Fermenting adventures: Kimchi and Kraut - Easy recipes!

James and I attended a fermentation class at the Florida Earthskills Gathering.   It was our last class of the week but one of the best.   We sat on the floor under the "dining tent" and passed around jar after jar of tasty goodness while learning that sanitation is not always advantageous, rotten fish mixed with sugar is good for the garden, and kraut is actually really easy to make and tastes amazing compared to store bought.   We came away inspired, and sense then our kitchen has been a regular science lab with new things brewing, bubbling, fermenting and sprouting on every surface, even the tiki bar.    People walk into our house for a visit and we shove forkfuls of new kraut in their mouth and pour samples of water kefir and kombucha for them to sample.    I bring jars and bottles to friends houses, violin practice and easter egg hunts eager to share our latest creations.    Jars are hoarded and beer is purchased with flip-tops so they can be used again.    The kid runs out of the room when a bottle is about to be opened because of the ONE time I sprayed the entire kitchen with an overly fizzy explosion of kifer.     Its a lot of fun, and no one has been poisoned yet by our creations - they just ask for recipes because they are so good!     Here I share a couple of my favorites, quick, easy and tasty!




First, is a kraut recipe.    Naked Kraut was one of the first jars passed around in our class, consisting of just 2 ingredients - cabbage and salt.    One bite of that stuff and we decided we would never need to buy store kraut again, there was such a big difference in flavor....and so much flavor for something so simple!  

Sense making basic kraut I've experimented with several other variations - its easy enough to mess with and change based on whatever you have on hand, the technique is the same either way.

Ingredients:
- Cabbage
- Salt*

Supplies:
-Clean jars
- smooth rocks (I use river rocks bought at the dollar store, boiled in water to sanitize)

*use sea salt, pink salt, kosher salt  - pretty much anything that is not standard table salt.

1.  Remove some of the big outer leaves of the cabbage and save them. 
2. Cut up the cabbage - I slice it up thin, you want it into little pieces but the shape is up to you.  
3. Put it into a big bowl and sprinkle with salt.   Smush the cabbage with your hands squeezing and turning it.    Taste a piece, if it tastes good, its got enough salt.  If you can't taste the salt add a bit more.   
4. Smash and squeeze and turn the cabbage until you get bored.    Then leave it alone for 20-60min and do it again.    You may need to do this just once if you have a juicy cabbage, or multiple times.   You are looking for a little puddle of water at the bottom of the bowl. 
5. At this point, if you want to add other things to the mixture, do that now.    Shredded carrot, shredded apple, cranberries, ginger, onion chopped small, cilantro, mustard seeds, any veggies you have chopped up leftover, etc.    Toss it on in.   
6.  Pack the cabbage into jars.   Put a handful into a jar, then smash it down with something (your fist, a wood spoon, the end of a rolling pin...).    Add another handful and repeat until you have around 3 of space to the top of the jar.    Fill up remaining jars the same way.  
7. Pour any additional liquid you have over the cabbage - basically everything should be under the brine you've created.      
8. Take one of the cabbage leaves you saved and tear it into a circle the size of the jar opening.   Pack it over the cabbage and press it under the brine.   Top it with the rocks to hold everything down.   Its very important that all of the "bits" are under the liquid.   
9. Put the lid on the jar and leave it on the counter.   Every day open the lid a tiny bit to "burp" it.  In around 4 days you can eat it, but its even better if you leave it 2-3 weeks or longer.   Just taste it and see how you like it best!   
10. Put it in the fridge once you start using it - at that point you can remove the rocks and big cabbage leaf and even pour off the brine if you want.   

Kimchi - vegan and not too spicy! 

Ingredients: 

- Cabbage

- additional veggies, if you want them (carrot and daikon are our favorites) 

- 2 TBS soy sauce

- 2TBS sugar (whatever kind you like)

- chunk of pineapple (maybe 1/3 cup size)
- thumb size chunk of ginger (peel it)

-  4-5 cloves of garlic (peel)

- 1/2 onion

- 1/4 cup red chili flakes (the kind you put on pizza)

1. Chop up the cabbage and any other veggies you choose. 
2. Take the rest of the ingredients and dump them into a blender or food processor.   Chop them a bit first if you need to.     Blend them up into a paste, if it seems super thick you can throw in a little water.   
3. Dump the sauce onto the kraut and toss it up - if you have sensitive skin you may want gloves, my hands burned for days.   DO NOT touch your eyeball (you can guess how I figured that one out).    
4. Press into jars, and using the same technique as for kraut.   
5. Leave on the counter for a while, its good after about a week but can sit longer too!   Start tasting it and decide what you like.   

Pi Day! Raw Vegan Apple Pie

Today, March 14th is "Pi Day" (3.14.....), and because we are trying to cut back on sugar, I made a raw vegan healthy apple pie.

Raw Vegan Apple Pie

Ingredients: 
Crust: 
1 cup of dates (pitted and chopped)
1 cup of nuts (walnuts or almonds)

Filling: 
5 apples (choose ones you like to eat!)
Bit of lemon juice (about 1 TBS)
1/2 cup dates
cinnamon (to taste)
nutmeg (pinch)
3 tsp chia seeds (optional, but holds everything together better)


Preparation:

Crust: 

1. Soak dates in some warm water for about 15min, then drain. 
2. Meanwhile, put the nuts in a food processor (I use my ninja) and pulse until very finely chopped.   Remove and set aside. 
3. Pulse the dates until finely chopped, then throw in the nuts and pulse some more to combine.  
4. This should hold together when you smush it - press into a pie pan. 

Filling: 

1. Peel the apples.  Chop up 2 of the apples and put in the food processor with the 1/2 cup dates, lemon juice and spices.   Pulse and blend until it looks like apple sauce.  Throw in the chia seeds and pulse a bit more to combine. 
2. Chop the other 3 apples (peel if you want) into small pieces.   Stir into the apple mixture. 
3. Put the filling on the crust and sprinkle on some more cinnamon if you want. 

Thats it!   Pretty easy to make and healthier than most pies.   

The "sauce" makes it look like a cooked pie

mmmm pie....

Levi approves, he wanted to taste it when I was taking pictures but I made him wait until after dinner.

Waldorf Treehouse - made from gingerbread!

 I made a gingerbread house based on waldorf tree houses/gnome houses.  Its made from 4 batches of gingerbread, using a few different recipes to give different colors and sturdiness.  The details are made from melted sugar, edible clay (made from scratch of course) and food coloring.  The only non-edible bits are the base, some toothpicks and a bit of string.  Everything else is all food!  

I have a tree house with 12 gnomes, a play house, checkerboard, swing, picnic table, bench, book, 2 tables, 4 chairs, firepit, garden, well/pulley system, ladders, a staircase, sugar greenhouse, a slide and sea saw, and a dock with a fisherman and lake.  

I painted the gingerbread with cocoa and food coloring to make different shades to make it look more like wood.  The posts were also painted with a layer of watered down gingerbread dough and re-baked to give a bark like texture.  

I tried to get pictures from all sides: 

  

This little green gnome is sitting a toadstool table.

 

Two gnomes sitting at another table on another floor. 

 

A gnome manning the pulley system for the well, and a bright red ladder.

 

On the top level, there is the swing off one side.   There is a picnic table with a chessboard and grey gnome, a little playhouse, and another gnome reading a book.

 

Gnome on a swing

 

Gnome on a yellow bench.

 

The little yellow gnome is fishing on the dock.  The fish is hand painted, and there are two more in buckets (the orange/green one made by my 6yr old).  The water is poured sugar over tin foil.   Behind is the path, hand painted with cocoa. 

 

Here is the greenhouse that I made from poured sugar.   There is also a carrot patch and a basket of carrots.   In the background is the staircase and playground. 

 

This is the well made from gingerbread and painted.  The rock is holding the string for the bucket/pulley system.  Green archway in the background is one of two.

 

Here is the firepit.  Its got "ash" in the bottom, rocks surrounding it (for safety of course), and logs and flame.  The teal gnome is roasting a marshmellow (funny angle in the pic, the marshmellow is by the gnomes face)

 

The pulley system holds this bucket, with a tiny gnome inside!

 

Another shot of the firepit, staircase, path and carrot patch. 

 

Lastly, here is a 360* view (no sound needed, the only audio is my sister watching house hunters in the background!)  

Barrier Island Field Trip

Today we went on a field trip with the Beachside Kids Explorers Club, to the Barrier Island Sanctuary.  We had a guide who led the kids on a 1 mile walk, to the beach and the hammock, and she told them all about the plants and animals in the area.    

The beach looked beautiful, but it was super windy!  

 She had the kids find stuff on the beach, and compare what belonged on the beach, vs. didn't belong there (trash!)

Heads bent against the wind! 

There was an interesting moment where the kids had to cross a road, and the guide asked them to line up.  These are homeschoolers, they had no clue how to form a single file line!  The guide was trying to tell them "get in a spot where you can see a person's head in front of you, one behind the other".  This was the best they managed:   (note the gaps, and clumps of kids holding hands!)

Then off we went into the hammock.

This is a "Gumbo Limbo" tree.  It has redish, peeling bark.  Its also called "the tourist tree".   Tourists often don't wear enough sunscreen on our Florida beaches, leaving them with sunburned, red and peeling skin, just like this tree! 

They checked out the water as well

We avoided this giant mound of fire ants: 

This tree was scratched up by a bobcat at some point, probably when the tree was smaller. 

After we had a windy picnic lunch.

And went inside, they have all kinds of things for the kids to look at, touch and explore.     This tree is decorated with sea glass.

Levi and Taylor did a little craft project. 

Taylor listened to facts about how sea turtles hatch, she likes to 'talk on the phone' 

It was a fun field trip!  Levi's favorite fact of the day is that "sand is made from shells".  


Then we finished the day with making some homemade pizza, with red sauce, pineapple and vegan rice cheeze.  

Christmas in Tahoe

 Our trip to Lake Tahoe, mostly in pictures:


The snow:

Playing in the snow (thats my kid, long sleeve shirt and velour pants, no hat, gloves, or anything else.  He is crazy! 

Our tree, it was tiny this year, only 11 feet.  We have had 15 foot trees in the past that had to be nailed to the ceiling beams!   This one was crooked or something too, but it was still pretty!

 We roasted chestnuts.  In an open....oven.  

And peeled them.  

And then watched the reindeer at www.reindeercam.com

We got to spend time with Grammy!

She read to him on Christmas Eve, the same stories she reads every year for as long as I can remember. 

Levi played with Buddy's old toys, from when he was Levi's age (like 50 years ago).  This rocket shoots pennies into itself, you load them up, push a button and they go up under the top bit.  Its pretty neat!

Buddy and Nai Nai got Levi some new skis and boots.  We did quite a bit of skiing.  Its fun because Levi is getting really good, so we can do more of the mountain.   He took a class at the ski resort as well, which ended up being a private class because there were no other kids in the advanced class to ski with him.    His instructor said Levi was the most fun class he had taught in a long time.   As a former ski instructor, I totally understand - kids like Levi who LOVE every moment of skiing are so much fun to teach! 

He got a hotwheels race track that launches cars.  

Fun for everyone, Auntie Shawn and Buddy spent an hour playing with it - well after Levi had gone to bed!   

 We went to a cool science museum in Reno. 

Static electricity experiment, this was so funny to watch as the 'zap' went around the circle of kids and they each jumped from the shock in turn! 

One of those things that you spin to make the figures move.  

And a giant one! 

They had a giant 'rising cloud' that spanned 2 stories.  Kids climbed all the way up to the top inside of it!   

Waterway with a hole in the middle

And all natural, completely allergy friendly Italian ice.  

I got in a little homeschooling for New Years, we made a time capsule!  This is going to go in with the Christmas star so we will find it next year.   It included a string the same height as Levi, a traced hand and foot to compare sizes next year, a self portrait and a worksheet he filled out. 

And some sparklers at midnight on New Years!  Levi did 3 boxes worth with our very patient neighbor.

 Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!