Cooking while fasting....

To be honest with you, I get asked this all the time - don't you find it hard to cook and be around food when you are fasting? All I can say right now is that perhaps I am so used to it that it no longer bothers me, however I am not sure that it ever did.

Of course I can smell the food, I can see it and I would love to have some. However, once I start a cleanse, I am single minded enough to follow it through no matter what is happening on the outside. It's as if my body goes into the 'detox mode' that I talk about in my book The Pagan Diet© and until this is finished, nothing deters me from my goal. I find that I am especially creative and want to cook and research recipes during my cleanses.

Yesterday was a productive day in many ways, I made lots of muesli for our post cleanse meals - I have been making my own muesli for years (my recipe is in The Way to Heal Body Mind & Soul) and if you have not tried making this yet, please do. You will not ever go back to buying anything from a shop - I like the fact that I can put anything into it that I want and I am the only one who handles it.

When I make it, I try to make enough to last about a month - it is not something that we would eat every day, but usually on the weekends or when my son comes home for sailing absolutely famished, it is an easy ready snack.

Muesli is packed with concentrated energy, which is a fantastic way to start a food day or even to end it as a final meal. I like toasted muesli that is not too sweet, with a variety of dried fruits, nuts, seeds and anything else in the cupboard!

Then late last night, because I had more fruit to be used up (local organic strawberries) I made some more jam, but not with the same results that I had the night before. My strawberry/apple jam turned out wonderfully and the jars sealed. Then I made some ginger/peach jam in a bigger batch - and 2 of the jars did not seal.

I was doing some trouble shooting when looking at the lids, they had been used previously for storing fruit, so this might be the problem with the lids, or it was just too late at night and I was tired. However, the other jars did seal and they were poured later... I did find that I preferred to make smaller batches at one time as this was easier to handle, at least right now when I don't have all of the equipment that I would like to have. 

But, all is not lost because I simply put the jam from the unsealed jars into the freezer to be used as freezer jam. Fruit is fruit and nothing need be wasted here - it will all be eaten. I am figuring that for  a family of 4 who loves jam ( and use it in everything) we would most likely go through about 1 big jar each week. That means I have to make at least 50 jars to last until next summer.

I still have work to do here! (smile) Now, I want to find more creative and tasty combinations for these fruits and will do some apple sauce as well. So, back to my research on fruit, jam and canning.

Have a homemade day everyone!

April

Muesli - raw in first bowl, then finished in middle bowl and ready to be toasted in oven tray. Finally in the jars once cool.