Modern Wife

  • Peppermint Stick Ice Cream

    Peppermint Stick Ice Cream

    Sure it’s cold outside, but here in our house we turn our leftover candy cane into…

    Peppermint Stick Ice Cream
    From The Ciao Bella Book of Gelato and Sorbetto: Bold, Fresh Flavors to Make at Home:

    Ingredients:
    2 cups raw organic whole milk
    1 cup raw organic heavy cream
    4 large organic egg yolks
    3/4 cup organic sugar, separated
    1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
    candy cane, crushed

    Pour milk and cream in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally so a skin doesn’t form until tiny bubbles form around the edge and the mixture reaches 170°F.

    In the meantime, whisk egg yolks until smooth. Slowly whisk in 1/2 cup sugar until it becomes a thick pale yellow paste. Slowly pour in the hot milk mixture while whisking continuously. This is important: The milk should not be poured into the egg mixture quickly or you will get scrambled eggs.

    Return the custard to the saucepan and cook over low heat. Stir frequently with a wooden spoon until the custard is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. Temperature of the custard should reach 185°F. Do not allow the custard to boil.

    Pour the custard through a fine mesh strainer into a clean bowl and let it cool to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

    Prepare ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Stir the peppermint extract into the custard before pouring into the ice cream maker. Churn until thickened. Add crushed candy cane to the churning concoction. When the ice cream has churned into a soft serve consistency and just before it overflows out of the ice cream maker, turn the machine off. Transfer to an airtight container and freeze until firm.

    Serve with larger chunks of peppermint candy topping.

    It’s like Christmas morning all over again.

  • Sugar Skulls Video

    Sugar Skulls Video

    Happy Halloween and El Dia de los Muertos!

    Here is a short video of me and my Halloween baby making sugar skulls.

  • Sprouts Plus Vietnamese Noodle Bowl Recipe

    Sprouts Plus Vietnamese Noodle Bowl Recipe

    I sprout. Do you sprout?

    I just felt like it one morning. I got out a couple of quart mason jars and put in a tablespoon each of alfalfa and mung beans. Poured it full of water, a teaspoon each of food-grade hydrogen peroxide and let it sit for 15 minutes.

    I trapped a mesh net (I save the mesh net packaging my lemons come in) between the mouth of the jar and the band – see my blog entry on alfalfa sprouts. Pour the water out, fill it back up again and let it soak in water for 8 to 12 hours in a dark place.

    Pour the water out, rinse, pour the water out, let it sit. Repeat everyday. Once the sprouts are a good size they are ready to sit in a sunny place to grow some greens.

    Eat!

    Vietnamese Shrimp Noodle Bowl

    This is my version of the Vietnamese Shrimp Noodle Bowl. The traditional way to do it involves fish sauce which I don’t have, and pickled carrots, which is not well-liked by my family. So here goes.

    Ingredients:
    1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined
    1 package (8oz) vermicelli (I have the Explore Asian Jasmine Brown Rice Vermicelli)
    1 tablespoon organic virgin coconut oil
    1 tablespoon Bragg’s amino acid (I may skip this next time. It tends to overpower all flavor.)
    1 teaspoon organic coconut palm sugar (I bought this thinking it would be a good sweetener but found out it was harvested using unsustainable practices.)

    From our local organic farmstand:
    leafy greens
    cut carrots
    cut cucumber

    mint from our backyard
    mung bean sprouts grown right in our kitchen

    Directions:
    Heat coconut oil in a large skillet over medium. Add the shrimp and cook until pink. Flavor with Braggs and sugar. Cook until sauce is almost cooked off.

    Boil water in a medium saucepan. Add vermicelli and cook for 5 minutes. Drain and wash with cold water.

    Arrange leafy greens, carrots, cucumber, mint, mung bean sprouts and cooked vermicelli on the plate. Top the vermicelli with shrimp. We skipped the syrupy sauce. The shrimp is plenty flavorful on the noodles.

    This is one way we sprout. How do you sprout?

  • Build a Hulda Clark Zapper

    Build a Hulda Clark Zapper

    My daughter learned how to build a Hulda Clark Zapper using a no-solder breadboard kit when she was 7 years old.

    The Hulda Clark Zapper has been such an indispensable part of our life. My husband and I have been zapping since 1997. Our daughter doesn’t know life without it. Even our pets get the benefits of zapping.

    The use of frequency for therapeutic purposes has been around for a very long time. Nikola Tesla began the study of diathermy back in the early 1900s. Georges Lakhovsky, Royal Rife, and a number of scientists, including Hulda Clark, followed in his footsteps to further this research. Some even say that the ancient Baghdad Batteries and the Ark of the Covenant were early explorations into frequency therapy. Today’s scientists are slowly catching up to this age-old technology.

    Being one of the very few companies in the world that makes Hulda Clark Zappers, we want to make sure that the technology gets passed on to future generations. What’s wonderful is that building a zapper has sparked our daughter’s interest in electronics, so that now she is learning to build other simple circuits. Here’s a video of her building an electronic cricket that she used to play a trick on me.

    Learn how to make a Hulda Clark Zapper, then teach it to your kids. It has made us healthier, smarter and happier. I wish the same to you.

  • Celebrate!

    Join me in wishing my husband a happy 50th! We’ve been counting down each month with tips for good health and longevity. This month’s tip: Celebrate!

  • Fiddleheads

    Fiddleheads

    I’ve never met this vegetable before: fiddleheads.

    It’s the curled ends of a young ostrich fern, harvested in early spring. It is rich in vitamin A and vitamin C.

    There are so many recipes and ideas for cooking fiddleheads online, but here is the simplest way to serve it:

    Steam the fiddleheads for about 20 minutes. Melt butter on warm fiddleheads. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve with quinoa on the side.

  • Kick the Tick

    Kick the Tick

    Just in time for summer, I found a recipe for repelling ticks and fleas for pets and people.

    Here in Maine, ticks are a big deal. Every year people get lyme disease from catching ticks while spending time in the great outdoors.

    Thanks to my friend, Darcy, for putting a spray bottle of this recipe together for us. Here it is:

    Kick The Tick Spray

    You need:
    1 part water
    2 parts distilled white vinegar
    an HDPE spray bottle

    Ticks hate the smell and taste of vinegar. The basic recipe above is enough to repel ticks from pets and people, but you can add more optional ingredients as I will show you below:

    For pets, you can add almond oil, which contains sulfur, a tick repellent.

    For both pets and people, lemon juice, citrus oil, eucalyptus or peppermint oil also repels fleas while making the spray smell fresher.

    Spray on shoes, clothes, skin and hair before going outdoors. It should be good for four hours. Spray again if spending more time outdoors.

    Spray all over dry pet fur before going outdoors. Take care not to spray eyes, nose, mouth and genitals.

    Enjoy the warm weather, but check for ticks as soon as you get back indoors. Keep a tick removal tool in the first aid kit just in case.

    Have a fantastic weekend!

  • Coconut Muffins

    Coconut Muffins

    Coconuts made quite an impression on my husband and daughter when we visited the Philippines. My home has coconut trees growing right on our front yard. One Sunday morning a boy climbed one of the trees with a machete and carefully lowered bunches of coconuts down to our driveway.

    harvesting coconuts from tree in the Philippines

    We drank fresh coconut juice and ate fresh coconut “meat” that day.

    Coconuts are nutritious and can be eaten in so many different ways: juice, “meat,” oil, milk. Here’s a healthy breakfast recipe that uses various coconut products:

    Coconut Muffins

    Ingredients:
    4 tablespoons organic virgin coconut oil, melted into liquid
    6 organic eggs
    1/2 cup organic coconut milk
    1/2 teaspoon salt
    1/2 cup organic coconut flour
    1/2 teaspoon aluminum-free baking powder
    6 tablespoons shredded unsweetened coconut

    Preheat oven to 400˚F. Grease a 12-muffin pan with coconut oil or use paper muffin cups.

    Beat eggs, coconut oil, coconut milk and salt. Add coconut flour and baking powder. Whisk until smooth. Pour batter halfway into muffin cups. Sprinkle with shredded coconut.

    Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Makes 12 muffins. Serve with raw honey for sweetening.

    This is based on a recipe found in The Candida Free Cookbook by Shasta Press. I skipped the Stevia for sweetening. Stevia is the sweetener of choice for people who are on a candida-free diet. Since my family and I are not, I took the liberty of topping the unsweetened coconut muffins with raw honey to taste.

  • My Daughter’s Homemade Lipbalm

    My Daughter’s Homemade Lipbalm

    I tend to skip the lipbalm. Instead of putting on lipbalm when my lips are dry I just drink more water and eat more hydrating fruits. Most lipbalm is made of petroleum, which is a burden on the immune system and obviously wouldn’t be helping me in the long run.

    Until I tried my daughter’s super awesome lipbalm.

    My daughter made this fantastic lipbalm out of healthy kitchen ingredients:

    2 teaspoons organic virgin coconut oil
    1 teaspoon raw honey
    a few drops vanilla or peppermint extract (optional)

    Ingredients for homemade lipbalm - coconut oil, raw honey and peppermint extract

    Mix them all up and store in a little plastic container. She made one by recycling a used HDPE juice bottle. Another time she upcycled plastic Easter eggs. My kid is amazing!

    If the weather is warm, keep your lipbalm refrigerated when you’re not using it to prevent the coconut oil from liquifying.

    I love my daughter’s lipbalm. I use it all the time. My lips stay soft and moist from the healing powers of coconut oil and raw honey.

  • Read

    Read

    One of the most rewarding parts of my day is reading to my daughter at bedtime. I’ve been reading to her from the moment she was born.

    When she was a baby, the sound of my voice soothed her as I read her short poems and sang her songs.

    When she was a toddler exploring her environment, soft books with tactile features amused her to no end.

    We read board books as she learned more about the world around her. She began recognizing images and putting them together with words. Her favorites were Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny, and Big Red Barn; and Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Very Lonely Firefly, and The Very Busy Spider.

    As she extended her command of language, her love for books grew. She got into Dr. Seuss and the poetry of Shel Silverstein.

    Long before she learned to read she had memorized Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, Skelly the Skeleton Girl by Jimmie Pickering, and Dr. Seuss’s One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.

    By the time she started kindergarten we were reading long form books. The first one was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which began our journey through the L. Frank Baum series. After that we dove into the How to Train Your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell. While waiting for the latest Dragon series release, we read all 7 books of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

    In third grade she started reading Roald Dahl on her own: Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and The BFG. At this point in time she already has a wide social life separate from me, and a great many interests she pursues on her own.

    I still read to her at bedtime, even though she can very well read by herself. We take turns, two pages each. We read The Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony Diterlizzi and Holly Black. We read Greek mythology and the book of Genesis.

    When I started reading to my daughter, I thought I was simply teaching her how to read and love books. What I’ve learned is that there is so much more to it than that. Most of the books I read to her, I had never read myself before. I was experiencing these stories for the first time with her. This was not a case of me, the elder, imparting wisdom to my young. We were sharing laughter, spontaneous bursts of tears, and epiphanies together. We were learning so much about ourselves and each other while we read. Most of all we’ve developed a language and a culture between us based on a literary bond we can draw upon as reference as we navigate the real world together.

    That is the gift of literature.