Additive Free Seasoning Blends

I'm always looking for ways to get the MSG, sand (silicon dioxide), and other unnecessary additives out of my seasonings. Click below to read an article I found on Natural News with some great recipes to create your own blends for popular seasonings like taco seasoning and beef bullion.

Article Link

Sweet Potatoes

Here's a link to an article I found extolling the virtues of the humble sweet potato.  Sweet potatoes are easy to grow, and a great calorie crop.  I've even seen them growing happily in those 5 gallon buckets that you find in the home improvement stores!

Growing
So far as growing them is concerned, now is probably too late in the season to try.  They need about 100 no-frost days to grow, but as soon as the danger of frost is over, you can sow them directly into your beds.  What's more, you can grow them again in late summer for a fall harvest.  If you're starting with a full size sweet potato that you've allowed to vine out (and good luck with that by the way if your potatoes have been treated with a bud preventer), don't just plunk the whole thing into the ground.  Nip off each vine with a chunk of the potato still attached, and plant each separately.  You'll get a bigger harvest that way.  You can use cuttings of the vine as well, but I admit, I have not tested this method yet.  The vines tend to be amazingly prolific, and will creep over your whole garden bed if you let them, so keep an eye on them.  Redirect as necessary.  I wouldn't get too carried away with fertilizer, and never use a nitrogen based commerical fertilizer.  Tubers in general often do better when you don't feed them too much.  Otherwise, you get lots of pretty leaf growth, and very little tuber.  They are not picky about soil, but, as usual with annuals, well-draining is preferred.  If you've got nothing but gumbo, then you'd better break it up or mix in some compost.  Root choker, that stuff is.  Finally, since the actual sweet potato tubers will grow out underneath the base plant, make sure your garden bed is nice and deep to allow lots of grow room.

Harvest & Storage
After about 4 months or so, you can harvest them!  Pull up the plant gently, and you'll see up to a handful of yummy sweet potatoes growing under the base.  Only they're not so yummy just yet.  Sweet potatoes don't quite live up to the "sweet" in their name fresh out of the ground, though they won't taste gross either.  If you want the sweetness and texture that you get out of the store bought versions, then you have to cure them.  You do this by keeping them in a warm, humid place for about a week.  If you've got warm, but not humid (Texoma, anyone?), then rig something up with row cover fabric, or anything else that will hold humidity.  The ideal temperature for this will be about 80-85 degrees.  After that, you can store them in a dark, cool spot (not your fridge, that's too cool), and they'll usually keep for at least two weeks minimum.  The ideal storage temperature is about 55 degrees.  The extent to which your sweet potatoes stay fresh is directly related to how closely you reach that temperature.  Here's a link I found with additional information on curing and storing sweet potatoes.

After that, you can enjoy your super healthy sweet potatoes.  Happy gardening!

Stay in the pink with greens

Ok, after you quit rolling your eyes over the title of this post, let’s talk about greens. We all know about spinach greens and collard greens, but what about all those greens we grow that many of us never think about. Did you know that radish, red beet and turnip greens are all edible? They’re not only edible, they’re very nutritious and very tasty! Want to hear the best part? They grow great in NE Texas in the fall! I struggle to get some things to grow in my garden, but I have never planted a batch of radishes that disappointed me. They go from seed to harvest in only a few weeks and can be a nutritious part of a meal. I have eaten radishes as long as I can remember, but it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I realized you could eat the greens. The more reading I did on the subject, the more I came to realize that not only can you eat the greens, but they are actually healthier for you than the already healthy root. ‘Ok, good for me’, I thought, ‘so how about the turnips I planted this year? Their tops are beautiful. Can I eat those too’? Absolutely! Radish and turnip greens have an abundant supply of calcium, and vitamins A and C. They also contain fiber, iron, and magnesium. Like most vegetables, they’re healthy to eat. I read one account that said the greens are up to six times more nutritious than the actual root. That’s saying something, because the roots are pretty good!

I washed the radish roots up, diced them, and added them to my salad. They had a subtle peppery taste that the kids and I enjoyed. (My husband won’t touch a leafy green of any kind with a ten foot pole, so he didn’t get to join in our taste test). It seems that many people who enjoy the greens from the root vegetables cook them like you would spinach. They sauté them in butter or a little bit of oil. I have never eaten cooked spinach (more eye rolling, anyone?) but love it raw, so I can’t compare the taste for you. I may have mentioned in an earlier post the delight we took in eating the red beet greens. Once again, we washed them up and added them raw to our salad.

So, just what do all these vitamins and other nutrients mean as far as your health goes? I love this quote I found online: A Chinese proverb says, "Eating pungent radish and drinking hot tea, let the starved doctors beg on their knees". I want to give credit to the web site, so follow this link to a very good overall nutrition page:  http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/radish.html    Aside from the old Chinese proverb, it seems that beets, radishes and turnips – both the root and the greens - are good anti-toxins and cleansers. They can aid in digestion and aid the liver, kidney and urinary tract. Some researchers believe they have anti-carcinogenic properties, and they can help you lose weight. There are many other purported health benefits. Just do a little research and see what you can find.

Enough of my prattling on.  Eat your greens and stay in the pink!