How could you not love quinoa?

Seen here with roasted beets, sauteed spinach, olive oil and salt.

Raise your hand if you know fermented foods are good for you.

Cultured ginger carrots.
Grated, pounded. Left to the magic of ginger, salt, and lactobacilli for three days.

Buttermilk dill dressing

Homemade sour cream and buttermilk combine with a few simple ingredients for an amazing salad dressing on chicken and apple salad. Yum.

Science experiments

Left: milk on its way to becoming buttermilk.
Middle: cream on its way to being soured.
Right: oats soaking in water and acids so is easier on our tummies when we cook it tomorrow.

(Bacteria arrived in the mail today.)

Homemade butter

Its easier than you might think. Especially if you own a food processor. Dump in a quart of cream and blend until you hear a splash and a thunk. Separate the buttermilk from the yellow globs of butter.
Rinse butter in cold water. Salt. Voila!

p.s. Its way better if the cows you got the cream from are grass fed, better yet if the milk was raw or pasteurized at low temps.

Sourdough

We have a new pet in the family--a wild yeast starter. Right now it has to be fed and watered twice a day. It's so demanding. But eventually it gives you something back. And this is Take One of the fruits of our labors. Waffles, pancakes, bread--all sourdough and all yum.

Raw Table Saw

I just had to post and say I've now opened two coconuts with my table saw. Yes. I. Have.

If the blade height is adjusted just so, the blade will burn through the hard outer shell of the coconut, leaving the white meat in tact, and the coconut water safe on the inside. All I have next to do is cut through the meat with a knife, catch the water, and voila...easiest coconut I've ever eaten. I'm perfectly aware I could take a big cleaver and whack a coconut in half. Problem is I never hit hard enough the first 20 times, so little coconut shell chips fly all over the kitchen. With the table saw, I can score the coconut so it breaks into sixteen pieces, and I get the meat out with more ease.

The downside: coconut-sawdust in a thin layer over my entire body; coconut sawdust in my sinuses and eyes; sneezing from all that coconut in my nose.