Google Search Trends show that "Our digestive systems could use some help"
It would seem that we are facing a rising wave of upset stomachs (pardon the poor pun)...
A number of studies starting in 2005 have continued to show that Turmeric and the Curcumin it contains can do a good job of supporting your bodies healthy immune response including our digestive system.....
How to Grow Turmeric at Home - 5 key steps for the best results
5 Steps to Growing Turmeric at Home
- Get three pieces (each about 1 inch) of fresh Turmeric root from the grocery store. Make it organic if you can.
- Fill a 5-gallon plastic pot or container 3/4 fill with well-drained potting soil. The extra room will be needed as the turmeric root grows later in the season and fills the container
- Place the turmeric pieces 1 inch under the top of the soil and cover them and keep it damp but not wet
- Place in a sunny warm location where the temperature stays between 70-80 degrees F. We like to cover the top of the potting mix with a 2 inch blanket of mulch like pine bark or straw to reduce evaporation and keep it warm. Now be patient - it is going to take a while for them to shoot.
- 5. Shoots will appear in 2-4 weeks. Add a general purpose fertilizer every 6 weeks
Recipe - Curried Turmeric Honey Shrimp with Pasta
Ingredients:
- Verdant Kitchen Turmeric Infused Honey - 1 tbsp
- Shrimp - 8 oz
- Red onion - 1 cup, chopped
- Frozen peas - 1 cup
- Olive oil - 1 tbsp
- Cumin - 1/4 tsp
- Coriander - 1/4 tsp
- Ground black pepper - 1/4 tsp
- Low sodium soy sauce - 2 tsp
- Cornstarch - 1/2 tsp
- Pasta - we chose a high-protein fine spaghetti - 8 oz
Details:
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Servings: 4
Preparation:
- Boil salted water in a large saucepan and add pasta. Cook according to package directions.
- In a skillet, add olive oil, cumin, coriander, black pepper and Verdant Kitchen Turmeric Infused Honey and warm to bloom the spices.
- Add shrimp, onions and peas and simmer for 5-7 minutes.
- Mix cornstarch in 1-2 tbsp. of water and stir to thicken.
- Drain pasta.
- Plate and serve.
Recipe - Antioxidant-rich Green Salad with Ginger Bites & Candied Pecans
This antioxidant-rich simple salad of fresh greens sprinkled with Candied Ginger Pecans and Ginger Bites is perfect for light summer meals. Dress it with our Golden Vinaigrette Salad Dressing for an additional burst of flavor from turmeric and honey.
Ingredients:
- Mixed fresh salad greens - 4 oz
- Verdant Kitchen Candied Ginger Pecans - 2 oz
- Verdant Kitchen Ginger Bites - 1.6 oz
Details:
- Prep time: 10 minutes
- Cooking time: None
- Servings: 4
Preparation:
- Wash and dry the greens.
- Dress with our Golden Vinaigrette Salad Dressing or your favorite dressing.
- Sprinkle salad with the pecans and ginger bites.
Verdant Kitchen® products used in this recipe
Try out the delicious and easy Golden Vinaigrette dressing
Recipe - Golden Vinaigrette Salad Dressing
Try this wellness-packed simple and delicious Golden Vinaigrette Salad Dressing on fresh salad greens. Just 3 ingredients and 3 minutes! It will have your taste buds tingling and your friends and family asking for an extra serving.
This quick dressing is not only tasty, but it supports whole body health. Featuring our Turmeric Infused Honey, you can add some extra crunch and flavor with a sprinkle of our Candied Ginger Pecans!
Recipe - Golden Vinaigrette Salad Dressing
Prep Time : 3 Minutes | Cooking Time: 0 Minutes | Servings: 4
Vegetarian
Calories: approx 35 per serving
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Verdant Kitchen® Products used in this recipe
Recipe: Roasted Turmeric Infused Honey-Glazed Plantains
Plantains are delicious, but often when served fried they can be a bit heavy. We've created an easy oven-roasted recipe that provides the flavor you want, but with a lot less oil and mess.
The Turmeric Infused Honey enhances the golden color of the plantains and gives a sweet, crisp glaze. It adds turmeric's anti-inflammatory benefits to the naturally high levels of fiber, Vitamin C (antioxidant), Vitamin A, B6 and minerals. Great tasting too!
Verdant Kitchen Products in this Recipe
Recipe - Peanut Butter Turmeric Energy Balls
Recipe - Peanut Butter Turmeric Energy Balls
Prep Time : 10 Minutes | Cooking Time: 0 Minutes | Servings: 16
Vegetarian
Calories: approx 80 each
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Turmeric Infused Honey brings a bright yellow color and is packed with Turmeric anti-inflammatory power.
Turmeric Ginger Green Tea - complex & intense, fresh whole body wellness
I wish we had the ability to share aromas online. Today we are fresh grinding our USDA Organic, USA Grown Ginger and Turmeric from our Savannah Organic farm for a batch of Ginger Turmeric Green Tea that will be produced this week in our Organic kitchens in Atlanta, GA.
But back to how it smells. I can't share the aroma, but let me try and describe it.
Our USDA Organic spices, including Ginger and Turmeric, are grown in sandy loams near the coast. They have that terroir. We grow over nine varieties of Ginger and four varieties of Turmeric (and several varieties of Galangal) and each has a unique flavor profile.
Careful processing does not mean low tech. Once harvested and washed, the spices are sliced and carefully raw food dehydrated in atmospheric-controlled rooms. They are then ground in air flow, all designed to minimize heat and maximize the existing essential oils, polyphenols, phytochemicals and other nutrients and functional products. The assault on your senses comes in no small part due to the careful way we prepare the ingredients. At Verdant Kitchen® we believe strongly that the end product can never be better than the ingredients used to make it. Take this concept and walk backward through the process. You come back to the soil, the farm, the seedlings, the irrigation, the harvest, and worry and work to make it the best it can be at every step.
The Ginger - intense citrus, but much more complex. Perhaps a reminder of Bergamot in a morning cup of Earl Grey. Sweet like a Hungarian Pepper. Something complex underneath, something that makes you feel happy, but what is it? Your mouth waters, ginger has that effect. Suddenly you feel it more than smell it. The essential oils are being absorbed and connecting with your brain. You almost sneeze and smile.
The Turmeric - carrots, is it carrots? No not carrots, but perhaps carrots mixed with butternut squash and something else. Savory, similar to the sea breeze from the marsh near the fields. Fresh pepper, a hint of camphor like your Grandma's old cupboard. Something familiar and friendly.
The Green Tea - grassy, fresh a little bitter. We speak a lot about the benefits of Ginger and Turmeric, but Green Tea especially when consumed several times a day has well proven positive impact including clinical research on the reduction of the development of Prostate Cancer. Here is a link to our blog and video on Green Tea and Prostate Cancer.
Together they are a potent blend of antioxidants, anti-inflammatories and polyphenols that can provide joy and wellness benefits across a broad range of critical body functions.
Making a cup of this tea could not be simpler. Here is a video where I have used our office Keurig. Use really hot water and let it steep for a few minutes. Some of the active ingredients, especially in the Turmeric, have limited solubility in cold water. The hot water will extract the oils and essential chemicals and provide you with enhanced bioavailability.
Ginger and Turmeric under the Live Oaks - Verdant Kitchen USDA Organic Farm Savannah, GA.
Recipe - Turmeric Ginger Almond Cranberry Power Boost
The hands-down favorite from a recent Manhattan product tasting, this simple heart-healthy combination is delicious, nutritious and packed with energy.
Energy + boosted anti-inflammatory and antioxidant bioavailability. Three simple ingredients combine to provide four wellness advantages in every serving.
- Turmeric Dusted Baby Ginger is a two-for-one bonus. Early season, mild ginger is packed with antioxidants. Naturally preserved in cane sugar and infused with our USDA Organic, USA grown Turmeric, bursting with flavor and prized as an anti-inflammatory, antioxidant dynamic duo.
- Almonds provide a complex array of vitamins, minerals and heart-healthy monounsaturated fats and protein. Eaten together the fats from the almonds help increase the solubility of key active compounds in the Turmeric and Ginger and boost their bioavailability in our bodies.
- Dried cranberries are high in Vitamin C and other natural phytochemicals that like ginger can help soak up free radicals that can damage our DNA and cells.
We often get questions about the sugar content of preserved ginger. When we grow and harvest Ginger, it is not naturally high in simple sugars. Unlike many fresh fruits that average around 10% sugar, ginger naturally has only a few percent. When we dry fruit, we remove the water and concentrate the sugars. This gives dried fruit both its delicious sweet concentrated flavor, but most importantly also acts as a natural preservative. To provide the same level of natural preservation, fresh early season ginger is steeped in a cane sugar solution. Some of the water is replaced by the cane sugar. The result is a product very similar to dried fruit. You should enjoy preserved ginger as you would dried fruit. Be mindful that they contain sugar and combine them with healthy fiber for slow and steady glycemic release.
Enjoy the mix as a snack, or my favorite, sprinkled over a salad.
Prep Time : 1 Minutes | Cooking Time: 0 Minutes | Servings: 12
Vegan
Verdant Kitchen® Products in this recipe:
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An Early Spring continues a 30-year trend - the Bees already knew
A lot has been said about the trend in warming weather. You can choose to call it climate change or not, but what is fact is that we have seen warming average temperatures for the last 30 years.
Looking across the US we can see this trend as increases in average mean temperatures by state.
You can customize you information at this NOAA site
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/state-temps/
If seems like every other person I have met in the last week has a cold of some sort. Changing temperature profiles changes disease spread. To focus on immunity and recovery, see FightBack5
We will hear a lot more about climate change and sometimes it seems a bit abstract and difficult to apply to your daily lives. On the farm it is only too obvious. Planting and harvest times are keyed to last frost, first frost and average temperatures. The temperatures and associated rainfall drives insect emergence, which has a very direct impact on quality and yield. Crops that have never been grown in a region suddenly become possible, while long-term staple crops become uneconomic.
Last week in mid-February on the farms at Verdant Kitchen in Savannah GA, the camellias were finishing their flowering. The azaleas were finishing a big bloom. It was 79 F. The weed seeds had shot and clover was 6 inches high and lush.
Farms worry about lots of things, but above all they worry about uncertainty. Uncertainty generally means reduced yields and increased costs. These are costs that in the end are borne by the consumer. We should understand climate change and all do our part to reduce the impact. The consequences of changing climate will hit our pockets and our environment.
We can watch our graphs and first and last frost almanac dates - but just go stand by a flowering shrub. The bees will tell you when it's spring.
