Produce... from our garden

I grabbed some quick pictures of veggies that we picked out of our garden the other day. 

We filled a whole basket! Green peppers, tomatoes and even a habenero, a seven pot and a jalapeno.

Has anyone ever seen this happen to a pepper?  We haven't.  We think it might be lack of water?  We have been watering our tomatoes but not our peppers because the nursery where we got them said we should not water them much.

Look at this beautiful heirloom tomato we have this year!  Do you notice the evil bunny teeth right in the middle of the side.  The first time we saw the bunny in our garden, it was only palm sized.  Now it's probably twice as big. 

After we were done picking peppers and tomatoes, the boys dug our potatoes!  I think we got about 10lbs.  (but I didn't weigh them) This is a much better yeild that last year, when we only got about three too-small-to-eat potatoes.  This year, instead of buying seed potatoes from the internet, we bought real, organic potatoes from the store and planted them! 

Finally, here is some tomatillo salsa that Chris made.  It is fermenting on our counter. Remember when I talked about adding fermented food to our diet (Kombucha is fermented!)?  We are trying new ways.  I also made a fermented green pepper and zucchini relish earlier this summer.

Well, I am going to try to add posts more often; maybe just take a quick picture and post a little blurb about it.  I know the pictures I take aren't the greatest, but they are what I have to work with now.  I don't have a great phone camera, but I also would never post another picture if I had to take them with my camera and upload them to the site.  So, for now I am going with low quality pictures over none at all.  :-) 

Have a blessed day!

Colorful food

What colorful food do you eat? 

One of my favorite funky colored food that we have is homemade sauerkraut.  It's super easy to make, and if you use a purple cabbage in the mix, you get purple sauerkraut. 

We have been trying to add more fermented foods to our diet.  So far, sauerkraut and kombucha are about all we do regularly.  I have made fermented carrots, which I like to eat with meat, but only one of the kids likes it (forgetting now who)...

Anyway, I took this picture of our lunch one day to share:

• orange slices
• homemade sauerkraut
• quesadillas with raw cheddar and homemade tortillas

On an unrelated note, I love the picture in this post.

Kombucha!!

Have you ever heard of kombucha?

Kombucha is a fermented drink made using tea and sugar and a starter, called a scoby.  Scoby stands for "symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts."  Here is a little blurb about kombucha that I found at seedsofhealth website.

A couple of months ago, my mother in law gave me a kombucha scoby.  I made it once, it didn't ferment quite like it was supposed to-- when properly fermented, it gets slightly effervescent-- and I just kept putting off brewing tea to make it.  Now that Thanksgiving and Christmas have passed, and I am trying all kinds of new things in the kitchen (and also on my sewing machine!), I made time to brew some more tea to make some more kombucha.  (You would think, as I drink tea multiple times throughout the day, that I would not have to 'make time' for this.  And really, I didn't.  I was just telling myself I would have to make all this time for it and thus putting it off and putting it off... ANYway...)

Making kombucha at home could not be easier.  Seriously.  And, if you already know about this stuff and how good it is, and you already have a craving desire for it, let me save you some (a lot of) money!  Get a kombucha scoby!  I can share mine with you, if you want and you are in the area.

Ok, so here is how I have been making mine, which method I got from Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.  (Great, awesome book, with lots of information and TONS of recipes covering all types of food.)  I seriously recommend this book to anyone who is serious about their health and crazy enough to think outside the conventional-food-available box.  :-)

Am I rambling a lot this evening, or is it just me?

Back to the recipe...

Kombucha
One scoby
1/2 cup of kombucha from another batch
2 tea bags
1/2 cup white sugar (I use organic cane sugar)
2 quarts of water
1/2 gallon jar

boil the water.  add the tea bags and the sugar.  stir until sugar is dissolved. let tea brew until it has completely cooled. pour tea, scoby, and kombucha into the glass jar.  cover with a cloth (and I put a rubber band around the top). leave on the counter 1 week- 3 weeks, until the kombucha is tasty and has bubbles around the edges. 

My latest batch of Kombucha-- you can see the scoby floating around in there. Actually there are two 'mushrooms' that have separated...

After a week or so on the counter, a new 'mushroom' should start forming on top of your kombucha.  It IS creepy, and looks slimy, but it is good!  It means your kombucha is working! Start tasting the kombucha, and when it tastes good to you (the longer you let it sit, the more vinegary the flavor will be), then it is ready to drink. 

You can brew another batch right away and use the scoby over again right away or store it in the fridge, with some kombucha for awhile.  Mine was in there for almost two months and it still worked when I used it this month. :-) I don't know if I will be storing mine in the fridge anymore, anyway, since the entire 2 quarts of kombucha was gone in two days at my house. 

Why drink this strange weird drink? Well, for one it tastes delicious.  It has a bit of bubbly-ness that is reminiscent of when I used to drink soda.  Also, it is packed full of B vitamins and other things like antioxidants and even more things that I don't know about because I honestly haven't looked up ALL the health benefits. :-)

Also, it's super cute to have your almost two year old say, "More kombucha, please, Mommy." :-)