Natural Cooking Blog

I love using fresh herbs to garnish my food. Growing organic herbs is the best way to have fresh herbs for your kitchen pot. If you want to have a good herb garden find out which herbs you would like to have to use commonly.

• Almost all herbs like a well watered mildly sunny place to grow.You can try companion growing or combining different patches of herbs to confuse insects and preserve your garden.
• Grow your herbs by the season they flourish in and then lay in a sufficient store for the rainy season. For the delicate herbs like lavender and dill select areas where you can control weather conditions well.
  
• Get good quality soil as well fertilized soil will get you a healthier plant with a better immune system and better yield. Add organic fertilizers like compost tea or diluted fish emulsion to help your herbs to grow.
  
• Don’t pinch off herbs till you have a good growth on your herbs. When you do need herbs harvest them early on a summer morning when the the essential oils in them are full.
• Don’t cut off more than one third of the plant for your kitchen use. And hang sticky bars to keep pests at bay.
  

Other than that you can also use a whole variety of newer variety of completely natural pesticides which will help you to grow organic produce for your own needs.

Diatomaceous earth- is a really abrasive powder found in tooth powder and made from the fossils of diatoms which are really tiny sea creatures. As the powder is really sharp it works with the action of slicing open the exoskeletons of insects which crawl in your garden soil. Once the exoskeletons of any animal is destroyed the animal gradually loses water and dies. You can use this variety of pest deterrent for insects like slugs, millipedes,earwigs, centipedes, cockroaches, silver fish and ants for indoors as well as the outdoors. As the pesticide works mechanically, the insects do not resistant to it and the you can use it again and again.

Garlic based insecticide and pesticides- are the next best things for you to use as pest deterrents. You can use these pesticides to preserve your fruits, vegetables, herbs and other plants. You can use the natural garlic you have with you or use a commercially prepared mixture from an organic manufacturer. A cheaper alternative is to manufacture the mixture at home as follows. Mix up one un peeled onion and one un peeled garlic in to small slivers and then add about one teaspoon of red pepper to boil it in three pints water. Cook for more than 20 minutes on low heat. When the spray cools put in to glass jars and you can store it for more than one month. Dilute the combination with one teaspoon of mixture in one liter of water for best results.

As the number of organic pesticides are really too many to have in a single article this will be a continuing series, so keep in touch.

This was really weird but I had never even heard of vegan fast food! I mean when you cut out all your meat and dairy products then its should stand to reason that you are eating a really balanced diet, right? Very wrong!

Take a look at your refrigerator and at what are you seeing? Do you see convenience items of vegan foods like, veg tacos, single-serve burritos, vegan snacks, TV dinners, vegan ready to eat stuff,vegan pizzas, oven snacks, as well as a surfeit of vegan fake meat. Its the same as stuffing yourself with a platter full of meat and high fat items!

Its simple; when you opt to feed your children ready made kettle fried wafers over a good vegan meal, then you’re guilty of eating more calories than you really need. This created bad eating habits irrespective of your vegan diet and lifestyle. So here are a few rules you can follow to make sure you do have a healthy vegan diet.

• Vegan does not mean automatically low fat but you have to make vegetarian food your main dish and cook it in a low calorie way to get the best benefit.
• Vegan serving size counts too. Whatever snack you like you have to make sure you eat it in moderation to have the best benefits.
• Being vegan does not mean you do not need to exercise. Make a 30 minute routine of enjoyable workouts like walking and jogging essential to your daily life.

Best of luck!

For all you people who are wondering, “Ok,so we’ve done healthy cooking , low fat cooking and even no salt cooking! What’s so different about all natural cooking and is it really important?”

Yes it is!

With the growing number of pesticides and preservatives in food, I sometimes wonder how much chemical’s our bodies actually contain.Is this good in the long run? I worry about the amount of chemicals we could be feeding our children unknowingly. But is organic versus conventional any different? If so then what’s natural cooking?

Organic food contains natural fertilizers like manure or compost which are used to feed soil and plants. Instead of using harmful chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides, these organic farming techniques use nature based insects and birds, or interference with natural mating processes, or even simple traps to control pests and disease which destroy vegetation. Weeds are manged with  crop rotation , hand weeding and tilling or even mulching rather than dangerous chemical herbicides .

Sounds better, right?

All naturals food should now carry a label saying USDA organic label which assure you that the the food or produce was produced and processed by following strict regulations of the  USDA standards .It also assures you that at least 95% of the food’s ingredients are produced organically.Its a good idea to opt for organic food and then preparing it naturally using healthy cooking techniques which I will be elaborating on later in this blog.

So keep in touch.

Welcome to my blog on organic foods and all natural cooking.