First, I finally made homemade fermented mayonnaise, following the recipe in Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon. It turned out a beautiful yellow color because of the pastured eggs, small amount of grainy mustard and extra-virgin olive oil in the mixture. To both ferment the mayo and allow it to keep for a longer period, I added liquid whey that I had kept from a batch of yogurt cheese I’d made a few weeks earlier. The mayonnaise has a wonderful, tangy flavor, and we’ve especially enjoyed it in egg-salad and tuna-salad sandwiches. (I toned down the taste at first by mixing it with our usual store-bought safflower mayonnaise. Nobody even noticed!)

My next new adventure was making water kefir. I had been wanting to try this for a long time, but I finally got motivated to make water kefir when I needed it as an ingredient in a gluten-free sourdough starter (more on that later). Water kefir is a probiotic beverage cultured with kefir grains specifically dedicated to that purpose. After culturing, it can be flavored with fruit or juice and even carbonated for a healthy soda-pop-like drink. I made strawberry lemonade from my first batch of water kefir. I loved it, but it was a little on the tart side (too much lemon juice, not enough pureed strawberries) for the kids. And it did get slightly carbonated after I stored it in an airtight, flip-top bottle, but not as much as I’d thought it might. I’m continuing the experimentation with each new batch, trying out different flavors to see what the family likes best.

The rest of my Kitchen Life lately has revolved around the lessons in Wardeh Harmon’s GNOWFGLINS Fundamentals eCourse. So far, I’ve soaked and dehydrated almonds (the first thing I made in my new Excalibur dehydrator!), soaked and cooked brown rice, and made soaked muffins and pancakes. Next on my list is soaked biscuits and pasta, plus soaked beans. If you’re wondering what all of the soaking is about, I’m learning about the importance of soaking grains, nuts and legumes with a small amount of acid, such as apple cider vinegar, to eliminate phytic acid (which prevents mineral absorption) and enzyme inhibitors (which make foods difficult to digest). Wardeh will be offering the eCourse again later this year, and if you missed it this first time around, I encourage you to sign up and see how easy it really is to adapt your cooking to traditional, real-food methods.

Finally, I’ll mention my not-so-successful attempt to make a loaf of gluten-free sourdough bread. I got off to a good start with my starter (brown rice flour boosted by water kefir), which I fed for five days before mixing up the bread ingredients. Unfortunately, my bread didn’t rise at all, and the loaf turned out to be a flat brick that was chewy and unbearably sour. I e-mailed the author of the recipe, and together we determined that my starter might have become overfermented, and that my substitution of a half cup of millet flour for chickpea flour was apparently detrimental. I’ve heard that sourdough can be tough to master—and that gluten-free sourdough is even trickier. Still, I’m undeterred and will keep trying until I get it right one of these days. I have a different recipe to try, and I hope I can get to it this week. Stay tuned!

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.

Shawn has always been a big fan of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, so when I saw a healthier homemade version of this treat circulating on some of the blogs I follow, I knew I had to try it. My friend Wardeh Harmon wrote about it two weeks ago (click here to see her results at www.gnowfglins.com), and she found the original recipe here, on a blog called Oceans of Joy.

First, I soaked raw organic peanuts overnight in salted water to neutralize the nuts’ enzyme inhibitors. Then I dehydrated them almost completely in the oven the next day. (I didn’t get them quite as crispy as I would have otherwise because I planned to grind them into peanut butter. Next time, I think I will crisp them up all the way to impart a more roasted flavor.) I placed them in my Vita-Mix (another blender or food processor would work, too) with a bit of sea salt and ground them until they were smooth. It wasn’t what I would call creamy peanut butter—it was a bit crumbly, actually. But I knew that I would be adding coconut oil, honey and vanilla to it to make the peanut-butter cups, so I decided that was OK. And it was. Next I made the chocolate mixture, and then I began layering the chocolate and peanut-butter filling into heart-shaped candy molds. It was a little time-consuming, but not difficult. I popped the filled molds into the freezer, and after dinner I surprised Shawn with his Valentine’s Day treat.

We both liked the peanut-butter cups, although the chocolate layers were the tiniest bit bitter. Next time, I think I’ll add a touch more honey—or maybe even melt in some Enjoy Life brand (dairy-free and soy-free) chocolate chips—to make the sweets just a little sweeter.

Nothing else in my Kitchen Life was new this past week, but that, I’m excited to say, is about to change. I enrolled in the GNOWFGLINS Fundamentals eCourse (which I wrote about here), and I’ve been preparing for the lessons that will begin after the enrollment period ends Feb. 22. I ordered a free sourdough starter (which I hope will arrive before Lesson 12: How to Make Sourdough Bread!). I’ve lurked a little in the forum, where other enrollees have written introductions and shared resources. And I watched instructor Wardeh Harmon’s sneak-peak video detailing how to make her basic soaked muffins. You can tune in, too, by clicking here.

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.

I got the idea from my friend Wardeh Harmon at www.gnowfglins.com to sprout some lentils and add them to grass-fed ground beef as a way to make the meat stretch and add some extra nutrition to our usual taco filling. I wasn’t sure whether it would alter the taste too much—or what my family would think of the idea. But the lentils blended right into the meat and spices (cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, oregano, salt and pepper) without any noticeable taste or texture differences. And after questioning the appearance of the filling initially, my family had no problem heaping it onto their plates. What I loved best of all was that sprouting 1 1/2 cups of lentils and adding it to 1 pound of ground beef made enough filling to feed our family of six for two whole dinners!

After trying my hand at almond butter a couple of weeks ago, I decided I might want to try the same process with some of the pecans that have been stored in my freezer for awhile. I wasn’t sure what to expect, having never seen pecans made into a butter. What I got (after following the soaking and dehydrating process outlined in Nourishing Traditions) was a rich, dark spread—more earthy than the sweeter-tasting almond butter, but really good. I’ve tried it on pancakes and, as pictured here, packed into a halved and cored apple.

Inspired by Wardeh’s recent posts featuring Best Chocolate Ice Cream and Basic Chocolate Syrup—and by a desire to use the frozen organic strawberries I recently got from Azure Standard—I made dairy-free strawberry ice cream and topped it with strawberry sauce. I used coconut milk as the base for the ice cream, plus about two cups of strawberries and a 1/2-cup mixture of Rapadura and organic sugar (powdered in the Vita-Mix). The sauce was simply more strawberries pureed with a little sugar in the Vita-Mix and drizzled over the top. The ice cream froze to a firmer consistency than my past attempts, thanks to Wardeh’s tip not to overfill the freezing canister. It could have used a bit more sweetening, and my husband felt like the coconut flavor overpowered the strawberry flavor, but as it disappeared pretty quickly, I’d say nobody really minded.

I’d been wanting to try Wardeh’s Basic Soaked Muffins for awhile, and I finally got around to making her version (using soft white wheat) as well as a gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free version (using an all-purpose blend of gluten-free flours—buckwheat, millet, sorghum and sweet rice) that Kellen could eat (pictured here). I added raisins to both batches, and was really pleased with the results. We had them for breakfast for several days before they, too, were all gone.

It’s probably pretty evident from this post—as well as many others I’ve written—that Wardeh Harmon is a real inspiration in my real-food endeavors. And she can be for yours, too. If you need basic recipes and techniques—as well as encouragement and ideas—for converting your kitchen to traditional food-preparation methods, I hope you’ll consider enrolling in her GNOWFGLINS Fundamentals eCourse. (I wrote about it in this post.) You can also click on the “Simple Plan, Healthy Food” image below to read more about what the course will include. Enrollment begins Friday, Feb. 5!

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.