little dollop

Welcome

Welcome to my little food blog. It's not for everybody, but could be just right for you. If you fit one of these categories, you might find this blog useful:

• Doing the Body Ecology Diet, GAPS Diet, or Paleo Diet 
• Interested in making their own cultured and fermented foods
• Avoiding grains, dairy and/or sugar
• My friends, since we all share recipes

Feel free to leave a comment -- I'd love to hear from you!

Veggie Roll

I think this is my new favorite snack and a great way to get some iodine-rich seaweed in my diet.

Ingredients

• 1 packet roasted seaweed 
• 1 avocado
• 2 medium carrots
• Salt
• Lemon juice

Directions

1. Shred the carrots and squeeze the juice of half a lemon over it.
2. Slice the avocado into thin pieces and sprinkle with salt.
3. Lay a piece of seaweed on a plate and top with carrot and avocado.
4. Roll up and enjoy!

This is a "eat it over the sink" kind of snack. I make one, eat it, make one, eat it...you know, bachlelor style. If you make them ahead of time, they get super soggy.

Also, you can find the seaweed packets at Trader Joe's for $.99 each.

Roasted Zucchini & Onions

This is an easy vegetarian/vegan dish and super tasty, too.

Ingredients

• 6 medium zucchini squash
• 3 onions
• 6 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
• 3 tbsp melted coconut oil (or olive oil)
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Sea salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Grease roasting pan with oil.
3. Quarter the zucchini lengthwise and cut the onions into slices. Place in a large bowl and drizzle with oil. Mix everything with a large spoon until evenly coated.
4. Add garlic, salt and pepper and mix again to evenly coat the veggies.
5. Pour everything out into a roasting pan or baking sheet. 
6. Bake 15-20 minutes, stirring once.

Dicing an Onion (the easy way)

I picked this up in a little cooking class years ago and thought it might be a good tip to show on the blog. I use onions in my cooking A LOT since they are so good for you and pretty tasty as well. 

 

1. Cut the top and bottom off of the onion. 
2. Place the onion on its bottom and cut in in half from stem to root. Peel the shell off of the outside.
3. Lay the center of the onion down on the cutting board.
4. Cut slices using the thickness you desire. The trick here is to place your index finger on the slice you have just cut so that it doesn't pull out when you pull your knife out for the next slice.
5. Spin the onion 90 degrees so that you're cutting perpendicular to your original slices and cut at the same thickness. Ta-dah! You have diced onion!

Just watched another video and apparently my way is "cheating", but if you want to have more evenly diced and smaller onion pieces you can follow this video. She also touches on how a sharp knife helps to reduce crying while cutting an onion.

Cultured Vegetables (Sauerkraut)

Making sauerkraut can take a bit of time (mostly in the clean-up), but it is essentially very easy and can be made in large batches which will last you a while. Of everything I have read about cultured foods, cultured veggies seems to be the most beneficial to your health, digestion and immunity. If you're new to eating homemade sauerkraut, take it slowly at first with only a few tablespoons a day and then you can increase it to about a half a cup with each meal. Eating too much early on can give you some uncomforable gas and/or diarrhea, which is merely a sign that it's killing off a lot of bad bacteria (which is good, but can be awkward if you're not expecting it).

The ingredients for sauerkraut can vary greatly, but every recipe includes cabbage. I've tried several different combinations of vegetables, but my favorite is actually one of the easiest to make so I'll include that one here.

Ingredients

• 3 heads of purple cabbage, shredded 
• 3-6 whole cabbage leaves (save these for the end)
• 6 carrots, shredded
• 1 bunch kale
• 2-6 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 2-3 tbsp of caraway seeds
• 1 packet vegetable culture starter
• 1/2 cup filtered water
• Salt

Directions

1. Dissolve one package of starter culture in 1/2 cup of warm (90 degree) water. Add some form of sugar to feed the the bacteria (honey or agave work, but don't use stevia). Let this mixture sit for about 20 minutes or longer while the bacteria wake up. You will use this mixture in step 4 below.
2. In a food processor, shred the cabbage and carrots. 
3. Combine all of the vegetables and seeds into a very large bowl. 
4. Remove several cups of the mixture and put into a blender. Add just enough filtered water to make a thick juice and blend. Gently stir in the starter culture and then pour the entire mixture over your vegetables.
5. With clean hands, work and crush the vegetables for about five minutes to get the cabbage juices flowing. 
6. Pack mixture into a glass, ceramic or stainless steel container. I use a couple 2-quart mason jars. If you can get your hand into the jar, you can pack it down with your fist. Otherwise, you can use a potato masher, wooden dowel or I use a large plastic "tamper" that came with my Vitamix blender to sort of crush and push the cabbage down into the jar. The goal is to have it pushed down so far that there isn't any air in the mixture and it should come to about two inches from the top of the jar.
7. Once your done packing it in, sprinkle a light layer of sea salt all over the top to prevent mold.
8. Roll up several cabbage leaves into a tight "log" and place them on the top of the mixture to fill the remaining two inches of space. This helps to hold the cabbage down within the liquid and keep oxygen out of the fermentation process. Screw lid on jar.
9. Let veggies sit at about 70 degrees for 5-14 days. The flavor will shift to being more and more sour over time, but also more and more potent and free of sugars. Refrigerate after fermentation. 

*Instructions based on those given in the box for the Body Ecology Veggie Starter and several other methods that I've amalgamated over time.

Dairy Kefir

I don't eat dairy otherwise, but the probiotic benefits of homemade dairy kefir are so great that I've been having a glass every morning and noticing a big change in my overall health and immunity. It's so simple to make that I can incorporate it into my diet very easily. Start off slowly when eating this for the first time and work your way into larger quantities. Just a few tablespoons a day is a good starting point and then work your way up to a glass every morning.

You can make this with milk or cream. Milk is much more commonly used for kefir, but I like to make it with cream occasionally and just keep it in my fridge to spoon over desserts or soups. It tastes kind of like creme fraiche and it's completly amazing.

It's very important that you only use organic milk for this. Here is a list of the healthiest milks for kefir, with the first one being the best and going down from there:

1. Goat milk - raw and organic
2. Goat milk - organic
3. Cow milk or cream - raw and organic
4. Cow milk or cream - organic (Strauss is good)

Ingredients

• 1 quart milk or cream
• 1 packet kefir culture starter
• Quart glass mason jar - don't use metal or plastic

Directions

1. Heat milk or cream to about 92 degrees. If you don't have a thermometer, you can warm it up so that it's not hot or cold to the touch -- just about skin temp. 
2. Pour entire packet of starter into your clean, dry mason jar. 
3. Next, pour warmed milk into the jar, screw on the lid and shake a few times until starter is thoroughly combined.
4. Put jar in a space where it can maintain 72-75 degrees for 18-24 hours while avoiding agitation. I usually put mine next to my stove or on top of my fridge. In the summer this works fine, but in the winter, you may have to get inventive to maintain that temperature (heating pad in an insulated bag, in the oven with the pilot light on and the door cracked, etc).
5. At the end of the fermentation period, refrigerate until cold. If you try to taste it before cooling it, it can taste a little funky so don't get discouraged.
6. The milk will thicken but will remain pourable. Try to drink it within 3-4 days to get the most potency from it. 
7. Kefir is delicious when used with shakes or even salad dressings. I like to add a little natural strawberry flavor or a squeeze of lemon juice and add a few drops of stevia. Omg - it's like dessert.

After initial activation, you can use the kefir produced from one foil packet to make up to six additional batches. I usally start with one quart and just make one more quart every 3-4 days, but you can get really wild with how much you want to make, depending on how many people are going to be drinking the kefir. Here are my basic calculations:

The "one quart" method: Make your first quart and within three days, use six tablespoons of it to start another quart of warmed milk. You can do this six times and then start with a new packet of kefir starter after the seventh batch.

The "multi-quart" method: Make your first quart following the instructions above. When it's done fermenting, don't drink it. You are going to use this first batch as a starter in itself to make up to six more quarts. Now, you don't need to make that much, but that's the most you can make with one quart. But get this: you can use each of those six to make six more, and it goes on from there for six rounds of batches. Whoa.

Let's say you have four kids, plus you and your husband (Allie!) and you want to make a quart for each of you -- that's six quarts -- perfect! So what you do is make the initial quart with the kefir starter packet. Don't drink that one. As soon as it's done fermenting, divide it equally between six clean one-quart mason jars. Pour a quart of warm milk into each of these six jars, shake to combine and let sit for 18-24 hours. Within the next three days, drink the kefir down to about a half inch from the bottom in each jar (or save a full jar) and use it to start another six jars. You can do this six times, effectively making 36 jars of kefir from one packet. How's that for saving a little cash?

Tips

• Refrigerate or freese starter packets until use.
• You can use many different kinds of milk: goat, cow, soy, rice or almond milk.
• Kefir that is too sour or has curds and whey was fermented at too high a temperature.
• Goat milk will result in a much more liquid kefir than cows milk, which is good to know, otherwise you might think you did something wrong!

*Instructions based upon those included in the box for the Body Ecology Kefir Culture Starter.