Pepper Paints

Thursday’s Recipe ….. Sprouting

Often times my kitchen looks like a laboratory with various nuts and or seeds soaking or sprouting on the counter tops.

Where to start—

So why sprout?  Sprouts are full of nutrition–They are alive, vitamin and mineral content doubles or triple!!  Sprouting pre-digests the nut or seed and  activates living enzymes which also assist in digestion.

What to sprout? Almost anything! Use untreated, unbroken nuts, grain or seed–not seeds treated for planting purposes. Anything out of the bulk bins will probably sprout.

What equipment  do you need? Any container that provides drainage. You can buy nut and seed mesh bags for sprouting or use mason jars with old tights or nylons on the top secured with a rubber band for draining or you can buy a jar with a screen lid or for larger beans/grains I have used a bowl strainer/colander combination.

How do I sprout? Choose something simple to start off with-   Easy beans–mung beans, garbanzo, lentil, kidney, aduki Easy seeds—alfalfa, clover, radish, mustard, feugreek      Easy grains—-whole barley, wheat berries, kamut berries, rye, quinioa  Best nuts—almonds, sunflowers, filberts

For 1 qt finished sprouts measure out:    small seeds 2-3 rounded Tablespoons — Medium Seeds 1/4-1/2 cup —-Larrger beans and grains 1 cup —sunflower seeds 2 cups

Pour into jar or strainer, fill with good water,  let soak over night    Drain using a screen, nylon or strainer of some sort.  Rinse and drain again.  Continue rinsing 2 to 3 times per day for 4 to 7 days depending on the temperature-until desired sprout length. Keep in a darker spot for days 1 through 3 And for the last 2 to 3 days place in a sunny spot to activate their green chlorophyll.  Drain and keep in the fridge for about 7 days.

Once you get started it’s super easy to sprout!  You can eat them raw in salads or on sandwiches (PB&J w/ alfalfa sprouts is a favorite of mine!!) You can add them to soups or puree to make pate or hummus. You can go on to cook sprouted beans and sprouted grains can be dried and ground into flour.  I have a recipe for the mung bean sprouts in the first photo that I will be making tonight! I love to use sprouted quinoa to make tabouli.  Happy Sprouting!

******Fermented Foods update from last week*********

I just tasted them again today and the carrots definitely have a bit of a zing to them but still not enough-I will taste again in a couple of days. The cabbage is now a beautiful purple color but not too tangy yet. The temperature hasn’t been too warm so I think that might keep things from moving along and fermenting. If I had to eat them now they would be tasty but I am hoping for a little more “sour” zest to them! I promise to keep you posted.

Thursday’s Quarter Recipes

This is the best “salad” I have ever had!! It is from The Pioneer Woman’s recipes. I changed it up a little bit to fit my taste-I’ll add in on the original recipe where I added or deleted ingredients.

Warning—-this makes 2 tons so you can feed an army or half the recipe!

Asian Noodle Salad

1lb linguine cooked, rinsed and cooled—-The first time I made this I used 1 lb of rice noodles but found that to be way too much noodle for me so the second time I used a smaller 1/2 lb package of rice sticks and it was much better. It was more like salad with a few noodles instead of noddles with some veggies! Some day I will get around to ordering kelp noodles and substitute these in this recipe!

1/2 to 1 head sliced napa cabbage

1/2- to 1 head purple cabbage

1/2 to 1 bag baby spinich

1 red, 1 yellow and 1 orange pepper sliced thin

1 small bag of mung bean prouts

3 (or more!!) sliced scallions

3 peeled and sliced cucumbers

lots (2 bunches for me) of chopped up cilantro

cashews

Dressing:

juice of 1 lime

8 T olive oil

2-3 T seseme oil

8 T soy sauce

1/3 c brown sugar –I used a large spoonful of honey

3 T fresh ginger chopped (I used more)

2 cloves garlic–again more

2 jalapenos (be careful when chopping!!)

Mix together salad ingredients. Whisk together dressing ingredients and pour over salad. Mix with tongs Top with cashews

Hint if using rice noodles-cook them for only a few minutes and taste DO NOT OVER COOK-rinse them repeatedly in cold water so they don’t become a sticky mess.

Also I added some Chinese hot garlic oil to my bowlful to make it super spicy!! Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

If you have a recipe to add to this weeks quarter recipes be sure to leave a link in the comments to your recipe post.

Thursdays Raw Recipe

I made this raw potato salad this weekend and it was really good! Definitely tastes better when it’s not ice cold and the dressing does get runny the longer it sits, but it still tasted good a few days later.

RAW POTATO SALAD

2 c diced jicama

1/4 c diced yellow pepper

1/4 c celery

1 T minced fresh rosemary

2 T minced green olives

1/4 avocado, smashed

1/2 red onion thinly sliced

fresh parsley

Now for the dressing:

2 t tahinin

1/4 t ground cumin

1 1/2 T lemon juice

2 T water

2 t parley

1/4 t nama shoyu

1/4 t agave

pinch of chili powder

and more than a pinch of salt

I blend all the dressing ingredients in my Vita-Mix. Dressing should be a little thick as it does thin out after the potato salad is all mixed up.

If you have a raw recipe to add this week, leave a comment with a link to your raw recipe post.

Thursday’s Raw Recipe

“Cheesy” Stuffed Peppers

From the book EAT SMART EAT RAW

Trying new recipes has helped me to realize that I really don’t like food that is puree’d -like baby food. I know I have texture preferences. I hate pudding, I like to chew my food.  I like the taste of this recipe, just not the texture. So next time I will only blend up part of the ingredients and leave some to stir in.

13oz of corn (I used frozen-thawed, technically not raw, so this is a better recipe for summer time!)

1 1/2 carrots

small bunch of parsley

1 T ground flax seeds

2 T extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp miso

2 T nutritional yeast

1/2 tsp red chili

2 garlic cloves

1/2 onion

4 oz orange juice

2 large peppers

I put everything except the peppers and OJ into my Vita-mix. I puree’d all and then gradually added the OJ. Only use as much juice as you need to. You want this to be thick but no lumps. Fill the peppers.

OK so I would reserve some corn and parsley, onions,  chilis and maybe some of the pepper  to chop up and mix into the puree to add some crunch to the filling.

Cheesy stuffed peppers and kale salad Mmmmm!

Thursdays Quarter Recipe, a little late

Let’s talk about food shall we?! I meant to post this yesterday to coincide with my Thursday Quarter Recipe theme, but well, it didn’t happen. I have been all obsessed with raw food and healthy eating these past few weeks. I have been looking through several recipe books from the library   COMPLETE IDIOTS GUIDE TO EATING RAW, THE COMPLETE BOOK OF RAW FOOD and ALIVE IN 5.  Not that these are the best out there, they are just what I have at the moment. My favorite book that I own is RAWSOME. I look through it so often to reaffirm specifically how good for me certain foods are.   I ordered a few back issues of PURELY DELICIOUS and really like this magazine too. They even sent me a RAW sticker for my van! Bonus!

I want to branch out a bit farther than salads. I LOVE salad and eat it just about every night. It is easy and can be changed up really easily. It is quick-which is important since I prepare a cooked meal for my family and then need to make something for myself too. But if I actually plan ahead and make a menu for myself just like I do for my family I should be able to eat a wider variety of foods  and food combonations. And left overs or pre-made salads are even better when I am hungry and want to grab something quick.

Some friends are also trying to add more raw foods into their diets. We even tried to go to a raw food meet-up but had an older meeting schedule, Next time! So I am going to switch up my Thursday Quarter recipe theme to be RAW. I would love for others to continue to share there recipes here too.  On Thursdays (or Friday in this weeks case) post a raw recipe on your blog and come here and leave a comment with a link to your post containing your raw recipe.

I don’t really have measurements for this but it tasted like sunshine. And god knows here in Columbus, Ohio we need more of that!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lots of celery and mung bean sprouts (that I sprouted myself!!) and onions. Some olive oil, alot of lemon juice, salt, citrus pepper, celery seeds and dill. Really crispy and fresh tasting.

Here are a few websites too if you are interested……..

The Sunny Raw Kitchen

Raw Food Right Now-a list of lots of raw blogs-most of which I have not checked out yet

We Like It Raw- There is a link to Sarmas blog and I am a big fan of hers. Hers is the first raw cook book I ever read and I thought if I ate raw I would look just like her!! I am still trying!

Do you have any raw blogs or web sites to share???