Warming Belly Brew

We had our first snowfall in Minnesota today, and it was ushered in by gale-force, biting, cold winds. Sunny warmth has flip flopped into bone chilling cold. What better time to snuggle up with a big mug of this spicy, tangy brew. The ginger warms your belly and bones and works with the lemon to enhance your immune system, while the cinnamon helps regulate your blood sugar. Sip on this brew and keep strong all winter long!

Warming Belly Brew

Ingredients:
Big pot of water
2-3 inches of ginger root (usually found by jalapenos or garlic)
1-2 lemons to taste
2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon or 1 stick of cinnamon
honey or maple syrup to taste

Directions:
Put the water on the stove and heat to boiling. While water is heating, peel the ginger, and chop it up in dice-sized cubes. (You don't have to, it just gives up more flavor. You can actually drop the whole thing in the water if you wish.)

Add ginger to the hot water and stir in the cinnamon stick.

Reduce heat to simmer for 15-20 minutes.

When it's good and spicy, squeeze the lemons in, and if you didn't have cinnamon stick, add the ground cinnamon at this time.

Drizzle in honey or maple syrup, or a little bit of both if you like, to taste.

Sip. Breathe. Rest. Enjoy.

Chillin' Chicken Casserole

We are enjoying a spectacular Indian Summer in Minnesota, with temperatures 20 degrees above normal. Usually fall ushers in soups and stews in our house, but it's just too warm outside for that right now.

This meal is a favorite of mine because it takes hardly any time at all to make, is delicious, packed with whole foods, and it has nice, simple flavors that can be admired by all. Best of all, it is super tasty cold. A couple of notes here: to save time, you can purchase a rotisserie chicken from your local grocery store. You can use the entire chicken in this recipe if you like, but I just use the breast and save the rest for other stuff. Also, you can find pre-cooked, frozen brown rice in the freezer aisle. Then you don't have to wait an hour for the rice to cook. Or you can precook your own rice and store it in the freezer.


Ingredients:
1 cooked chicken breast
1 1/2 cups of dry rice
2/3 package of frozen peas and carrots
20 baby pickles
2 Tablespoons garlic powder
1/2 cup sliced almonds, toasted
salt and pepper

Directions:

Cook rice. Put in a large bowl. Chop chicken in small cubes. Chop pickles. Put rice, chicken, pickles, garlic powder, peas and carrots, salt and pepper in a large mixing bowl. Drizzle a little pickle juice on top. Mix it all up. Eat right away, or put in the refrigerator to cool. Enjoy!

P.S. You don't have to cook the peas and carrots first, since this is a cold salad. Simply mixing it with the warm rice heats it up enough to make it not frozen.