Sourdough Brownies

Unbelievably simple and so delicious.  Finally a chocolate treat that is basically healthy!  Remember: It is the quality of ingredients you use more than anything else.  We will be making these a LOT from now on!  

Original recipe is from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Fermenting Foodsbut like most baking recipes, I didnt follow it exactly.  Her book includes all of the information you need to start your own sourdough starter as well but getting a bit from a friend is the easiest way!

Here is what I did:  

Sourdough Brownies

Makes one 8 or 9" pan

Ingredients:

4    eggs

3/4 cup organic baking cocoa powder

1    cup (scant) organic raw sugar (any unrefined)

1    stick butter

1    teas vanilla extract

1/2 cup whole wheat sourdough starter (fed within last 12 hours)

Directions:

• Take the stick of butter and butter the pan with it. 

• Melt lightly melt remaining stick of butter.

• Put all ingredients (eggs, cocoa, sugar, melted butter, vanilla, and extract) into medium mixing bowl and mix well -wisking until smooth and well combined.  

• Pour batter into buttered pan.

• Bake 25-30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.  

• Remove from oven and let rest for 10-15 minutes.  It will pull away from the sides a bit.  

Serve plain or with fresh whipped cream or ice cream.  Store leftovers in the fridge or freezer.  

My very first attempt at anything soughdough... English Muffins! Will go great

My very first attempt at anything soughdough... English Muffins!

Will go great with our potato-egg casserole and sourdough pancakes with pastured bacon for dinner!

Freezing Lemon Juice

We were given a HUGE bag of lemons a few months ago that we had planned to freeze the juice from.  Well, the weeks -and now months- went by before I got a chance to even pull them out of the bag unless I needed to use one!  Finally, I set the children to work peeling a bunch of them so that we could juice them and freeze it.  They peeled a huge bowl of them and that bowl then sat in the fridge for about a week before I Dale finally juiced them for me one night.  In other words... they lasted forever and still had tons of juice even after sitting in the fridge all unpeeled!  (Thankful for a Husband who continually helps me in these ways too.)

Initially I was going to use ice cube traysbut can you believe I dont have a single one!  I went to buy some but then as I thought about it more, I decided I wanted to freeze the juice in 1-lemon servings.  Ice cube trays are an ounce or less per square and an average lemon (or recipe calling for the 'juice of 1 lemon') is 2 ounces.  Hmm. What to do...

I finally decided to juice them and freeze the juice in jelly jars-which I have a lot of- and then pop the juice out of the jars, put them in baggies and back into the freezer.  It worked great!!

The Great American Fruit Tree Campaign will have full details on how I froze my juice soon so here are just a couple of pictures to hold you over and give you an idea how you could do it too.

(We peeled the lemons; sliced in half cross-ways -revealing the seeds; picked out some of the seeds but not all; and then juiced in our juicer.This gave us lots more juice than hand squeezing but even doing it by hand would be worth the effort!)

Bowl of lemons. The smaller ones are the ones given to us by friends and that we just juiced. The large ones are Meyer Lemons -those are up next!

2 oz/ 1 lemon 'cubes'

Baggie of frozen lemon juice cubes!

Freezing Squash

Kroger had a great price on Organic Butternut Squash ($2.99 each and they were huge) so I grabbed a bunch -eating some now but also wanting to preserve some for later.  I decided to freeze three of them and thought I would share how I did it so you can see how simple it is.  Anytime you have extra veggies that you wont be able to use before they spoil (or a great deal like this), simply freeze or otherwise preserve the extras and you will save money as well as adding to your 'emergency' food supplies.

The 3 I chose to freeze

First peel off the outer skin.  You may need to go over the squash twice in order to get all of the skin off.  See the color difference here?  You want the lighter color all removed so all you have is the deep yellow flesh left.  

(No idea why these two pictures are backwards!?)  

Cut in half (pic below) and then cut off the stem end (above).

Cut the top section in half, slice into crescents, and then dice into pieces.  

Slice the bottom in half revealing the seed section.  

Using a large spoon, scoop out the seeds and pulp.

I saved the seeds to eat later.  (Rinse and soak overnight in salty water then dehydrate or bake until crisp -yummy!)

 Slice off the bottom end

Cut the blossom/hard portion off and save the side pieces.  (Its all about saving every bit you can!)

Again,slice into strips and then dice into pieces.   

The container of diced squash pieces.  

I wanted mine in 4c portions as that will be about 1 meal for my family.  

You can freeze them in ziploc bags if you only want to freeze them for a few months. (Up to 6.)

Or you can vacuum seal them and they will remain fresh for years in the freezer.  (I love our FoodSaver-Jarden GameSaver Silver but even the more basic FoodSaver - GameSaver would be great!)

(Note I recommend labeling your bags BEFORE you put the squash in them -sure is hard to write on those chunks of squash in those bags!)  

If you prefer, you can also cook the squash chunks, mash them and then add them to ziploc bags for freezing.  I may go back to Kroger and get a few more if they still have the sale and do that.  We love butternut squash mashed and cooked with lots of yummy butter and sea salt!

Venison -frozen

Venison is the only meat I can think of that is actually easier to prepare when still frozen. We can a lot (most) of our venison but do freeze all of the tenderloins and larger steaks.

Since I didnt grow up eating venison and didnt really get many chances to try it, I was convinced I hated it. Dales dad cooked it the first time I actually remember eating it and I was shocked that not only did it not taste terrible, I loved it! A while later I tried cooking some for our dinner and it was awful. Needless to say, it DOES matter how it is cooked and it took me a few times watching Dale before I figured it out well enough to make myself. (Though it was nice when I didnt know since that meant he cooked!) Venison is now one of our staples and every one of the children love it.

In a large (10") skillet -cast iron is best- melt 1 stick of butter. Add 1 whole onion diced or sliced (your preference) and garlic (fresh or minced and as much as you like- I do 2 or 3 cloves fresh). Cover and cook while you prepare the meat.

Take frozen venison steaks and slice them in thin medallions. It actually cuts easier while frozen and you also save the juice that way since it is frozen right into the meat. Sometimes I take them out an hour or so before cooking so they are easier to take out of the package. Other times I use hot water to loosen them.

Add the venison to the skillet, stir to mix together, cover, and simmer for an hour.

Stir occasionally but not necessary.

After abt 30 mins, test for tenderness. If still a bit tough, cook longer. If tender,leave uncovered and simmer, stiring often, until juices have mostly absorbed. Once the juices are reduced, it is ready!

Love served with a hot baked potao and cheddar cheesy broccoli.


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Look what is set back up!

I have lots I want to share soon in the food preservation area. Freezing, dehydrating, and hopefully some canning. In looking through preparedness and survival packages, it will be a lot cheaper to buy own own organic produce and preserve it ourselves than to buy the non-organic already prepared stuff!

Lots (hopefully) coming soon!

Also, please visit www.GAFTCampaign.com and bookmark her site. Will be doing some guest posting but there is also tons of great stuff there.

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Kimchi Recipe (AKA Korean Sauerkraut)

This is the recipe I use to make my Kimchi.  As with everything I do, there were slight variations and alterations -left out the radish and used less salt for example.  Mine did fine in a tightly sealed mason jar -no airlock- though when I opened it on day 3, there was definitely good pressure.  (Oxygen in ferments can reduce the amount of probiotic benefit so try not to open them.)

Recipe is from my constant go-to book (and what I keep falling back to whenever I start looking at other nutritional diets and such):

Korean Sauerkraut/Kimchi

Makes 2 quarts

1    head cabbage (Napa), cored and shredded

1    bunch green onions, chopped

1    cup carrots, grated

1/2 cup daikon radish, grated (optional)

1    tablespoon ginger -freshly grated

3    cloves garlic -peeled and minced

1/2  teaspoon dried chili flakes

1    tablespoon sea salt

4    tablespoons whey (if not available, use extra 1 TBSP sea salt)

Place vegetables, ginger, garlic, red chili flakes, sea salt and whey in a large bowl and pound with a wooden pounder or meat hammer to release juices.  Place in a quart-sized, wide-mouth mason jar and press down firmly with a pounder or meat hammer until juices come to the top of the cabbage.  The top of the vegetables should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jar.  Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days before transferring to cold storage.

My notes:

I shredded my carrots and it worked fine but I think finer pieces would have tasted better.  

I do use whey in mine so can not say how it would taste with the extra salt instead.  

Make sure your bowl has as flat of a bottom as possible and if it is plastic, be careful as you pound the mix.  I cracked two of my plastic bowls so far from the meat hammer hitting the sides -oi!  

After pressing it into the jars as much as I can with the hammer, I then use my hand to press it again and level out the top.  Make sure your hands are very clean first!

The plastic mason jar lids work for this but I think I recommend using the two piece tops -with a ring- so that should too much pressure form, it will press up the top rather than blowing the glass jar.  (A 

Fido Jarwould be awesome for this and will be what I use next time.)  
You can use smaller amounts and do more jars if you need to -4 pints for example.  Follow all the same instructions.  

Quick Note: We stopped GAPS Intro. Will explain details as I have time but in

Quick Note: We stopped GAPS Intro.


Will explain details as I have time but in a sentence (or 2)... The more I learn, the more I realize I dont know. (and) Every person and family is unique.

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Why are we doing GAPS?

Our family is very healthy in general.  When someone is sick, they typically recover very quickly and rarely does anything come up that causes us to worry during an illness.  We eat very clean -about 50-60% of our diet is raw or lightly cooked; we eat about 75% organic foods (and those that are not organic are either locally grown or typically a 'clean' food); we raise our own chickens for eggs and meat; the list of 'healthy' things we do both in diet and lifestyle goes on and on.  So why in the world would we even consider an extreme healing diet like GAPS?

The first reason is that every single person can benefit from this healing program.  Every day we are subjected to toxins -just about everywhere.  Try as hard as you want, there is no way to completely avoid them.  This is the reason we are including C1 and (as much as possible) C2 on the diet.

The second -and biggest- reason is that several of us have 'issues' that we are hoping to heal and eliminate during this month (or more) on GAPS.  My husband deals with candida, allergies, anxiety, joint issues, and a plethora of gut/intestinal issues; I struggle with candida, allergies (skin and environmental), joint issues, and sensitivities; A1 also struggles with candida and skin issues as well as ADD-type concentration struggles; A2 is my vaccine-injured child who struggles with many gut issues -including IBS, gluten sensitivities, and chronic (severe) constipation. She also has several Autistic spectrum markers; some ADD-type issues; Restless leg; and a few other 'minor' issues.

Though I know GAPS is not a magic-bullet that will heal all our issues forever, I do know that science has proven over and over that it is beneficial and does bring healing.  Even if a portion of our issues are healed and we spend a month detoxing, it will be worth it for us on the whole.

We are going to be learning a lot along the way and since I will forget what I dont record, anyone who follows along with me might learn a thing or two as well!


I do highly recommend getting a copy of Gut and Psychology Syndrome: Natural Treatment for Autism, Dyspraxia, A.D.D., Dyslexia, A.D.H.D., Depression, Schizophrenia . Watch the price as it fluctuates a lot.  (Currently $28 plus shipping and I have seen it as high as $40 plus shipping!)  It is definitely a book you will want to own rather than just borrowing as it contains recipes and step-by-step guides to help you along the way.

We are also using this eBook: What Can I Eat Now?  It contains step-by-step and Day-by-Day guides for the Intro portion that we are doing.  Literally contains a menu with recipes for every day of the typical 30-day plan and how to know when you are ready for the next Stage.  You could probably get away with just this guide if you cant afford the GAPS book right now.

Probiotics and Sick Tummy's

If I dont quickly write about this now I will forget to do so but time is limited right now...

I woke this morning to C2 vomiting in my face.  Yeah, my face.  Thankfully I moved mostly out of the way so she only caught the side as I was in motion but still... ugh.

While she is sitting on my bed and I am trying to figure out how to go about getting up and cleaning us both up without making more of a mess, I can hear C1 in the bathroom moaning.  Whining and whimpering for Daddy.

This cant be good.

That was at 7am and for the next 3 hours there was almost constant vomiting -sometimes both of them together with me holding a bucket in each hand while they retched into them.  By 10am, the vomiting was over and they were begging for food.  Fevers were low but not gone and their faces were fairly ashen as evidence they had been really and truly sick.

By 11:00 they were both begging for food.  By lunchtime they both ate a normal lunch and I sent them to bed -neither wanting to lay down but both falling asleep fairly quickly.

What I did...
When they first started throwing up, I dont do anything at first.  The infection (bacterial or viral) needs to leave their system and one of the natural ways to expel it is via vomiting.  Not fun but necessary and a good thing.  I also dont treat fevers unless they go above 103 for more than 30 minutes for the same reason but that doesnt apply this time.

When their vomiting didnt produce much actual vomit, I begin giving them teaspoonfuls of probiotics.  Initially -since they are vomiting even water- I give them a single teaspoon after each bout of vomiting.  I then set a timer for 15 minutes.  If they havent vomited again, I give them another teaspoon.  If they vomit shortly after the next one, I start over immediately and give a new teaspoon as soon as they finish vomiting.  When they can go more than 20 minutes without vomiting (so they are mostly keeping the probiotic down), I increase the probiotics to 2 teaspoons (or 1 tablespoon depending on the child) and continue giving them more every 15 minutes.  When they have gone 30 minutes without vomiting, it is usually a sign that the worst is over.  At this point, I give them a small (4oz) cup of 1/2 purified water and 1/2 pure juice -fresh squeezed is best- and let them drink HALF of it along with a dose of probiotic.  Set the timer for 30 minutes and repeat with the last half of the cup of water/juice.  Each illness is different but usually after this point you can introduce light and easily digestible foods.  (This time we started with very soft cooked egg yolks -NO whites.)  I like to continue with the probiotic every hour but I confess that I rarely remember.  Thankfully they like it enough they usually ask for it but not always.

I have done this 'routine' three different times now and each time the vomiting stops completely within hours. If there was a lingering fever, I add 250-500mg of vitamin c when I start with the juice.

If you know me at all, you know I am a HUGE proponent of probiotics.  We all drink kefir smoothies every single day for lunch in addition to having sips of kombucha and other fermented foods and drinks.  I know that our overall gut health and regular use of them does help these times of illness as well but this will still work for everyone.

Probiotics:
There are many different kinds of probiotic foods.  You can even buy probiotic pills such as NOW Foods Probiotic-10, 50 Billion, 50 Vcaps (the key is the higher the different strains, the better).  This one is a decent chewable for children: (NO corn syrup or artificial stuff) Rainbow Light Probiolicious Gummies, Ages 4 and Above, Cranberry Flavor, 50-Count The most common probiotic that everyone thinks of is yogurt -which typically has about 1-3 different strains.  Better than nothing but not the best option.
Home made milk kefir has around 50 different strains of probiotics and each teaspoonful has billions of them!
Kombucha has fewer different strains but is equally as concentrated.
Water kefir has around 20 strains and is probably easiest to get little ones not used to them to take.
Milk kefir and Kombucha can both be purchased at stores -with milk kefir being available at most grocery stores that has about 7-10 strains.

Some info on probiotic foods here:  http://www.naturalnews.com/036785_superfoods_probiotics_fermented_foods.html

Fermented foods vs Probiotic pill:  http://www.picklemetoo.com/2012/10/26/fermentation-friday-probiotic-pills-vs-fermented-food/

A collection of probiotic-related links (always adding to them): http://delicious.com/kstrader/probiotic

I am sure most will already guess that milk (and water) kefir are our favorite forms of probiotics.  True but not where it ends.  We also always have kombucha on hand as well as various fermented veggies at different times.  I would run onto a huge rabbit trail here so I will get back to these stomach bugs...

My favorite probiotic for these sick stomachs is kombucha.  Ours is quite strongly brewed since I almost always forget to 'finish' it at the 2 week mark but thats ok -stronger is better!  If I didnt have kombucha on hand, I would likely have made one kefir smoothie (a touch of honey and vanilla) and used that instead.  So far I havent had to but I know it would work.  Kombucha requires no additional 'prep' like kefir, can be kept in the fridge for months, and can be flavored.  I love this site for recipes: http://www.picklemetoo.com/kombucha/

I can never say enough or encourage people enough to start getting probiotics every day.  If making kefir and/or kombucha is overwhelming (kombucha is the least 'hands-on' of the two), then get the pills or buy them from the store.  Your gut and overall health with thank you -I promise you!

GAPS countdown

My GAPS book arrived today!! Probably the best $30 investment I have made in a long time -just flipping through it quickly I can already see many things I was wondering about and I am especially pleased to see many recipes and meal ideas. Cant wait to sit down tonight and actually read the important chapters right away. You can order your own copy here (you wont regret it!):

   

 and there's a DVD! (Havent watched it yet but you have to know its now on my list to get!)

   

 We are now down to days before we start our GAPS 30-day intro diet for our whole family. I have learned a lot in the last month of 'bad' eating and cant wait to share some insight as well. (Lets just say I am guessing that just cutting our processed sugar and white flours will make a HUGE difference in your health -and Ill share my own experience as proof!)

 If you are interested in doing a 30-day GAPS diet, I highly recommend this eBook: GAPS Intro eBook -What Can I Eat Now?? Though I am pretty savvy in the kitchen and have learned a lot in regards to traditional eating in the last year, this book is a huge help to me. When I first go through new things, I like to know I am on the right track and this eBook lays out specifics that I need. Literally- Day 1, you eat this; Day 2, you eat this; etc. If you are even curious about GAPS Intro, go to the page and request the sample and you will get a very good idea of what is included in the book and what the diet will look like in general. (I was pleasantly surprised to see it isnt as limiting as I anticipated it would be! Very doable.)

 Not exactly sure when we will be starting but planning on next week. If anyone is interested in doing it with us, let me know -maybe I can create a FB group for us to encourage each other in.

Oh, and a cool side benefit of the GAPS intro -it is by default a sugar-free month! Trust me, you need to go sugar free for a month! :-)

To our health!