Copyright The Bettina Network, inc. 2011
We discovered an elegant way to use the skins from the fruit we have for breakfast. Sometimes we serve oranges – different kinds – having taken off the skins and separating them into segments, putting the segments on the plate as beautifully as possible. Normally, we put the skins in the compost after breakfast, but this day, we julienned the skins, put them in one cup water and one cup organic turbinado sugar and let them cook until the temperature reached 240 degrees. What a great discovery! Oh, before I forget – we put the water and sugar in a pot with the fruit rind or skins and didn’t stir – we didn’t touch it, we just let it do its thing until it reached the proper temperature.
When the mixture reached about 220 to 240 degrees, we took the skins out of the syrup, put them in a pan of organic turbinado sugar and mixed them around until the skins were well coated. We took them out of the sugar, put them on a plate laying them out very carefully and let them sit overnight. The next morning the skins had hardened on the outside, were soft on the inside – not too soft, but sill recognizable as oranges – and enjoyed them on a little of everything. They were great to add a lovely touch to dessert dishes. We also put them out, in a cut glass candy dish, for snacks. We served bread pudding and decorated each plate with a few candied orange peels.
We took the syrup left from boiling the orange skins and used it to make Bettina’s Marshmaples – only without maple syrup in the dish we are going to have to rename those ‘sort of’ marshmallows.
This was a great find. Not only did we now have a use for something we would have – not thrown away, but composted – we had also found a way to add a lovely touch to breakfast and other meals with snacks inbetwen.
Onward and upward. We have been looking for ways to use the left over ginger root after we boil it to make ginger tea. What better use than this? After all, candied ginger costs quite a bit at the store and it is usually neither organic nor made with a really good sugar. So we put the Corning glass pot back on the stove, added one cup of water and one cup organic turbinado sugar and dropped in the sliced ginger, which had just been used to make ginger tea.
After about 15 – 20 minutes, the syrup reached 240 degrees and we took out the ginger root. We used the leftover syrup to make Marshmaples and they were also sensational. Marshmallows that taste like ginger. The orange rinds produced Marshmaples which taste like oranges. We have discovered something really great and alleviated the kitchen of leftovers that would be thrown out or composted. The flavor of the Marshmaples are real – not produced by using synthetic flavorings.
And we have found a way to use what would have been left-overs. As days move along, we hope to have lots of the candied fruit rind to offer guests and visitors as idle snacks to be eaten while talking, reading or just looking for something to ease that food craving and our dishes will begin to take on another look as we decorate with candied fruit peels.
P. S. We searched our cookbooks for recipes for this candied peel and found one major difference between their recipes and ours. All the recipes we found suggested you first ‘blanche’ the rind – in other words put the rind in cold water, bring the water to a boil, let them in the boiling water about a minute. Some went so far as to suggest you do this two or three times before candying the rind. A couple recipes suggested you bring water to a boil, put in the rind for about a minute before using them the way we did. We disagree. We didn’t know about blanching so we didn’t. We have tried making candied fruit rind the cookbook way and it tastes like a medium of some kind was used to produce another way to eat sugar. And in each recipe you had to add flavoring to the water and sugar to get the rinds to taste again. We just put the rind in the water and they came out full of flavor and had flavored the syrup so we could use it for other things. I can see using the syrup as a flavoring for a lot of different dishes.
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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.
Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.
Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net
This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com
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Beauty in 2011
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011copyright The Bettina Network, inc. 2011
“This is the year I throw out my cosmetics and follow organic beautify treatments. Not organic cosmetics, but organic foods used the way I have been using cosmetics.
I was part of a fantastic breakfast conversation at one of the Bettina Network bed and breakfasts which talked about – basically – only using on your face, skin and hair, those products that you would eat because within seconds what you put on your skin shows up in your blood stream.
I was the one denying this and talking about the block your skin has from products getting any further than just on the surface – certainly not getting as far as your blood stream. And then, when I got home I looked up what we were talking about and realized folks must have thought me really ignorant because I didn’t really know anything about the topic. I didn’t let that stop me from spreading ignorance. I don’t normally act like that, but these are emotional topics and everyone thinks they are experts. I thought I knew everything there was to know about cosmetics, etc. because I spent a few thousand dollars a year on cosmetics and here I could have had better results spending only a couple hundred for everything.
I’ve gone over Bettina’s Blog and found some of the things talked about and have tried a few. The one that has produced the best result for me is the virgin organic coconut oil. That is the one I objected to over breakfast because over the years, everything I heard about coconut oil was telling me to stay away from it because it was bad for your health. Imagine my amazement to hear folks talking about how great it was over breakfast and their experiences with it. And just think how uninformed I was and sounded, especially since I insisted I knew what I was talking about.
This letter is my way of ‘eating crow’ from my bad behavior at breakfast. I hope you will share it by putting it in Bettina’s Blog. If you don’t I will thoroughly understand. Also feel free to edit it anyway you feel necessary, in case you have space requirements.
The woman whose beauty regimen I have been following, was very quiet at breakfast, but she did describe how she uses coconut oil all the time. She looked stunning. She is not a great beauty – sorry – but she had this aura around her, which apparently comes from her beauty regimen. She uses coconut oil as an all over massage after her bath (yes, Virginia, she takes a bath – that freaked me out) – who in this day and age takes a bath.
Once I got over her bathing instead of showering – I could hear her again – she massages with coconut oil and uses it to give her scalp and hair a real good massage as well. Another quiet person around the table suggested coconut oil was being touted as being good for Alzheimer’s and for thyroid problems. Since I am at that change of life stage, the thyroid sounded good to me. I don’t have a thyroid problem, but I am at the age where that is possible, so I massage my neck every day with the coconut oil – hitting the spots where I think my thyroid lives. I know about thyroids thanks to Dr. Oz.
I’ve been using it for a few months and feel great, – I look much better – and my skin and especially my face have taken on the brightness and healthy look of the woman who I admired. I love the soft sheen her face had and that is what I’ve been trying for. Some of the other stuff talked about I haven’t yet tried. The use of beta carotene on your lips instead of lipstick struck me as really great, but so far I have been going without lipstick. Once I get the coconut oil down, I will move on to the beta carotene and then the aloe vera as an alternate massage to coconut oil.
There is so much I heard around that breakfast table that today sounds really great to me – I really regret getting up on my high horse of knowing it all and not really listening. I could have learned so much more.
Thank you for providing this forum. I’ve added a lot of good habits to my daily life which I had no knowledge about before staying at your bed and breakfast. Do all of your homes have this kind of breakfast? If so, I will never travel another way. To visit friends and pick up good habits which will last a lifetime and make me look really good, what more could I ask. Thanks also for putting up with me – I wasn’t the best breakfast conversationalist. a bit too pushy, but I am really nice deep down. When I’ve made a nute of myself I always apologize. In this case, please accept my apologies and my thanks for what I took away from your bed and breakfast.”
Ed Note: We published the letter we received in its entirety with no edits.
_______________________________________________
Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!
[give_form id=”3763″]
______________________________________________________________
Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.
Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.
Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.
Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net
This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com
TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com
IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!
1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.
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