So, my sister-in-law makes THE BEST cream of broccoli soup. EVER. And she won’t give me the recipe because the person who gave it to her made her swear never to give it away. Can’t she cheat a little? I was determined to make this soup and it had to be just as good. In the end, it was my husband who made a suggestion that made the soup rock. I was missing the cheese!

If you want some tips for growing broccoli, check out this post. It includes another recipe, and yeah, that one has bacon and cheese in it as well. Of course, I always use bacon without nitrates from pastured pigs and cheese from grass-fed cows when I can get it.

Cream of Broccoli Soup with Bacon

Ingredients:

• 1/2 lb. of nitrate-free bacon (where to purchase)
• 4 c broccoli, diced
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 T parsley
• 1/8 t cayenne powder
• 4 c chicken bone broth
• 1 c heavy cream
• 1 c milk
• 3 T butter
• 3 T arrowroot powder, or flour
• 1/4 c grated parmesan cheese
• 1/4 c cheddar cheese, cubed
• sea salt and pepper, to taste

Saute the chopped bacon until crisp. Add onion and celery and saute until tender. Add garlic and cook another minute. Add the bone broth, broccoli, and parsley and bring to a boil; reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the cayenne powder. Puree with a potato masher or immersion blender. In a small sauce pan, melt 3 T butter. Stir in arrowroot powder. Slowly add in milk and cream, stirring until thick and bubbly. Add the cream mixture to the soup, along with the cheeses. Season to taste with sea salt and pepper. This soup is great served with some crusty bread.

Do you have a sister-in-law that won’t give away her recipes? Mine also makes sesame-seed chicken wings that are to-die-for. You guessed it – I can’t get that recipe either.

Recommended Reading: Good Meat: The Complete Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Meat  by Krasner, Nilsson, and Sanders

Photo by Kim Winey

Shared at: Fat Tuesday, Backyard Farming Connection

The post Cheesy Cream of Broccoli Soup with Bacon appeared first on learningandyearning.

Welcome! I polled my facebook readers a few weeks ago to ask them what they would like to win. It was a close race between Pyrex storage containers and a countertop compost keeper, but the compost keeper won. I’ve decided to give you a few choices so that you could pick the compost keeper you’d like. Thanks for being here!

Hoping to Win? Here’s What You Have to Do:

• First, check out these 3 compost keepers and leave a comment letting me know which you’d prefer to win:
  • Norpro Grip EZ Stainless Steel Compost Keeper
  • Norpro 3-quart Ceramic Compost Keeper, Blue and White
  • Oggi Countertop Compost Pail with Charcoal Filter
• Next, use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter this giveaway. A requirement for the giveaway is  to sign up to receive my latest blog updates and newsletter via email. You may unsubscribe at any time, but must be signed up at the time of the drawing to win.
• You’ll also be able to earn extra entries for liking my Facebook page,  or following me on Twitter.

The giveaway will run from Sunday, June 16th at 12 a.m. to Wednesday, June 26th at 11:59 p.m. The name of the winner will show up in the Rafflecopter below after the giveaway ends and will be contacted via email.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Note: This giveaway is open to U.S. residents only.

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Welcome back to the Raising Healthy Family Series! In this final installment, Kelly at The Nourishing Home is sharing a healthy way to beat the heat of summer without compromising good nutrition.

Making your own homemade ice pops and frozen treats is so easy and it’s fun too! And best of all, you’ll feel good knowing that your family is enjoying a healthy boost of wholesome nutrients in each and every yummy bite!

So be sure to join Kelly at The Nourishing Home as she helps us celebrate summer
with some delicious and nutritious real food frozen treats certain to bring
a smile to your kids faces! (The ice pop molds can be found here).

Note: This series is designed as a fun and informative compilation to help you and your family thrive. Each post is the opinion of that particular blogger, not necessarily mine or Positively Real Media’s.

The post Raising Healthy Families: Healthy Fruit and Cream Bars appeared first on learningandyearning.

The goal in your garden is not to eradicate all insects, but rather to create a natural environment of balance where “good” insects are eating or parasitizing “bad” insects to keep them under control. A great way to insure the presence of these beneficial insects is by providing plants which attract them to your garden.

Common Beneficials and How They Help

Ladybugs, or more technically Lady Beetles, are probably the most easily recognized beneficial insects. They devour aphids.

lacewing

Lacewings also eat aphids in addition to thrips, mealybugs, scale, moth eggs, smaller caterpillars, and mites.

Trichogramma Wasps are parasitic and lay their eggs in the eggs of garden pests such as cutworms, cabbage loopers, and tomato hornworms. These wasps are tiny and do not sting humans.

Spiders eat insects and help to prevent outbreaks of insects destructive to your garden.

Tachinid Flies help to control gypsy moth, tent caterpillars, japanese beetles and more. (And, unfortunately, the monarch butterfly).

Beneficial Nematodes are microscopic worms that live in the soil and feed on grubs, maggots and larvae.

Attracting Beneficials to Your Garden

zinnia

Plants which attract beneficial insects to your garden are known as insectary plants. Grow plants that will provide nectar and pollen so that they have food when insects aren’t available. It’s important to provide plants which bloom at different times so that food is always available. Some favorites include dill, mint, lemon balm, clover, calendula, marigolds, sunflower, zinnias, alfalfa, morning glory, fennel, and chamomile. In addition to providing food, insectary plants provide shelter for your beneficials.

Another consideration when attracting beneficials is to provide a source of water for them. Small garden ponds attract insects but a bowl filled with pebbles and water will work as well.

Lastly, do not use pesticides in your garden. They not only kill pests but also the beneficial insects that you are trying to attract.

What are you planting in your garden this year to attract beneficial insects?

For further reading:

Good Bug, Bad Bug

The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Pest and Disease Control

Photo Source1, Source2

Shared at: Green Living Thursday, Mountain Woman Rendezvous, Thank Your Body, Simple Lives Thursday, HomeAcre Hop, Simply Natural Saturday, Fat Tuesday, Backyard Farming Connection

The post Attracting Beneficial Insects to Your Garden appeared first on learningandyearning.

Herbs, in general, prefer full sun. Their flavor will generally be stronger when grown in sun, but there are several culinary herbs that do just fine in partial shade. Many herbs will not bloom when grown in shade, but that’s actually a bonus since the flavor often declines after flowering. Shade-grown herbs also tend to be become leggy, but keeping them trimmed will help them to become bushy. Plant these 5 herbs in moist, well-drained soil rich in organic matter and they will thrive without full sun.

Chives – great in soup, salads, and as a garnish. What would a baked potato be without sour cream and chives?

Lemon Balm – this lemon-scented perennial herb is used in teas, salads, or is dried and used in sachets.

Mint – for 12 great ways to use mint, see this post.

Oregano – especially good in Italian or Greek dishes.

Parsley – besides being used as a garnish, parsley is wonderful in soups, stews, salads, and to flavor meat and fish.

Which herbs do you grow in partial shade?

Recommended Reading: The Complete Book of Herbs by Leslie Bremness

Shared at: Fat Tuesday, Backyard Farming Connection, Tuesdays with a Twist, EOA, Real Food Wednesday, Party Wave Wednesday, Green Living Thursday, Mountain Woman Rendezvous, Thank Your Body, Simple Lives Thursday, HomeAcre Hop

Photo Source1 Source2

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Food Used to Contain Probiotics

We’re being attacked on all fronts. Our ancestor’s diet was naturally high in probiotics. The methods they used for preservation, such as lacto-fermentation, increased the good bacteria in their food. We make and eat some of the same types of foods – pickles and sauerkraut, sausages and corned beef, but instead of using methods that increase the nutrients of these foods, we take shortcuts in the ways that we preserve them, and often turn them into dead food, no longer nourishing to our bodies. So the good bacteria in our guts are not being fed.

Our Lifestyle is Destroying the Beneficial Bacteria in Our Guts

And then, to add insult to injury, our lifestyle is killing what beneficial gut bacteria that we have left. Antibiotics are over-prescribed and are in the food we eat. We drink and bathe in chlorinated water. We use birth control pills and take synthetic vitamins. We use artificial sweeteners, and eat copious amounts of refined sugar and grains. And our food is laden with pesticides and herbicides.

What we are destroying are the bacteria that help our bodies to prevent the growth of pathogenic bacteria. They also produce certain vitamins and hormones that our bodies need, help to prevent depression, strengthen our immune system, and help us to digest food and absorb nutrients.

When our gut ecology is out of balance, we become prone to gas, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease, colitis, weight gain, colon cancer, depression, allergies and asthma. Even autism and diabetes have been linked to poor gut health.

GMOs are Everywhere and Are Destroying Good Bacteria

And according to this report, a ubiquitous substance in our environment may be the worst offender of all. 100 million pounds of the herbicide glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup® is sprayed on American yards and farms every year. We have been told for years that glyphosate is safe, less toxic than aspirin, and not a problem if ingested in food sources.

Here’s how glyphosate works in plants – it disrupts something called the shikimate pathway, which is involved with the synthesis of certain amino acids, thus killing the plant.  The shikimate pathway is absent in all animals, and so it has been assumed that glyphosate cannot harm humans or mammals. However, the shikimate pathway is present in gut bacteria.  According to the report I linked to above, “highly pathogenic strains of Salmonella and Clostridium were found to be highly resistant to glyphosate, whereas beneficial bacteria such as  Enterococcus, Bacillus and Lactobacillus were found to be especially susceptible”. If you didn’t catch everything I just said in this paragraph, I genuinely hope that you’ll read it again.

Processed foods containing corn, canola, soy, and sugar beet are consumed in high proportions in this country and are difficult to avoid. If what you are eating contains any of these foods, it has been genetically modified to be Roundup Ready®, unless certified to have been grown organically. If it doesn’t say organic, it is GMO. This means that glyphosate has been used in its production contaminating your food and affecting your gut bacteria. Colorado State University estimates that 60 – 70 percent of food on U.S. grocery shelves contains at least one GMO.

And remember, the animals that you eat – cows, pigs, chickens and even farm-raised fish and shrimp – are fed a diet consisting of genetically engineered grains and forage. That means that products like eggs, butter, cheese and milk are also contaminated with these residues.

What Can We Do?

I didn’t write this to depress you.  Although it may be virtually impossible to remove every trace of GMOs from your diet, we can educate ourselves so that we can avoid as much of it as possible. A shopper’s guide may be found here. And the really good news is that we can do a lot to feed the good bacteria so that it can do the fighting for us. That’s what I’m really here to talk about.

To increase beneficial bacteria in your gut, it is recommended that you eat some type of probiotic food at each meal. It’s not really as hard as it sounds. There are so many great recipes out there for foods and beverages that would appeal to both children and adults. The beginning is always the hardest, but once you make a habit of making and including these foods in your diet, it will become second nature. Below are links to information and recipes that I’ve found helpful.

Although probiotic supplements may be a helpful option, Nutritional Therapist Craig Fear has several reasons why it is a much better idea to get probiotics from fermented foods. According to Fear, “fermented foods give us a far greater variety and complexity of beneficial bacteria than probiotic supplements.”

Fermented Vegetables

If you are new to fermenting vegetables, here’s a primer I wrote. If you’re not quite ready to ferment vegetables on your own, you may find fermented vegetables here.

Fermented Dairy

Raw milk may be fermented into yogurt, kefir, cultured cheese, creme fraiche, and more. (Source for yogurt and kefir cultures)

Fermented Meat

Before refrigeration, meats were preserved through culturing, but what we know today as dry sausages such as salami are often made with preservatives and are no longer rich in probiotics. It is worth seeking out sources that continue the traditional methods of fermenting sausages, or try your hand at curing meat yourself with this corned beef recipe. (Source for cured meats).

Fermented Fruit, Beverages, and Condiments

Other foods which can easily be fermented are fruits, beverages such as kombucha, fermented lemonade, fermented orange juice, fermented homemade sodas, or beet kvass, and condiments such as ketchup or salsa.

Recommended Reading:

Nourished Baby, 2nd Edition eBook by Heather Dessinger – You’ll learn how the birth experience affects your child’s health. Includes lots of recipes for fermented foods (and others) that are child friendly.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Fermenting Foods by Wardeh Harmon – Includes chapters on fermenting all of the items I listed in my post above, including instructions on sausage making.

Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon with Mary G. Enig – A fantastic guide to properly preparing whatever it is you want to eat, so that it is nutrient rich and easy to digest.

Real Food Fermentation by Alex Lewin – This is a great primer and is especially helpful if you are a visual learner. Lots of fantastic photos of the processes required in fermentation.

 Shared at: Homestead Barnhop, Fat Tuesday, Backyard Farming Connection, EOA Tuesdays with a Twist, Real Food Wednesday, Party Wave Wednesday, Green Living Thursday, Mountain Woman Rendezvous, Thank Your Body, Simple Lives Thursday, HomeAcre Hop

Photo Source

The post GMOs: One More Reason to Eat Probiotic Foods appeared first on learningandyearning.

Village Green Network is proud to announce Village Green Premium – a new Membership Club offering thousands of dollars in savings and rewards – for only $5 a month! As a member of the Club, you’ll receive up to 50% off many of our publishers’ bestselling products, amazing discounts and special offers from our advertisers – as well as Premium Giveaways and exclusive publications available only to Premium Club members!

As soon as you join, you’ll receive access to our Premium Offers page, chock full of discounts, coupons and special sales. You’ll also receive special alerts for Premium Giveaways from VGN, Limited Time Offers from our Advertisers, and Deep Discount Offers.

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Welcome back to the Raising Healthy Families Series!

We hope you’ve enjoyed joining us each Friday as we’ve shared different ways to keep your family healthy and vibrant in a not-so-healthy world! Be sure to join us next Friday for our final post in this series from Kelly at The Nourishing Home, as she shares delicious, real food frozen treats that your family can enjoy all summer long.

Getting a child to eat vegetables can be a monumental task; we all know that many kids balk at vegetables. Moms therefore try to find ways to “hide” vegetables in meals and casseroles, hoping their children do not notice the “green and orange stuff” hidden within their food. They whisper to their older children that they “better not say the word ‘vegetable’ or their younger siblings won’t eat supper!” My girls eat vegetables every day.  I’m not talking about vegetables hidden in food; I’m talking about fresh, raw, healthy vegetables!  My girls cheer when they see I’m chopping up a plate of celery, carrots and green pepper!

Hop on over to Jill’s Home Remedies for fun and practical tips on teaching your own kids to eat more vegetables!

Note: This series is designed as a fun and informative compilation to help you and your family thrive. Each post is the opinion of that particular blogger, not necessarily mine or Positively Real Media’s.

The post Raising Healthy Families: How to Get Your Kids to Eat More Vegetables appeared first on learningandyearning.

Mike and I recently hopped on a bus to take a “Sustainable Landscapes Tour” in a neighboring county. Over an 8 hour period, we made 6 stops at a variety of sites including parks, offices, a community garden, and a farm. It was encouraging to see that even in the middle of a shopping center district, individuals and organizations are taking the time to build and landscape in a way that reduces energy use, and conserves and cleans water. Here are a few highlights of our day.

This rain garden captures water from the parking area. Note that the parking area is gravel, which also allows water to penetrate the ground.

We saw a number of rain gardens throughout the day, which are designed to treat runoff from buildings, streets, parking lots, and other impervious surfaces. These gardens are specially designed and look like a sunken garden. The size and shape can vary. When rainwater hits impervious surfaces, it picks up pollutants such as car exhaust, pet waste or lawn chemicals. The rainwater which drains off of these surfaces is often so high in contaminants that fish would die if this water were used in an aquarium.

A rain garden in front of a veterinarian office.

But if rain gardens are placed to catch this rainwater, the water is cleaned and filtered naturally before draining into nearby lakes and streams. Flooding is also a major concern in this county, and rain gardens help to slow the flow of water after a heavy rainfall. They allow 30 percent more water to soak into the ground than a conventional lawn.

A fairly new rain garden at a farm.

The two office building we toured were designed in ways to maximize natural lighting, so that lighting in the buildings is often not needed at all.

Inner offices in this building are lit by windows from the outer offices. Even the inner offices were bright without artificial lighting.

These are not lights in the ceiling, but sun tubes which provide the benefits of sky lights without the drawbacks such as overheating in the summer, and heat loss in the winter.

The most unusual site of the day was a building – a Wellness Center – with a green roof. By green, I mean covered in plants. 6000 of them. The plants help to slow runoff and provide insulation. Most of the plants are different types of sedum, and rainwater is enough to keep the plants alive – no irrigation is needed.

The entire roof is covered in plants, which are starting to bloom.

The green roof provides energy conservation and noise reduction.

Inside the Wellness Center. Note the brightness of the room – no artificial lighting is needed on most days.

One of our stops was a non-profit, educational dairy farm. The cows are mostly grass-fed and are frequently moved to new pasture. Most of the herd are Jersey cows, well-known for high quality milk. I asked the director of the farm if they ever plan to offer raw milk products and his answer saddened me. He said, “No, I’m too afraid.” I mulled this over all day, wondering how it came to be that raw dairy has been more vilified than any other food. People have been sickened and have died from virtually every type of food that is available. When spinach, or cantaloupe, or even beef causes illness, no one suggests that these foods be declared illegal. No one stops selling them, except for short periods of time when they are taken off the market after a scare. All of these illnesses are caused by improper handling of the food, or unsanitary conditions, the same causes of any illness from raw milk. Why is raw dairy treated differently? Why are people afraid? While people have been sickened from raw milk, more have been sickened by pasteurized milk (see this chart). Ok, I digress, but I think that this little statement made more of an impact on me than anything else that day.

At the farm, we also saw:

This beautiful greenhouse was restored a few years ago.

This one is waiting for restoration.

Inside the greenhouse is an aquaponics setup (not to be confused with hydroponics). With aquaponics, fish are feeding the plants, while plants are feeding the fish.

Although the photo below is nothing exciting to look at, it is an important feature at many of the sites we visited – green parking. A parcel of land is leveled, a durable plastic grid is placed down and filled in with gravel. This is covered with soil and seeded with grass. This provides mud-free parking in a grassy area that also provides good water drainage and is cooler and more attractive than conventional parking lots.

Green parking area – this particular lot is fairly new, so it’s not yet being used so that the grass has time to mature.

We also made a stop at a community garden that day. What was unique about this garden was that many educational opportunities are provided here to teach gardening to both children and adults. There are a number of demonstration gardens, and an orchard to teach pruning and other tree care. The garden also has a flock of chickens. Participants take turns caring for the hens, and in return, they keep the eggs which are collected each day. I’ll leave you with a few photos taken at the garden. Thanks for joining me!

A medicinal herb garden.

The president of the community garden association by a low tunnel.

And last, but not least, some of the garden chickens.

Shared at Clever Chicks , Homestead Barnhop, Fat Tuesday, Backyard Farming, Tuesdays with a Twist, Wildcrafting Wednesday, Green Living Thursday, Thank Your Body, Simple Lives Thursday, Homeacre Hop, Fight Back Friday, From the Farm

The post A Sustainable Landscapes Tour appeared first on learningandyearning.

Welcome back to the Raising Healthy Families series - a fun and informative series designed to help you and your family thrive! Join us each Friday as we take a look at different ways to keep your family healthy and vibrant in a not-so-healthy world!

Written by Emily McClements of Live Renewed

As you push your child in a cart down the aisles of the grocery store, they are bombarded by brightly colored packages and more choices then they would ever know what to do with. The produce department is a full rainbow of fruits and veggies from around in the world, all looking like they’re at the peak of ripeness. And the cereal aisle is a rainbow full of sugar, artificial vitamins and minerals, and toxic dyes that are meant to attract your child’s attention.

So how do we teach our kids what real, seasonal, and local food actually is? Emily McClements of Live Renewed gives us easy ideas to help us teach our kids what’s on their plates, and where their food really comes from.

Note: This series is designed as a fun and informative compilation to help you and your family thrive. Each post is the opinion of that particular blogger, not necessarily mine or Positively Real Media’s.

The post Raising Healthy Families: Easy Ways to Teach Kids Where Food Comes From appeared first on learningandyearning.

The post Never Yet Was a Springtime When the Buds Forgot to Bloom appeared first on learningandyearning.

You can just tell that Angela England, the author of Backyard Farming on an Acre (More or Less) is a get-it-done type of person. On a half acre of land she and her husband raise fruit, vegetables, bees, chickens for meat and eggs, goats, and 5 kids of the human variety. They produce 40% of all the food that they eat in a year – quite impressive for such a small piece of land. That’s really encouraging for those of us who don’t own acreage. And in Backyard Farming on an Acre (More or Less), she shows us how we can do it, too. She doesn’t make it sound easy, but she makes it sound doable with lots of hard work and dedication.

Her 414 page book covers a myriad of homesteading topics beginning with why backyard farming is a such a good idea. Topics include finding property and building, gardening, animal husbandry, preserving and preparing the harvest, and some fun things like brewing wine, making goat’s milk soap, and spinning and dyeing fiber. Angela is an encourager and makes us feel as if we, too, can do it. I appreciate the Resource section in the back of the book. If there is a topic she covers that you wish to explore in further depth, she provides sources for that information.

About a fourth of the book is dedicated to gardening, the area that most interests me. I’m pretty opinionated when it comes to gardening, and Angela passes muster – for the most part. I’m a bit of a zealot for no-dig gardening, and Angela does dig and even uses a rototiller once a year, but she is also very diligent to build soil, so I’ll forgive her this one indiscretion.

I’m delighted that Angela has made a copy of  Backyard Farming on an Acre (More or Less)  available to one of my readers by entering the giveaway below, or you may purchase a copy here. The giveaway runs through 6/5/13 11:59 p.m.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Note: This giveaway is open to U.S. residents only.

Shared at: Fat Tuesday, Backyard Farming, EOA, Whole Foods Wednesday , HomeAcre Hop, Non-Fiction Book Love, Fight Back Friday, From the Farm, Clever Chicks 

The post Backyard Farming on an Acre Review & Giveaway appeared first on learningandyearning.