Olive Leaf Tea

Olive Leaf Tea is a beverage that has been around in Greece for over 5,000 years. I was introduced to Olive Leaf Tea through the Low Histamine Chef (now at a new website, HealingHistamine). This gal has so much information about mast cell disorders and histamine intolerance - and foods and supplements that can affect them, with references - that it's a gold mine of information.

Olive leaf tea (made from leaves from the variety Olea europaea L.) contains certain flavonoids - these are organic compounds that occur in plants, and which can have many beneficial properties we can enjoy. They're often known for the anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that some of them possess. Olive Leaf Extract: the Mediterranean Healing Herb mentions daily average flavonoid consumption in the USA is typically 250-275 mg.  If you eat the amount of daily recommended fruits and veggies, though, it should be closer to 1000 mg flavonoids.

Olive leaf tea is one way I'm trying to increase my own flavonoid consumption as many fruits and veggies are off limits to me.

Looks like tea, eh?

Homemade electrolyte solution

An electrolyte solution, yeaaa!  I have never been able to find an electrolyte solution free from my allergens, so this is the result of a little research on nutrients needed in electrolyte solutions and some taste testing.

As this is an electrolyte solution of my own design, I would be wary of using this in an emergency situation where you need a more precise and verified balance of electrolytes, but I'll put in the specifics of what I've found, so you can see if it works for you, eh? If I'm really dehydrated, I have it as is, but more often, I dilute it more and have it instead of water. It seems to help me a little better than plain water does.

Melon Smoothies

As it's the season for melons, we've been getting a lot of them at the store. However, as I think I've mentioned before, I dislike the mouth feel of melons intensely. The taste never really does it for me, either.

However, since I made that last cantaloupe smoothie, I've been experimenting, and I'm in love with the melon smoothie, wow. Just awesome.

Seriously, LOVE this.

Cantaloupe smoothie - dairy free

OMG - I loved this so much!

Dairy free Cantaloupe smoothie

Can't even express the love for this

Lavender Lemonade

Lavender Lemonade, from UseRealButter.com 

Our lavender, hiding among the allyssum

Rice-milk frozen deserts

So after making rice milk for my son, and the one day every couple weeks that my daughter can have it, my children almost immediately decided that they didn't want to drink it ever again. Or at least not until it went bad and I'd have to make it again. So I've been trying to think of ways I can use this, and we came up with two a couple days ago: frozen strawberry rice-milk and Cantaloupe rice-milk smoothies, yeaaaa!

Strawberry pastel prettiness

Food success and failure, all in one

Today I decided to try to make veggie burgers for the first time.

I've been making Pecan Milk for my son, where you soak pecans for a day or two in about 4 times as much water, then blend it until smooth in a blender.

Soaking pecans look rather nasty, don't they?

Rice Milk

My son can have rice milk periodically, so today I'm making up a batch. Lundberg rice, so it's as gluten free as I can get it. I'm using a recipe from the Vegan Reader. It's worked well in the past, and I like the simplicity of the recipe.

Isn't it so pretty and white?

Watermelon Rind

I've heard of pickled watermelon rind, that Southern specialty, but I never realized how many different ways you could use watermelon rind, or even what it actually is.

I suppose I always thought it was the part of the watermelon that was left over, but I was wrong. It's the pale green part of the watermelon, in-between the outer skin and the pink inner flesh. One has to cut off the outer, dark-green skin, after you've eaten the pink skin, and that will leave you with the rind to use in recipes.

How-to: Making Herbal Tea

Growing an herb garden is, IMO, one of the best things you can do for yourself in terms of adding a little flavor to your food and drink that you know is safe and allergen free. An unexpected benefit of having numerous fresh herbs is the ability to make some lovely herbal teas.

Now I'll be honest, I'm an herbal tea newbie. This is just not something I've drunk much of, so I don't have any particular expectations. However, I was surprised at not only how easy it is to make herbal tea, but how many herbs can be used in it, including many herbs typically found in even the smallest herb garden.

I'll mention specific herbs to use at the end of this post, but for right now, here's the basics of herbal tea making.

Citrus-ade

Time: 2-10 min, depending on amount

Ingredients
Fresh citrus - lemons, limes, oranges. Grapefruit might work, but it'd be iffier
Water 
A sweetener of some sort - I've used sugar in the past, when I could have it, but honey, date sugar, rice syrup, coconut sugar, maple syrup or sugar, yacon syrup - they'd all work, with slightly different flavors. Just remember that most of these have processing, which can introduce cc from certain allergens.For the those who haven't found a safe sweetener yet, you might want to try and grow your own stevia. Take the leaves, dry and crumble them up, and they work great! Or steep fresh leaves in hot water, let it cool, and then use that water for this recipe.

Pecan milk

Time: 8 hours 10 min
(8 hours soaking/ 10 min prep) Or, if you're like me, 40 hours, since I forgot I was doing this for over a day. Oops.

Ingredients
1 1/4 cup raw pecans, chopped
4 cups water
1/2 tsp. sea salt
agave syrup to taste (optional)