Announcing the Winner for Cultures for Health!
I apologize for the delay in announcing the winner to this contest; I had intended to do so last Wednesday but our modem broke, and we just got it fixed; which left me sans internet for several days. But, without further delay:
Congratulations to Kelly Busby! You are the winner of 3 amazing cultures from Cultures for Health! You will be contacted soon with details on how to obtain your prize!
Thanks to everyone else who participated in the contest!
Matsoni: The Counterculteral Yogurt
Last week, as you may know, we were running the Cultures for Health giveaway for 3 starter cultures of your choice! In honor of my giveaway, I wanted to reflect on why investing in a starter culture is an easy, no-fuss way to add more nutrition and less cost to your life!
Matsoni is what I call a “counterculture” because it doesn’t need to be incubated in order to culture, as most traditional yogurts do. Although, to be fair to history and regionality, it seems to me that most of the yogurts that need to be “incubated” to remain at a constant temp of about 90-100 degrees–these yogurts actually hail from the parts of the world that have temperatures that are fairly constantly in that range! All that’s to say that I don’t think Nature intended for much fancy equipment in order to culture milk.
The Matsoni is perfectly happy at around 70 degrees to culture within 12-24 hours. I made my first batch this week and here is what I love about it:
1) No need to incubate (already explained above!) so no expensive equipment or hassle required. Just add the starter, and do nothing until about 12 hours later when it’s ready!
2) You can transform regular pastuerized store-bought milk into an enzyme-rich treat!I actually cultured a quart of half & half and got a really creamy, mild, delicious and thick yogurt! If you strain this just a little bit, you end up with delicious, probiotic-rich cream cheese (raw cheesecake anyone? Or perhaps a smoked salmon-cream cheese roll up?)
3) It saves money! Organic yogurt can cost up to $5.00 per quart. You can buy an entire half-gallon of organic milk for about the much, which means you can make your own for half the price. By adding your culture week after week you can eventually pay for the price of the culture with the savings.
4) Did I mention it was easy? College students could keep this going in their dorm (bootleg a quart or two of whole milk from the cafeteria and culture it in your dorm room!!!), busy moms can quickly and easily make a batch in about 2 minutes and forget about it until the next day. No heating milk, cooling it to just the right temperature, then configuring some way to keep it warm, etc. No adding skim milk powder or gelatin to thicken it, because it thickens right up (especially when you add cream or half & half).
5) The taste and texture are amazing, even my husband liked it! This is reason enough to stick with Matsoni. I’ve tried kefir, fil mjolk, and regular yogurt and the taste is just too “off” for my husband. I recently make the Indian cucumber yogurt dip called raitaand my husband raved about it. My kids love the Matsoni mixed with fruit sauce (just boiled down blueberries or peaches; no sugar added) for a fun and easy “fruit on the bottom” breakfast. The texture (especially when using half and half) is thick and pudding-like and once the culture is set (about 12-18 hours for me) there was absolutely no “runniness” to it.
If you missed my recent contest to win your own yogurt culture, there’s good news. Thursday, September 17th I’ll be announcing the winner for the contest along with a special coupon code for discounts at Cultures for Health. This offer is limited, so check in when I announce the winner so you can get the deal!
This is what Works for Me when it comes to Organic & Thrifty Real Food!
Welcome to Organic and Thrifty!
Welcome to the new and improved Organic & Thrifty. Well, I hope it’s improved. At this point there are still some minor tweaks to do, like setting up a better way of letting you, dear reader, subscribe to feeds or get daily e-mail updates. My efforts at doing this myself have turned out not-so-good, so if any of you have feedback, please let me know!
This new site continues to be a work-in-progress so please pardon our “dust” so to speak!
In the meantime, if you’re a twitter user, please consider following me so that you can receive post updates via Twitter. Or just check back often; there’s nothing wrong with that!
Thank you so much for your support of Organic and Thrifty!
Sincerely,
Carrie and the Organic & Thrifty team
Organic and Thrifty Under Construction
Welcome to Organic and Thrifty! This particular sight is nearing the end of its construction phase. We’re basically picking out curtains and paint colors and decluttering from our move. Feel free to browse the content; it’s all here. We’re still sleeping over at our old blogspot location, but in the next few days we should be camping out on our new terrain!
So if you want new posts, you’ll need to head over to to my blogspot site to get the latest and I’ll keep you posted as to when we go “live” over here!
Thank you so much for visiting!
Introducing the Fridge & Pantry Cleanout Challenge!
Read the rest of this entry »
Weight-Loss Wednesday (and other stuff)
Labor day weekend really threw me off and I just realized that Wednesday is already upon us! We had a great labor day making 72 quarts of homemade salsa with our good friends! We bought as much of the ingredients locally as we could find, which was fun. We literally picked some of the produce on the farm and so it was fun to watch it go from the bush to the stock pot to the canning jar! I also learned a thing or two about canning that I didn’t know before! I’m still kicking myself for not bringing my camera and taking pictures!
In other news, I’ve been meaning to share more of my favorite weight-loss (or weight maintainance, rather) inspriations and I’ve got to tell you about my absolute favorite work-out.
First of all, a little background on me: While I grew up participating in athletics (cross-country, basketball, and tennis in high school) I don’t consider myself extremely athletic now. I try to walk several times a week, but that’s about it. I am extremely limited in what I can do with two young children. Pushing the double jogger is my best bet, although I usually don’t have unlimited time to walk nor do I always have cooperative weather. Even though my husband’s employer is a major athletic footwear and apparell company, (and thus offers state-of-the art gym facilities to employees at a decent price) I still have trouble joining a gym and committing to such a schedule. Time and childcare become my hindrances with every exercise option I investigate.
Videos are OK….but I have a hard time learning from a video. I don’t like to have the TV on anyway when the kids are awake nor do I want to monopolize it from my husband when they are asleep.
SOOO, what is my solution? Well, I found a book that I absolutely love about a program called T-Tapp. The website is very informative and that’s where I first learned about the program. Actually, another blogger several years back mentioned the program and linked over to it. There are TONS of testimonials from real people like this one you must read!
The Gist of it:
T-Tapp is a program started by Teresa Tapp, a rehabilitative theraptist. The book is very informative about the physiology of exercise and talks about how to maximize fat burning, detox, and eat for optimum health and fitness. It’s a very wholistic, rehabilitative exercise program ideal for those who suffer from fatigue or are recovering from an injury. It’s also great for anyone who wants to lose fat and inches and who wants a really toned body!
The Pros:
When you do this program, you will see and feel results FAST. You will drop pant sizes and you will just feel your body getting more toned. You will also feel really good because your muscles are working efficiently and are supporting your organs optimally for elimination and detox. The program also works your lymphatic system which flushes out toxins and other things that can make you sick. It’s such an informative program; I feel like I learned so much about how the body gains and loses weight and it makes so much sense! You also don’t need any equipment or even much time or space to do her workout. In her Fit and Fabulous in Fifteen Minutes program, you really can do an intense workout in about 15 minutes (once you understand how to do all of the exercises).
Her book is also very thorough in explaining how to do the exercises (like I said above, I learn physical movements best by reading about them! YMMV, of course!) You can also order DVDs that teach the movements and a plethora of other resources from the T-Tapp website. She also gives very sound nutritional advise that doesn’t contradict anything from the Traditional Foods movement, other than the fact that she encourages people to “cheat” every third day and just eat whatever they want.
The Cons
This workout takes some intense study for a period of time while you learn the exercises. The movements must be done with precision or they are not as effective and can even be harmful. Great care must be undertaken in performing the exercises. Sometimes the long explanations were frustrating to me, but in the end I appreciated knowing how to do all the exercises absolutely correctly!
Overall, I highly recommend this book. I began this program a little over a year ago to lose baby weight for my sister’s wedding and I’m still doing in today. I am more flexible than ever and I feel really good about myself after 30 years and 2 c-sections! Of course, there’s always room to improve…
Check it out:
Technical Difficulties
Well, my “free ride” has come to an end. In the spirit of being “thrifty”, we have been using “free wireless” workgroups that we could access from home. Lately, we haven’t been able to log on, so I haven’t been able to update posts, respond to comments, or read all of your amazing blogs! I’m calling our local internet provider (sigh) this week in order to “take the plunge” and buy internet. So, as soon as I’m hooked up to the comcast juggernaught, I’ll be back in business.
If you would like to subscribe to this blog (and thus receive an e-mail when I’m back up and running) feel free to click the link at the right. I think it works….
Hopefully I’ll be back up and running in a few days. I guess I’ll be “fasting” from the internet through the end of Dormition *wink*!
Weight Loss Wednesday: Eat Fat Lose Fat
This might be a bit ambitious, but I’m planning on doing a weekly review of diet books/fads/etc. that have to do with weight loss. I am always reading the latest weight loss books out of curiousity and have found that there’s a lot of information floating around in my head to share! I’m going to post the reviews in a simple format of summary, pros, cons, and a recipe that is inspired by the book.
Book: Eat Fat, Lose Fat by Mary Enig and Sally Fallon
Summary: This is a whole-foods based approach to weight loss which outlines a high-fat (mostly from coconut oil) diet with limits on grains and nuts. It includes lots of helpful information and reviews of other diet plans, and includes shopping lists and menu plans. It includes three phases, “Quick and Easy Weight Loss”, “Health Recovery” and “Everyday Gourmet”. Calorie counts are also included on the weight loss plan. There are many recipes as well.
Pros:
- Includes sound scientific and medical information to debunk the “all fat is bad” myth.
- Recipes range from very simple to more “exotic”, but the range of ingredients remains typical to meats, eggs, dairy, and in-season vegetables.
- A “7-day” checklist is provided to help you prepare to start the diet, guiding you through the “baby steps” necessary to begin!
- Minimal “supplements” are required for the weight loss plan, except for a good quality cod liver oil. There are some recommended superfoods for health recovery.
- Health recovery has a whole catalogue of ailments and gives specifics in how to use the diet to heal various chronic illnesses and conditions.
- No “faddy” products need to be purchased in order to do the diet (like pills, bars, shakes, or pre-packaged foods)
- There is a really helpful list of ways to use coconut oil for external purposes in the back of the book.
- The book includes a wonderful “resources” section for recommended brands of foodstuffs to purchase that are diet-friendly.
- The book offers alternatives for dairy-allergic people.
Cons:
- This diet takes a lot of commitment to changing your lifestyle. You need to be willing to do a “pantry purge”. This is not necessarily a con, but for some it could be!
- Diet would be very expensive if you aren’t able to make your food from scratch.
- This plan takes a lot of work. (Again, not a bad thing, just a warning. I think it’s very doable if you have time to prepare fresh meals)
- Unlike some diet approaches, this diet discourages snacking between meals. This might put you off at first, but actually I’ve found this method to be effective for me.
- The authors don’t encourage drinking much water to aid in weight loss. Instead, they limit liquid consumption to 3 glasses of raw milk per day as well as 2-3 glasses of a lacto-fermented beverage. Both of these are very good, but I do feel that drinking water (with a little sea salt added) is a great way to aid in detoxing.
Overall recommendation: Yes!!! This is a book I refer to again and again for information, recipes, and resources! One of my favorite recipes is for the “coconut candies”. These are little melt-in-your-mouth ice cube snacks that are low-carb and a great way to get coconut oil down. It is recommended that 1 cube be eaten about 20 minutes before a meal to help the body’s metabolism and prevent overeating. Here is my version, and I’ve tweaked this a lot. I think it’s my best and simplest ever!
Coconut Candies
1.5 cups coconut oil
3/4 cup of almond butter
1 tsp cocoa powder
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
6 drops of stevia concentrate, or to taste
Combine all ingredients in a food processor or melt gently in a saucepan. Pour into an ice cub tray and freeze for about 20 min. This makes 18 candies (about a week’s supply on the diet).
And the Winner Is…..
Congratulations Erica Gott! You hit the nail on the head.
Everyone else who commented did a great job and came very close; but Erica gets 100%!!.
#1. Even though I don’t often buy tropical fruits, I will be tempted with a pineapple from time to time, and pineapple vinegar is a great way to utilize the leftover skin and core!
#2.What better way to use pineapple vinegar than cortido!?!
#3. This was a tricky one. It’s coconut kefir. The purple “blob” is my kefir grain, which was dyed purple after living in my grape juice for a while!
#4. Everyone came really close on this one. These were fermented sweet potatoes. I attempted these for my baby Jonathan, but he didn’t particularly like them. Oh well.
#5. This last one was clabbered raw milk , which can be used to make whey and cream cheese.
Great job, and thank you to all who participated! I plan to do more fun things like this in the future, so please stay tuned!!!!
