Urban Cave Girl

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.

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

After chopping up the onion I threw the carrots in the mini food prep (which has since broken and I'm beside myself) and chopped them up really good.  I do this often if we have leftover carrots around.  I'll use them in just about anything.


Put the hamburger, sausage and onion in the pot and got things cooking.


 Then opened the fridge to get out my jar of garlic and realized....oh, leftover taco meat from our taco salads we had a few days earlier. Hating to waste I thought what the hell and threw that in the pot too.  I tell ya, when I cook, it all goes in the pot! I added in some crushed garlic at this point too.


Then I added in the can goods - tomatoes, tomato sauce, and olives.  Added in some generous dashes (maybe 2 tbsp of each) of oregano and basil and then let that all come together to a mild boil then turned it way down to simmer while I got busy on the "noodles"


I greased up a square baking dish and laid down a very thin layer of the sauce.  Then I layered on zucchini.  This is where I will tell you to layer it on thick.  Do like 2-3 layers of the zucchinis cause I only did one and although it was delish, I would have liked more "noodles".


 I covered it in foil and baked it in the oven for about 40 minutes.  My husband loved it and I love it!  The leftovers were especially fabulous!  This is on our list of things to make again in the near future.



Enjoy!!

Made this ice cream last week out of sheer desperation for ice cream.  It was warm and everyone on FB was making ice cream with their ice cream makers and I don't have one *pout*

It's hot!  I won't complain though cause I was bitching and moaning last weekend about how cold it was.  I even spent one afternoon scouring the rentals in San Diego on Craigslist trying to convince the husband we needed to head farther south.  Aside from the Bay Area, which I ADORE, there are only two other places I would ever even remotely consider moving - one being San Diego and the other, Portland.

But....summer graced us with her beauty, I'm content, and we will stay put for the time being.

My point of popping on here was not to talk weather but rather to share an amazing recipe I threw together the other night that consisted once again of everything random and leftover in the fridge.  Those meals always turn out the best and they are hard to duplicate.  Go figure.

Stuffed Bell Peppers and Stuff Portobello Mushrooms - YUMMMMMM!

1 lb of hamburger and 1lb of spicy sausage links (I removed the casing) from Trader Joes
1.5 zucchinis
1 yellow onion
3 peppers (red, orange, yellow)
2 large portobello mushrooms
Salt, pepper, some dried basil and garlic

Here is a picture of all the "ingredients" once I pulled everything out of the fridge.

I browned up the hamburger and the sausage with the chopped up yellow onion.   Then diced up the zucchini and the red bell pepper and threw them in too along with some salt, pepper, dried basil, crushed garlic, and the cut up stems from the mushrooms.


As the pot mixture was simmering I cleaned out the other two bell peppers and the mushrooms and placed them in a greased glass baking dish.


Then I took the mixture that was in the pot and put it all into my food processor and mixed it up till all the really large chunks were gone.


Then it was time to stuff the peppers and mushrooms.  There was a lot of mixture in comparison to the compartments I had to stuff so the over flow was abundant.  You could have easily filled 2 to 3 more peppers or mushrooms.


I then baked them in an oven at 375 for about.....30 minutes or so.  When they look nice and browned on top they are done.


Served them up with sliced up avocado.

SOOOOO Delish!!

I've bought a total of 5 Larabars in my entire lifetime.  It wasn't until recently, in like the last 3 weeks or so that we decided to give them a try.  Mainly it was an on the go snack alternative that was good and easy.
The only downside was the price tag.  However not extremely spendy...still a 1.29 more than I wanted to spend.  I know, call me cheap.  But I don't work remember.

So after reading the ingredients on the back, like 5 times, cause there was no way that's ALL that is in those things, I thought "Shit, I can make this"  which is something I say to myself all too often.

After a pitstop at Trader Joe's for some dates we were on our way.  Everything else I was going to use I already had on hand and chances are you do too.

I threw the baby up on the counter and we went to work.  She ate berries while I tossed things into the food processor.

These bars didn't really have one specific ingredient and therefore a name was eluding me.
I just went with:

Larabar Try #1 (it was appropriate)

Also, I didn't measure anything.  I've said several times, I'm not a measuring kind of cook.  And, I'm sorry for that if you're trying to follow the recipes I post to a "t".  It's an inherited trait cause my mom is the same way.  I'm a pretty good eye baller though so even though measurements aren't exact...I guess-ti-mate them to be damn close.

1.5 cup of dates.  Let me start here by saying this was my first real time using dates.  I didn't know they had seeds.  It wasn't until after putting them in my food processor and hearing a terrible noise did it dawn on me.  Going back through the mutilated dates and pulling out seeds by hand was not only incredibly MESSY it was really time consuming.  So, note to self, take out the seeds FIRST!

1/4 cup of slivered almonds
1/2 cup of golden raisins
handful of dried cranberries
1/4 cup of sunflower seeds (out of the shells.  I know, DUH!  but hey, I didn't seed my dates sooooo just covering bases here)

Everything goes in the food processor and eventually comes out looking something like this:



Basically a big glob of goo that smelled really good.
I scooped it all into a glass baking dish (which I actually greased a little with some coconut oil) and then patted it all out flat.


I covered it and stuck it into the fridge overnight.  The next morning took it out and cut it into small bars and then wrapped each one in some parchment paper.  I put them all into a plastic ziplock and back into the fridge they went, ready to be grabbed for a quick snack.


Then entire family LOVED THESE!!!
They were really good and so easy to make.  I think you could use just about anything to make them.  Next up I'm trying a cherry concoction.

Enjoy!!

It went something like this.....

Then this..........

Bright pink permanent marker all over her face and legs and arms.  Wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.  I got a picture before I did either.