I finally made a kombucha video. I'm in desperate need of a decent recorder. But I think the video could still be helpful.
Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T7xTaTdpSE&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Thai Meatballs with Spicy Almond Butter Sauce
Just a quick recipe from dinner last night.
Used whatever I had on hand and it turned out A-mazing!
Girls loved it and so did the husband.
Thai Meatballs with Almond Butter Sauce
(remember these measurements are all approximates cause I don't measure much of anything)
Meatballs:
1 package of ground turkey
1/2 pound of pork sausage (plain, not seasoned)
1cup shredded carrots
1/4 cup almond flour
1 egg
2 tbsp of grated ginger (mine is jarred)
3 green onions chopped up
2 minced cloves of garlic
1/4 cup of chopped up fresh cilantro
1 tbsp coconut aminos
2 tsp of toasted sesame oil
Put all of this into a big bowl and mix it up really good with your hands.
Then scoop out about a 1/4 cup size and make a meatball with your hands.
Place meatballs onto a greased baking sheet.
Bake at 485 for 15-20 minutes
My mixture made 18 meatballs and I was pretty exact with each one being 1/4 cup of mixture.
Spicy Almond Butter Sauce:
1/2 cup of almond butter (I used the trader joes almond butter with roasted flax seeds)
3 tbsp of coconut vinegar (you could probably use any vinegar here I'm guessing)
4-5 tbsp of water (start with 3 and then if it's too thick add more at the end)
1 tbsp of coconut aminos
1 tsp of toasted sesame oil
1 tsp of raw honey
1 tbsp of minced up ginger
a few dashes of red pepper flakes
a few dashes cayenne pepper
Whisk it all together in a bowl.
I used this to drizzle onto the meatballs after they were served.
Enjoy!
Used whatever I had on hand and it turned out A-mazing!
Girls loved it and so did the husband.
Thai Meatballs with Almond Butter Sauce
(remember these measurements are all approximates cause I don't measure much of anything)
Meatballs:
1 package of ground turkey
1/2 pound of pork sausage (plain, not seasoned)
1cup shredded carrots
1/4 cup almond flour
1 egg
2 tbsp of grated ginger (mine is jarred)
3 green onions chopped up
2 minced cloves of garlic
1/4 cup of chopped up fresh cilantro
1 tbsp coconut aminos
2 tsp of toasted sesame oil
Put all of this into a big bowl and mix it up really good with your hands.
Then scoop out about a 1/4 cup size and make a meatball with your hands.
Place meatballs onto a greased baking sheet.
Bake at 485 for 15-20 minutes
My mixture made 18 meatballs and I was pretty exact with each one being 1/4 cup of mixture.
Spicy Almond Butter Sauce:
1/2 cup of almond butter (I used the trader joes almond butter with roasted flax seeds)
3 tbsp of coconut vinegar (you could probably use any vinegar here I'm guessing)
4-5 tbsp of water (start with 3 and then if it's too thick add more at the end)
1 tbsp of coconut aminos
1 tsp of toasted sesame oil
1 tsp of raw honey
1 tbsp of minced up ginger
a few dashes of red pepper flakes
a few dashes cayenne pepper
Whisk it all together in a bowl.
I used this to drizzle onto the meatballs after they were served.
Enjoy!
Friday, July 27, 2012
Spicy Roasted Cauliflower Dip (hummus?)
Back in the day, as in before my enlightenment, I was a HUGE spicy hummus fan. Trader Joes Spicy Hummus to be exact and my dipper of choice was Naan Bread. (cue loud *gasp* now)
To be honest, I've missed my dip!
I came across this recipe here from Paleo Plan and it looked easy enough.
As always I made some modifications and didn't follow it exactly.
Let's face it, I have trouble measuring and following directions.
Basically it went like this:
Preheat oven to about 475
1. take a head of cauliflower and cut it up, stems and all.
2. throw it in a large bowl and drizzle in some melted coconut oil
3. mix it up to coat all the pcs of the cauliflower then dump it onto a cooking sheet
4. sprinkle the cauli with sea salt and pepper and put it in the oven
5. bake until the cauli is brown and roasted which may be in the 20-30 minute range. I checked and stirred up the cauliflower about every 10 minutes or so to ensure it was evenly roasted and browned on all sides. This could be my OCD and may not be necessary.
6. pull out the cauliflower when done and dump into a food processor or blender
7. add in some garlic (3-5 cloves), about 1/2 cup of tahini, 1-2 tbsp of lemon juice, a few dashes of paprika, a few dashes of hot sauce, a shake or two of cayenne and a shake or two of red pepper flakes.
8. mix it all up till a nice mixture forms. You can drizzle in and mix some olive oil if you need too. It was pretty thick but I kind of liked it that way.
9. scoop it all into a bowl and eat it warm or chill it and serve later.
I ended up chilling it and eating it later with bell pepper slices. I've got to say this dip was SO DAMN GOOD! Had a wonderful kick to it. If you're not a spicy fan I'd cut back, or out completely, the hot sauce, cayenne, and red pepper).
This recipe did make a huge batch. Next time maybe I'll cut everything in half. We did eat it all though over the course of about 4 days.
It would make a fantastic spread for a lettuce wrap or paleo "sandwich".
I found myself eating it by the spoonful. The things you could do with this dip are endless but my favorite would probably just be sitting in the corner with a bowl of it and my spatula.
Trader Joes didn't have tahini and I didn't want to take a trip to Whole Foods or Berkeley Bowl where I would normally go, so I looked at Sprouts and they had it. A big box like Safeway may have it....I don't know.
Here are a few pictures.
Enjoy!!
To be honest, I've missed my dip!
I came across this recipe here from Paleo Plan and it looked easy enough.
As always I made some modifications and didn't follow it exactly.
Let's face it, I have trouble measuring and following directions.
Basically it went like this:
Preheat oven to about 475
1. take a head of cauliflower and cut it up, stems and all.
2. throw it in a large bowl and drizzle in some melted coconut oil
3. mix it up to coat all the pcs of the cauliflower then dump it onto a cooking sheet
4. sprinkle the cauli with sea salt and pepper and put it in the oven
5. bake until the cauli is brown and roasted which may be in the 20-30 minute range. I checked and stirred up the cauliflower about every 10 minutes or so to ensure it was evenly roasted and browned on all sides. This could be my OCD and may not be necessary.
6. pull out the cauliflower when done and dump into a food processor or blender
7. add in some garlic (3-5 cloves), about 1/2 cup of tahini, 1-2 tbsp of lemon juice, a few dashes of paprika, a few dashes of hot sauce, a shake or two of cayenne and a shake or two of red pepper flakes.
8. mix it all up till a nice mixture forms. You can drizzle in and mix some olive oil if you need too. It was pretty thick but I kind of liked it that way.
9. scoop it all into a bowl and eat it warm or chill it and serve later.
I ended up chilling it and eating it later with bell pepper slices. I've got to say this dip was SO DAMN GOOD! Had a wonderful kick to it. If you're not a spicy fan I'd cut back, or out completely, the hot sauce, cayenne, and red pepper).
This recipe did make a huge batch. Next time maybe I'll cut everything in half. We did eat it all though over the course of about 4 days.
It would make a fantastic spread for a lettuce wrap or paleo "sandwich".
I found myself eating it by the spoonful. The things you could do with this dip are endless but my favorite would probably just be sitting in the corner with a bowl of it and my spatula.
Trader Joes didn't have tahini and I didn't want to take a trip to Whole Foods or Berkeley Bowl where I would normally go, so I looked at Sprouts and they had it. A big box like Safeway may have it....I don't know.
Here are a few pictures.
Enjoy!!
Friday, July 13, 2012
Making Kombucha Pt. 2
Life is good!!
So when we last left off, the kombucha was almost ready to be bottled up and I was thinking about some experimentation with frozen fruit. Pineapple to be exact.
I'm happy to report that everything went off without a hitch.
This is how it went down on Sunday:
I washed my hands REALLY well and scooped out the scobies, (my spellcheck wants to change scobies to scabies and I refuse to let that happen!) mother and my new "baby" (a little strange feeling) and sat them on a plate.
Then I poured most of the tea through a strainer (nylon mesh, no metal) and into a plastic bowl. I left some tea in the glass container to be starter for my new batch.
I used the strained tea in the bowl and bottled it into two jugs. I had some left in the bowl so I poured that into an old pickler jar. I added to that some frozen pineapple.
Then, I pulled my mother and baby scobies apart. I added my original mother scoby to the tea and pineapple in the pickle jar and covered it with a cheese cloth and rubber band.
Then, I started all over again.
I brewed more tea, added sugar, iced it, and then poured it into the large glass container that still had some tea in it (remember the stuff I left in it to start my new batch?).
Next I put them all back on the shelf in my cabinet and let them sit from Sunday to Thursday.
On Thursday I took the pineapple batch down and pulled out the scoby and strained all the tea into a bowl, making sure to leave a little bit for the scoby to hotel in until I make another batch.
Then I bottled it up. It only made about half a bottle.
I took my newly bottled pineapple jug and the two original jugs and stuck them in the fridge.
I'll leave them there for a few days I think to get chilled and carbonate some more, then I'll drink them this weekend.
I can't wait!!
I put my mother scoby and the tiny bit of pineapple tea I had left it to "hotel" in and put it into a small leftover coconut jar I had (cleaned out obviously) and I left the scoby in there until today (Friday) when I had time to make MORE kombucha!
It's addicting!
Today I made a ginger peach brew. I used the same pickle jar I had used for the pineapple brew.
So now, I have 3 bottles in the fridge and two jugs going in the cabinet.
I've been using straws to sample and taste the brews through out the process and they are really delicious.
Like I said previously, I enjoy a less sweet tea so I think my fermentation times are longer than others.
It's a personal preference I believe.
And this is in no way a "tutorial" so don't grade me on that level.
This is just what I did and my experience so far.
With that said, it's easy to do. If I can do it, anyone can!!
Enjoy!
SR
So when we last left off, the kombucha was almost ready to be bottled up and I was thinking about some experimentation with frozen fruit. Pineapple to be exact.
I'm happy to report that everything went off without a hitch.
This is how it went down on Sunday:
I washed my hands REALLY well and scooped out the scobies, (my spellcheck wants to change scobies to scabies and I refuse to let that happen!) mother and my new "baby" (a little strange feeling) and sat them on a plate.
Then I poured most of the tea through a strainer (nylon mesh, no metal) and into a plastic bowl. I left some tea in the glass container to be starter for my new batch.
I used the strained tea in the bowl and bottled it into two jugs. I had some left in the bowl so I poured that into an old pickler jar. I added to that some frozen pineapple.
Then, I pulled my mother and baby scobies apart. I added my original mother scoby to the tea and pineapple in the pickle jar and covered it with a cheese cloth and rubber band.
Here is my new pineapple brew in the pickle jar and my two bottled of the original.
Then, I started all over again.
I brewed more tea, added sugar, iced it, and then poured it into the large glass container that still had some tea in it (remember the stuff I left in it to start my new batch?).
Next I put them all back on the shelf in my cabinet and let them sit from Sunday to Thursday.
Then I bottled it up. It only made about half a bottle.
I took my newly bottled pineapple jug and the two original jugs and stuck them in the fridge.
I'll leave them there for a few days I think to get chilled and carbonate some more, then I'll drink them this weekend.
I can't wait!!
I put my mother scoby and the tiny bit of pineapple tea I had left it to "hotel" in and put it into a small leftover coconut jar I had (cleaned out obviously) and I left the scoby in there until today (Friday) when I had time to make MORE kombucha!
It's addicting!
Today I made a ginger peach brew. I used the same pickle jar I had used for the pineapple brew.
So now, I have 3 bottles in the fridge and two jugs going in the cabinet.
I've been using straws to sample and taste the brews through out the process and they are really delicious.
Like I said previously, I enjoy a less sweet tea so I think my fermentation times are longer than others.
It's a personal preference I believe.
And this is in no way a "tutorial" so don't grade me on that level.
This is just what I did and my experience so far.
With that said, it's easy to do. If I can do it, anyone can!!
Enjoy!
SR
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Making Kombucha Pt. 1
So, after my fermented kraut and the major success that was, I thought WTF let's move onto kombucha. Lord knows I'm sick and tired of paying damn 4$ a bottle for that shit (however tasty and beneficial it might be) and let's face it, I'm a DIY kind of girl.
I went to a paleo meetup a few weeks back, it was awesome, and the topic was making your own kombucha. Fantastic!!! I find this to be some sort of kismet because two years ago when I went paleo I was looking for meetups and found none!! Fast forward to now and there are quite a few. And, wouldn't you know the first one I joined had a kombucha meetup the very next weekend. It was MEANT TO BE!!
Now bear in mind here that I don't follow recipes that well and this really is a work in progress for me.
This is by no means a tutorial.
I'm also not going to go into the science of all this or get really geeked out with specifics. You can use google for that.
At the workshop, the hostess with the mostess and a truly FABULOUS girl gave each of us a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast - YUM RIGHT?!!) in a jar with some starter tea to take home and start our own brew. I won't even lie to you, I was a little weirded out. It resembles a pc of chicken breast in some brine.
I took it home and made two large pitchers of tea. I used a pomegranate white tea from Trader Joes.
First, I just pulled tap water and boiled it and then steeped my tea. But, while it was steeping I remembered hearing something about not using tap water because of chlorine and other chemicals.
IDK... But, CRAP! So that pitcher of tea got tossed.
Let's do this again. Second time I pulled water from my fridge, filtered so I'm hoping it's ok, and I boiled and steeped my tea in that. I did about 6 tea bags per pitcher of water and steeped for about 15 minutes.
Then I filled the pitcher the rest of the way up with ice cubes. Let the cubes melt, and then dumped the pitcher of tea into a large glass container.
Hot water/tea will harm the scoby. Makes sense. It's a living creature after all and who wants to be thrown into a boiling container of tea.
I repeated the entire process for a second time. Resulting in two full pitchers of tea.
SHIT! Then, I remembered the sugar!! Yes, pure white sugar. The devil kind. Thankfully I had a little bit in my cabinet. ( Does it ever go bad?) All I had was a cup though. I think some other recipes call for a cup and a half, but I wasn't about to trek to the store again.
So, I poured my full cup of sugar into the tea that was in the glass container and stirred it a lot till it dissolved. DO NOT USE METAL utensils. This will harm your brew. There are details behind this, google it if you're interested.
Once my sugar was dissolved my tea was ready for the scoby!
Scoby eats the sugar. That's how it grows and thrives. Apparently you want to make sure you have enough sugar otherwise it will starve and go bad.
I opened the jar she had given me and just dumped the entire contents into my glass container of tea (scoby and starter tea, which is just left over tea from one of her batches).
The scoby immediately sank. I was upset. I thought there was something wrong with it or maybe I had done something wrong, but after much research and emails back and forth with Tara, this is a-ok. Nothing to be alarmed about.
Then, I covered up the glass container with a dish towel and my husband rigged me up a pc of string and a bungy cord thing to keep the towel on super tight. This lets the gases flow out and the brew can breathe all the while keeping out dust, dirt, bugs, etc.
That was it. I stuck the container in my cabinet and let it sit. It likes a good dark place that gets decent air. I found my kitchen cabinet was good for this.
After about 5 days I noticed that the original "mother" scoby was still on the bottom but a new "baby" scoby had grown all across the top! I was soooo damn excited!! Bust out the cigars!
On the 9th day, today, I used a straw and actually tasted the brew. It's still a little sweet for me so I'm going to leave it go another few days. The longer you leave it sit the less sweet it will be. I think you just need to make sure it doesn't go for too long otherwise the scoby will get hungry when there is no sugar left.
I'm going to do a second brew or fermentation if you want to call it and add some frozen pineapple.
I'll blog that when I get there. For now, I'm letting this continue to ferment for a few more days. Maybe Friday I will start the next step.
Until then.....
xo
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Adventures in fermenting
For my birthday I begged for a fermenting pot and my husband being the most wonderful guy that he is bought me one from my amazon wish list. It's the 7.5 liter Harsh Gairtopf and it's gorgeous!
We started off with a basic kraut recipe:
A few heads of organic cabbage
Sea Salt
Garlic
That's it. (you can see my handy helper)
I shredded up all the cabbage (at first I wanted to use my food processor and it was a pain in the ass so I ended up just chopping it all up) and then layered it in the pot with sea salt. Smashing down each layer with my fist as I went. Apparently there is a special mallet for this and it's on my list of things to get.
After my layers were finished I put the heavy stones on top, put the lid on the pot, and let it sit for 9 weeks to be exact. Well...more like 9 weeks and a day.
When we opened it up, I won't lie, I was really scared. But, it looked almost exactly as it did when I put the lid on 9 weeks earlier, with just a bit more liquid.
We took off the stones and scooped out all of the kraut. It was delicious!!!
It had tons of flavor. It was garlicky, but really good. It also retained a lot of "crunch" and I liked that.
It wasn't as soggy as kraut I'd had in the past.
Overall, 100% a fantastic experiment. I'm on my way to becoming a fermenting freak!
And,
If you're thinking to yourself..."fermented what?"
Here is a great link to a post from Mark on the many benefits of fermented foods.
This is a really great book and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in getting started with fermenting their own foods.
We started off with a basic kraut recipe:
A few heads of organic cabbage
Sea Salt
Garlic
That's it. (you can see my handy helper)
I shredded up all the cabbage (at first I wanted to use my food processor and it was a pain in the ass so I ended up just chopping it all up) and then layered it in the pot with sea salt. Smashing down each layer with my fist as I went. Apparently there is a special mallet for this and it's on my list of things to get.
After my layers were finished I put the heavy stones on top, put the lid on the pot, and let it sit for 9 weeks to be exact. Well...more like 9 weeks and a day.
When we opened it up, I won't lie, I was really scared. But, it looked almost exactly as it did when I put the lid on 9 weeks earlier, with just a bit more liquid.
We took off the stones and scooped out all of the kraut. It was delicious!!!
It had tons of flavor. It was garlicky, but really good. It also retained a lot of "crunch" and I liked that.
It wasn't as soggy as kraut I'd had in the past.
Overall, 100% a fantastic experiment. I'm on my way to becoming a fermenting freak!
And,
If you're thinking to yourself..."fermented what?"
Here is a great link to a post from Mark on the many benefits of fermented foods.
This is a really great book and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in getting started with fermenting their own foods.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Blog? What Blog??
Hello??? Is this thing on??
I get many emails from wonderful people asking where have I been? Why have I not been blogging?
And, it's life, just life. It gets busy and I find no time for blogging. Sad I know because I have so much to say.
For a quick run down this is what's been going on the last year:
Still Paleo. Not so much a "diet" as a lifestyle. I find talking about it to be boring now in a way. It's so over talked about at this point everywhere you turn. I still have many recipes and findings to share so I will still ramble on about it. We do add in a few other foods now and then. A few dairy products here and there and even once in a while some gluten free oatmeal I found at trader joes which everyone can tolerate. But, 95% of the time it's meat, veg, fruit, and a few nuts. Period.
Kitchen remodel. HUGE undertaking and a project that still is NOT completely finished. I PROMISE to post pictures, SOON! September will mark the two year point and I really hope to be finished by then. It's fully functional now though and really has just cosmetic finishing to do.
Furniture restoration. I'm in the middle of about 6 pcs right now. With limited space and winter weather, I don't have anything finished enough to showcase. As soon as the sun comes out though so will my sander and elbow grease.
Fitness front. I've gotten back into lifting quite a bit. I love it! It just makes me happy. I have done some mud run stuff (SO FREAKING AWESOME) and plan to do a lot more. A triathlon is in my future too. I've pretty much determined I'm not a "runner" - 10k is my max and it can't just be pavement. I need other "stuff" to do along the way cause I don't enjoy it, it's not for me. So in the meantime, just hand me my weights and let me be.
Photography is phasing OUT! I realized I don't like photographing things or people that I don't want to photograph. People are picky and unappreciative and no one wants to pay for the time and talent it takes to produce beautiful pcs of art. So, still doing a few weddings here and there because they actually pay really well and still doing a few random pcs and shows of MY CHOOSING but that is about it. My site should be going down soon and advertising has come to a complete halt.
That's it in a nutshell.
I will repeat over and over again:
I'll post more
I'll post more
I'll post more
Until then, I hope all of you are enjoying spring, looking forward to summer, and kicking some kind of major ass in whatever it is your heart so choses to do.
xo
I get many emails from wonderful people asking where have I been? Why have I not been blogging?
And, it's life, just life. It gets busy and I find no time for blogging. Sad I know because I have so much to say.
For a quick run down this is what's been going on the last year:
Still Paleo. Not so much a "diet" as a lifestyle. I find talking about it to be boring now in a way. It's so over talked about at this point everywhere you turn. I still have many recipes and findings to share so I will still ramble on about it. We do add in a few other foods now and then. A few dairy products here and there and even once in a while some gluten free oatmeal I found at trader joes which everyone can tolerate. But, 95% of the time it's meat, veg, fruit, and a few nuts. Period.
Kitchen remodel. HUGE undertaking and a project that still is NOT completely finished. I PROMISE to post pictures, SOON! September will mark the two year point and I really hope to be finished by then. It's fully functional now though and really has just cosmetic finishing to do.
Furniture restoration. I'm in the middle of about 6 pcs right now. With limited space and winter weather, I don't have anything finished enough to showcase. As soon as the sun comes out though so will my sander and elbow grease.
Fitness front. I've gotten back into lifting quite a bit. I love it! It just makes me happy. I have done some mud run stuff (SO FREAKING AWESOME) and plan to do a lot more. A triathlon is in my future too. I've pretty much determined I'm not a "runner" - 10k is my max and it can't just be pavement. I need other "stuff" to do along the way cause I don't enjoy it, it's not for me. So in the meantime, just hand me my weights and let me be.
Photography is phasing OUT! I realized I don't like photographing things or people that I don't want to photograph. People are picky and unappreciative and no one wants to pay for the time and talent it takes to produce beautiful pcs of art. So, still doing a few weddings here and there because they actually pay really well and still doing a few random pcs and shows of MY CHOOSING but that is about it. My site should be going down soon and advertising has come to a complete halt.
That's it in a nutshell.
I will repeat over and over again:
I'll post more
I'll post more
I'll post more
Until then, I hope all of you are enjoying spring, looking forward to summer, and kicking some kind of major ass in whatever it is your heart so choses to do.
xo
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