Meal of the Week: Tuna Salad

This meal of the week has tuna, lettuce, green, red, orange and yellow peppers, covered in extra virgin olive oil and flavored with a little ranch.

Eric
Dempsey's Resolution Fitness

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Pine Needles: Another Amazing Health Source

I have always been fascinated by the wonders of nature and the bountiful blessings that God has given to the Earth. Nature has everything you need to prosper, survive and be healthy. Many cultures and tribes have used nature as part of their daily life. There are simply too many natural things that have medicinal and health benefits. It's amazing that natural things like olive oil, aloe vera and vinegar have health uses that date back to biblical times. But there are simply too many to remember. So as I learn of new natural wonders, it compels me to tell you about them.

The latest natural wonder that I have learned about are Pine Needles. Back during my Army days, I spent alot of time doing survival training and went through survival school. Pine needles were always mentioned as well the many benefits of different parts of the pine tree. Pine bark, pine nuts, pine oil and pine needles all have amazing health and medicinal properties. But right now, we are going to focus on pine needles just due to the overwhelming amount of information.

We will only cover the tip of the iceberg with Pine needle health benefits here. So lets run down the basics. Vitamins: Pine needles are high in vitamin A and C.  Native Americans used pine needles to treat the scurvy of the early European settlers.

Reported health uses of pine needles include treatment for about 80% of all major ailments and diseases from colds and coughs to cancer.

Pine needles are usually consumed in tea form. You simply go out to a healthy pine tree and gather a cup of live pine needles - make sure you wash them, of course. Then cut them up into smaller pieces. Steep the needles in very hot, but not boiling, water for about 2 hours. The tea should be brownish in color and won't taste great. You may want to use raw honey or stevia to sweeten to taste.

That's the most inexpensive and probably one of the healthiest teas that you can make and it's simple and right outside your door. It's amazing stuff that's been used by many different people like Native Americans. Read up on it and give it a try. I'm going to for sure.

Update - so this past weekend, my son Mikey and I decided to actually make Pine Needle Tea using pine needles from a tree in the yard. We got a pine branch and took a bunch of green needles, washed them and chopped them up, heated water, super hot, but not boiling and let the pine needles sit in the hot water for about an hour. Then we strained the pine needles and put the tea into mugs, added stevia and raw honey as sweetners and tried it. The tea wasn't bad but it was strong. Even sweetened, it smelled and tasted like pine - shocker I know. I wouldn't drink it for pleasure, but I could definitely choke it down for medicinal uses. And it didn't cost anything. For the amount of health benefits that pine needle tea provides, it is an easy and inexpensive, healthy drink.



Eric
Dempsey's Resolution Fitness