food preparation.

Today was a pretty productive day, food-wise. I am still excited about the fact that I can now make as much yogurt as I want, simply, overnight in my crock pot! In fact yesterday I made a whole new batch, and then I drained what was left of my previous batch, turning it into "yocheese". What excites me most about this is that while the cheese was delicious--sort of a mix between cream cheese and sour cream, and quite scrumptious spread on my whole wheat sourdough toast this morning--I now have whey! This excites me because I had just read about how to prepare lacto-fermented vegetables in my new book, The Maker's Diet. So now, I have on my counter a beautiful jar of shredded carrot and fresh ginger, and in two or three days I will be able to enjoy my ginger spiced carrots, probably with some fish. Next I'm going to try sauerkraut!


I have also read that adding a few tablespoons of whey to soaking grains and beans is a good way to help the enzymes break down the starches, making them more digestible, which is especially good for me. So now I have black beans soaking for dinner tomorrow. And speaking of soaking grains, I ALSO have a pan of oatmeal soaking for a new recipe for baked oatmeal that I'm trying tomorrow morning (by the way, the peanut butter smoothie on that page is delicious! I made it using homemade yogurt, instead of milk). I'm using my homemade yogurt in the oatmeal recipe, and I'm going to add in some of my home-canned applesauce before I bake it. YUM!