Winding Down

At what point does one decide the summer crop is over? I get a little crop like this every day now. You can see in the Chinese longbeans a certain madness now. Somersaulting, pinching and twisting, they are in a frenetic scramble as they sense the "last call" of the season.  I'm sort of loving the show, but it may be time to pull it all out, dry the pods that remain for a new crop in the spring, clean up the garden and condition the soil for the winter.

Indoors, here's a recent project (I LOVE the warm, soothing light of the very early morning):

Sprouts! My friend, Liat, loaned me this awesome hemp sprouting bag which works so, so much better for me than the tall jar with the rubber gasketed/screened lid. I am ordering one of these bags right away! I showed my daughter my sprouts and she asked, "But what do you eat them with?"

"My fingers!" I answered, demonstrating.

Another bonus is that Liat is the Mom of my daughter's best friend, so the sprouting bonanza provides fodder for hours of eye-rolling, teenage fun at our expense! It is such a joy to make those kids laugh.

Here's another way I eat my sprouts --

This was my breakfast this morning: sprouts (Ezekiel Bread), sprouts and hummus! Delish!

Why sprouts? Bioavailability! Simply put -- the sprouts are alive, with 100% of their nutrition intact, and have converted the starches/gluten of the seed/bean to the phytonutrients we all need for regeneration and fuel for our cells. I'm a newbie in this learning process, so I will share more when I know more.  I'm going to go throw a handful into the juicer now with some kale and maybe a pear. What do you do with your sprouts?

P.S. upon re-reading, I'm happily noticing the sprouts echo the acrobatics of the longbeans, all indeed "winding"!

Oh, The Irony! Good Luck Peas and Rice for a Snowy Day

Here it is halfway through January, and I am finally getting around to serving Hoppin' John. I'm right on schedule for this year actually, since I only took my Christmas decor down a couple of days ago.

For you non-southerners, Hoppin' John is a traditional southern dish originating in the Low Country and the Gullah Islands (South Carolina, Georgia) comprised mainly of black-eyed peas and rice. It is usually prepared with a slab of bacon or a hamhock. Some Hoppin' John afficionados cook the peas with the rice and some cook them separately. The dish is purported to bestow good luck for the year to someone who eats it after the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve. There are many legends surrounding this tradition. It was said the southern slaves had smuggled the black eyed peas from Africa and used them in their magical feasts. The plantation owners jazzed the peas up with the pork products and some even hid a shiny dime in the dish. The person at the table who found the dime would have extra good luck in the coming year. There are many theories as to where the dish got it's name. My favorite is that there was an old man with a crutch called "Hoppin' John" who peddled mugs of the magical dish on the streets of Charleston.

I was raised mostly in rural Virginia, which is not as southern as where I am now, but it was southern enough for us to eat black eyed peas for good luck on New Year's Day.  My mom never used any piggies in her peas, she just served them straight out of the can with a little garlic salt, I think. I loved 'em!

So yesterday, on January 11, I endeavored to bestow good luck for the year upon those I hold dear.  I made up a recipe based on what I had on hand. Inspiration had struck too late for me to soak dried peas, so I pulled a can out of the cupboard. You are probably wondering what's so ironic about this lucky-pea installment of A Midlife Vegan. Well, I'll tell you . . .

Once almost all the ingredients were happily bubbling away in my crock pot, I raised the pepper grinder to add one more generous grind of my favorite multicolored fresh pepper. Then the grinder broke in my hands. About 3/4 cup of unground peppercorns were suddenly in the stew and bouncing mischievously all over my countertops and floor. The dogs went bananas, barking and chasing the naughty little spices. My husband went bananas trying to keep the beasts from wolfing down what would surely later result in piles of vomit. I went bananas just in my own little head, as I stared, wide-eyed at the pile of pepper in my good-luck peas. 

"This has got to mean something!" I moaned, ridiculously.

"I mean -- why does this happen?"

My husband, uncharacteristically cool-headed as he went to get the broom and dustpan (I guess he could sense I was hot-headed enough for the both of us) said, "Things don't always have to happen for a reason,"

I disagree, but I kept that to myself since he was being so helpful. 

I scooped as much as I could off the top of the half-finished stew, then reassessed. "I guess I don't need to add that scoop of salsa I was considering," I said to myself.  

As I stirred and inspected, I realized I was at a decision point. Do I throw it away, or go through the stew pea by pea, grain of rice by grain of rice? I opted for the latter. I wasn't giving in to whatever the universe was dishing out, or rather, I just didn't want to waste it, and it would be too much of a mess to throw away. We are all snowed in, and who knows when the garbage man will make it out here.

In any case, I turned off the crock pot and got a large bowl and a plate. I spread out scoopful after scoopful onto the plate, going over the contents with clean fingers to extract every last peppercorn that I could find. This took an hour. Check it out:

Those are the soggy peppercorns I extracted and that is the broken peppermill -- I don't know if you can see the vertical crack in the collar -- the whole top fell off.

The good news -- the resulting peas were expertly seasoned after the peppercorns had steeped for an hour in the hot broth. But you don't have to do it the hard way. Just an extra grind from an intact peppermill would also do the trick.

Here is my recipe:

Good Luck Peas and Rice for a Snowy Day

Ingredients:

3 c. water with bouillon cube or broth

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 c. long grain/wild rice

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 large onion, chopped

1-2 organic carrots, chopped

heart of a bunch of organic celery (about 5 small stalks with leaves) chopped

Salt and pepper

can of black eyed peas, drained and rinsed

a sprig of rosemary, intact (remove later)

a couple of sprigs of sage, intact (remove later)

1 Tbsp. sherry

Put all ingredients into the crock pot except peas, herbs and sherry. Bring to a boil and then lower heat and simmer for about 2 hours. After the first hour, add peas and herbs. I also noticed it was getting dry but the rice wasn't yet done, so I added another cup of water. When the stew is thick again, after two hours, it is done. Right before serving, stir in the sherry and remove the herbs.

Here is my good luck stew right before the pepper explosion.

And here it is after I got it all cleaned up, I let it cook a little more and added the herbs. I didn't get a shot of the peas right before I ate them. I was over the whole thing at that point and just wanted to eat. It turned out to be really delicious! Give it a try, and better luck to you, now and throughout the year!

Beverages

Teaser -- I've got quite a tale to tell you about something I've got bubbling in the crock pot right now, but since I've not yet tasted it, I'll wait 'til later to post on it. In the meantime, I didn't want to neglect mentioning these photos of what I've been drinking.

No, that's not tequila, I already drank that. I washed the empty bottle and am recycling it to hold my kombucha in the fridge. I finished this last bit off this morning. It got decidedly more gingery as the days progressed, so I may not need as much ginger next time. It also got ever so slightly bubbly, but not as much as the kind we buy at the store. I did more research on the bottled kombucha issue and found that the fermentation happens while the bottles are unrefrigerated, which could of course vary widely from store to store. In some cases quite a bit of fermentation is allowed to happen unchecked, hence the alcoholic content. Even so, one would need to consume 8-12 bottles of kombucha to equal the alcohol in one beer. So, I liked my own kombucha, and in my next batch will leave it fermenting a bit longer. I only gave it three days with this first batch. I'll keep you posted on what I discover in my brewing.

I needed a little pick-me-up this afternoon, so I made myself an Almond/Mocha Latte -- Just half Silk Dark Chocolate Almond Milk and half leftover coffee from this morning.  I just warmed it up and put it in this fun ceramic Starbucks-ish mug, and wrapped the whole thing with a woolen huggie. I cut up one of my old sweaters and had fun making these over the holidays. The coffee sweater is so nice to hold on a snowy day like today, and my fingers don't get burned. The latte was decadent and rich, like a cross between coffee and hot chocolate, again perfect for this weather. I'm all perked up now.

My "Kombucha"

Do you drink Kombucha Tea? I'm talking about the organic, raw, fermented bottled teas you can sometimes find in better grocery stores. I say sometimes because ever since I began liking the teas (Lindsay, of "Kiss Me, I'm Vegan" was right -- they are an acquired taste) the north Atlanta Kombucha supply has been slim. Whole Foods does not carry them at all. Sometimes Kroger will have just one bottle left for me to snap up, sometimes nothing. The labels are on the edge of the shelf, but the shelf is empty. Publix? Nope. Something seems to be going on with Kombucha.

I read on a blog somewhere that we can make our own Kombucha, so I googled it. In the list of ingredients is something called a "mother" which is actually a symbiotic collection of yeast molds that work together with a sugar source to create the fermentation process necessary for Kombucha. I wouldn't even know where to start looking for such a thing. It is described as spongy, and after you make a batch, you remove the "mother" and use it again in the next batch. So, you probably think I should go to some health food store and ask about where to get a "mother". No, I'm not gonna do it. I'm just not putting myself through that.

Georgia, I love you, and you have come a long, long way since I asked a store manager ten years ago about where to find pine nuts, only to have him stare at me, eyes wide, and repeat in a thick southern accent, "PINE  . . . . . NUTS?" then shake his head and walk away from me. There are some serious country folk down here, and a lot of them think I'm from Mars.

So an idea popped into my head:  the Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar has, "with the Mother" on it's label. Since I previously didn't know what a "mother" was, I had just ignored it, up 'til now, that is. Next step, I googled Bragg's for a recipe.  On the website is an explanation that recently the FDA has been cracking down on Kombucha sales because of the notion that the tea contains alcohol. I think this is a bunch of baloney -- I can detect the scant amount of alcohol in a non-alcoholic beer, and I think I would be able to tell if Kombucha contained it. It is said that Kombucha can become addictive. Well, maybe, but because of the energetic well-being it imparts, in my opinion, not because of alcohol. So this FDA crackdown is at the heart of the matter of why I can't find my ginger kombucha!  FDA, you are overreaching once again, yada yada . . .

Bragg's response to the Kombucha hullabaloo was to create a variety of Apple Cider Vinegar drinks that are purported to impart similar health benefits to the Kombucha. Of course they don't appear on our Georgia shelves either.  So I just made up my own recipe, which is pretty darn good, if I do say so myself, if not identical to the contraband version. Here it is:

Cheryl's Kombucha Tea
Ingredients:
4 cups distilled water
1 kukicha twig tea bag
1 Triple Leaf Detox tea bag, or other herbal tea
8 Tbsp. Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar
8 Tbsp. Agave Syrup
4 Tbsp. grated ginger
In a pan, bring the water just to a boil, then pour it over the teabags in a ceramic or glass teapot. Don't use metal anymore after this, since it can stop any fermentation. The teas I chose work well with a long steeping time, so I just left them in the pot until the tea cooled to room temperature. If you choose a green tea, you will want to remove the teabag after about 3 minutes or the tea will become bitter. Once the tea has cooled to room temperature, remove the teabags and add the other ingredients, stirring with a wooden or other non-metal spoon. I handled the ensuing fermentation in much the same way as we make the radish umeboshi vinegar pickles from The Kind Diet. Set the teapot aside, at room temperature, loosely covered with a lid or with cheesecloth for at least 24 hours, and not more than 3 days. Then refrigerate the tea. 


My measurements were based on the size of my teapot, which holds 4 cups of liquid with space enough to add other ingredients. You can tinker with the amounts according to what works for you. Basically, after the tea is brewed, for each cup the proportions should be 2 Tbsp. vinegar, 2 Tbsp. agave and 1 Tbsp. ginger.

I taste-tested my tea as I went along, having some right away -- no bubbles at all, just a flavorful, refreshing iced tea. After about 24 hours the tea was definitely not as bubbly as the storebought Kombucha, but I did detect a slight tingle on the tongue. I will try it again tomorrow, but I will be surprised if the effervescence increases by very much. I have some ancient experience with the idea of creating fermentation (my husband and I used to be master home-brew beer makers back in the day, when time was not such a hot commodity) and I do realize that sugar -- the plain old white stuff -- was crucial to setting up the bubbling process. Come to think of it, so was bottling, hmmm, I need to seal the tea so it stops "breathing!" I'm going to go wash out our empty tequila bottle with a cork and put it to good use! I'll let you know what happens.

Verdict on this homemade kombucha experiment:  Worthwhile. The tea is similar to the stuff that used to be in the stores, but not the same. I cannot claim that it is organic, I can't claim that it is raw -- maybe if I didn't bring the water to a boil? but the agave syrup, how is that prepared? My tea is delicious, refreshing and does impart a calm sense of well being, mostly from the alkalinizing kukicha and vinegar. I'll be making this again. If any of you have experience making kombucha of your own, please share your methods. I'd love to know!

Incidentally, my husband, watching me performing what he called my "witchcraft" said, "You are just like Eula!" he was referring to my grandmother who passed away when I was only 12. He was right. In that moment I was just like that wonderful lady. I'll take the compliment!