefully before proceeding.)

Cover dish. Heat at 325o for 3 hours.

I turned the oven on and slid the casserole dish into the oven. Done! Only about 30 minutes (including 10 minutes spent trying to track down the dish, plus 5 minutes trying to find a photographer).

At lunchtime, I heated up a jar of homegrown green beans and pulled the chicken out of the oven.

It was, if I may say so myself, delicious. Without a whole lot of time in the kitchen, we enjoyed a hearty Sunday dinner, and had leftover chicken and rice to enjoy at a later date. Despite having raised chickens for 15 years, it was the first time I can remember roasting a chicken myself, and I was amazed at how easy it was. If I can do it, anyone can!

Want to try the recipe yourself? Here it is:

Chicken and Rice

Put 2 cups of brown rice in a deep casserole dish. Add 4 cups of water and sprinkle on Lawry’s salt.

Take heart, liver and neck out of the chicken. Cut off the flap of skin holding the legs of the chicken. Sprinkle the chicken with Lawry’s salt, onion powder, garlic powder, and paprika. (If you have other spices you would like to use, feel free to add or substitute them.)

Place chicken on rice. Cover dish. Bake at 325oF for three hours.

Enjoy!