Tinctures. Yeah, that's what I said.

What other concoctions do we have brewing? Tinctures of all sorts. They just sit in the dark doing their thing. What's a tincture?

A tincture is typically an alcoholic extract of plant or animal material or solution of such or of a low volatility substance (such as iodine and mercurochrome). - wikipedia

A good example of a tincture is vanilla extract. That's in one of the jars.

If you read the label on a McCormick for example, you might just find that it also contains corn syrup. We won't be putting that in ours. Usually you sweeten your baked goods with their own ingredients, guys. We're not eating the extract straight up, so it doesn't need to taste good by itself. (Who's running these companies?) Here's a post about it if you want to see more label voodoo.

What's really nice about making tinctures, is 1) it's fun to say and 2) you need Vodka on hand. If you notice in the picture, the bottles and jars are pretty small, so there's leftover vodka.

What would you do with the leftover vodka?

Pizza, Pizza.

Growing up in the seventies suburbia (of nothing) an hour away from Mickey Mouse, we saw the pizza industry blow up. Pizza used to be an agonizing wait in the deep red vinyl booths at an actual Pizza Hut restaurant or a Chef Boyar dee pizza in a box kit.

We saw the dawn and sunset of Little Sleaser's, I mean, Caesar's--and now its new sunrise. In their infancy, you ordered a pizza from Little Caeser's and go two. The little cartoon guy chanted, "Pizza! Pizza!"

Pizza was always a treat we didn't think too much about, except, "When will we have it again?"

Top, Bake, and Eat This.

Now we're not only a little bit concerned by all the bread for health reasons, but it turns out Red2 is terribly sensitive to wheat and dairy. We diagnosed her food allergies when she was still nursing. She was way cranky and would break out when Mrs SFDaddy ate anything with wheat or dairy. Long story short, we are now mostly gluten and dairy-free.

There goes the pizza, or that's what we started to think. Over the last few years as going gluten free has become more popular, our lives avoiding for allergy-reasons have become easier.

Mixing up our own dough to make a pizza was a good adventure and very doable. There are a lot of great recipes and alternate flours that taste great, but how about a good quicker alternative? Udi's to the rescue. Udi's bakery has a gluten free frozen pizza crust you can get in the freezer section of the grocery store. Yeah! Thank you Udi's.

Our first great experience 'out' getting pizza was from Blue Moon Cafe. They make a great gluten free pizza. We brought our own dairy-free cheese and they were happy to serve us.

Four people at a pizza joint can be pretty pricey though and add the premium price for getting the special dough.

Look for specials! Recently, Uncle Maddio's opened up and on Sunday nights they offer a 2 for 1. It's Pizza! Pizza! all over again.

But wait there's more. We've recently joined a group of families with kids about the same ages who regularly share a weekly pot-luck together. In addition to that, some of us have started frequenting another pizza place, Your Pie. Both Uncle Maddio's and Your Pie offer gluten free crusts and vegan sauce and dairy free (or vegan) cheese. Both of these places have great products.  Your Pie actually mixes their own dough which bumps their review up a few notches for us. Both locations make a serious effort to change gloves, use different surfaces and even move out of the normal prep areas to assemble your order.

Thank you, to all the restaurants who recognize legitimate food sensitivities, even if it's becoming just fashionable to go gluten free right now. Hear that Dominoe's? (They just announced their new gluten free crust (but use the same utensils and workspaces to prepare their pies. If you are deathly allergic, you'll want to read the fine print.)

Related articles

• Pizza Hut to Test Market a 7 Calorie Pizza in Maine!
• Gluten-Free Bisquick Pizza
• Uncle Maddios Gluten Free Pizza

G Gingerly Germinating Ideas for Growth - The Seed Swap 2.0

Grow! Part of the effort to create a wildlife garden full of bird feeding, seeding producing, flower-popping, goodness, is to grow some seedlings from scratch. From seeds.

Label This

Red3. Red4. Red5, Standing by.

Mrs. SF Daddy wrangled a large collection of seeds this year. Almost every year for a few years now, she'd started trays of seedlings, popped them into the ground and bam, we have tomatoes, daisies, bachelor buttons, echinacea, peppers, cucumbers, blah, blah, munch, munch, munch.

Plant this.

This year, she decided to start, not just a seed swap, but a seedling swap. She conned--I mean--enlisted her friends to start their own trays of seeds. They'd return to their own homes with trays of seeds ready to sprout. In a few weeks, they all return to the scene of the crime and trade little baby plants. Then instead of 20 or 30 of the same plants, they all leave again with a wide variety.

The plan was fool proof. Almost. The first batch of seeds was shipped to the wrong address and the seed starting party had to be postponed. (And all the way to the next full moon, if you're following along with the posts.) 

While the first batch sprouted, we had a few intrusions! Ants in the trays!

Now that things have calmed down and we're in April, we have lots of little babies almost ready to share and pop into the ground around the tulips. Surprise! Red2 and I planted tulip bulbs and they're almost ready to pop!

This video will walk you through the seed starting process. Join us as we prepare to plant some seeds.

What's growing in your garden?

F Ferments and Krauts

Kraut This

"It's a full moon, have to start the kraut."

Those really aren't words I thought I'd ever hear. I didn't see them coming. I didn't really think about sauerkraut very much. I knew that I liked it, but that was about it.

Paying attention to the moon apparently helps fermentation  As the moon is "born" or grows, you plant or start things that grow. Otherwise, it's the opposite. Things just don't grow as well.

This kraut is a mix of purple and green cabbage. Together it ends up being pink. The green bit at the top is just a leaf to keep actual cabbage below the water. It's not mold.

It's really tasty on its own or on a salad. We throw just about anything in a salad these days. Hold the sauce though, with enough wet things, you don't really need it.

Below we have some samples of the other ferments. These are what the smaller batches of mead look like.

If you think you're interested in fermentation, there's a way lot of information out there, but we started a small Google+ community for our Juicy People friends to share with. Join in and share with us. We had a link to a few sites and other books. The ladies met up with, Sandor Katz, one of the authors of these books a while back and he actually inspired our current adventures in krauting.

Ferment This

B Boozy Botanists

Fill This

Part of the fun of being able to identify plants as you walk by them in the forest is knowing which ones might poison you and which ones are mighty tasty prepared in a mixed drink over ice or fermented and bottled.

Last year the ladies got really interested in squishing fruit. They combed the neighborhood and delivered letters to our especially fruity neighbors inviting them to some free labor. In exchange for cleaning up around their fruit trees, we'd bring home a few large buckets of apples, pears, persimmons and muscadines. Over the course of several weeks during harvest season we accumulated many "carboys" (large glass containers) full of squeezings. They're naturally doing their thing and now we have lots of bottles to fill. Pretty tasty pear wine, honey wine, cyser, mead, and more, I'm sure. I'm trying to stay at arm's length. (Yes, with a glass in hand, though.)

Identifying the plants while you're walking next to them is pretty impressive, but what really wowed me was driving around, even on the highway, hearing, "Pear! Apple! Persimmon!" Red2 identified a pear tree hiding in front of a grocery store. She's 9, kiddos.

Their mom and I did share. It wasn't all booze. We had persimmon cake, apple and pear butter, and pear preserves using as recipe from the tree owner who feels like she's all done making preserves herself. She was very happy to have some help.

The last thought here is about where this all leads. The natural ingredients that used to be found in things like Maraschino cherries and grenadine. Amy Stewart's book, The Drunken Botanist, is good read full of stories about what's really supposed to be in the bottles. Read the labels, folks. Red1 wants a field trip to a liquor store to find real grenadine made with pomegranates, not colored up corn syrups. I think she'll have to wait a bit for that. Do you think the shop keepers will let us in to read the labels?

Fat, Sick, Juicy, and Almost Dead

Drink This.

Rescuing this post with way too many links, from the drafts folder, but after a year sitting there, the topics are coming up again. This one's for Papa Ho Ho.

The Juice:

The Juicy People at work and my extended family were interested in the movies we've been devouring about food, so it was time to dust off this post and prep it for release. Welcome back, SFDada.

We're on our 3rd device for juicing and think we've found a great gadget. A little mortified by the infomercial, with David Wolfe, but the Nutribullet is just so fast and easy, it really allows for no more excuses to juice up.

David Wolfe is in a few of the movies I'm listing below, so even though the infomercial was a bit repellant I at least knew who he was and knew he has a lot of interesting things to say about nutrition and the health of your skin.


I ordered ours at Amazon, but my mom picked one up at Macy's with a big %-off coupon and got the best deal for about $70. I don't know this guy, but he does a great job talking about the thing in 8 minutes.

The old post on the movies:

A few years ago, Red1 wanted to go vegan. Over the years we've been watching a lot of documentaries on Netflix on the subject of food and health. A good friend at work also writes a vegan blog, "Healthy Living on a plant based diet", so we seem to have really good support now. I think we're now in the market for a good juicer.

Red1 has enjoyed them all. She became quite over the top after watching Food, Inc. So much so, her friend's mother asked us to try to get her to stop lecturing their family about the cows who stand in their own poop and the sad little chickens and turkeys the fast food farms in America.

Today we spent a good amount of time at the supermarket buying some good fruit and vegetables to restock the kitchen properly. Last night, after watching a double feature of Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead and Forks over Knives, I went through the kitchen and cleared out some of the worst junk on the counters and cupboards.

A good list of films to add to your Netflix queue:
Food, Inc.
Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead
Forks Over Knives
Hungry for Change

Gerson
The Beautiful Truth... which is the one about the Gerson Therapy, if you haven't really heard about it, it's worth looking into. It's pretty much the cure for everything. The film will lead you to more related films available at Netflix.

Here's a copy of Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead that's currently streaming at Hulu with no account needed. (and still is.)