Spring Garden in New England

Ingredients for the first salad of Spring:
Claytonia,
Shredded Red Sauerkraut and
Horseradish Condiment made with
homemade herbal kombucha vinegar


Claytonia in the Over-winter cold frame


This week begins the section on “From The Garden”. The snow is almost gone, still a few patches in the woods and in the shade. We’ve had our first salad consisting of Claytonia also known as Miner’s Lettuce.



This week’s video First Spring Salad, shows a thick row of Claytonia/Miner’s Lettuce grown in the over-winter cold frame. It germinates easily in the fall and is thick by March. We start thinning it out by cutting some leaves and using them for salad. I mixed some Horseradish Condiment and Shredded Red Sauerkraut into the salad and topped it off with Olive Oil. I love the spring because we get that first burst of enzymes from the garden! The salad was fresh and potent and full of flavor!



There is also a page, Spring Garden showing photos of the new greens already up in our New England garden.



Future pages will include descriptive photos and videos on the growth cycles of Walking Onions and Green Garlic which are very easy to grow and require minimal work.

The First Signs of Spring

Hi All,

Hope you are getting glimpses of Spring as the snow recedes. Today we started raking the leaves off the beds and I saw shoots from my Walking Onion beds, Green Garlic Beds, and Horseradish Beds.

We’ve also overwintered some rutabagas by leaving them in the ground in the hopes of getting salad greens from them in early Spring. There are little nubs of green! In our overwinter cold frame we have a thick crop of Miner’s Lettuce, a goodly amount of Mache’ and some small Swiss Chard plants. These were all planted last fall. The Miner’s Lettuce needs some thinning so we will have our first salad this week!

Can’t wait to ingest these potent greens!

I finally finished up 2 new videos for my video course site:
Kombucha Cultures and Fruit Infused Water Kefir. Kombucha Cultures is a short video contrasting a young, smooth culture with a mature, gnarly culture.

Fruit Infused Water Kefir is about turning your extra finished water kefir into a fruit drink using seasonal fresh fruit. These drinks quench thirsts in the heat of summer. They are delicate-tasting and give us those great probiotics and enzymes that keep us running smoothly.

These videos expand the Kombucha and Water Kefir section. Another Kombucha video on Kombucha Marinades for meat and fish is in the works.

Hope the videos are helpful.
Best,
sharon

Medicinal Kombucha

While experimenting with natural remedies I found an excellent concoction that breaks up congestion. It uses Kombucha Tea or Kombucha Vinegar as a base with the addition of Lemon, Horseradish Root and Ginger Root. You can download the recipe and view my video on how to make it here:
Medicinal Kombucha

Kombucha Tea

Meat Loaf free of gluten, dairy, eggs

Check out my recipe and video for Meat Loaf that is free of gluten, dairy, and eggs. It's nice and light and deeply flavorful. Meat Loaf Recipe & Video

New Video on Kombucha Tea!

I have a new video on my Ecourse site about how to make
Herbal Kombucha Tea, that tasty, potent tonic full of probiotics and enzymes.
Learn to make it yourself for pennies a batch.
Click Here to take a look!

Kombucha Tea



Purchase Kombucha Cultures from this excellent company!

Restaurant Review: Nevaeh Cuisine

Recently I had the pleasure of having dinner at an amazing little café/bistro in Pleasantville, N.Y. called Nevaeh, (that’s Heaven backwards) I found this excellent place through the Triumph Dining Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide. I was on my way to vendor at a conference and we were ready for dinner after the first leg of our trip.

I’ve had so many problems dining out that I mostly avoid it. Dining at Nevaeh was a completely different experience. Most of the dishes were gluten-free as well as dairy free. Everything was already cooked and stored in refrigerated cases and we got to look and taste before we ordered. These two fabulous chefs, knew their ingredients hands down and when I mentioned multiple food allergies they were able to instantly give me a run down of what I could eat.

The food was very high caliber, in my humble opinion, fine-dining quality! The seasonings were well-balanced without the high amount of salt that is often found in restaurant food. We also bought some food “to go” to supplement us through the weekend, which worked really well.

How fortunate for us that we were able to be served fine-dining quality food at a relaxed, everyday establishment. If you’re traveling through Westchester County it would be well worth your while to check out this wonderful gluten-free oasis.

Nevaeh Cuisine
146 Bedford Road
Pleasantville, NY 10570
www.Nevaehcuisine.com

My Student's Success!

I received this photo from one of my very industrious students. This photo was taken after a particularly complex cooking/baking session.



Back row from left:
Water Kefir, Kombucha Tea, Red Cabbage Sauerkraut with her new airlock jars, fermented tomato pepper salsa (I have to get that recipe from her.)

Front row from left:
Gluten-free sourdough pancakes, Mock rye gluten-free miniloaves and Buckwheat Buns.

This photo makes me just smile!