Vinegar. Lemon Juice. Baking Soda, Eternally Grateful

Lemon juice/vinegar/baking soda are the go-to unbeatable staples in Momsey's life.. These three ingredients are the top 'tools' for body and environmental health, in my world. When simple natural things enable us to live in a more peaceful, healthy state, then it behooves us to try them and make them work! Momsey embraces and adopts simple strategies. ... Complicating our lives with things that make no sense, only serves to increase our costs, stress us and make make us ill.

Lemon juice is king. I marinate with it, barbecue with it, cook with it, wear it and drink it. In Hug a Farmer, I mentioned it as a mosquito repellant, as I work outside or garden among these dangerous little monsters. ... The citronella candles, used to help repel mosquitoes, outside, might work, but who thinks of candles when gardening? ... In the absence of these outdoor accessories, Momsey has used the real deal: lemons, squeezed into my hands and 'rinsed' on exposed skin, near the shoulders, neck and on the hair, where mosquitoes linger, hide or gesticulate. Lemons are a mainstay in my life. I add it to all food, meats, steamed vegetables, especially salads, to improve taste, texture and overall health. It helps to improve pH levels in the body, too. I have begun to add the grated skin of lemons, called jest, in more ways that can be imagined. ... Then there is the greatest dessert of all time: lemon meringue pie. Each time I make it, I use less sugar and more lemon juice/jest to augment flavour and add to health. ... Homemade lemonade is an all-time favourite made with healthy honey or maple syrup for added sweetness. ... (Changing the lemons to freshly squeezed grapefruits, with added honey and basil leaves, creates another incredibly tasty beverage.) What about squirting lemons to the top of a pizza just before eating it? Could this simple step add to the pizza's overall health benefits, too?

When baking soda is called for in recipes, I add buttermilk, also, to counter the soda's effect on taste and to improve its leavening effect. ... (Buttermilk adds incredible flavour to mashed potatoes, too,) ... In the cleaning department and to stop the 'spread' of fruit flies, I sprinkle baking soda on top of the fruit peels inside the kitchen pail used for compost. I use baking soda to clean the kitchen sinks followed by hot water soon afterwards. .... To keep my kitchen sink drain free flowing, I add soda, then white vinegar, creating a foamy mixture which aids in clearing out the drain, easily. Hot water soon follows this routine. Using two food ingredients help clean and sanitize the sink.

Vinegar comes in a myriad flavours and 'colours'. There is healthy red wine vinegar, derived from red wine, raw unpasteurized apple cider vinegar, balsamic, malt and white vinegars, to name a few. All can be use in making fresh salad dressings, to marinate meats of all kinds. ...To remove coffee or tea stains, found inside mugs and teacups, I add a few drops of vinegar, then wipe clean and wash, as usual. White vinegar can be used to clean windows, wiping away fingerprints and pups' nose prints off of glass door panels.... It's a great addition to making pastry as it interferes with gluten development and adds a tangy flavour to the finished product. Vinegar can be used to punch up our health, while we add it here and there.. To make sour milk, lemon juice or vinegar can be used. The choice is ours.

It is comforting to know that food ingredients: lemon juice, vinegar and baking soda can help clean where we live. When Mr. Wiggles and his cohorts are playing outside, spraying a water/vinegar mixture vinegar outside helps to dissuade them from chewing questionable vegetation while killing off the scent of nocturnal animals that might have come calling, the previous evening, outside the compound. A top layer of baking soda sprinkled on the contents of the kitchen compost pail helps to keep away the 'night visitors' - if the pail has not been taken to the larger compost container at the back. I use kitty litter baking soda, often, to help freshen the litter box. And every few days, I clean out the litter box using vinegar with its bacteria killing, sanitizing properties.


Finding creative ways to include simple food ingredients - lemons, vinegar and baking soda - into our lives serves to help cleanse both our palate and our environment. Could this be the beginning of something special? It is here that our tolerance for chemically laden food and cleaning products begins a slow decline. What a way to go!