Low Energy in Winter? You’re Probably Missing These Minerals

Introduction to Natural Energy and Winter Fatigue 0:00

Do you wish that you had more energy, but you don't want to rely on caffeine and other stimulants to get it? You want it naturally? Well, that is what we are going to learn about today. Do you want to live well? Meaning, do you want to stay well, not wait to make changes until you're already sick? Well, welcome to my home. Let's go on this journey together. Do you feel like you are just running on empty in the wintertime? Your to-do lists are a mile long. You're trying to do everything right for yourself, for your family, for everyone that relies on you.

But it's dark outside, it's cold, and you just want to take a nap. but you can't. So today we're going to learn all about how to recharge you by recharging every single cell in your body so that you can do all those things and still feel like you can keep going. So we're going to learn how to recharge every single cell three times a day. And if you could recharge yourself three times a day, think about all the energy you can have. The first thing we're going to do is make my morning recharge drink.

This contains lemon juice, which is vitamin C. Now, if you watched my other episode on vitamin C, you'll know that this is full of electrons. Electrons are literally the charge that we want to be in our cells. I'm going to add salt to that because salt is something called an electrolyte. Now we hear this word electrolyte, but do we know what it really means? I have a real kind of catchy phrase that I want you to think about. An electrolyte helps the electrons to light up your cells. So it helps the electrons get into the cells.

Now these are all the minerals that we find in a real salt. Salt is actually really important for this. You can't have energy without salt. Your cells won't work right. This is it. This is all I have. The water is warm.

Morning Recharge Drink 2:02

Why? Because warm water helps you to digest faster and better. If you drink with cold water, you actually calm this all down. You make it not work as well. Cold water slows down your digestion. So warm water, lemon juice, and salt. Now there's actually another version of this that farmers have used for centuries. They would use, again, warm water with a little bit of apple cider vinegar. Now vinegar can be made, in fact apple cider vinegar can be made from apple peels. So apple cider vinegar was something that was around all the time.

The vinegar actually brings some of those electrolytes with it, potassium, some of the things that are really useful. And then a little bit of maple syrup. Now why maple syrup? Well, it makes it taste a little bit better, right? That's good, but maple syrup is actually really mineral rich as well. So now we have the vinegar, which has its own minerals. We have the maple syrup, added minerals. and a little bit of salt. Both of these drinks, the farmer's drink and the lemon water with salt, will literally recharge your cells.

Now, the dentist in me has to tell you one very important fact. This will weaken your teeth. It will soften your teeth. for a short period of time, for about 30 minutes, 30 to 45 minutes. So you do not want to brush after either of these drinks. So what do I do? The first thing I do in the morning, I get up and I go brush my teeth because I actually crave these drinks. I need my recharge. I go brush my teeth, then I come in the kitchen and I drink my morning recharge drink. It's safe in that order.

If you haven't brushed your teeth yet, wait for about 30 to 45 minutes before drinking that. All right, our morning is off to a good start, but we all feel that afternoon slump, right? About 1 p.m., 2 p.m., again, that nap is sounding so good. So what do we do to recharge then? We've kind of used up a lot of energy through the morning. That is where, again, this word electrolyte comes in. Remember, It helps electrons light up your cells. So electrolytes can recharge your system. This is the ultimate afternoon pick me up, not caffeine, because caffeine is going to give you an up and then a crash.

And it really is simply tricking your body into thinking it's not tired when actually you're more tired because you're pushing past your reserves and electrolyte refuels your cells and gives you more reserves. This one is my favorite. It's mine. but the reason I formulated this is because most electrolytes are actually very acidic. Think about it. They're lemon-lime flavored. They're all the acidic fruits because they taste good to our mouths, but they're very damaging to the teeth. So you drink an electrolyte, you snack a little bit, you brush your teeth.

Any of these things, you're going to actually be losing minerals. So this electrolyte is alkaline. You will not lose minerals. This is the most delicious drink you've ever drunk, I can promise you. You can drink this electrolyte hot, you can drink it cold, you can take it on the road with you, all of these things. I actually look forward to this every single day. I think it's about 2 p.m. I can drink my electrolyte. I promise you are going to love this. It's chocolatey delicious. I needed a little recharge.

Okay, the last thing is at nighttime. How do you recharge your body and why? Aren't you ready to go to sleep? Isn't that what we should be doing is winding down? Yes, but guess what? Just because up here goes to sleep doesn't mean down here does. In fact, that is what I call construction zone. All night long, our cells are working to rebuild themselves, to clean up the mess, to do all the maintenance work. All of that's happening while you sleep. So you need those electrolytes, those minerals to be able to do the work.

Afternoon Electrolyte Pick-Me-Up 5:49

This is a great way to do it. What you do is you make a magnesium spray. These are magnesium flakes. They are just kind of big flakes. You put them in a spray bottle of any variety. This is my favorite spray bottle because it's small. It can just sit on my counter. And the rule of thumb here is you want half and a half. So you want half magnesium flakes to half the water. So I'm not going to fill it all the way up, but I would have filled it all the way to half. I'm just going to give equal amounts of water as I do magnesium flakes.

Now my husband, he actually gets really bad leg cramps at night. So because he gets leg cramps, He wakes me up at night because he starts to scream. And I know exactly what's going on when I hear in the middle of the night, ow, ow, ow. And I'm like, okay, what is this? This is his leg cramps. As soon as I hear that, I go and I grab the magnesium spray bottle. You just shake this up and those magnesium flakes dissolve. I grab the magnesium spray bottle. I spray it down his leg. Three seconds and it's gone instantaneously.

But how can you actually prevent even getting those cramps at all? Or how do you prevent having restless leg syndrome or moving all over the place while you're sleeping or waking up a lot? Magnesium is amazing for recharging your batteries. It's actually needed to recharge batteries, but it's amazing to relax your muscles. and help you sleep better. So you spray this on, I like to spray it on the soles of my feet. Spray it on the soles of my feet before going to bed, sleep like a baby. You can spray it on your stomach area, on the inside of your arms, basically thinner skin areas.

I get a little rashy when I do that, so the soles of my feet is my best place. Spray a few sprays, go to sleep, sleep like a baby. These are three ways to recharge yourself during the day. The morning recharge drink, the electrolyte afternoon, and the magnesium flakes at night. Give it a try. I promise you, you will feel energized. All right, so we've learned how to supplement electrolytes and minerals into our day, but where do we get them naturally? And I doubt that my great-grandma had a bag of electrolytes or magnesium flakes to use during the day.

But our cells require minerals, so where can we get them? Just from nature. Well, the answer really lies in how plants work. During freeze and thaw cycles and different rain and dry cycles, the earth actually flexes and it breaks apart rocks. And when a plant grows, it sends roots down around those rocks, picks up the minerals, and brings them into the plant. So when you're eating plants, you are eating minerals. Isn't this amazing? I mean, the earth provides such incredible things. So the place that has the most minerals is the root portion of the plant.

We are going to learn an amazing dish today that your family is going to love that's made of root vegetables, because remember, this is where the minerals are. So to start this off, we are going to start cooking some chicken. Now, the key with cooking chicken is you want the pan hot first.

Nighttime Magnesium Spray for Recovery 8:55

Then you want to add your oil to that hot pan and let it heat up just a bit. I'd already warmed up the pan, so it was ready to go. Now I'm gonna wait and watch until this oil shimmers just a little. Now why do I do this? Honestly, it's so that I can clean the pan a little easier because I am all about shortening steps and making this faster. So the chicken's gonna go in here, probably could have warmed up a little bit more, but we're gonna put it in now. Now this chicken is actually some chicken thighs.

and I'm gonna just put a little bit of salt on here because when you're cooking, it tastes better when every single ingredient is actually seasoned by itself. It doesn't taste as good when you wait and add the seasonings at the end of the dish. So the salt goes on every single component while we're cooking. I could stand here and keep stirring this But in my life, that's not what I do. In my life, I come back over here and I keep cooking while this is cooking. We're doing two things at once. So I'm gonna go ahead and peel all of these vegetables.

Nothing special about potatoes, sweet potato, carrots, but there is something special about ginger. I need about a tablespoon of ginger. So what I do is I actually use a spoon to peel the ginger. It's the fastest way to peel ginger. So you just use the back of a regular old spoon that you get out of your silverware drawer. I like to keep the rest of the ginger even though I don't need it all because it gives me a handle. And now that's the part that I'm going to cut up. So I'll show you in a minute how I cut it up.

I'm going to go peel and then we'll come back. Okay, I got everything peeled. Now I have a test for you. Which thing are we going to cut first? The rule of thumb is you're going to cut the thing that cooks the longest first. Why? Because it's going to go in the pan first or If there's an onion, usually that's always first. So let's talk about this onion for just a minute. A lot of times people will take off both ends. I want you to keep this root end in place and I'll show you why. But the first step, like always, is make a round thing flat, right?

Always the rule. We wanna get all of the skin off of the outside of the onion. So cut a little bit deeper and usually you can peel the whole thing off in one fell swoop. Now you're keeping that root end intact. For this we're going to cut halfway through that root end and that's going to be down here. Now I'm actually moving slightly off the edge of my cutting board so I can get my knuckles down below the cutting board. I'm going to cut sideways this way a couple of times, probably three times because I want these fairly small.

Then you're going to cut with the grain of the onion and then into your dices. So that is the key to keeping this root end because it keeps everything in place while you're doing the cutting. I'm actually only going to use half an onion on this one. Now my key with this is I use the bowl I had everything in and I just swish it into the bowl and now the bowl takes it to the pan. Real easy way to keep everything clean while you're cooking. Give it a little stir. That chicken's about done. You can use chicken thighs, you can use chicken breasts, it really doesn't matter.

Chicken thighs make it a little juicier, so my family usually likes that. Okay, what's next? The thing that's gonna cook the longest, which is gonna be probably my sweet potato, then the potatoes, then the carrots, then the mushrooms are very last, right?

Minerals in Plants and Root Vegetables 12:47

They're gonna cook the quickest. So, that's the order we're gonna cut things. This is going to go in our sauce, so it's for a little bit later. Nothing special about cutting these, so I'm gonna go ahead and get these cut in chunks, and then we'll come back and show you what to do with them. All right, I've got everything cut up, so potatoes are going in first. First thing into the pan, they have to cook the longest. We would cook this for a few minutes. I cut up everything already, so I'm just gonna add it in now.

But remember, the easiest way, put that bowl off to the side, dump it in. This way you don't lose anything. Turn around, put it behind you. We're gonna wait just a minute on these mushrooms because they don't need to cook nearly as long and I don't want them overcooking. Stir this in. I'm actually gonna add a little bit of salt. Remember how we wanted to salt every single layer? So we're gonna add a little bit of salt at this point. just to make sure that every layer has the seasoning that we want in it.

All right, while that's cooking, we're gonna come back and make the sauce. So this sauce uses a few different things. We're gonna use that ginger that we had right at the beginning first. We're gonna make some slices with this, and then we're gonna cut it very thinly. Nobody really likes a big chunk of ginger in their bowl, so we wanna make sure that we're making pretty small pieces with this. And ginger is a really important thing, especially during the wintertime. Both ginger and garlic are very anti-microbial.

They are gonna kill flu bugs, cold bugs, everything that's flying around this time of year. So we wanna make sure that we're adding these in. Not only that, they actually taste really delicious. So we wanna make sure we have the ginger and the garlic ready to go. Now, garlic, easiest way to cut these, you're gonna cut off the root end. sometimes you're lucky and that whole skin comes off with it not always are we so lucky but take that root end off if we need to get that a little easier off we can flatten it out and it'll often just peel off at that point we're going to cut the same way that we did with the ginger we want to make some small slices then we're going to cut it into small pieces I know everybody loves garlic and ginger in these recipes, but nobody wants to get a big old

Chicken and Vegetable Stir-Fry Prep 15:05

chunk of it, right? So you're gonna cut pretty small, little tiny minces, and then we're gonna add this to the sauce. For now, we're just gonna add this to the bowl. So ginger, garlic, all in here, ready to go. Deliciousness. Now we're gonna add some soy sauce. Mirin, which is a rice wine with a little bit of sugar in it, some rice wine vinegar, and some sesame oil, along with some warm water. Now this is deliciousness in a bowl. It has that savory element from the soy sauce, it has just that little bit of tang from the vinegar, the mirin gives it a little bit of sweetness, and then the ginger and garlic make it absolutely delicious.

This is actually going in with our veggies. So I'm gonna put that in now, along with those mushrooms. and that is going to simmer. So we were able to get it a little bit browned before we put all that in. Now we're gonna simmer this. Okay, so I've cleaned everything up and it's not just because I'm on camera. This is actually exactly what I do when I'm cooking at home. As soon as something goes in that pot, the thing it was in goes in the sink, I wash it real quickly and I put it to dry. There's nothing more depressing than getting done with an incredible meal and seeing a sink full or a counter full of dishes.

So my rule is we don't actually start to eat until dishes that I've used during the making of the meal are already taken care of. I promise you, you will be happy you did this later. All right, the last thing we're doing right now, this is simmering over on the stove. It needs to be there for about 15 minutes. We're cooking those potatoes, making sure everything is nice and cooked, but also all of that sauce is glazing all the vegetables. It's gonna be delicious. We also have rice cooking over here.

This is my cute little rice cooker that I love so much. That's been cooking while I've been working. Again, we now have two things going on while we're doing this. This is a drizzle that's going on top. A couple last little kicks of flavor here. We're gonna use miso. I'm gonna use a lot of miso in the next segment, so stick with me. Miso is amazing, full of minerals and full of proteins. It's also full of probiotics, so it's very good for gut health. And tahini, which if you don't know what tahini is, it is actually sesame seed paste.

It's kind of like peanut butter, but sesame seed butter. Again, full of good fats, amazingly delicious. And then we're gonna add a little bit of honey and a little bit of water in with this together. The honey just makes things a little bit sweeter. We'll add the water while the honey's making its way down there. The water is just to make it so that it will drizzle quite well. So just a little bit of honey. We just want a little bit of sweet, a little bit of glaze on there. Gonna mix this up and that's going to go on top.

You can see that miso takes a bit of work to mix in. but it'll get mixed in. And I'm going to show you a few tricks to work with miso in the next segment because we are making miso soup, the ultimate side dish when you have a stir fry. So this is the drizzle that's going to go on top. I will show you the rice, the veggies, the chicken and the drizzle when we're all done. But for now, Let's go learn how to make miso soup. So simple, so full of minerals, and everybody loves it. Okay, we have our rice done, our stir-fry cooking, now we're gonna cook miso soup.

A lot of you have probably had miso soup in a restaurant, but you've not realized that you can make it at home. Well, I'm gonna teach you how to make it at home for two reasons. First of all, it's delicious, but second, it is so mineral rich. So you are just putting the cherry on the top of this meal when you're having miso soup. Let me explain why. When we make the broth for miso soup, we start with water. I actually have the water heating up on the stove right now. but we want to flavor that water and it's called dashi when it's flavored.

Well, the traditional way is you use something called kombu, which is seaweed. Now kombu is actually known as the sea's multivitamin because this has so many minerals in it.

Miso Soup and Mineral-Rich Broth 19:30

It's absolutely incredible. You use the kombu in the water, it infuses the water with all those minerals, along with something called glutamine that brings that umami or that mmm this tastes so good flavor to things. It's actually what they copied and made MSG out of was the flavor of seaweed. So you can use this and then you finish it off with something called bonito flakes, which are actually a dried tuna flake. Most of you probably don't have this and this in your kitchen, so I'm going to show you how to do this without that.

This is the very simplest way and the way that we're going to use today. These are actually tablets that are concentrated dashi stock basically. They're just these little tablets. They're going to go in the pan while that's warming up. and you have the flavor and really there is kombu. There's all these things inside of here too. That's gonna just go in that pan while it's cooking. You can also get these. These are little spice packets that can go in the water and can infuse it with all the things you see inside of here.

There's mushrooms, there's anchovies, there's kombu, and it makes it taste delicious. I know you might turn up your nose at some of those ingredients, but it actually tastes amazing. So our stock is being made. That's item number one in miso soup. The second thing is the miso. What is miso? Well, miso is actually a fermented bean paste, so had a funny little story. During COVID, I got really bored. I don't sit around very well, and so when we actually were forced to sit around, we were home, I decided why not learn to make miso.

So I ordered a bunch of things off of Amazon. I ordered the soybeans. I ordered it's called koji rice and I made miso. I got a little cookie crock and put it in and the miso has to sit for a year. So I made it during COVID but we didn't get to eat it till the next year. It was amazing. In fact, my daughter, she goes downstairs and she gets spoonfuls of this because she loves the flavor of it so much. It's simply fermented bean paste with some fermented rice. That sounds disgusting, but it actually is so delicious.

It's full of that umami and it's full of minerals. So we're going to add miso to the water, but here's a trick. You can't add it when it's boiling, so I am not going to let this water boil. I'm going to turn it right down. We don't want it to boil because that will kill the probiotics or the good bacteria that are in this miso. The other thing you want to do is you want to have it so that the miso can mix in with the water and not be clumpy. You don't want a big old clump of miso when you have your soup, it just doesn't taste very good.

So you can use a strainer. This is actually a fancy, it's called a miso muddler. You can use any kind of strainer and what you're going to do is you're going to put the miso in here. Typical rule of thumb is you want a tablespoon of miso to every cup of water. So I put four cups of water in there so we're going to put, you know, you can tell how equal and exact I'm being here. That's about four tablespoons of miso. Now what I want to do is I actually want to add some of the water to this, get it starting to mix up in here, and then I'm going to add it to that main pan over there.

So I'm going to grab some of that dashi broth out of here and add it to this bowl with the miso. What that does is it just helps to mix the miso in. You can use anything at this point to do that. I have this little stick that does it. You can just use a spoon. You can use anything. I just want it to mix in with that broth and start to thin it out. so that when you put it in that entire pan, it's going to mix in and not be lumpy. So it's starting to thin a little bit here. I'm going to dump it into the pan and then we're going to mix it all in.

Now I have one even easier method than all of the methods that I've told you today. There's actually dashi miso so what it is is it's miso that already has that dashi flavor in it so then you only have to even have one ingredient just that kind of miso and you are ready to go all right so we have the miso in here we've put it through the muddler it's mixing in with the broth now the last ingredients that we add miso soup are tofu and something called wakame, which is a different kind of seaweed.

Again, it just brings a little more of that flavor and a little bit more of the minerals. I don't love large chunks of tofu. I like it little teeny tiny. So I have kind of a funny story. I'll always remember when my grandpa tasted miso soup for the first time. My grandpa was raised on a farm. There was no miso soup in sight. and he used to work at a car dealership. So one day I remember my mom and I went and picked him up at the car dealership and we decided we wanted to take him for lunch. Well there was a brand new Japanese restaurant across the street and Japanese restaurants were really not a thing back then.

So we took him and we got miso soup. tiny little pieces of tofu which makes it a lot easier and more palatable for people who aren't sure about tofu.

Final Meal Assembly and Closing Thoughts 24:18

We just told him it was eggs because he had no clue what tofu was and he was totally fine with it as long as he thought it was eggs. So this is actually more tofu than I'm going to use. I'm only going to use about half of that. I don't feel like you need a ton of tofu in miso soup. We're going to put a little bit of the wakame in there and if I pronounced anything wrong that's in Japanese I apologize now I don't speak Japanese so you can correct me in the comments but we're gonna put this in and you will see what the miso soup looks like when we're all done All right, today we've learned all about what our bodies need in winter.

They need to be replenished. Just like the soil is rebuilding while it's sleeping and waiting for spring to come, our bodies need to be recharged as well. So if you are lacking energy any time of year, not just the winter, now you've learned what to do about it. It's all about the minerals. First thing in the morning with your morning drink, in the midday with the electrolyte, and in the evening with magnesium spray. Then, every single meal can be full of minerals if you focus on root vegetables, warming, grounding, things like miso.

like broth with seaweed, all of these things are literally infusing your cells with energy. This is the way your grandma recharged her cells and her system. This is the kind of thing that we do right here at the Living Well Homestead. This is how I want you to learn how to be well. So I hope you join me next time right here in the kitchen where we make delicious food, we learn to live well together. So good.