Have you ever eaten shoyu eggs? I’m guessing that unless you grew up in a Japanese or Hawaiian household, you probably have not, but this dish was a staple in my household growing up! These are still one of my favorite comfort foods, and my whole family loves this dish! It is a quick and […]
Shoyu Eggs –a family tradition!
Do not make this recipe! You heard me right!! Stop right here if you want to continue with life as you know it! Do NOT make this recipe if you hope that you can continue buying store bought corn tortillas without feeling like those cold, flat, breakable, dry corn tortillas will curb your cravings ever […]
Super Soft, Stuffable Corn Tortillas Made at Home!
Mmmmm, a pillowy soft, delicious bread made from beer? Who’s up for some beer flatbread? If you are new to making bread though, I got […] The post Want to try my simple & soft beer flatbread? first appeared on Jungle Living with Jill.
Want to try my simple & soft beer flatbread?
We have had a bumper crop of okra this season! Okra-bundance!!! (As my husband Todd says.) Okra seems to love the warm days and wet […] The post A new twist for using okra… my okra hush puppies! first appeared on Jungle Living with Jill.
A new twist for using okra… my okra hush puppies!
Perhaps you have already fallen in love with green beans in the air fryer? Or perhaps you only use your air fryer for French fries? For those of you that have (or those of you that have not) already experienced the joys of air fried green beans, you need to try my garlic dilly green […]
Garlic Dilly Green Beans (in the Oven or Air Fryer)
Looking for an easy grab-and-go breakfast or snack you can make for just one (or for your whole family)? Look no more! I’ve got you covered this week with not one but two recipes for banana overnight oats 😯! Me and my bowl of banana overnight oats We’ve gone bananas! 🍌🍌 Living on a homestead […]
Banana Overnight Oats — An easy, healthy breakfast for one
If you aren’t familiar with gallo pinto, you probably don’t live in Costa Rica! People eat it everyday for breakfast (and throughout the day). Rice and beans. In fact, people love it so much, they made it the national dish here in Costa Rica! I love my food variety, but I don’t think I could […]
Jill’s Rice Cooker Gallo Pinto (Costa Rican Rice and Beans)
Most everyone knows the impact that time spent in the outdoors can have on our health and wellness, but few probably understand the underlying reasons why.
I now believe it all comes down to Schumann’s Resonance. Simply put, that’s the energy frequency at which the earth resonates…7.83 Hz. It also happens to be the frequency that we should be resonating at when optimally “tuned”. And therein lies the problem. Due to the amount of time people spend in office buildings, in cars, or immersed in electronics, their resonance is often far from that of the earth. So, time spent listening to the seagulls and waves can retune us to a healthy frequency, as can time spent by a mountain stream. These escapes to nature don’t just set our minds at ease. They actually help retune us to the healthy frequency that permits us to be at our best.
Over the past few years, we’ve been intrigued by the testimonials from guests who visit here and spend as little as a few days. They declare how much better they feel afterwards, even health problems disappearing. At first we thought it was the clean air, food and water, which are very important. But I now believe at the heart of it is energy…getting a “tune-up”.
How can you accomplish this while immersed in your busy life? For starters, make sure to spend some time each week with your bare feet in contact with the ground. This simple act can do wonders to bring your energy back in harmony with the earth. Always drink the freshest, healthiest water that you can, and never from a plastic bottle. And need I say anything about food?
So the next time you’re feeling the strong need to get to the beach or mountains but life won’t permit it, just plop a chair down on your lawn, kick off your shoes and dig your toes into the grass. Close your eyes and focus on the birds singing. After 15-20 minutes, see if you don’t feel recharged.
To your health!
Often when asked about my age, my response is met with disbelief. This happened again recently, when the inquiring person seemed convinced I was joking when I answered, “48”. A discussion ensued about many of the healthy changes we’ve embraced in our lives and…perfect blog entry!
One approach is to take you through a typical day at the Hinson homestead in the southern Pacific mountains of Costa Rica. Upon rising in the morning, the first priority is ‘oil pulling’ with organic coconut oil. What is oil pulling? It has been a staple of Indian ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years and has gained more and more followers in the west. Simply put about a teaspoon of coconut (or other) oil in your mouth and swish around for 10-15 minutes. Spit it out, then rinse twice with water and discard. It may sound crazy, but oil pulling can lead to countless improvements in your dental and overall health. Just make sure to use chemical free coconut oil so you “detox” instead of “retox”.
Next up is what we call the Water Chug. I drink about a liter (one quart) of room temperature water as quickly as possible…in about 30 seconds. Different folks have different capacities for the volume and timing, but the idea is to drink as much water as you can as quickly as you can. Why? Think of it as turning a hose to your GI tract, flushing everything that settled in your system overnight. It’s a great approach to detoxing and can produce incredible health benefits. Don’t confuse this with getting plenty of water during the day. The morning water chug is something entirely different.
After my coffee, the next unusual ingredient in our morning is a drink containing diatomaceous earth (DE). Made up in water or juice, DE powder is stirred in and quickly consumed. Why drink the fossilized “skeletal remains” of ancient algae? The outer shell of diatoms is largely composed of silica, along with a few other ingredients. DE is incredibly versatile, useful as an abrasive, for filtration, insect control, and pet and human health. For people, make sure to purchase food grade DE. The far reaching benefits for human consumption are beyond this blog entry, but please read up on this amazing natural product. We treat it as a general part of our detox routine, and we have good reason to believe it’s making a difference.
After all that…breakfast! There are far too many elements to our diet to summarize here, but suffice it to say we know the source of the vast majority of food and drink we consume. You are what you eat…let food by thy medicine and medicine be thy food…etc. We gave up beef, pork and poultry years ago, but we do enjoy fish and seafood a few times each month. The rest of our diet is heavy in locally grown rice and beans, along with a variety of eggs, fruits and veggies from our homestead. A common ingredient in much of Jill’s stellar cooking is organic coconut oil, something known to promote brain health. Results with coconut oil and dementia patients are often stunning. Turmeric and black pepper are also used liberally in the Hinson kitchen, for their many benefits when combined.
Quality, all natural personal care products comprise another point of focus for our family. High quality soaps from Red Mountain Goodness are extremely important to us, since commercial “soaps” are typically nothing more than a patented combination of detergents and chemicals. When you contemplate changes you can incorporate in your life that have the biggest impact, ponder what else do you spread over your entire body once a day. Now consider that your skin is a highly absorptive organ. Don’t believe me? Try rubbing a clove of garlic on your bare foot and count the seconds before the taste appears in your mouth! Shampoos should also be all natural whenever possible.
Deodorants that contain aluminum, polyethylene glycol, etc? If you consider the ever increasing breast cancer numbers in the “developed world” , you might want to avoid such ingredients. Baking soda is a very simple yet effective deodorant you can use. And the more “detoxed” your body becomes, the less need you’ll have for deodorant! Commercial toothpastes are another problem, and we’ve been working on our solution to that for the past year. As with anything that goes in or on your body, just make sure to read and understand the ingredient label.
One final note…any of these changes in your healthful routine can initially produce side effects such as headache, upset stomach, general achiness, etc. If that happens, stick with the change for a few days and see if the symptoms subside. Often it’s due to the toxins buried deep in your body beginning to surface on their way out. During this transition period you may sometimes feel uncomfortable, but in the long run it is a short term price worth paying.
To your health!
June 2020 update….
Though this information remains completely relevant today, I do need to make a couple of additions. A newer part of our daily routine is grounding, or placing our bare feet in contact with the earth for 10 minutes. The reason is that doing so resets our energy to match that of Mother Earth, and the health benefits of that are amazing. See “The Earthing Movie” and “The Grounded” on YouTube for more information on grounding, and different ways to accomplish it. One excellent way is to simply ground your bed using a grounding sheet that you purchase or by using your own approach.
The other big addition to our health routine is taking bamboo charcoal powder. Though there isn’t a great deal of information about this supplement online, a similar commercial product is C60 Purple Power. You can read about that product to get an idea of the wide ranging benefits of taking charcoal powder daily. We mix our powder, made here at our homestead, with olive oil (1 part charcoal powder to 2 parts olive oil), then take 1 teaspoon of that daily. Typical results include increased energy, better concentration and multitasking, improved digestion, and many other reported benefits. My theory is that since the charcoal powder is almost pure carbon, and since we are carbon based, our bodies are able to use the excess carbon to optimize systems. That is why we hear that the powder tends to help with whatever health problem an individual has. But since charcoal can be detoxifying, heed my earlier advice about possible early aside effects. If you buy charcoal powder for daily consumption, make sure it is NOT activated. That is great for short term detox, but not for daily use.
Finally, including naturally fermented vegetables in your diet (not to be confused with pickled or canned!) adds powerful microbiotics that will improve your digestion, and quite possibly improve your mental health as well.
Let me know if you’d like more information about this amazing gift from God that you can make at home.
December 2020 update….
An important recent addition to our wellness routine couldn’t be much simpler. When drinking water throughout the day, we now add baking soda first….about 1/4 teaspoon per liter. This easy and inexpensive practice helps maintain an alkaline environment in our body, and this is key to protecting against most all diseases. Cancer and many other diseases require an acid environment to thrive. By maintaining alkaline conditions you stop them before they get started.
August 2024 update….
57 years old. 💪🏻💪
31 Aug 2025 update
Something we’ve done for years and forgot to mention….solarizing. Spending 15 minutes in the sun on a solid sunny day provides most of the Vitamin D you need. And vitamin D is super important to your overall health. 👍🏻👍🏻
Honestly…why in the world did we pack up everything and move to a Central American country? For the longest time, we decided to keep one of our most significant reasons for moving to Costa Rica to ourselves. The predictions I had for where the U.S. was headed were just that…predictions. But with those predictions now playing out in the news (if you follow an honest news source), I feel it is now time to explain one of our more important reasons.
Of course the Land of the Free is VERY far from it. Drive with cash and the police can seize it without charges. Step outside the lines just a bit and get your kids snatched up by “Child Protective Services”, so they can place your children in foster care and collect their promised bounty from the U.S. government. Have puddles on your land after heavy rains? The EPA could easily declare your property a protected wetland, severely limiting your use or even seizing it. Feel like having a telephone conversation or exchange of texts or emails without the content being reviewed by strangers? As Edward Snowden informed us all, good luck with that! And the most recent freedom of the press rankings placed the U.S. at #45…right smack between Romania and Haiti!
I could go on and on about the many assaults on the concept of freedom…a concept that Americans still proudly boast about. And certainly those were some of the compelling reasons for our move to a much freer country (for example, Costa Rica recently ranked 21st in freedom of the press). But our decision to move goes far beyond the concept of freedom. Simply put, the U.S. could be headed for a tsunami of such epic proportions, it could make the Great Depression appear like an episode from Happy Days. What is this coming storm? The end of the U.S. dollar as we know it. Sound crazy? Permit me to briefly explain.
Since WWII, all trade between countries has been transacted in U.S. dollars through banks in New York City. This position of the dollar as the world’s currency reserve has forced all countries to hold U.S. dollars for their international transactions. Let’s say Australia wants to buy product from China. The transaction must be conducted in dollars and be routed through New York City. Sound crazy? I agree. But that may all be about to change.
Some time back, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (“BRICS”) became fed up with the current global financial system that rewarded the U.S. at every turn. Many times they asked the IMF to end their blind allegiance to the U.S. dollar, but their concerns fell on deaf ears. So in July 2014, they agreed to form their own international development bank and establish a new reserve currency or basket of currencies for trade. This will permit members of the bank to conduct transactions with each other in currencies other than U.S. dollars, something China and Russia are already doing. What will this mean to the dollar? When a group of countries near simultaneously decides to sell their U.S. dollars, it creates a potentially serious problem when they dump those dollars onto the open market. Basic law of economics…when many rush to sell the same item with few interested buyers available, the item’s value typically plunges.
But as significant as the BRICS countries are (~40% of the world’s population and growing), could their decision to drop the dollar be significant enough to inflict serious damage? Maybe, maybe not. But with plans for the new AIIB bank coming together, the BRICS recently opened the door for other countries to join as founding members with voting powers. Who signed up? A harmless handful of rag tag countries? A very partial list of the 57 members includes France, Spain, Norway, Great Britain, Italy, Sweden, Australia, Israel, and Germany. (The U.S. did not join, and the membership drive recently ended.) Just imagine if/when this group of 57 countries unloads their U.S. dollar holdings for the new currency/currencies. As prices in America explode, the scene could resemble something other than peace and brotherhood.
I could certainly hope that these scenarios don’t play out in the years (months?) ahead, but that would require a hefty suspension of reality on my part. What I have outlined are facts, not theory or conjecture, and these facts are developing faster than I ever imagined…even back when we decided to pack our bags for beautiful Costa Rica.
A new life in Costa Rica 