How to Treat Lung Congestion and Cough at Home

During a global pandemic, there are going to be lots of people that will develop symptoms. It doesn't mean that you have the virus, but it could. So, fear gears up and it lowers your immune system. So, how can we combat our fears and anxiety when we develop a cough?  How can we cope when we feel like we can't breathe? The best way to cope with these fears is to focus as much as you can on what you can control. So, if you start having symptoms that scare you. Start doing things that can help, not only your immune system, but can treat your symptoms. 

Of course you should watch your symptoms and if they get worse, absolutely see or talk to your doctor, but in the mean time. Try some of these methods first. I, myself, recently had a sore throat and had heard that this was how the virus starts. Did I freak out? Yes, I'll admit I did a little. But, I spent the next two days drinking lots of oregano tea (known to be an natural anti-viral) and I drank lots and lots of liquids. After two days of this, my sore throat was gone. So, sometimes it's just a simple fix. 

Here are some simple at-home methods to treat lung discomfort. I'm going to start with the most effective method. Start by trying an overnight ginger wrap. You may have to do this a few nights in a row, but ginger wraps are known to help remove phlegm from the lungs. Below you will find directions for making a ginger wrap.  

How to Make the Ginger Wrap for Cough

• Grate or puree about a half a cup of fresh ginger
• Place in a strainer lined with cheesecloth to drain
• Spread on an old towel about 9-12 inches square
• Lay the towel with the paste on your chest as you are laying down
• Cover with another towel that is damp and warm
• Leave on for 15-20 minutes
• Rinse off with a warm cloth or shower
• Repeat if necessary

If you experience discomfort from the ginger wrap, you can use another old towel on your skin under the towel with the paste. You’ll need the vapors to penetrate your skin to benefit from the herb.

 Along with using a ginger wrap, you can also drink ginger tea or ingest ginger raw. Not everyone can eat raw ginger, but if you can stomach it, this is the best way to consume it, make sure it is organic and wash it well. It is great for immunity and again, even ingested, it will help with your lungs. It has also been known to help with anxiety. Below I have included a link for fresh ginger root tea. 

Homemade Ginger Root Tea

Alright, so the amazing ginger! Try it in it's many forms. Next, lets look at the benefits of  echinacea. This is another thing that can help with breathing. It is often used along with peppermint as you can see on this tea box. I like to take a tea like this and breathe in the steam it creates. It soothes the lungs. Then, because of it's immune powers, I drink it once it's no longer too hot. 

If you aren't interested in drinking tea, you can also put a drop of ecinacea oil and a drop of peppermint oil into a bowl of boiling water. You can then put your head over the bowl and breath in the oils. Or, if you have a diffuser, you can do that as well. Another option is to take a hot shower and put a few drops of oil on a wash cloth and hang it in your shower. 

Another thing you can try is Eucalyptus tea or oil. It has been known to promote lung health and help remove mucus from the lungs. This is great for use in the shower as well. A drop or two is all you need as this has a very strong scent. I love a tea called Breethe Easy that utilizes this amazing plant. 

I hope this helps! And remember, focus on what you CAN control. Find ways to calm your mind and do what you can. 

Much love to you in these trying times! 

Strengthen Your Immune System with Smoothies!

This is a Love Letter to you all! 
It's a reminder that in times of stress and uncertainty, especially when it involves something like a global virus, we need to be focusing on strengthening our bodies and our immunity. 

I've found the best and easiest way to get lots of nutrients into your body is through smoothies. There are so many variations and they are delicious. Smoothies and smoothie bowls are also a great treat for your kids and will help them get some fruits and vegetables into their diet. Get your kids hooked on smoothies! Yum! 

First of all, I'd love to share with you what I put in my smoothie every morning. I call it my detox smoothie because of all the antioxidants and cancer fighting power that it has. See my recipe below. 

My Super Detox Smoothie

1-2 cups Frozen Wild Blueberries
1 Banana Frozen or fresh
a handful of Frozen Spinach
1/2 cup Frozen Mixed Berries
1/2-1 Navel Orange
1 scoop of Greens Powder
1 teaspoon Maca Root Powder
1 Teaspoon Moringa Leaf Powder
1/4 cup Chaga Tea (I brew my own Chaga Tea with dried Chaga Mushrooms, Orange peels, Cinnamon Sticks, and Cloves)
1 cup Almond Milk
Water or coconut water to thin if you don't like your smoothies thick. 

I don't know if I would call this one kid friendly, but I think it tastes good and I drink it every morning. I used to put a lot more powders in, but I have an auto-immune disease that doesn't allow me to boost my immune system too much. So I try not to over do it any more. For my husband, I add in more powders, he gets an elderberry powder, and a mushroom powder that has a mixture of different immune boosting dried mushrooms in it. 

So, the next two smoothies I'm going to share with you are recipes that I got from Pinterest. I've tried both of them and they are both absolutely delicious, I made minor changes to both which I will share with you, but these would definitely be kid friendly! 

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Smoothie with hidden vegetables! 

So, for this one, I skipped the hemp seeds and used almond milk instead of coconut water and thought it tasted great! I made it a few different times and did add in some dates for extra sweetness when my strawberries weren't looking very sweet. Every time I've made this I've enjoyed it. I would recommend adding a bit more sweetness if you make it for your kids. A few dried dates, or raisins would probably do the trick. Otherwise my other favorite alternative sweeteners are date syrup, maple syrup, and coconut nectar. If you add any sweeteners, it doesn't need much. 

Chocolate Mint Smoothie

This is another one that I tried and enjoyed. I had a whole bunch of mint to use, so I used fresh mint instead of mint extract. However, you need quite a bit of fresh mint in there to actually taste it, and I don't think I put enough.  Mint extract would definitely give it more of a minty flavor if you like that sort of thing. This is delicious! and your kids will love it! It's like eating mint chocolate ice cream. Oh and PS, you cannot taste the Mushroom Powder or the Kale, but these delightful additions will help yours and your children's immune systems. 

Okay, so now that I've shared with you some recipes that I have personally tried, below I will list some more recipes you can try with your family and your kids. Yummy, antioxidant rich smoothies that you and your family can enjoy as the weather gets warmer and our bodies continue to need nutrients to be strong! 

Much love to you all and find more links to smoothie and smoothie bowl recipes below. 

Peanut Butter and Jelly Smoothie Bowl

Cinnamon Apple Pie Smoothie Bowl

Mint Chip Spirulina Smoothie Bowl

Green Smoothie

Blueberry Banana Smoothie

Banana Mango Smoothie

Kale Cherry Smoothie

Peanut Butter Banana Breakfast Shake


These are just a few! There are tons more recipes online! These ones sounded the best to me and are colorful and fun for the kiddos. Much love! 

Perfected Blueberry Banana Muffins

 I love to take base recipes and figure out how to make them oil free, gluten free, refined sugar free, and Vegan. I know, sounds boring, but I don't make these treats to be gross. I am usually craving something sweet or trying to re-create something from my childhood into something that I can eat now that I'm doing my best to eat clean and be healthy. I was excited to find this recipe as I didn't have to change much. 

First of all, I used Aquafaba for the coconut oil and it worked really well. I used Bob's Red Mill GF flour, and I only threw in about 2-3 Tbsp of date sugar. The recipe calls for a lot more sugar than that, but it really didn't need it. I also ended up adding a container of those cups of organic unsweetened applesauce that you can find at most grocery stores. Because of this the cook time needed to be increased because they were a little more wet than the recipe called for. 

I did a mixture of 6 big muffins and a few mini muffins. The mini

muffins took about 20 minutes to cook, I kept checking them with a toothpick. The big muffins took about 25 minutes. 

They were really delicious! I highly recommend trying this recipe for some healthy muffins that you can have for breakfast or as a snack. If you don't plan on eating them all in one day, I reccomend freezing them and thawing them as you want to eat them. You could also re-heat them in the oven if you want. 

Blueberry Banana Muffins

Tofu Scramble with Hollondaise Sauce

We had leftovers of boiled Cauliflower, Carrots, and Potatoes and I was trying to figure out what to do with them. I didn't want to waste them or have them go bad. The following day, I decided to throw them into a tofu scramble for breakfast. I threw this together with what I had in the house. The hollondaise sauce was taken from one of my blogs, which I will link below. 

Tofu Sandwich with Hollondaise Sauce

Recipe:

Boil cauliflower, potatoes, and carrots until tender.
Add to pan and fry in either water or vegetable broth. 
Push to side of pan, drain extra firm tofu, squeeze out as much water as you can and then crumble into the pan. 
Add Turmeric, Pepper, Kala namak/black salt, and a splash of coconut aminos. 
Add any other seasonings you want.
Add your greens. I think I had kale this time. But any greens you want work great. 
Scramble everything together, put in a bowl, and pour the hollondaise sauce over top. 

So delicious! Enjoy! 

My Pretty Stir Fry

My husband and I made this very colorful stir fry the other day with veggies that needed to be used up in our fridge. My husband has been asking me to make stir fry for a while. I told him that I just got really sick of stir fry for a while because it was in our weekly rotation and we made it all the time. I also just wasn't a fan of the sauces we were using. I like my stir fry to be really saucy, but I just felt like every time we had it, it was lacking something. 

So, hubby suggested I look up some stir fry sauces. I searched

through pinterest for sauces and found one that sounded good. I left out some stuff, but I'll let you know what and you can decide if you want to add any of that stuff in, but we really enjoyed it. The photo above doesn't show the sauce. Recipe link for sauce below. 

Stir Fry and Sauce Recipe

Okay, so we only used this for the sauce, not the whole recipe, but you are welcome to do with it what you will. :) Most of you know by now that I can't handle any spice whatsoever because my mouth is very sensitive, so I left out the chili garlic sauce. I added fresh garlic instead. 

It was so good! I will keep looking for more delicious sauces to go in stir fry, but this was definitely a winner! 

If you get sick of one type of meal, I strongly recommend switching up the sauces, it helps tremendously! I feel like switching up the veggies helps too! Enjoy! 

Mango Cauliflower Curry

This was another unique one! I wasn't sure it would be any good,

but it was delicious. The only reason I even tried it was because when I ordered groceries through Whole foods, they screwed up and sent me way too much frozen mango. So I was looking for a recipe to use up some mango. 

The recipe says to use fresh, but it's winter here and ripe mangoes are hard to find, the frozen mangoes worked out well. I also left out all of the peppers and anything spicy, because I cannot handle spice. Chris added some red pepper to his at the end and he really enjoyed the flavors. 

I do recommend getting the curry leaves. Unfortunately, I have not found these in any stores, so you have to order them online. They are totally worth it though. I also didn't have the seeds for the recipe either, so I left them out and I'm not sure how important they are for the flavor. I would say that the toasted cashews helped out quite a bit for texture and flavor. 

Another unique and delicious dish to try. It's so fun to try out these great new flavors. I get sick of the same old flavors over and over, so trying out new things has been great! This is a very mild curry, so if you aren't into Indian food, I wouldn't say this is really all that intense. You should definitely try it out. 

Mango Cauliflower Curry

Curb Your Chocolate Craving with Chickpea Brownies

I've been hardcore craving chocolate lately, but I've really been striving to stay away from processed sugars and when I really crave chocolate, I've been making this amazing raw hot chocolate by Nest and Glow.  It has sort of been my replacement for coffee as well. 

Well, on those days, where the hot chocolate just isn't doing it for me, I found this recipe for chickpea brownies. I leave out the oil. I use Aquafaba (chickpea juice) from the chickpeas instead of the oil and they turn out perfectly. I also use coconut nectar for the sweetener as it is low glycemic. For Chocolate chips, I use Lily's brand vegan chocolate chips as they are sweetened with stevia. 

I don't consider these to be the healthiest option. But they are a nice treat, every once in a while. I always like to start with a base recipe and then change it for my needs, but I didn't have to change much with this one! If you are interested in some healthy brownies. Check out the link below. 

Chickpea Brownies

Super Easy Instant Pot Corn Chowder

There are stove top instructions for this recipe as well if people

don't have an instant pot, this was so simple and good. It has very few ingredients, but I just loved the flavor and how easy it was to make. The most complicated part is blending half the soup and putting it back in, but if you didn't have a blender you wouldn't even have to do this. 

Mine turned out a bit green because I added some kale that we needed to use up. If you click on the link for the recipe, you'll see the beautiful yellow color or this soup. That is what it is supposed to look like. I could have blended before putting the kale in and it would have kept it's yellow color. 

This soup is so versatile, you could really add in any veggies you wanted and still have it taste great. Start with the base and just add in what you have in the fridge or freezer or things you need to use up. It says that fresh corn on the cob tastes best in this dish, but I just used frozen and it worked out great! 

It's another great recipe for kids as it is a mild flavor, and super easy to throw together. I'd make this again in a second! Sometimes you just need something easy to throw together. It would also hold well in the fridge if you wanted to make it ahead of time and just head it up later. I had it with some salad and toast the other day and it was delicious, even re-heated. Recipe linked below! Enjoy! 

Instant Pot Corn Chowder

Cowboy Beans

I love the name of this recipe! Cowboy Beans! It reminds me of sitting around a campfire in cowboy gear with guitars and cowboy songs under the stars eating beans out of the can.

However, these are by far a step up from eating plain beans out of a can. :) This recipe popped up on my feed from another blogger that I follow called Shane and Simple. He posts some great simple plant-based recipes. These just sounded too good to pass up and with the weather getting a bit nicer, I thought it would be fun to try out this recipe for like a baked beans kind of substitute for grilling days. I had some leftover rice so we had it in bowls over rice, but it's very versatile. It's kind of like a BBQ baked bean dish. 

I ended up eating it out of a Siete Almond Flour Tortilla with some Cilantro lime sauce. It was delicious this way! I had the same thing for breakfast the following morning and it was, again, delicious! You can find the recipe for the Cilantro Lime sauce in my sauce blog, which I will link below, and I found the tortillas at whole foods which are totally gluten free! 

We made this dish again when we had people over this weekend for grilling, and everyone loved them and wanted the recipe. I highly recommend it! 

Cowboy Beans

Sauces Blog

African Peanut Stew

Okay, so I saw this recipe on one of my favorite blogs. I didn't want to try it because it sounded too weird. It didn't sound appetizing. But, I was going to this Plant-Based potluck, and I wanted to bring something unique so I thought, why not try out this recipe there. 

Unfortunately, the timing didn't work out and although I did have all the ingredients I needed, we didn't have time to make it and get it to the potluck on time. So we ended up bringing some leftover desserts, which worked out great! People loved them. 

So, now I had an extra meal to make for the week. Which, mind you, is never a bad thing, but I kept putting it off, I mean, it's a weird concept. You look at the ingredients list for this and you are like, how will this all fit together, how could it possibly taste good. Well, you will be pleasantly surprised! I made this for my husband and I a few nights ago, and not only was it super easy, but the flavor was just so unique and wonderful. It was like nothing we had ever tasted, but it was just delicious. Not only that, but if my husband and I can finish an entire pot of something in one night, that is saying something!! 

I went onto the Clean Food Dirty Girl facebook page right after to rave about it and several people responded that they loved it to. 

I don't know, this recipe is just delicious and for those of you who don't like or can't have mushrooms, there aren't any in this one! LOL. Sorry I've been so mushroom obsessed lately. If you are interested in trying something amazingly delicious, warm, soothing, and unique then click on the link below. You won't be disappointed. 

African Peanut Stew

Happy Hour Appetizer Night

My husband goes to a taco happy hour with our friends on Wednesdays. I used to go with, but when my diet drastically changed, I decided I really wanted to avoid eating out when possible due to added oils, non-organic products, etc.  So, I decided when meal planning last week that we choose a night to do an at home happy hour. I planned "buffalo" cauliflower wings and crispy potato wedges. The reason I put quotes around the buffalo part of cauliflower wings is because I can't do spicy, so I didn't add the spicy stuff to the sauce. My husband had to add his hot sauces at the end. But, he's used to this, so that's okay. 

I also made two sauces. One is a cashew based cheezy sauce, it was supposed to be a ranch, but it didn't taste like ranch at all so I just call it a cheezy sauce. The other is a cilantro avocado lime sauce. Both were really good, but I am still on the look out for a really good ranch tasting vegan sauce. The only good ones I have had have been at restaurants. So I'm still experimenting at home to find a good one I can make. I will, of course, let you all know when I find one. 

Both recipes are pretty easy, I think the hardest part was just that I also had to make the sauces. Oh, and balancing both recipes in the oven. I think they worked out pretty good, but I'd like to try a gluten free cauliflower wing recipe that has a more thick breading. The batter used for this was pretty good, but it just didn't have the texture I wanted. I enjoyed the flavor though. 

The following day, we had leftovers, so I cut up the potatoes, and leftover cauliflower wings and made a tofu scramble with it all for breakfast. We poured some leftover sauces over the top and it was scrumptious! 

Recipes for Cauliflower, Sauces, and Potatoes below. 

Buffalo Cauliflower Wings

Cilantro Avocado Lime Sauce

Cheezy Cashew Sauce

Crispy Potato Wedges

Purple Cabbage Rolls

I had never even heard of cabbage rolls before making this recipe. We had this massive purple cabbage to use and even though this recipe calls for green cabbage, I figured we could use the purple cabbage instead. I made my own tomato sauce for this recipe, which I will share as well. It was really good, but it really needed more sauce and I think because the purple cabbage is thicker, it needed to be cooked longer. The cabbage was more crunchy than I would have liked. 

The filling was absolutely delicious! I ate this twice and both times, I mostly just ate the filling. The second taste was better than the first because the cabbage was a bit more cooked, which I liked better. I recommend doubling the sauce recipe for this, the sauce just really adds that extra oomph to this recipe. It's kind of involved, but it's worth the work if you want to try it out. It's definitely something different to try. I'm not even sure what to compare it to, it's just a really different dish. 

Recipe for Cabbage Rolls and Sauce linked below. 

Vegan Cabbage Rolls

Marinara Sauce (I added 6 fresh tomatoes and fresh basil to this recipe, and like I said above, you want to double it, it may look like  a lot of sauce, but trust me, it will make the dish so much better! I also blended the sauce because I don't like mine chunky, but you can do whatever you want!) 

Delicious Tofu Egg Sandwich with Hollandaise Sauce

I had been finding all of these great breakfast recipes online that I wanted to try. But because of the amount they made, I wanted someone to be around to share them with me. So I asked my husband when he would be around. I sent him 3 of the potential recipes and he chose this breakfast sandwich. 

It has Tofu Egg strips that literally taste like egg! Then you could add whatever toppings. We had Avocado, Tomato, greens, and the hollandaise sauce that came with the recipe. The hollandaise sauce was to die for! It's the best vegan one I have found. I've been bummed out by most hollandaise sauces at restaurants so when I found this one, I was very excited! 

My husband and I decided this sandwich needed something salty, so we were thinking next time we might add some mushroom or tempeh bacon. 

We both really enjoyed this sandwich and I trust you will as well. It's scrumptious! 

Link to recipe below. 

Tofu Egg Sandwich

Sweet Potato Lentil Curry

I had recently been reading about the amazing health benefits of the sweet potato. I have never been a fan of Sweet Potato, so I was looking for ways to incorporate it into our diet. 

This recipe looked really yummy online. I have been having a bit of a tough time with curries lately because the curry powder I bought has a bit more spice than I'm used to, but this was mild enough that I was able to eat it! I also enjoyed the addition of the lentils and the chard. We used Rainbow chard because that is like my favorite thing ever lately. I love it cooked. I haven't tried it raw yet, but I love adding it to cooked dishes as a green. 

This was easy to throw together, but it does call for dried yellow lentils, I didn't have these, I used green, and they took a really long time to cook and get soft. The recipe said for the yellow lentils, it was about a 20 minute cook time, and we cooked these for 60 minutes before they finally got soft. 

We served this dish over some brown rice. It was delicious and nutritious. Full of some great flavors. 

You wanna try it! Link to Recipe below. 

Sweet Potato Lentil Curry