My kitchen has been smelling like a deli this week! It brings back fond memories of the years I spent hanging out at Bernie’s!

I shared on my twitter and face book about how great my countertop pickles tasted and was then asked by so many people for the recipe–So here it is!

I belong to an organic produce co-op. One of the other members spoke of her counter top pickles and was also asked by many of us for the recipe. She referred us to Wild Fermentation.  I linked to this website back when I made fermented carrots and sauerkraut.

Basically this is what I did–Because these were not just picked out of my garden -I soaked my cucumbers in cold water in the fridge for a few hours to crisp them up. I had regular old large cucumbers not pickling ones so I cut them in half and then quartered them. I dissolved 1 Tablespoon of salt for each cup of water. I think I did 8 cups of water for the 3 large cucumbers I had. I did not have a large enough jar so I used the inner crock from one of my crock pots. Perfect!!

After stirring and stirring to dissolve the salt I gently crushed several heads of garlic-say 4 or 5 with the back of a spoon-just to crack them open and threw those in the water with a small handful of peppercorns , 4 heads of flowering dill and a small handful of fresh dill and 2 freshly washed oak leaves from the big tree. The oak , grape, sour cherry or horseradish leaves are to help keep the crunch.

I mixed all of that around and placed a plate on the top to keep the cucumbers submersed in the brine.

I then put the lid on very loosely–leaving it slightly cracked open on one side.

The next morning I noticed a few bubbles–IT”S  ALIVE!!! Then there was a film that I scraped off over the next couple of days-then we tasted on day 2–delicious!!  Actually we ate several!

It has been really hot here so the fermenting went quickly! I left them 1 more day and then moved them into jars (that I have been saving from our Bubbies pickles) and put them in the fridge to slow down the process.M more were eaten this morning as I moved them into the jars–lucky I ordered several more pounds of cucumbers this week!

We might need to add some Rubens to the menu!!

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.

OK Sorry, so no real Thursday  Recipe to post today but eventually this  will get around to food.

I love to strew! If you’re not familiar with strewing-it is the art of scattering and spreading interesting stuff in obvious and not so obvious places. I love to set things out for my kids to discover or play with. I always scan the non fiction section of our library to find books to leave in the bathroom or in our window seat. Books filled with Art work, riddles, puzzles. At the moment a book about how everyday things are made, why snot is green, a book about poop, a guide to Houdini and Why Pi are a few of the books that are lying around our house. I also have a table in the dinning room that I use to set different stuff out each week. I usually clean on Thursdays and switch out the activity. But more on that tomorrow!

We have a pretty good collection of magnetic stuff that the kids love to experiment with. It isn’t something that sits out all the time but when I pull it out they always love to mess around with all the different magnets. Today being no different!

I remembered seeing an experiment using magnets to see how much iron is in iron fortified cereal. So after we played around with the magnets this morning we got out yesterday’s cereal plus a  few others out of the cupboard.

We poured a little bit of each kind in a bowl. We looked at the nutritional values on the side of the boxes and Molly decided that the higher in iron the worse the taste. Hmmmm-so she lined them up according to least amount of iron to most—or should I say the one she thinks tastes the best to worst.

We checked the bowls with a magnet but none of the cereal was attracted.

Next we crushed up the cereal.

Checked it again…a few pieces stuck

Then we added a little bit of water and mixed it up.

Success! Some of the iron fortified cereal stuck to the magnets! I hear Total cereal works the best-but I just used what we had in our cupboards.  What kind of cereal is in your cupboards?

And check back tomorrow for a new Friday Feature.

Molly wanted a Hamburger Cake for her birthday. We trolled around the Internet and looked at lots of photos and ideas. This is what we came up with. It might look like something difficult but let me be the first to tell you-I am not much of a baker and if I can put this together anyone can! I don’t have any photos of the cake in progress.

I bought 2 cake mixes-1 yellow and one chocolate. I made the chocolate in a 8×8 brownie pan-square patty like Wendy’s burgers!

I made 2— 8 inch rounds out of the yellow cake but filled one with more of the batter (bottom bun smaller-top bun larger.)

After they cooled I trimmed the patty to make it nice and flat as well as trimming the bottom bun. Then I took the extra chocolate cake and added it to the top of the top yellow cake bun to make it more dome like. Make sense?

I bought 3 cans of frosting 1 chocolate and 2 white

We took some frosting out  and divided it into 3 bowls for condiments and added food coloring –red for ketchup, green for lettuce and yellow for mustard. You don’t need much. After you reach the desired color put each into a plastic bag and squeeze down to one bottom corner. set aside.

Take more white frosting into a bowl and add color to look like American cheese—use this to frost graham crackers to look like cheese slices on the burger.

Take the other can of white frosting and make it bun colored-we added a bit of the chocolate frosting for some color plus some food coloring.

Now to put it together

bottom bun cake first with burger patty (chocolate cake) next. Frost the chocolate cake with the chocolate frosting-making the edges look burgery!

 To that we put the graham crackers already frosted on the edges of the burger cake-hanging over a bit. We didn’t go all the way into the middle of the burger with these I wanted it to stay stable and thought this might make it tippy and too sweet. We did use more of the cheese frosting between the graham crackers and on the edges to look like melting cheese.

Then top with top bun. Use the bun frosting to glue the dome shape together. Try to smooth the frosting out as much as possible. Now get your condiment frosting’s and cut a tiny bit off the corner (a little larger for lettuce) and pipe lettuce around the bottom edge and squeeze squiggly ketchup and mustard on the cheese frosting.

We added a few slivered almonds on the top for seseme seeds.

This really wasn’t too hard. And it was surprisingly good. I thought it was going to be way too sweet-but it wasn’t. It was a little hard to cut but no one seemed to mind!

Remember I used to post recipes on Thursdays and invited readers to join in the fun and link to recipe on their blogs on Thursdays? Well let’s try again!! If you need the whole sorted explanation of why I chose to call them quarter recipes you can read about it here.

So here is my meager but tasty and healthy recipe for this week.

We enjoy smoothies many mornings. On this day we mixed up a couple of frozen bananas, about 3 large handfuls of spinach,  some orange juice, a couple of tablespoons of goji berries, a couple of tablespoons of chia seeds, and a whole lot of frozen blueberries in my VITA-MIX.

I keep my chia seeds in the freezer, that’s why they look sweaty.

This may be a green smoothie, but the blueberries really make it more purple.

If you have a favorite recipe to share (it doesn’t have to be raw) leave a link in the comments to your blog’s recipe post.

Or think about joining in next week. Because I have the world’s best salad recipe to share next Thursday! (I have been eating it for days)

The grocery stores around here have been having some great prices on fruit-some organic and some not. I try to buy organic whenever possible-which is about 90-95 % of the time. But there are a few things like pineapples and mango that I don’t often see here as an organic choice. But the last few weeks these have been really cheap. So I stocked up and have been making this smoothie over and over again with a few minor changes here and there.

These measurements are just guesses because when it comes to smoothies-I just dump things into my Vita-Mix.

1 to 1 1/2 cups pineapple chunks

1 to 2 mangos

1 frozen banana

a handful of ice

almond milk-enough to make it as thick or thin as you want

a handful of almonds

2 Tablespoons of chia seeds

2 Tablespoons of hemp seeds

dash of cinnamon

This tasted a lot like orange sherbet!  I almost always make green smoothies and adding spinach to this didn’t change the taste too much.   Other additions to this basic mixture that tasted good have been spinach, frozen strawberries, flax seeds and a cut up orange. You can pack tons of nutrition into these smoothies, which is a great start to the day!

If you have a raw recipe to share this week please leave a link to your raw post in the comments. Thanks!!

With the nice weather here this week-we have been busy hitting the playground and back yard! But I did take the time to sprout some quinoa. I say take the time-almost tongue in cheek, as these little nutrional powerhouse grains sprout overnight! And this tastes great too!

Tabbouleh

1 c sprouted quinoa

1/4 c olive oil

3 T lemon juice

1 t salt

cucumbers, tomatoes, red onions and at least 1/2 c parsley.

This tastes better if you make it and then let it sit or marinate for at least a half an hour.

If have a raw recipe to share this week-leave a link to your raw post in the comments or just type it out sand add it to the comments. Thanks!!