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.   

Vegan Savory Muffins

This recipe is adapted from the I Love Trader Joe's Vegetarian Cookbook, which we got from the library but might end up buying, there are so many good looking recipes and every one of them has a vegan option.  

This muffin recipe is so good (and quick and easy!) that we have made it 3 times now in the last couple weeks!

Vegan Savory Muffins



Ingredients:

2 Cups of white whole wheat flour*
2 TBS organic sugar (optional, but adds a tiny bit of sweet to counter the savory)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup mild oil (I use coconut, but any oil works, even good olive oil)
1/4 tsp vinegar (again, whatever you have on hand, I use ACV)
1 and 3/4 cup non-dairy milk (I use whatever I have on hand)

Seasoning/Add ins, add whatever you like here, but add something, this is where the flavor comes from!
This is the blend I use:

2 tsp ground oregano
1 tsp dried garlic powder
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1-2 TBS herbs from the garden washed and cut up (chives, basil, thyme, etc)
Handful of shredded cheese (we use non-dairy "Follow your heart" brand)
1/4 cup chopped up sundried tomatoes
1/3 cup (ish) of chopped up breakfast sausage (we use vegan field roast apple maple)


*We use King Arthur's Flour, which is GMO free, I have not tried this with alternative flours, GF flour, etc., but it might just work!


Preheat oven to 400 degrees.   Line or grease muffin pans.    Dump all of the dry ingredients into a bowl and mix.   Dump all of the wet ingredients on top and mix.   It should be pretty thick and lumpy, just mix enough to get rid of any dry spots.  
Fill muffin cups, its ok to fill them all the way up.    This fills up a dozen to the top.
Bake 14-16min



Cool.   Eat!

Cookbook can be found here: 

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.

Christmas Around the World: Mexico

We learned all about Christmas time in Mexico!


We made some hot chocolate
(almond milk, a handful of dairy-free chocolate chips, and a sprinkle of cinnamon - heat it up and thats it!)  

We learned the story of poinsettias .  We also learned about poinsettias themselves, there was a great fact sheet about them on the free curriculum I downloaded from "teach with me" .  I used that to make a worksheet that he filled out.  One of the facts was about color prefrance, stating a persentage for people who liked red, pink, and white poinsettias .  With that information Levi colored in a hundreds chart giving a good visual of the comparison. 

We made a poinsettia craft too.   We put white paper in a tray, added some globs of paint and 3 marbles and then rolled them all over.   Rinse and repeat with green.  Then cut out the flower and leaf shapes, and a pot out of scrapbook paper.  Glued everything down and I had Levi "shadow cut" around the design.  

He also filled out a journal page with the country name, how they say "Merry Christmas", the dates they celebrate Christmas, and the flag and map.   We will do one of these for each country and put them together in a little book when we are done. 

And lastly some copywork, which I had to fix because there was a typo in it!  (whoops!).   The sentience is one Levi came up with as the moral of the poinsettia story. 

Sources and the cover for this project can be found here

Magazine Meal Planning

My mom told me about a conversation she had with one of her friends about family meals.  Her friend asked what our "go to" meals were and my mom answered "lasagna".   But truthfully, I can't remember the last time we had any!
We like to try new recipes and have a lot of variety, so I guess we don't really have any 'go to meals'.  Maybe that's part of why Levi will eat just about any food you offer him, or at the very least, take a "no thank you bite".

So one of our biggest issues is keeping track of recipes we want to try, we are often searching through magazines, pintrest recipe lists, and recipe books to find "that one recipe that had___ in it and looked good".       I've come up with a way to help organize!

Two of our favorite magazines for recipes are Vegetarian Times, and Food Network Magazine.   Food Network tends to have less complicated recipes, plus the format of the magazine is easier to follow.    Of our family of 5, we have 2 vegetarians, and one with lots of food allergies, so we have to accommodate everyone.  The vast majority of our meals are 100% vegetarian so that helps!

So anyways, here is how I do some meal planning with a food magazine, this could easily be adapted for online recipes as well, especially using pintrest.



First, choose your magazine.  Food Network has LOTS in each issue, and most can easily be adapted to vegetarian/allergy friendly.   

Next, go through and pick out what looks good.  I let Levi look through too and fold over pages of things he likes! 

Once you find something you want to make, write down the title of the recipe (use the title in the magazine if it doesn't have a picture index like Food Network) and include the page number (to make it easier to find later)   Then write down all of the ingredients that you will need to buy.   Things that are ALWAYS in your house, you can skip, such as spices, and basic things.  When you write your list, you can change any ingredients you want, like using a different veg, or using almond milk instead of regular, or whatever you'd like. 

As you do this, you will also notice overlaps - maybe a few recipes call for vegetable broth, or parsley or whatever.   This can help you with deciding what to have when, because maybe you want to use up that parsley within a couple days so it doesn't turn into green slime in the bottom of your fridge, so you will plan to have those two meals the same week.   Or if several recipes call for green apples or tomatoes, you might buy a whole bag instead of just a few because you know you will use more.  

Cut out the set of ingredients, like the pic below.   

And stick them back in the magazine on the right pages (its best to cut them out and stick them in the pages as you go, instead of spreading them all over the place)

 

Now, when you make your grocery list, you will just put your basic items and household stuff on it,  and grab the little lists from your magazine of whatever you plan to cook.   You can either just carry the small lists with you (which is what I do, I tape them to the big list) or transfer the ingredients to your main list (which is a pain, but my dad likes to do it).   

Then just make your meal, knowing you have everything you need!  

  These were yummy Italian cabbage wraps, modified to be totally vegan!    

That's it!  I probably made it sound more complicated than it really is, but it works for our family, and doesn't take up much time.  I also like that its not a "set" day of the week that you have to have each meal, its easy to adapt as much as you want because each list is separate and easy to grab on your way to the store.    

What do you think?

Fresh Vanilla Beans

My dad went on a trip to Mexico, and brought back from fresh vanilla bean pods.   So I made dessert!

I made vanilla bean cheesecake, with white chocolate mousse topping.    I found the recipe on Pintrest, it comes from another blogger, The Inner Gourmet.   It was easy to make and came out light and oh so good.  This cheesecake has no eggs in it, which I think contributed to the lighter texture, this recipe is a keeper for sure.   

My dad was happy to test it out.  

mmm......

 

And then, I started some homemade vanilla extract.  Its simply vanilla beans (the leftover cut ones from the cheesecake), and rum.   The rum is a good quality Guatemalan rum made from sugar cane.   It will be 8 whole weeks before it can be used.  

 


I also found an orange-vanilla bean meringue recipe that I'd like to try.  Minus the orange food coloring, Levi could eat it. 

Blueberry Picking

 Today we went Blueberry picking, partially because it goes along with out farming unit study, but mostly because fresh picked blueberries are soooo yummy!   It was also the last day of pickin' this year, so they were only $1.50/lb.  Well worth the 1 hour drive to get there.

This is the entrance to the farm, there are rows and rows of blueberry bushes behind the pond.   Levi chose to wear is cowboy hat instead of a sunhat, and I put him in a dark colored shirt so I wouldn't have to worry about stains. 

There was a tractor by the pond, so we checked that out, we are going to learn more about farm equipment in a few days.   

This machine is used for trimming the tops of the bushes down at the end of the season in preparation for next year. 

The first handful!

There were plenty of blueberries, some not ripe yet, but lots of plump juicy ones. 

Check these out! 

Levi and Nai Nai

We picked a total of 12lbs of blueberries.

We brought them home, and later in the evening started cooking with them.

First, we made blueberry sorbet.  It was quick, easy and oh so delicious.