As we are somewhat new to the Carolinas, we were delighted to find that L.D. Peeler’s Milky Way Farm in located in Starr, South Carolina, sells its natural dairy products locally — locally to us, that is. They have a schedule of places to pick it up as well as various stores and markets in South Carolina that sell it. Now, yes, we have to travel across the border from Charlotte, North Carolina to Fort Mill, South Carolina in order to buy it — but, geez, it’s about five miles. Not far at all.
And it’s well worth the trip. We load up on sweet milk and thick cream (I like coffee with my cream). We also use the cream to make our all-natural ice cream, which we flavor with different organic extracts such as lemon or orange. more »
Since moving from Los Angeles to southern Charlotte, North Carolina, we’d been looking for places that sell minimally processed food, such as natural foods and organic foods. While searching the web, we discovered What’s Your Beef, a butcher shop/deli that sells only natural meats of all kinds. They moved up to Charlotte’s Ballantyne area from Waxhaw, which is just south of Charlotte.
Owned and operated by Victor Giroux and John Saari, What’s Your Beef is a real live butcher that caters to a wide range of meats cut to order, selling only natural meats, which is a very wise and safe way to eat. According to their website: more »
So I was sitting around the other evening (a while back, when we were back in Los Angeles), wondering why I felt … rather worn out, with strange achy pains in my legs. I normally don’t get sick (and I wasn’t), so that wasn’t it.
After pondering a while, I wondered if it could be due to something that Dr. Mercola mentioned … that Many People May Be Deficient in Vitamin B-12.
Not sure why that occurred to me, but — since I’m sometimes a better shopper than a do-er — as it turned out, Dr. Mercola had already sold me on the idea of B12, and there it was, sitting on my desk. Mighty convenient for me! more »
For Christmas dinner this year, serve a savory, roasted goose — a fresh-from-the-farm bird if you can find one. Even though early American settlers had an unlimited supply of wild turkey, old European custom prevailed at holiday dinners, especially with the roasting of the Christmas goose. more »
The other day, apropos of nothing much at all, George uttered these words:
"I want to make our own butter."
Being a true city girl and <web geek>, this stopped me dead in my tracks. I had visions of an upright wooden churn and George <surely not me> pumping away industriously (or is that stoically?) until someday it turned into butter of some sort. more »
A baker has been born!
In our continuing desire to improve our understanding and our eating methods in order to improve our health and not pull in some catastrophic illness at the end of our lives, we decided to make our own bread. more »
Just a quickie to announce that I’ve installed a new Site Map program (a site map is a list of links to pages on a website). The old one simply listed the articles by category. The new one allows you to switch how you want to "sort" the articles … by article title, by author, by category.
I think this makes it a lot easier to find what you might be interested in reading. Just click on the "Archives" link at the top of any page (in the bar below the logo) to try it out.
North Carolina Foliage
Well, we moved, finally, from Los Angeles to Charlotte, North Carolina. And I have to tell you that it was quite grueling, to say the least, driving a 26 foot Penske truck pulling an auto trailer with our Toyota Camry loaded on it. The trip was over 2400 miles long.
What we encountered on our trip was amusing at points and a real test of patience, endurance, and stick-to-it-ivity as we traveled from one side of the continent to the other. It was great timing that we did not get stuck in two snowstorms as we passed over the Rockies. However, when I did stop in order to get some rest in New Mexico, I chose a rest stop that was still a bit high up in terms of altitude, just under 7300 feet high — where my wife decided it was time to switch her typical L.A. attire (shorts) for long, thick pants! While she slept in the truck cabin, I crawled into our Toyota and buried myself under some blankets and a sleeping bag. I nevertheless froze my arse off! But, I got enough rest to continue on down the mountain and out into the panhandle of Texas, which was, by the way, much warmer. more »
There seems to be a pandemic lately of recommendations that one get vaccinated. Immediately.
I’m not a fan. In fact, I’m not a fan of taking medication at all — unless it’s needed for a specific reason at a specific time and there’s really no other way to treat whatever it is.
I could cite various studies and findings; however, I think a viewing of just a few television commercials for "wonderful" medicines would suffice — that is, the part towards the end, after they’ve presented you with the visuals of the wonderful life you’ll lead if you take this stuff. The part where they mention that, although their medicine can do great things for you, it’s also true that taking it can cause all kinds of bad effects — effects that sound to me quite a lot like the body is trying to rid itself of the medicine itself. Another bad effect sometimes mentioned is, well, death. "In rare cases", of course. Gotta love that truth in advertising … at least we’re being somewhat protected by the fact that pharmaceutical companies are being forced to warn us. more »
While reading at David Gumpert’s The Complete Patient blog the other day, I took note when he, too, mentioned the call to "Trust your Farmer" that I’ve been hearing lately — along with various similar sentiments: trust your local farmer, farmers need a break, etc.
When I first heard this phrase, it was in the context of doing our produce shopping at our local Farmer’s Market … that, because it is so difficult and costly to obtain an organic certification, one should simply ascertain from the farmer whether pesticides and the like were used in the production of the produce — or, for dairy farmers, whether hormones, antibiotics, etc. were used on the cows. more »
