NT task thread... - Page 3

[mountain mom]

Today I made a veggie soup with the bison broth. It is very healing with tons of garlic, onion, ginger and all kinds of veg. YUM

We went to get groceries and like Hreka, we too got way carried away. Including finally buying a ceramic crock for our water bottle so we can recycle the plastic one we have been using. Wow feels sooo good. Now we just need to find a glass bottle, instead of the plastic one. What do you all use?

Tonight I can going to make the fermented bean paste and the musturd from the NT cookbook.

Tomorrow my tasks are minimal to conserve time for family time!
1) Start a basic sauercraut.
2) Make the sunflower brownies, they went fast last week
3) Change the water kefir over.

Loving this thread, I too am a HUGE little house fan.

[The Hidden Life]

For you Little House fans...

...have you seen "Alone in the Wilderness" on PBS? My husband and I just love to watch that show. It's about a man in his fifties who decides to live "alone in the wilderness" and builds a cabin, makes all his own furniture, plants a garden, hunts sheep, etc. and films the whole thing for like 35 years! He has this incredibly soothing voice (like Martha Stewart's if you know what I mean) and we laugh about how whenever we watch it we fall asleep, but it's just fascinating to watch this guy say, "I need a lock for my front door," then watch him whittle out this perfectly smooth hinge and lock system with hand tools. He does get some supplies by float plane occasionally and mail but that's about it.

My favorite Little House book is the first one because it has more descriptions of how they set up house and started from scratch. Eating corn meal mush every day couldn't have been pleasant. Oh, and Farmer Boy too. I was reading that one to my girls, the first time I'd read it as an adult, and was realizing how much wealthier Almanzo's family must have been than the Ingalls. They had a horse farm and regular buildings and went to town and everything. The descriptions of the food Almanzo ate are just incredible, not just the variety, but the portion sizes! I can't imagine having all that food on hand all the time, but I guess you just never stop baking and cooking all day long. And here I can't even get these simple Essene crackers to turn out edible! What a failure I'd be in the 1800s!

LeeAnn

[yitlan]

Thought I'd jump in! I'm now separating my whey from my yogurt and will make my first batch of mayonnaise this afternoon. We're running low on kimchi, so I need to make more of that. We go through that like nobody's business. You don't want to know all we put it on!

Need more morning oatmeal, so will soak tonight and rice is soaking now for tonight's dinner.

Love reading what everyone else is doing!

[annettemarie]

OK, I will confess. I want to try this stuff, but I am afraid I will poison my family. :
Did anyone else need to get over personal fears to do this?
Also, I am an extremely picky eater and am afraid I will go through a ton of work and hate it or screw it up.
Last week I made cookies from an old Mothering recipe, grinding my own organic oats into flour and everything, and they hardened into hockey pucks. :LOL

Annette

[hrheka]

We just got back from the longest walk, hoping the endpoint to be pastured cow milk but the store was closed. It was a 60 block walk but it was really beautiful out. Chinese New Year is this week so we walked through Chinatown. There is so much amazing food there all I need is a translator!

So this morning I worked on kneeding my kishk (this is a 9 day process), pureed the lentils and rice w/ some kefir for dosas, set some chickpeas in water to sprout(think I'm going to try making sprouted hummus) and I made cocnut chutney. I also put a chicken in a bowl to marinade for dinner. I'm going to go pop that in the oven now and also make some cilantro pesto (our new favorite condiment).

Tomorrow I'm going to finish up the dosas and make some cookies. I'm sure I'll get inspired to make some other stuff too.

Mountain Mom, let me know what you think of the mustard. Ours came out amazing! Its so spicy its more like wasabi than regular old mustard.

[cjr]

: I just took the plundge and bought the book. I paid way too much for it, but it was totally worth it. We are already eating NT in many ways. I need to soak my grains more and impliment fermented veggies. So....

Tonight I have my yoghurt draining for whey and cream cheese, so that tomorrow I can make the fermented carrots, preserved lemmons and orange marmalade. I also have almonds soaking in the oven to get them started into crispy almonds. Tomorrow we will have beef stew in the crock as my oven will be buisy with the almonds.

I'm so excited. I want to make everything.

OK, I will confess. I want to try this stuff, but I am afraid I will poison my family.

Nope. I don't expect my family members to eat the stuff up right away, but I'm hoping that I will be able to introduce things they will like. I'm not afraid of food spoiling. From what I understand if the food "turns" then you will know immediately.

[Brisen]

You guys are getting so much done! We've been sick this week and I have done nothing. Not even soaked any oatmeal or made any yogurt. We have 2 gallons of raw milk in the fridge, which were delivered Thursday. We haven't had any of it! We still have almost a litre left over from last weeks' delivery. We've just been eating soup (from a can : ) and bread (from the store : ) and crackers (from the store : ). I managed to make myself some nettle tea this morning, and I made up some "hot lemonade" for the boys, as they woke with very sore throats too. Man, we must have very weak immune systems. We looked after kids on Monday because their parents both had some kind of stomach flu, and one of the girls had influenza (fever, sore throat) later in the week. Almost everyone here has had both of those. Luckily the baby hasn't really been affected -- on Tuesday she slept a lot, and in the evening she threw up once and was a bit crabby. My toddler has been complaining of a sore tummy for days, and had a fever one day. My 5 yo then started throwing up, and I was nauseus and had a sore throat/head cold/chills thing going on. Now the boys both have sore throats and coughs. I have to say though, my kids are great when they are sick -- they don't really get whiny or crabby, they just want to rest a lot and fall asleep easily. My dh, on the other hand... I'm glad he was away for a few days, he seems to have escaped catching the bug.

The bottom shelf of my fridge is full of veggies I bought a week ago, intending to make yummy food and ferment some of it. In the book, it says to use only the highest quality, freshest veggies. These are not. Should I not use them for fermenting, or go ahead and try it out? I'm very inexperienced, and I wouldn't be making anything for long-term storage with this stuff.

If I get some time, I'm going to post a couple of recipes on the yahoo group. The lady I get my milk from has been doing NT-style stuff for a long time -- she has been to a conference where Sally Fallon spoke. She did a class for me in the summer, and left these recipes. Her methods are a bit different from Fallon's, so I thought I would put them out there.

[mountain mom]

Got a tonne done yesterday...
-I made the sunflower brownies and added sprirulina powder too, yum
-made the musturd
-made the fermented bean
-changed my water kefir and fyi....grapefruit juice and water grains taste like shoe
-made youghurt
-made tzaziki


Today I will....

change over the grape kefir and thats it...too busy with other tasks, same with tomorrow, no NT tasks, but then on Wednesday I will:

Make youghurt
Make youghurt cheese
soak flour for baking
change the both kefirs over
put the fermented bean and musturd in the fridge
make sauercraut!

[hrheka]

I'm feeling pretty droopy today but have managed to get a bit done. I started rinsing the chicpeas for sprouts, finally made the cilantro pesto, started some beans soaking for tomorrow's dinner, been keeping up on my kefir & buttermilk. I also got my Kombucha mushroom today! So I have tea cooling off right now and am going to start it a little later. So if anyone is going to want Kombucha mushrooms PM me because in a month or so I should start having extras.

Tonight we'll be having the dosas I started the other day & the coconut chutney.

Tomorrow will be low key as I need to go to the laundrymat. So I'll:
+keep kneading the kishk
+put the punch in the fridge
+take a chicken out of the freezer
+make chili
+mix up some coconut oil w/ carob & raw honey (I take EVCO as a supplement but this makes it a little easier to swallow)

[Gale Force]

Originally Posted by mountain mom

-changed my water kefir and fyi....grapefruit juice and water grains taste like shoe

hee hee

thanks. I probably would have made some in the next two weeks.

I'm straining broth and not doing much else. We've got some leftovers. Tomorrow is kefir day.

[cjr]

Tonight I accomplished a lot, now I'm tired and need to go to bed.
Tonight I...
-started the preserved lemons
-started the fermented carrot and ginger
-have yoghurt in the contraption
-marinating my bison stew meat in the wine for tomorrows stew
-started soaking the spelt flour in kefir for the biscuits to go with the stew
-got the crispy almonds in the oven

Tomorrow I will...
-put the stew in the crock first thing in the am
-start soaking some black beans to make the fermented bean paste
-turn over the kefir
-figure out what I need to make the creame freshe

I have kefir coming out of my ears. The small amount of grains are producing kefir with in 24 hours and if left much longer then that it gets way too curdy. That's ok, I don't have a buttermilk starter so it's a good substitute.

Here's a question for ya. When the book says to "turn the lemmons once per day" what does that mean? My first thought was to actually turn the jar around, then I though that maybe it means to actually turn the lemmons in the jar itself. What does she mean?

Also, when the fermented stuff gets transfered into cold storage and you start taking some out of the jar to eat...do you need to make sure the rest of the fermented veggie/fruit is submerged in the juices?

[HerthElde]

Today I will:
-make carob muffins (and post recipe for all of you )
-mix & roll out cracker dough, cut and start drying in oven
-buy some nuts, beans, carob
-strain and add new milk to fridge kefir
-weekly meal plan
-start sourdough culture
-read about breadmaking

By the way, I changed my username - it used to be KatzMama - so am not really new to this thread, just have a new name

[mountain mom]

Hi everyone!

So I have accomplished my tasks and this is the list of things to do before we go away for the weekend. We are heading out of town Friday morn for three days...my aunt passed suddenly SO keep this thread rocking everyone!

Off topic: Katzmama/HerthElde...is their meaning to your new user name?

My list of things:
Change the water kefir over today and the juice kefir tomorrow
Bake carob tahini molasses spelt squares tomorrow morning
Make tzakiki for the trip
Make veg lazanga for the trip....I have a question about this that I posted in the NT thread....can I substitute youghurt cheese for ricotta in the recipe? what do you all think?
Pack the cooler with all the yummies for the trip

Next week....Sauercraut and crispy nuts...plus the regular stuff

Have a great week and weekend everyone! Hug your kids...life it so short.

[cjr]

I got so much done today.

-went to the market and bought the meat/dairy for the week
-made kefir and yoghurt
-soaked whole wheat flour for dinner rolls tomorrow
-soaked whole wheat flour for waffles in the morning
-soaked whole wheat flour for muffins to make tomorrow night
-made fermented honey mustard
-made the ginger snaps
-put my very gelatinous bison stock in the freezer
-had a great dinner of bison/kidney meatballs, sooooo goooood.

I am going through way too much dairy and at $5/L I need to start soaking in just water and whey. So, I am trying that with the waffles and muffins. The dinner rolls I used kefir. My family is big on flour based things like muffins and cookies. The ginger snaps turned out great.

Tomorrow I am having friends for dinner and roasting a chicken. Tomorrow night I will put the bones in the crock for stock, make my muffins to put in the freezer for the week, and make more whey and yoghurt cheese. I'm not letting my yoghurt ferment too long this time, my cheese was way too tart last time.

[Gale Force]

I've put on more kefir and more orange juice to ferment.

I soaked almonds and just set them out by the woodstove to get "crispy." I expect that with the dry air around the stove, they should get crispy in less than 24 hours (which is what it has taken me in the oven).

Other than that, I am not on dinner duty tonight. But I hear tell that a bokchoy stirfry with shrimp is in the making.

[HerthElde]

Originally Posted by mountain mom

Off topic: Katzmama/HerthElde...is their meaning to your new user name?

Herthe means Mother Earth and Elde means Warrior, so Mother Earth Warrior is the meaning of the name (and will be my senior member title thingy ) I changed it because I need to start self-identifying differently.

[mountain mom]

I like the name HerthElde!

Tonight to do:
1) Soak almonds for cripsy and milk
2) Make a batch of youghurt
3) Change over my juice kefir and the water kefir...AND....

wash my brand new stock pots my Mom gifted me with!!! They are soooo lovely, one kinda big and one really big, both with glass lids and both are stainless steel with stainless steel covered copper bottoms. WOW. I have been pricing out pots and a large one like above was about 100 - 120 bucks! Guess what my savvy shoppin Mama paid....


a whopping......$60.00 for BOTH. Wowza.


SO tommorrow I will....
1) Start the crispy almonds
2) make almond milk
3) strain my youghurt
4) make a second batch of youghurt
5) make chicken stock


Glad to be home!

[Hibou]

I'm just subscribing to this thread. I've been enjoying reading what everyone else is doing. We are slowly doing more and more NT, and I am feeling more energetic all the time. I'm anxiously awaiting my kefir, which will be here in a day or two. I just finished reading Wild Fermentation- awesome book! Anyways, I've been busy the last couple of days; here's what I've been up to:
Yesterday I started my sour beets and a batch of mixed sour pickles. I tried my sauerkraut, and it's really getting a nice flavor. I started a batch of crackers (posted the recipe on the NT thread in Nutrition forum) and made a big batch of sourdough waffles so that I could freeze some. I started some lentils soaking. We've been eating lots of dahl since I found out that ds loves it. I sliced and marinated a beef roast for jerky.

Today, I put the jerky in the dehydrator. I have to make my crackers, cook some chickpeas to make hummus and falafel, get my soup going (from homemade chicken stock made a couple weeks ago) and find a recipe for sourdough biscuits.

I find that I really enjoy doing the NT tasks. I am excited to try more fermented stuff. I have to get the ingredients for kimchi this week. A friend who was in Korea was telling me how highly it is regarded there.

[mountain mom]

Welcome Hibou!

Haven't made stock yet since I found some frozen bison stock and used that up. I made an asian soup with it and it rocked!

Today I made more youghurt and cheese for the week.

Tomorrow I will make chicken stock, change the kefirs over and hopefully make a chicken rice soup.

Still need to start a craut! :

[HerthElde]

Today I have to:
-skim fat off chicken stock, package and freeze
-learn how to render fat
-soak almonds
-feed sourdough starter
-knead kefir yeast-free bread experiment
Non NT tasks
-iron abc strap seams
-learn about EC potty strikes
-if I'm really lucky, do some sewing

Tomorrow:
-render fat from chicken stock
-make crispy almonds
-start ginger carrots
-deliver kefir grains to anxiously awaiting fellow MDC mama