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Along with our healthy eating challenge this year to switch over to a more whole foods approach to our diet, we have discovered the benefits of making our own yogurt, drinking and making kombucha, recently started making kefir, and have been making our own bone broth.

I have always used chicken bouillon base to make our soups and to flavor our dishes.  I never really thought that I was feeding my children a chemical, sodium filled ingredient until I stopped.  I found an alternative to make my own chicken bouillon with nutritional yeast.  That was our first step to flavoring our soups.  We stopped buying  store chicken bouillon and then added this homemade version to flavor our soups.  It definitely had less of a salty flavor but we were “training” our tastebuds to a different way of eating.  I added more spices and we learned to enjoy this method.

My next step was to make my own broth.  People all over the world make this mineral rich nourishing broth, why would I not have done this in the first place??    I started looking at the benefits from it:

• Helps aid in digestion.  The gelatin extracted from the bones can help heal and protect the lining of the digestive tract, which means you absorb more nutrients from foods.
• Good for your bones. Calcium and other minerals in bone broth help repair bones.
• Can help joint pain.  Glucosamine, found in the fluid that lubricates our joints, is also in bone broth.
• Helps boost growth in nails and hair as it contains collagen and gelatin.

Then to look up the benefits of chicken flavored bouillon, I found one:

• convenient to use

That wasn’t enough for me to continue using it.  Convenience over health has taken a back seat for me.

I took whole chickens that I had bought from Aldis and put them in my roaster with water to fill it to the top.

I added some carrots, onions, celery, and garlic to help infuse the flavors.  I then set it on low and let it cook for hours, overnight was best.  The longer you let the  meat cook, the more tender your meat will be.

It just fell off the bones and then I separated the meat from the carcass and gave that part to the animals.  I then strained off the liquid from the vegetables and put it into containers for the freezer for a later time.

I use this to make as a base for any soup for our family.

At Thanksgiving time, after removing all the meat from our turkey, I put the carcass into the crockpot with water, onion, garlic, carrot, and celery and let it simmer on low for 8 hours.  I strained off the carcass and vegetables and used the broth for turkey stew later that week.

I don’t have to use any more spices to our soups.  Just some pepper for spiciness and we are good.  It takes getting used to because we are used to a salt laden broth, but as we continued to make it, we were able to use less and less salt in our soups.

Try it, it is inexpensive and good for you.  Why waste things that are free.  You can buy a whole chicken and use it for a few meals and then make some soup with the carcass.  Use up your resources.

 

 

FreeDigitalPhotos.net by Praisaeng

Need a great cold and cough remedy that is homemade??  Then look no further.  This is probably one of the most potent and strong tasting –cough suppressing–and throat healing natural remedies I have EVER taken.  Notice all the little pieces floating around inside??  That would be garlic and onion and some fiery hot cayenne pepper!!!  That is what you want to be taking when you are trying to ward off a sore throat or cough.

This is how you make it….

You will need 1 cup each of the following:

gingerroot, horseradish, onion, garlic, cayenne pepper

Here is a piece of gingerroot.  You can buy it at your local grocery store, look in Chinese stir fry fresh food area.  How to prepare it?  Use a vegetable peeler to peel off the outside of it.  Then chop into a few chunks.   Here is horseradish.  I got this from my close friend who grows it in her herb garden.  It is a root therefore grows underground. 

You prepare it the same way, by using a vegetable peeler and cut into chunks.Here is my garlic all minced and ready to throw into the food processor.

I peeled and chopped my onion into chunks and put into the food processor along with the rest of the ingredients minus the cayenne pepper.

Puree it until it is completely chopped up.

Divide it up evenly into 4 quart sized jars. 

Pour unpasteurized apple cider vinegar into the jars.

Yes, it will smell horrible.  Even when chopping those ingredients you can just FEEL it burning your nostrils:)

Here it is sitting in my jars.  I then looked over on my counter top and realized that I had forgotten to add the cayenne pepper!!!!  This stuff is still pretty strong and just knowing how strong it already without the cayenne pepper, it was just going to get stronger.

What I did, was to pour them out again into a large mixing bowl and added the 1 cup of cayenne pepper.  I was sure to buy the hot kind, no whimping out!!  I mixed it up and poured it back into the jars and closed them tight with a lid.  Put them in your pantry for about 3 weeks to sit.  About every 3 days, I picked up the jars and gave them a shake and swirl to activate all of the ingredients.

After the 3 weeks, I then used a mesh strainer and strained out all of the little particles.  I then poured the remaining mixture back into the jars and recapped them.  I keep them on my pantry shelf for storage.

While we moved down here, my children all came down with a hacking cough sickness.  A few of the children were brave enough to try the tincture.  It is extremely spicy and burning, I would not recommend it for young children.  My older ones, who took a tablespoon and drank it at the back of their throats could feel the effects immediately.  It literally burns going down your throat.  You can feel it working in your sinuses immediately.  Sure it tastes horrible, but if you think of cough medicine, it isn’t that tasty either.  Do it quick and it will work wonders.

I woke up a few days ago and was thinking that I might have become the last victim falling prey to the sickness. I immediately took 2 tablespoons and let it glide down my throat.  It burned for a little bit and I took another dose later in the afternoon but I did not get any more sick.

Before learning about natural remedies in my life, I would have never blinked at the thought of NOT buying cough medicine when I or the children were sick.  Then as I realized that the medicine did not “cure” the sickness I stopped getting it.  Colds and sickness are a natural part of life, we are going to be exposed to germs and the more we are the more our bodies will build up immunities to them.  We do our best to try and train the children to wash their hands before eating, being careful to use hand cleaner after getting into the van from shopping, and trying to just keep their fingers away from their eyes, nose, and mouths–sometimes that is impossible for little ones!!!

That has been the natural “cure” in our life.  But we are living in a germ filled world and we ARE going to be occasionally exposed to sickness.  The best way for  help is prevention.  We try to eat a healthy diet, get exercise, fresh air, and drink lots of water to help flush away bad bacteria.  But for the occasionally sickness I would almost always turn to some natural healing remedy.  This is FULL of everything natural and “normal”  just by taking a spoonful can help you feel the effects instantly.  I recommend making it and having it on hand for the coming “sickness” months.