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Homesteading Goals 2018
Last year around this time, I broke my rule of ‘don’t tell people your goals’ and published a blog post about three things I was hoping to accomplish around our little homestead through the year. I thought that this might be an interesting time to take stock of the situation: review what actually happened in each of these three areas last year and think about what the goals are for the next year. February will mark two years since we embarked on this weird little adventure, so this whole homesteading/self-sufficiency thing is still fairly new to me. I am genuinely curious as to what my family will manage to accomplish…
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GEMS Nutrition
We love food. I have written before about how, when you start doing any type of homesteading, you become basically food-obsessed. I think many people in the holistic health industry find themselves in this position, learning more about the body means learning more about how to feed it for optimum performance. GEMS Nutrition is a course that has been percolating in my mind for a long time. I thought it was done nearly two years ago, then found out to my chagrin when I sent the files to a student, that I had somehow saved over some of the files incorrectly. As we had just moved to the rainforest all…
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Food Obsessed Homesteading
It is impossible to homestead in any way without becoming kind of obsessive about food. Though I have always been a self-proclaimed nutrition-geek and chef, my day now revolves around food as never before. First thing in the morning, before I even put on the coffee (now that’s love!) there are animals to be fed and watered. And in the evening, everyone needs to be fed again. The scraps go into the compost which the chickens are happily picking through and some tasty morsels get saved out for the goats who daintily nibble the best bits before dropping the rest on the ground and peeing on it. The plants need…
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GF Sourdough Bread with Kombucha Starter
Because warm homemade bread is basically love in carbohydrate form. Two of my ‘kitchen’ goals for our little homestead this year were, 1) to keep my kombucha continuously brewing, and 2) to bake bread every week. We are gluten-free as my youngest son has some issues with digesting it and my daughter is allergic to eggs. This combination, added to the fact that we live in a village in the jungle where certain trendy luxuries (ie: GF cookies, bread and pizza) have never been heard of, means that if we are going to have treats, I pretty much have to make them myself. I was utterly delighted when I stumbled…
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How to Make Tamales – Tico Traditions
Tamales are traditional Costa Rican cuisine. While the ingredients are simple, they are time consuming to make. They remind me of my Ukrainian family making perogies, women working together in an assembly line to make hundreds for a special event or holiday. Last Friday we were invited to join a Tico family to make tamales and, while it was great to learn how to make this local staple, the best part was that feeling of community. A kitchen full of people talking, laughing and working together. I have seen recipes for tamales online and in books, but learning from a matriarch is different. Family recipes are passed down in approximations.…
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Wandering Herbalist: Costa Rica Fruits
I have a confession to make that usually puzzles my clients and students who know me to be a food “expert”: I don’t usually eat fruit. It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s that, for some reason that I have never fully understood, my body just doesn’t seem to metabolize fructose very well. To put it bluntly; fruit makes me fat. But, it is impossible for a self professed food fiend to travel to a new country learning about plants and food and not eat what grows locally! So, I eat it all. And I’ve gained weight, but that’s beside the point! One thing that I really enjoy about…
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Gluten-Free Pizza Recipe
Warning: This recipe is not going to be perfect pizza dough. You could never toss it up into the air while singing Italian folk songs. It is, however, fairly tasty and doesn’t fall apart instantly once it’s cooked, which is a step ahead of many gluten-free crust recipes. 4 cups brown rice flour 2 cups corn flour ½ cup arrowroot starch 3 tbsp cane sugar 1 tbsp dry yeast 1 tsp salt 3 cups warm water 1 egg 2 tbsp olive oil We live in the middle of nowhere and gluten free flour blends are hard to come by (and really expensive). I throw 4 cups of brown rice in…
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Clueless Attempts at Permaculture: 6 months and Drowning
Remember last time I wrote one of these and it seemed vaguely optimistic? Forget all that. We are currently in the depths of the rainy season. The good news about this is that, as it pours for hours every day, nothing needs additional watering. Here are the downsides: the soil just washes away and if you don’t catch it quickly and remedy the situation, it can leave delicate roots exposed. Heat-loving plants like tomatoes and peppers get moldy and rot, and weeds grow incredibly quickly. Now combine that with the fact that my free-ranging chickens have stripped the leaves off of everything they can reach and the leaf-cutter ants on…
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Wandering Herbalist: Mamon (Rambutan)
Medicinal plants, fruit: Mamon The fruit stacked high on the table at the market looks almost alien. Spiky, with little barbs radiating outward, bright red and about the size of a ping-pong ball; here in Costa Rica, this fruit is known as mammon, though in Asia it is better known as rambutan. Don’t be fooled by its’ strange appearance – it is delicious. And at this time of year when it is in season, it is ridiculously cheap and can be found everywhere. There was a lady selling bags on the side of the highway out of the back of her truck today; one kilo for one mil colones (just…
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Clueless attempts at Permaculture: 3.5 months
The good news is: food is actually growing. The half-dozen pots of lettuce I had planted as we were getting settled are large and we are consistently pilfering leaves for salads. We’ve had our first little crop of radishes and celery, green onions and herbs are in abundance. Almost every tiny bit of space that could be eked out of what used to be our driveway has been put to good use. Combined with our new little property (see below), this feels like a tremendous amount of plants for me. The thing is, while I have always loved to garden and have always had one, up to now it has…
