Springhole.net Blog

Here’s an odd product you can reuse – pickle brine.

Some people enjoy picked eggs – that is, eggs that are boiled, shelled, and placed into pickle brine.  Boiled eggs make for a nice protein-rich snack, but I can’t vouch for the taste since I can’t stand pickled eggs.  I’ve heard from my relatives who do this that it works, however.

If eggs aren’t your thing, you can put whatever vegetable you want into the brine.  Some people like to soak onions in pickle brine overnight to use on their hamburgers.

Now bear in mind that the vinegar will be less potent (and less flavorful) than a fresh batch of pickle brine, so you should plan on only keeping whatever you’re pickling in the refrigerator (do NOT reuse brine for canning) and eating it relatively soonish.  Also, don’t reuse the brine more than once.

Some people soak sponges in brine and use them on their copper kettles.  (Adding a little salt is also supposed to be helpful.)

Pickle jars are also easily reusable.  Rather than buying glass pitchers, we just started keeping our large pickle jars for brewing tea.

I found these two awesome articles today.

Five Reasons You Are Still Fat
This article points out some great problems with the way people are eating, such as following the low-fat fallacy and consuming too much sugar. (In today’s sugar-glutted market, it’s all too easy.)

Sometimes the government goofs. In the late 1970s, the United States began advocating a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet. In the early 1970s, the average daily energy intake was 2,450 calories. By the year 2000, that number had risen to 2,618. Almost all of those extra calories came from carbohydrates, according to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

And…

According to a USDA survey, an average American eats 82 grams of added sugar every day. That’s almost 20 teaspoons, which contribute an empty 317 calories.

And now for the next article…

The Cure For Diabetes
Dr. Mary Vernon is curing people of diabetes. How? By doing the logical thing: cutting out the sugars and starches. This article also does a great job of explaining exactly what causes diabetes and why the diets that doctors place diabetics on don’t really make any sense.

Dr. Vernon instructed Long to adopt a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet instead of the ADA’s well-established dietary guidelines. His condition reversed — and fast. In just 3 months, he was no longer diabetic. And this was without ever taking a single dose of metformin or injecting insulin.

Not bad, eh? Now chew on this:

“I think the onus should be on the ADA to show data that suggests low-carbohydrate diets aren’t beneficial in the intermediate term,” says Feinman. “All evidence we have suggests otherwise, including epidemiological.”

Feinman is referring to studies on Greenland Eskimos, who prior to the 1980s had perhaps the lowest prevalence of both heart disease and diabetes on the planet. One 25-year study found that only one out of the 1,800 people monitored developed diabetes. Their diet: almost entirely fat and protein, and only about 3 percent carbohydrates.

Now lawl (or spit your coffee):

A University of Pennsylvania study reports that doctors prescribe a low-fat diet to their patients 67 percent of the time, yet when it comes to their own diet, they more often go low-carbohydrate.

Now go read the rest of the articles for yourself. Try them! Try them! You may like them!

We drink coffee sporadically around here.  And when everyone drinks coffee sporadically, this can mean that a pot may be drained instantaneously, or it may remain unused for days.

Stale coffee just doesn’t taste all that great.  So what to do with the leftovers?

Personally, I put them in the refrigerator after pouring the remaining coffee into a jar with a lid.

Interesting note: if you leave uncovered coffee in the fridge with a browning banana, you will soon have banana-flavored coffee.

Some people take it a bit farther by putting their leftover coffee in the freezer.  Some make their leftover coffee into coffee cubes to use in iced coffee.  And apparently you can make a mean steak sauce with leftover coffee.  If you’re feeling creative, you can use it to artificially age papers to make them look more like old parchment.  Some color Easter eggs with them; personally I don’t see the point, since that’s what color my chickens lay anyway. 

• 5 Things to Do with Leftover Coffee
• 20 Uses for Leftover Coffee
• How To Recycle Stale Coffee and Used Coffee Grounds