I grew up on my Mother's own version of Eggs Benedict, and I loved it. Hers involved English muffins & such, with varied permutations according to what she had on hand to cook with. Since I am a hopeless buttermilk biscuit addict, I too came up with my own tweak with permutations of what is on hand to cook with. This is also a good version for lazy cooks, although doing everything from scratch would be absolutely delicious too. Making a big batch of biscuits and freezing them saves me time during the week and I always have a great meal that will keep me energized or...stuffed like a tick and ready to pop... I just put a couple biscuits in the microwave for a minute and they are almost warm and can be cut and stuffed with more delicious things, then warmed a minute more to melt the butter, or cheese. For this version, slice your biscuits open and put the ham (I happen to be using last night's dinner ham) on them. I am a super lazy egg poacher, so I never use the cute little cups, and my poached eggs never look cute but they taste just fine. I hate washing more pans/utensils than I absolutely have to, and I positively cannot let a dirty pan/utensil age in such a condition. I wash and put away as I go. I hate washing dishes etc after a good meal! Bring half a big deep pan of water, a dollop of vinegar + salt & pepper to a light boil, then ease your eggs in (cracking them into a shallow cup makes this less difficult) and gently simmer until they are done to your satisfaction. (Too much of a boil and you will get a foam over and more foam then eggs at the end, too little of a boil, and your eggs will stick to the bottom of the pan.) Remove your eggs with a slotted spoon, drain off, and place on your ham biscuits, then smother thoroughly with already made Pioneer peppered gravy to which you have added some American cheese, cheddar cheese and about a teaspoon of dried onion. (melt the cheese into the gravy, of course) Stick it all back in the microwave and heat for another minute, remove and enjoy. I usually end up sopping up more gravy with my plain biscuit tops rather than putting them on the fully loaded bottoms. If I have a good tomato, I put a slice on each biscuit too. I had a request for usnea recently, and for a purpose I had never experienced. I consider usnea to be a fairly innocent ingredient in topical applications, and excellent for some magical applications, but I cock an eye at the suggested internal uses promoted by numerous herb hawkers online. I am sure I have a stash of locally harvested Usnea strigosa in my storage/work room at this very moment, and I have yet to get around to making a salve with it since I have not needed it for that purpose. Years ago, I was warned against consuming it, and I have always obeyed that warning without ever really contesting it. This led me to do some digging and I did indeed find some references to liver toxicity, so it is good that I listened to granny! Even though certain government publications have been exposed as less than perfectly credible, especially in recent times, it is still good to consider certain ramifications in toxicology and far better to err on the side of caution than not in many instances. Primum Non Nocere!
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5739313/ www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK548493/ We all love our pets so very dearly, and we want to give them the best of everything of course! Sometimes, determining what is best can be a minefield. Garlic is one of my go to herbs for nipping the onset of morbid sore throats and colds. It must be consumed fresh to get the benefits of the compounds that are effective. Sorry, when you cook it, you also cook away the active compounds. Human livers have no problem metabolizing the active compounds, but our cats and dogs metabolize differently, and garlic is 100% not good for them. You can heed my words or consult your veterinarian or look it up in the pet poisons list. I get angry when I see supplements marketed for our precious cats and dogs that contain garlic extract as an ingredient and I firmly state that you should avidly avoid these. You may have already given your cat or dog a supplement with this ingredient and observed no ill effects, and that is great, your animal dodged a bullet so decease and thank your stars. I cringe at my less educated self of 20 years ago that let my cats and dogs clean up my leftover garlic laden spaghetti. They did not die, but I was not doing them any favors. It was just good fortune that they did not consume enough to damage their bodies. Anything in the allium family should not be given to cats and dogs. The Merk manual describes the effects here: www.merckvetmanual.com/toxicology/food-hazards/allium-spp-toxicosis-in-animals
Supplements for animals marketed with all natural ingredients are fine ideas, but please do your research on each and every ingredient! Just because it works for humans does not at all mean it does the same for animals. This includes pharmaceutical drugs as well. If you cannot find enough reliable evidence to support the use of it, then to not use it is the more humane choice. Often, finding reliable evidence means many queries along many different paths and it does take time. This will be time well spent because it will protect your animals from hidden harm. Look for scientific research rather than claims made by the hawkers of the products and then look for conflicts of interest regarding that scientific research. |
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