It's Easy Being Green

Winter can be a tough time to keep up your vitamin intake but it’s essential to stave off sickness and any sort of infection that might come your way.  One of the best ways to make sure you’re getting enough vitamins is through some good whole, natural foods.  This recipe for a vitamin-rich soup is a great way to change your dinner routine, warm yourself up on a cold night and help your body and immune system by getting a nice dose of vitamins.  It’s great made in the crock pot and can simmer all day if you like.

A rutabaga, packed with loads of nutrients.

This recipe includes rutabagas, a root that is usually clumped in with turnips.  Rutabagas have a larger root than turnips and are a weedy relative of the cabbage.  They’re popular in Canada, France, Russia, the British Isles and Scandinavia.  In the U.S., rutabagas are grown even less often than its cousin the turnip, although they store better and have a sweeter, yellow flesh.  Turnips are one of the first vegetables cultivated by man and were once as popular as potatoes are today.  The vegetable has fallen out of favor with gardeners despite new, tasty varieties that mature quicker.

Rutabagas and turnips

While you can substitute turnips for the rutabagas, you’ll be losing out on some amazing nutritional benefits.  They’re both moderately good sources of fiber, calcium and vitamins A and C.  Rutabagas have almost twice the amount of nutrients than turnips do.

Ingredients:

1 cup dried beans (any variety will do)

1/3 cup dried peas

2 cups diced carrots

2 cups potatoes, peeled and diced

1 cup rutabaga, diced

1 medium-sized onion, chopped

2 tsp. dried summer savory

1/2 tsp. dried thyme

1/2 cup fresh or frozen parsley, chopped

2 cups cooked chicken (optional)

1 cup zuchinni or pumpkin, grated (optional)

Soak the dried beans and peas in water overnight or for 8 hours to soften them up.  Fill your crock pot 1/3 full with water.  Add carrots, rutabaga, potatoes, onion, beans and peas.  If you decided to include the chicken or the squash add them as well.  Let simmer for 3 hours or until the vegetables are almost tender.  Add the summer savory, thyme and parsley.  Let simmer for another 1 to 2 minutes or until vegetables are completely tender.  Serve hot.

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Here’s another timely set of home remedies I pulled from the Reader’s Digest book Homemade.  It’s also cold and flu season and if you’re like me, you hate pouring money into over the counter medicinal products that may or may not work and cost a ton of money.  Try some of these quick fixes to relieve your symptoms.  If you like these recipes then you might want to consider picking up the book for your library.  It’s chock-full of recipes from meals to drinks to desserts to home remedies for whatever may be ailing you.

Homemade Chest Rub – It really is quick and easy to make this rub.  Rub the mixture onto your chest, cover with a piece of flannel and then top off with a hot pad.

Ingredients:  – 30 drops massage oil or carrier oil like almond, jojoba or avocado oil

- 5 to 10 drops eucalyptus or wintergreen essential oil

1)  In a small bowl mix the oil and the essential oil together until combined.  Rub the mixture into your chest.  Cover with the flannel and heating pad and get comfy as the essence opens up your chest.

Cough Suppressant Tea – If you know how to grow any herbs in  your home garden, sage should be one of your first choices.  Not only is it great on chicken and other dishes, it also makes a wonderful cough suppressing tea.

Ingredients:  – 4 fresh sage leaves or 1tsp. dried leaves from your spice cupboard

- boiling water

1)  In a standard sized cup, steep the sage leaves in boiled water for at least 20 minutes.  If you leave it sit longer more of the goodness will release from the leaves.  Strain and drink the tea hot or cold.

Throat Spray – I bet you didn’t know you had a natural throat antiseptic and pain killer sitting in your spice cabinet.  Well, you do and it’s also pretty simple to make.  You’ll wonder why you didn’t know about this before you always bought that awful bottle of throat spray at the drug store.

Ingredients:   – 8 oz. spray bottle

- 1 Tbsp. cayenne pepper

- Enough water to fill the bottle

1)  In a clean spray bottle, combine the cayenne pepper and the water.  Shake the mixture well and spray into the back of your throat.  It will numb your throat and you can also use it as a gargle.  Just make sure not to splash it into your eyes because you migth have another problem to deal with if you do.

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The Environmental Working Group just completed a study that went more than skin deep into the best and worst sunscreens on the market.  They studied more than 950 different name brands studying the effectiveness of the product and the potentially harmful chemicals the brand included.  The study is frightening, showing that 4 out of 5 sunscreens are either ineffective or contain ingredients with significant safety concerns.  The leading brand, Coppertone, didn’t have any sunscreens that made the effective or safe list put out by EWG.  The next leading brands, Neutrogena and Banana Boat, had only 1 out of 103 sunscreen products ranked safe and effective by EWG.

Here are the top 5 performer’s in EWG’s tests:

1.  Keys Soap Solar Rx Therapeutic Sunblock, SPF 30

2.  Trukid Sunny Days Facestick Mineral Sunscreen UVA/UVB Broad Spectrum, SPF 30+

3.  California Baby Sunblock Stick No Fragrance, SPF 30+

4.  California Baby Sunblock Stick Everyday/year-Round, SPF 30+

5.  Badger Sunscreen, SPF 30

To see the full report of all 950 tested sunscreens so you know where yours stands, click here.  If you can’t find any of those, it’s recommended that you find sunscreen with at least 7% zinc oxide or titanium dioxide for better sun protection.  Always use SPF 30 or higher.  Look for sunscreen that doesn’t contain any bug repellants so that your skin isn’t absorbing pesticides.

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