Lotion bars

As a beekeeper, I tend to have a lot of beeswax on hand. Every time I harvest honey, I render the cappings, but I rarely get around to using them for anything.

Last fall, I used some of my surplus beeswax to make a batch of mini lotion bars to hand out to my colleagues at school. I ended up with way more than I needed, so I stored the leftovers in the freezer. They’ve been a godsend since we started washing our hands approximately nine million times a day to ward off coronavirus.

I realize normal people don’t just have chunks of beeswax lying around, but if you can put your hands on some, you can make your own lotion bars with just a few minutes’ worth of work.

For the basic bars, I used:

1 part beeswax
1 part coconut oil
1 part olive oil

A lot of recipes say to melt your beeswax in a double boiler to reduce the risk of igniting it, but I’ve melted beeswax in the microwave for years and never had any problems. The trick is to use a Pyrex measuring cup; cut the beeswax into thin slivers; and watch it closely, stirring every 30 seconds to prevent hot spots.

(If you ever do have a fire in your microwave, just unplug it and leave the door shut until the fire burns out. It shouldn’t take long, because there’s not much oxygen in there.)

When the beeswax was mostly melted, I added the coconut oil and continued nuking and stirring until it was all melted together. Then I stirred in the olive oil and enough wintergreen and peppermint essential oil to make it smell nice, poured it into silicone molds, and stuck them in the freezer to harden. Once they solidified, I wrapped them in candymaker’s foil and stored them in an old sherbet tub in the freezer.

To use, hold a bar in your hands until it softens up, then rub it over your skin. It takes a while to soak in, but it’s a good overnight moisturizer that doubles as an excellent lip balm.

Emily

P.S.: Hat tip to Mom Makes Joy, who posted the recipe I used as the basis for mine.

Ask the Hippie: Controlling Hot Flashes

Q. You had your ovaries removed during your hysterectomy. How bad are the hot flashes, and what are you doing about them?

A. For about a week after surgery, I kept the hot flashes to three or four a day, but the frequency (12 to 15 a day) and intensity spiked as I started feeling better and drifted away from the carefully planned, phytoestrogen-heavy meals I’d prefabbed before my surgery. When I started eating right again, the hot flashes settled back down to manageable levels.

Phytoestrogens occur naturally in most plants. Soybeans are among the richest sources; other good sources include black beans, peanuts, ground flaxseed, oats, tree nuts, and sweet potatoes.

Here are five easy ways to boost your phytoestrogen intake:

Source 1: Smoothies. Blend together half a frozen banana, a cup of frozen berries, two tablespoons of powdered peanut butter, two tablespoons of ground flaxseed, orange juice (I freeze mine in ice-cube trays and throw a few cubes in a smoothie), a cup of soymilk, and a little water. These are loaded with protein, fiber, and phytoestrogens and make quick breakfasts, especially if you assemble the frozen ingredients in advance and freeze them in individual containers.

Source 2: Oatmeal. Microwave half a cup of old-fashioned oatmeal with a quarter-cup each of nuts and dried cranberries, a pinch of cinnamon, and as much water as needed to reach the consistency you like. Sweeten with honey, brown sugar, or — for an extra dose of phytoestrogens — a half-cup of applesauce. Rich in protein, fiber, and phytoestrogens and nice on mornings that are too cool for smoothies.

Source 3: Soynut butter. Made for little kids with peanut allergies, soynut butter looks and sort of tastes like peanut butter. I spread some on a whole-wheat mini-bagel and add a tablespoon or so of marshmallow creme to make a soy-based Fluffernutter for breakfast.

Source 4: Baked sweet potatoes. Bake ’em in a slow cooker for a few hours. Top with butter and either brown sugar and cinnamon (for a sweet treat) or salsa and a little lime juice (for a savory snack).

Source 5: Veggie corn dogs. Morningstar Farms makes these. They’re 150 calories apiece take a minute and a half to nuke, and taste like regular corn dogs. Easy lunch on busy days.

Beyond that, I try to drink plenty of water, eat popsicles, and wear a cooling scarf in warm surroundings.

Emily

Green-chile stew

Green-chile stew is one of the reasons I find fall and winter exponentially more tolerable in Tucumcari than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. I’m pretty sure everybody in the entire state of New Mexico has a different recipe for this cool-weather staple, and everybody who makes it is sure his or her recipe is the best (and probably only proper) way to make it.

Here’s the way Celtic white trash from a town full of Italians makes New Mexico’s favorite winter dish: heavy on the potato, loaded with garlic, and doused with cheap beer for good measure.

Ingredients:
1 medium yellow onion
2 tbsp. olive oil
5-6 cloves of garlic
2 big baking potatoes
At least 1 lb. roasted green chiles
1 can diced tomatoes, drained (optional)
Decent-sized pork roast (at least 1 lb.; amounts aren’t precise, but never use more pork than chile)
1 can cheap beer
At least 1 tbsp. each of cumin and chile powder (or use my Mexican spice blend)
Salt to taste

Chop the onion and saute in olive oil in a cast-iron skillet until clear. If it browns a little bit, so much the better. While onion cooks, crush and mince the garlic and set aside, then dice the potatoes and chiles and toss them into the Crock-Pot along with the tomatoes (if using).

Trim the fat off the pork roast and cut the meat into bite-sized chunks. Transfer the onion to the Crock-Pot and brown the pork in the skillet. Add the minced garlic and saute briefly before adding the pork-garlic mixture to the Crock-Pot.

Deglaze the skillet with the beer and add the resulting liquid to the Crock-Pot. Stir in spices and salt, add water to cover, and cook on low overnight. Serve with warm flour tortillas.

There is no shame in eating a bowl of the finished stew for breakfast after dreaming about it all night as it simmers, but it will taste even better if you let it rest in the fridge all day and then warm it up for dinner.

NOTE: Green chile does not mean “any random chile pepper that is green.” Green chiles are a specific type of pepper grown in New Mexico and parts of Colorado.

Emily

Vegetarian Friday: Cheddar soup

I’ve seen various versions of this recipe floating around online. Most of them are obscenely high-calorie, unduly complicated, make way bigger batches than anybody really wants to eat, or can’t be accessed without scrolling through somebody’s elaborately monetized blog that takes forever to load, so as usual, I glanced at ingredient lists and photos on Pinterest and then riffed on the general idea. Ron liked the results, and he never likes cream-type soups.

Ingredients
12 baby carrots
1 small potato
2 leeks
3 ribs celery
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 tbsp. flour
1 bottle Newcastle or similar ale
1/2 tsp. salt
2-3 bay leaves
2 c. skim milk
2/3 c. veggie broth
4 oz. cream cheese
1 1/2 c. shredded cheddar

Chop up carrots and steam in the microwave until soft. (The easiest way to do this: Throw the carrots in a bowl with about a tablespoon of water, cover with a saucer, and nuke for 5-6 minutes.)

Chop the leeks and celery (note: Just use the white and light-green parts of the leeks — not the leaves) and saute in olive oil until soft. Add 2 tbsp. flour and cook over low heat until flour starts to brown, stirring constantly. Deglaze the pan with part of the beer, then add the rest slowly, stirring as you add it. Add salt and bay leaves.

Bring beer-leek mixture to a boil over medium heat. While beer is cooking, dice the potato and cook it in the microwave until soft. (I just poked a hole in mine, stuck it in there on the baked-potato setting, and then diced it, using a clean cloth to handle it so I didn’t burn my fingers. The peel came right off that way, and it was easier to cut.)

The carrots give the soup a yellowish tinge even before you add the cheddar.

Add milk and veggie broth to the pan and simmer over low heat until the bay leaf starts to release its flavor. (You’ll know this is happening because it will suddenly start to smell awesome.) Add cream cheese and let it melt, stirring occasionally.

Remove bay leaves, stir in diced potato and cheddar cheese, and serve. Makes about 4 big servings.

Hot, thick soup and a heavy-bodied beer make a nice dinner on a cold day.

This soup is especially nice on a cold day, accompanied by a good English or Irish beer.

Emily

Vegetarian Friday: Mashed potatoes and green-chile gravy

On vacation in 2014, I ordered something called a green-chile parfait at a little diner in Gallup, New Mexico, the name of which escapes me at the moment. Said parfait was a Coke glass in which the cook had layered mashed potatoes, green-chile sauce, and shredded cheddar cheese. The execution was kind of mediocre (I think they made the parfait and then microwaved it in the glass, because it had some hot and cold spots in it), but the idea? Brilliant.

I don’t have any parfait glasses, so I just made a bowl of skin-on mashed potatoes and topped it with green-chile sauce and shredded cheddar. It was delicious. Here’s how to make it:

1. Click over to the Visit Albuquerque website to get the green-chile sauce recipe I used. I forgot where I’d stashed my plain cumin, so I subbed a tablespoon or so of my usual homemade taco-seasoning mix for the cumin, and I upped the garlic to three cloves because I grew up in a town full of Italians, and if you’re going to use garlic, you might as well do it right. For the broth, I used a cup of water and three of those vegetable-stock cubes I froze last summer. It turned out very well.

Green-chile sauce is basically brown gravy with onions and green chiles in it. It’s good on just about everything.

2. Bake two potatoes, cut them into chunks, and mash them up, skins and all. (Time-saving tip: Potatoes bake well in the Crock-Pot. Wash them up and cook a bunch at once; when they’re done, you can dice them up or mash them and freeze them for later use.)

3. Layer potatoes, green-chile sauce, and shredded cheddar in a bowl and nuke until the cheddar melts.

Serves two, with enough green chile left for a batch of huevos rancheros or a couple of wet burritos.

Emily

Vegetarian Friday: Mom’s fruitcake

NOTE: I managed to let the entire Christmas season get away from me without posting the holiday blogs I’d planned, so this recipe is either too late (seriously: Don’t make it today and plan on eating it Sunday, or you’ll be terribly disappointed) or impressively early. If you assume the latter and make it now, it should be spectacular by December 2017.

People who regard fruitcake as a punchline are miserable souls who have probably spent their lives eating the wretched commercially prepared alcohol sponges that pass for fruitcake in those gift baskets you buy for people you don’t really like.

It is entirely possible to make fruitcake that tastes good. I know because my mom has been doing it for decades.

Before we start, I need you to understand three important principles concerning fruitcake.

Principle 1: Candied fruit has no place in a fruitcake. People who think it does probably drink flavored coffee and approve of the designated hitter.

Principle 2: Green-tinted maraschino cherries are a Communist plot to destroy humanity. They are little green balls of mint-flavored poison, to paraphrase Patrick. Never, ever put them in a fruitcake for any reason.

Principle 3: Booze has a legitimate purpose in fruitcake, but that purpose is not to get you drunk. If you’re making fruitcake to hide your alcohol consumption, click here.

Now that you understand the basics, you’re ready to make fruitcake the way God intended: Using my mom’s recipe.

Ingredients
1 c. cider or apple juice
1-2 c. dried apricots*
1 pkg. whole dates (10 or 12 oz.)
1 c. raisins or currants
16 oz. red maraschino cherries, drained
1 c. English walnuts
1 c. pecans
1 c. hazelnuts or Brazil nuts**
3 c. all-purpose flour
1 c. butter
1 c. sugar
4 large eggs
1/4 c. orange juice or maraschino syrup
1/4 c. apple juice
1/4 c. molasses (NOT blackstrap)

Chop fruit coarsely. (Mom says poultry shears work well for this.) Boil 1 cup apple cider or juice and pour over dried fruit. Mix. Dump nuts on top of fruit and set aside.

In mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Combine liquid ingredients. Add to batter alternately with 2 cups of the flour, blending thoroughly after each addition. Add remaining cup of flour to fruit, which has been soaking in the juice, stirring to lightly coat fruit.

Add fruit to batter all at once, blending well so fruit is coated with batter.

Pack into greased and floured loaf pans so that each one is 3/4 full.

Bake at 275 degrees until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean and cakes are a medium brown (at least an hour and 15 minutes; probably longer, depending on your oven).

Let cool in pans, remove, wrap in clean towels moistened with cider or hard liquor (Mom swears by Southern Comfort for this; I’ve gotten good results from Kilbeggan’s, but any decent whiskey is probably fine), then wrap tightly with plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator in a big ziplock bag.

About once a week, check the moisture level and re-moisten the towels as needed to keep them damp. Mom says to alternate between booze and cider for this or the fruitcake will end up tasting like whiskey, which is NOT what you want. Your goal here is just to keep it from drying out or getting moldy while it ages.

As long as you keep the towel moist and the bag sealed between snacks, fruitcake will keep indefinitely in the refrigerator. The longer it ages, the more the flavors will blend, so I wouldn’t even touch it for at least two weeks.

I like to keep fruitcake in the refrigerator and eat it after hard workouts. The nutritional content is just about ideal for refueling after a long run.

Emily

*You can substitute other dried fruit for some of the apricots. Mom has had good luck with dried pears and dried pineapple. Check the comments, because she’ll probably weigh in with suggestions.

**Black walnuts are also wonderful, but don’t use more than a half-cup, as their flavor is pretty strong, and you don’t want them to overpower everything.

Vegetarian Friday: Quinoa salad

This fall, we attended a family cookout at my in-laws’ house, and their next-door neighbors — a pair of world-class back-to-the-land hippies — brought this great quinoa and black bean salad that tasted like a cross between tabouli and Texas caviar. Ron and I both liked it, but the cool hippie neighbors left before we had a chance to exchange email addresses with them, so I did some Googling, ran a few Pinterest searches, and cobbled together something I think is pretty close to what we had at the cookout. As always, feel free to adjust proportions to suit your personal taste; the only really important part is that you have a 2:1 water-to-quinoa ratio.

Ingredients
1/2 c. red quinoa
1 c. water
At least a dozen cherry or grape tomatoes
1/2 bell pepper
1 bunch cilantro
1/2 bunch scallions
2 tbsp. olive oil
Juice of 1 lime
Cumin and chili powder to taste (I used my homemade taco seasoning)
1 can black beans

Several hours before you plan to serve the salad, put quinoa in a strainer and rinse thoroughly. (Don’t skip this step, or the quinoa will taste bitter.) Bring quinoa and water to a boil. Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer until most of the liquid is absorbed — about 15 minutes.

While quinoa cooks, prep your vegetables: Rinse the tomatoes and halve them if desired, dice the pepper, and mince the cilantro and scallions.

Drain and rinse beans and stir them into the finished quinoa, along with the olive oil, lime juice, and spices.

Chill the quinoa-bean mixture for several hours. Stir in the vegetables just before serving. (If you add the vegetables while the quinoa is still hot, they’ll wilt.)

Makes about four big servings. This salad makes a good lunch all by itself, as quinoa is very high in protein.

Emily

Vegetarian Friday: Jalapeno soup

For several months, I’ve been seeing recipes on Pinterest for something called “jalapeno popper soup.” Some of the recipes looked better than others. None of them really impressed me, but the concept was solid enough, I decided it was probably worth making my own version.

The results were pretty good. I have an idea for a substitution, which I’ll include below. (If you’ve read this blog much, you probably already know what it is.)

Ingredients

1 pkg. cream cheese (I use Green Mountain’s Greek yogurt kind to boost the protein and cut the calories)
2 c. veggie broth
2 tbsp. butter
1 smallish onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp. olive oil
2 tbsp. flour
About 1 c. of canned jalapenos, chopped coarsely
1 c. shredded cheddar
2 tbsp. taco seasoning (click here for a recipe)

Nuke the cream cheese in 30-second bursts, stirring after each, until it melts.

Dump the melted cheese into a pan.

Nuke the broth until it’s hot through.

Whisk the broth into the cheese, a little at a time.

Saute the onions in butter until they become translucent and start to brown. Add the garlic, stir once or twice, and then add the olive oil and flour and stir constantly until the flour browns to make a roux.

Remove pan from heat and whisk the roux-onion-garlic mixture into the cheese mixture.

Whisk in the jalapenos, taco seasoning, and about a cup of shredded cheddar and bring to a boil over medium-low heat, stirring frequently.

Garnish with jalapeno slices and serve with crushed tortilla chips.

Yes, I basically just ate an entire bowl of queso with a spoon. Don’t judge me.

The Pinterest recipes claim the soup tastes “just like a jalapeno popper,” which is obviously a lie, because jalapeno poppers are either breaded or battered and deep-fried. I’m sorry to be the one to break this shocking news, but soup is never going to taste like deep-fried fair food. It’s soup, not midway fare. Get with the program.

What this soup will taste like is a pretty good queso. To make it taste like a really good queso, I’d swap the jalapenos for roasted green chiles. (You saw that coming, right?)

Feel free to disregard that suggestion if you really, really like the taste of jalapenos. I don’t. I can eat them if there’s no other hot pepper available, but I can name a half-dozen other varieties I like better. (Which reminds me: One of these weeks, I need to give y’all a tutorial on cooking with habaneros. They’re magic.)

Emily

Vegetarian Friday: Tomato-pepper soup

I found this recipe from Budget Bytes by way of Pinterest.

I riffed on it only slightly, so rather than plagiarize someone else’s recipe, I’ll just tell you the bits I changed, and you can click on over to the link above to get the full recipe, including tips for making it vegan without losing much flavor.

Here are my modifications/notes on the recipe:

1. Saute the onion until it’s translucent BEFORE you add the garlic, or you’ll scorch it. Garlic should never be sauteed longer than about 30 seconds — as soon as it starts to smell good, take it off the burner.

2. Diced tomatoes are fine if you can’t find crushed or don’t have any on hand.

3. If the 16-oz. jar of red peppers is cheaper than the 12-oz. jar, it’s fine to use all of it.

4. Remember that vegetable stock we made a while back? Two of your frozen cubes and a cup and a half of water will work well here.

5. I’m lazy and like my flavors assertive, so I used a tablespoon of my Italian seasoning blend in place of the basil and thyme. If you prefer less spice, start with the original recipe and go from there.

6. Skim milk is fine in place of whole if you’re counting calories (or just don’t have any skim milk on hand).

I love tomato soup. Ron usually doesn’t, but he really liked this recipe, which I served with pesto, some leftover crostini I’d bought for another project, and a generous helping of Parmesan cheese, so we’ll be having it again in the near future.

Emily

Vegetarian Friday: Southwestern cornbread

Mom’s cornbread turns out lighter than mine. That’s because I use yellow cornmeal instead of white and lace my batter with taco seasoning.

I’m posting this recipe mostly because today was sort of drizzly and chilly and a bowl of chili and cornbread sounded good, but it also occurred to me that some of you might be making homemade cornbread stuffing for Thanksgiving, and a good cornbread recipe would come in handy. This is based on my mom’s cornbread recipe; the spicy additions are mine.

If you’re making cornbread to enjoy with beans or chili, use this recipe as-is. If you’re making cornbread to use in your turkey stuffing, you should probably leave out the taco seasoning and green chile. If you double the recipe, don’t use two eggs; just swap the small one for a large one.

Smear plenty of butter on there. Now is not the time to be responsible about your fat intake.

Ingredients
3/4 c. cornmeal
1/4 c. flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. dried minced onions
1 tbsp. taco seasoning (find my recipe here)
1 small egg
3/4 c. buttermilk
1 roasted green chile, chopped (OK to use canned, but frozen or freshly roasted will taste better)
1/2 tbsp. shortening or butter

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Melt shortening in a small iron skillet, coating sides and bottom evenly. Mix other ingredients in order. I stir the dry ingredients every time I add something, taking care to break up any clumps in the baking powder or soda, and then I stir in the eggs and buttermilk before adding the melted shortening from the skillet. (Mom’s instructions are slightly different, but I’m always afraid the hot butter will start to cook the egg if I don’t mix the batter before I add it.)

Pour into hot skillet and bake 15 to 20 minutes. (If you double the recipe, use a bigger skillet and bake for 25 minutes.) It’s ready when a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let cornbread cool in skillet. (Or, if you’re me, cut out a slice while it’s hot and burn the snot out of your fingers trying to put butter on it because you can’t be bothered to wait until it cools.)

Enjoy!

Emily