Today's Accomplishments!

Today's focus was to get the little odds and ends done.  Once again, not much philosopy today, just life management to keep the secondary parts of my health experiment going smoothly.  My tasks:  get the filler items for some recipes and get my garden issues addressed.  This meant trips to the super grocery store, Central Market in Poulsbo, WA and Home Depot.

Last night, I poured over "RAW", a recipe book I mentioned yesterday, to find a few dishes I'd like to try.  It is very gourmet and takes planning to make.  Not every day eating unless you have a private chef to spend all their time planning for tomorrow and prepping things.  I love to cook and experiment in the kitchen, so none of this is considered a trial for me.  I'm very excited!  I enjoy almost any vegetable from kale to cauliflower, which makes the Raw and EAD diets easy to follow for me. The hardest part is figuring out how to make dishes taste good at 110 degrees as your maximum heat.  With RAW recipes...I've made my selections and I'll post how they go. 

But speaking of planning and prep, to get ready for my RAW Recipe Book experience, I needed to have something called Rejuvelac.  It's a fermentation of sprouted wheat or rye berries that is used to make nut milk cheeses.  They say you can buy it commercially, but they didn't have it at my specialty store.  So, home brewing it is!  RAW gives me all the instructions very clearly (bless them), so I can give this a try.  Since EAD says no wheat, I'm using rye berries for sprouting.  I'll be making Cashew milk cheese, that then expands to Herbed cheese and Mediterranian Cheese with Dragon Crackers (one of the first RAW recipe book items I will try). 

I made a 1/2 batch of Dragon Crackers and 1/2 batch Maple Ginger Crackers last night and they came out great!  Still have 1/2 batches of dough for both in my fridge.  My sister tried them at dinner tonight and like them, too.  She especially like the nutritional values of flax over wheat-based crackers.  I gave her a round (16 servings) of Dragon Crackers from my round dehydrator.  She wants to use them with her afternoon snack.  (She's been on Nutrisystem for about 14 weeks and has lost over 30 lbs!!  I'm so proud of her.  She looks great! :)  

I love how easy it is to use Flaxseed for dough.  It is extremely forgiving as you spread it on the trays to dehydrate.  I'm envisioning using my leftover dibs and shreds from juicing to make some interesting crackers (Kale flake, Key Lime, and Apple flake?)  I hope the juicing book I have lists the nutritional values of juice + pulp = whole fruit or veggie values.  It would be helpful to know what's left in the pulp.  I know it can very based on the juicer, but a guideline would be nice.  Hmmmmmm....

I also remembered to by jicama today so I can try a recipe I dreamed up.  I will be interesting to see if it works.  Top secret, of course. Don't want to spill my ideas before they have matured!

At Home Depot, I nearly fell over when I saw they had Stevia plants for sale.  WOW!  I thought what a good thing to grow.  I've seen recipes with Stevia leaf as an ingredient, and I thought, "where the heck to you buy just stevia leaves?"  Now, I can give those a try.  I need to do a bit of research to see what temperatures this plant likes best to figure out which container box it should grow in. 

I bought 2 more basil plants to see if I could get them to grow if I "greenhoused" them in a plastic tent of sorts.  My last 2 basil plants died a very quick and cold death.  Fresh basil is so expensive compared to the plants, I hope these guys will grow. 

One "odds and ends" issue are RACOONS!  I started composting my kitchen scraps 2 months ago.  I didn't have a compost bin, so I was just hiding it in the tree line with the grass clipping.  This has brought back racoons.  We just got rid of them from under our shed last year, so I knew I had to do something. 

I found a great, inexpensive compost bin called e-Composter.  If you click on the Amazon link on this page, and put in e composter, it will come up.  Don't mean this as a sales pitch, but I am quite pleased with it and wanted to share.  Quite a large bin and very good price for a bin.  Most standing bins are almost $100. This is almost 1/2 the cost around $50-60 at most locations. It's flat packed for easy shipping and getting home, and clicked together with no tools.  Took me 5 minutes to get it put together and in place.  Did I get my current compost in?  NOPE...but that's tomorrow game. 

Because I've drawn racoons, I realized I needed to get my little container garden (pictured below) up off the ground.  I bought a pair of saw horses and moved the containers up to people level.  Hope it works and that little rascals don't dump them over. 

Need to get moving.  It's getting late here in the PAC-NW and I still have lemons to zest and dehydrate from the 9 lemons it took to make N. Roses Golden Elixir Salad Dressing, and about 10 bulbs of garlic to peel so I can pickle them to prep for making garlic chips that are a part of another RAW recipe book item I want to try.  Gourmet is not for the faint of heart! haha...
A lovely Raw day to you all!