Posted in Efficiency, GAPS, Recipe, tagged baking, ferment, GAPS diet, mayonnaise, snacks on April 29, 2012| 2 Comments »
Boring Post Alert!! Carry on.
Ferments to maintain:
Ferments to start:
Quick ferments:
To soak and/or sprout:
To bake:
Posted in GAPS, Recipe, tagged breakfast, comfort food, dairy-free, GAPS diet, homemade, nuts, review, snacks, travel on April 26, 2012| 5 Comments »
I planned to make a fruit crisp for breakfast yesterday and didn’t get to it, mainly because I didn’t allow soaking time for the granola I intended to use as a topping. As it turned out, I didn’t even start the nuts soaking until around lunchtime yesterday and the granola was barely done by the time I served it this morning. But it was good on the baked peaches and I’ll definitely make it again.
I used 2 cups of previously soaked and dehydrated almonds, so the granola mixture wasn’t completely soggy before it went into the dehydrator. Other than omitting the vanilla bean scrapings (because I had none, and I forgot to add vanilla extract to compensate) and adding 1/2 cup soaked sunflower seeds, I followed the recipe as written. I did not dehydrate the soaked nuts before I mixed the ingredients together, although reading through the comments on the blog I see that Coco intended for the nuts to be dry before mixing. Oops. I soaked the nuts for 4 hours and dehydrated the whole mixture for about 18 hours (and I think it could have gone a couple more), so the whole process took about 24 hours start to finish. I got about 4 pints of finished granola from this recipe, and we used one pint to top our baked peaches this morning.
What I liked most: the granola held together in chunks like real granola. Amazing.
Verdict: A keeper! I’ll definitely make this granola again, although to be honest I could use a little more sweetness. Some dried fruit or a little extra honey would do the trick. Also, I might oil my dehydrator sheets before I do the next batch – this batch stuck like the dickens and was pretty tough to get off in nice chunks. Oh – and we aren’t really sunflower seed fans, so next time I’d leave them out and probably sub pistachios! Yumm!
Posted in GAPS, Health, Recipe, tagged alternative, homemade on April 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »
I pinned this recipe for an herbal healing clay several weeks ago, but I lacked a couple of ingredients. Since my Mountain Rose Herbs order came earlier in the week, I thought I’d mix up the powder to use when we get boo-boos. I will be trying the tea tree oil and grapefruit seed extract option when I overdo on chocolate (not that I ever overdo on chocolate or that I ever get pimples when I do eat chocolate, because I’m much too disciplined to ever let either of those happen). In fact, not that I ate too many chocolate-covered marshmallows in the past week (*cough*), but I will have the opportunity to try this clay out when I wash my face tonight!
A couple of things: if you’ve never used goldenseal extract, you should know that it has an unpleasant smell. I have used goldenseal in an eyewash for pinkeye, and the first time I used it I was…surprised. So word to the wise: be prepared. Now having said that, you can totally get over the smell. Just don’t expect it to calm the injured party like a drop of lavender oil would. Also, comfrey root should be used with caution. Do not store this where little ones can get their hands (or more specifically, their mouths) on it. Comfrey root is an excellent healer but it should only be used externally.
Posted in GAPS, Recipe, tagged comfort food, dairy-free, dessert, GAPS diet, homemade, nuts, review, special occasion on April 25, 2012| 2 Comments »
Last weekend was craZy!! Yep, crazy with a capital Z. And so far, this week is following suit. However, after dinner Monday night (and before we rushed off to my son’s golf class) both kids decided that they needed dessert. The desserts they were coming up with were pretty time-consuming, and I was having a hard time thinking of something special enough to treat my kids for the hard work they did over the weekend while still keeping my hour start-to-finish time frame. Right before we ran out the door, I remembered that I had wanted to try Mommypotamus’ Homemade Marshmallow recipe. I mentioned it to the kids, and they Freaked.Out. Yep. We had a winner.
We dropped off my son and rushed back home to get started. Unfortunately, I was unable to watch the video that went with the recipe. I was a little bummed about that. But we managed to whip up the marshmallows pretty quickly and get them into the pan. I did not read the comments before we started, but I would highly recommend doing that if you plan to make these marshmallows. I knew from a previous attempt at a honey-based candy that we would need to coat the marshmallows with something to prevent moisture from making the end product a mushy mess. I had just gotten my cocoa butter in from Mountain Rose Herbs, but I didn’t want to fool around with it yet…so I pulled out my Trader Joe’s chocolate bar (non-GAPS) and melted some of that with some coconut oil for a coating. Then we sprinkled the marshmallows with nuts. Then we ran to pick up my son while the chocolate hardened – fitting into our hour time-slot just right!
I don’t have time for a fully detailed post about this – but I plan to make these again with a GAPS-legal coating and I can do a step-by-step later. For now, here’s a pic of a few of our finished marshmallows to hold you:
They were every bit as good as you could possibly imagine.
Verdict: Is twice in one week too much? Because we are definitely doing it. YUMMMMMM.
Posted in GAPS, Recipe, tagged baking, dessert, GAPS diet, main dish, special occasion on April 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »
I don’t have any chicken breasts on hand now, but if I snag some at a good price in the future I’d like to modify this recipe for Sundried Tomato-stuffed Chicken and maybe try freezing extras to reheat later.
These macaroons look delicious, but they would need to be modified slightly to fit our GAPS regimen.
I had to look up “trimoline” – but I think I can substitute honey and come out close on this recipe for Passion Fruit Ganache. Now where am I going to find passion fruit puree??
Lettuce wraps. Now that we have an abundance of lettuce.
These lemon cupcakes look yummy, too! The blueberry frosting on these cupcakes is intriguing.
Posted in GAPS, Recipe, tagged GAPS diet, review, snacks, vegetables on April 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Because they are yucky, that’s why.
Okay, maybe I’m being a little harsh. I tried this recipe sans olive oil and dehydrated the chips until they were crunchy. Every review of kale chips that I have seen talks about how people can’t get enough of them – that they practically inhale them and the Kale Chip Maker cannot keep up with demand; so quite frankly, I was expecting nothing short of awesomeness. I made two bunches of kale since I knew they would be fabulous.
They tasted like kale.
With salt and lemon, of course. But still. I mean, I like kale…but not by itself. I like it in stuff like potato soup or chopped up and sauteed with other veggies.
Kale chips are not going on my “make again” list. I’ll use them on the meatza that I plan to use later in the week and probably try to get the kids to eat them as snacks, but that’s it for me.
Posted in GAPS, GAPS intro, Recipe, tagged beverages, ferment, GAPS diet, GAPS intro, homemade, vegetables on April 14, 2012| 3 Comments »
I’ve been debating over whether to try the Pickl-It fermenting system. I have heard great things about it and I keep wondering if it will improve my ferment success rate (which is probably around 90% right now, but ANY loss hits hard when you’re on a budget and you spend the time preparing the ferment). I had considered making my own lids with airlocks to see if that was a more affordable solution (sorry, I have a hard time spending $20 or $30 per jar when I’d likely need about 10!!).
Anyway, I have a lot more thoughts on the Pickl-It but I don’t suppose anyone is terribly interested in them. I’ll skip ahead to the part where I saw some glass jars for a third of the cost of Pickl-It jars at my local co-operative today and decided to try them as an interim step. I guess they are made in Italy by Bormioli Rocco, and the brand is Frigoverre. The label said that the plastic lids were airtight and I bit – hook, line, and sinker. I bought a 1L pitcher for about $6 and a 2L pitcher for about $10. Then I came home, ran them through the dishwasher, and immediately made sauerkraut and lacto-fermented lemonade.
I didn’t have enough cabbage on hand to fill the 2L jar – as you can see in the picture, the jar is only about half full. I know this kind of negates the “air-tight” qualities of the jar so I’ll have to try again when I’ve got more cabbage. I used about 2 1/4 lbs cabbage, so I could probably fit a full 5 lbs into this jar in the future.
I made 1/4 recipe of the lemonade to put in the 1L jar (which is a bit more than a quart) and 1/2 recipe to put in a half-gallon jar as a control. I shook the lemonade upside-down to see if there would be any leaks in the pitcher, and it held up well! So I’m excited. :) We’ll see if the results in that pitcher are any better than in the 1/2 gallon jar.
I am really loving the handles on these jars. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to grip a jar that is moist from condensation or is just plain too big for my hands and nearly dropped it! It’s nice to have something to grab on to that won’t slip.
The fact that the lids are plastic doesn’t really bother me as I don’t expect the food to come into contact with the plastic for more than a second or two as I am rearranging jars in the fridge, etc. The lid has a rubber gasket and a stopper that you turn clockwise and counterclockwise to seal or open the jar.
I’m thinking of picking up another one or two tomorrow while the Owner’s Appreciation sale is still going!
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