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.   

Butterflies at the Zoo

My parents are now "Jaguar Members" of Brevard Zoo, meaning they (and in turn Levi and I) get access to special events and behind-the-scene events.    We were some of the first to see the new butterfly exhibit, get a tour, and release some butterflies! 
 

First, we walked through the fairy and frog and troll themed area.  There is a little section of the zoo where they put different displays, usually plants and things like that, but this one was really neat and very kid friendly.   

 

Fairy houses with tarantulas living in them:

Design your own fairy house/garden.  These are at kid height, and are really cute.  The kids can use various pots, wood pieces, pine cones, stones, grass and other bits to build little houses.  Kind of a sensory bin/small world play center.  

They have a big toad (frog?) set up in the center.  They are poisonous ones!   Difficult to get a picture though.   It was funny because a volunteer was in there to change the water, and had to wait for someone to bring a bucket for her to dump it in.  Its a very low enclosure so she was ducking in an odd position for a long time at the same time as everyone in our small group was there to see the frogs! 

There is a troll "toll booth" with a book of riddles for kids to read for people to "pay the toll" to get past/out of the section.  Behind is a secret tea party area just for kids!   There are dishes and things for them to play with, great for imaginative play.

A troll

The zoo uses local artists to decorate for themed events.  This artist uses recycled materials to make sculptures.

Turtles are made from bowls, pans, and spoons!

These I thought would be fun for kids to make as well. 

Then we got to the butterfly enclosure.   They gave us guides about all of the native butterflies and butterfly plants.  The zoo uses live butterflies for the initial set up of the exhibit, but will only get chrysalis for the rest.  They are all local as well.     They put signs in the enclosure so we could try and identify the butterflies.

Levi trying to id this butterfly.

My dad (Buddy) asking questions in the background!

Helping the butterflies out of the net.  Levi got to reach in and get out dozens of them. 

 Two at once!

My camera was cooperating, I got a few nice pics.

We stopped to see the meerkats before heading home to go to swim team practice, my mom hadn't seen them yet.   Levi was pleased that they were inside the tube.  There were two in there having a wrestling match!  I tried to get them on video but missed it of course. 

But I got them on camera! 

We are looking forward to more Jaguar Society events at the zoo, it was interesting to have someone walk us through an exhibit and answer questions instead of simply going their on our own.  

Plants/Trees/Seeds lapbook and unit study

I'm trying to catch up with my posts on lapbooks and unit studies! 

This one was about plants, seeds, trees, leaves, and growing things!    This one is from a year ago and I guess I never got around to blogging it.  I'm amazed at how far Levi's handwriting and spelling has come sense then. 

Sources:

For this one I put everything including links to lapbook sources on my pintrest board,

 check it out here

 How do plants grow mini book

Itsy Bitsy Seedling mini book

Apple life cycle slider

and an environment flap book

Parts of an apple (labeled inside) and copywork

Some lapbook elements.   The bottom right is one we made using an actual seed that we took apart to look at the different parts.  I think its some sort of bean. 

More lapbook elements

Classic celery in colored water experiment - I remember doing this one in 1st grade! 

Lifecycle of a plant  - these sets came in pockets that I got some place with cards to place in order and then copy.

Math coloring mosaic.

This is a chart of uses for apples, we found the best uses in a book and then graphed it using stickers

 

Leaf printing -  We found various leaves and then printed them with paint.  Then counted squares to find the area of each leaf. 

Copywork from Draw Write Now

More copywork

This was a t-shirt Levi designed, to "save the trees"  (he labeled England and Florida)

Tree artwork - his hand for the roots and finger prints for the leaves. 

Parts of an apple, with actual seeds glued on. 

Thumbprint flowers

Q-tip painting of a tree.

Apple star printing (this is squares because I didn't want to waste the apple too!) 

Plant journal - I believe I got this at a homeschool book sale someplace, it had a lot of good stuff in it so we did the whole thing. 

 These I pulled out of a random workbook.

More lapbook elements:

And this is an experiment we did with plants

One more copywork

Water color painting

Plants in our garden. 

Levi's Garden:

Seeds and food clippings growing

Measuring leaves with pennies. 

Seedling lunch (beans/rice for dirt, carrot for the stem, spinach leaves)

Collecting leaves to compare:

Finished lapbook: