‘hummus’ on different way….marching against monsanto

Posted on 31 October, 2013 by saskia

Yesterday there was a demonstration against companies who are working with pesticides, ruin farmers, working with GMO and who are big companies.
I am talking about Monsanto, the most famous one, Syngenta, the biggest one, Bayer, BASF, Pioneer and Dow.
For me this was a good way to show the people I am against it, unfortunately it wasn’t so crowded, maybe it was the time of the day and the day in the week. On Wednesday a lot of people are working. And I had to leave earlier also because I was with the little boys.
But after all I was glad to be there. A couple of weeks ago I was demonstrating against the hummus again (to eat it), so I wanted to make a variation on it. And yes I made a variation with a basic of raw soaked cashew nuts!
And here you will get the recipe also

The ingredients for the ‘hummus’ on a different way
200 gram of chick peas (soaked overnight in a bowl with water and cook for 1 1/2 hour and /get rid of the peel after cooking by taking a chickpea in 2 fingers and slide the peel off for more creamy hummus/)
200 gram of raw cashew nuts (soaked overnight in a bowl with water)
1/2 lemon juice
3 tablespoons of cold pressed olive oil
3/4 cup of basil leaves
1/2 cup of chopped mint leaves
1/2 cup of water
some cayenne pepper/salt or black pepper to taste

Kitchentools
a food processor

How to begin……
Just easy this one, wash all the herbs! Get al the other ingredients together.Go to the food processor, put in all the ingredients except for the water and olive oil (and salt/pepper and cayenne pepper). Let the s-blade do his job, cutting the ingredients, in the same time you poor in slowly the water and the oil. You see the mixture is getting smooth, if you like it more smooth you poor in some more water. Put in some pepper and salt to taste!
When it’s ready put it in a jar and in the fridge it can stay for almost one week, I always smell at the mixture if it taste strange. If it does get rid of it 😉

Enjoy

Borage……….

Posted on 25 October, 2013 by saskia

Last year I seed this plant I never saw it growing, this year, wow, it becomes huge, so many flowers. Great for the colours in the garden especially when everything is green!
Original, borage comes from the Mediterranean.when to grow
You put in the full ground the seeds, when it’s not freezing anymore. So lets say in may in the Netherlands.

nice solution
I really don’t know they become very huge, so maybe you can grow some beans next to the plant, you can hang them into the borage. But they don’t become 2 metres high.

When to eat?
You can eat the flowers if you see them, they are beautiful blue and sometimes pink, you can pick them while you get the stamp of the flower and pull it towards yourself. Wash and eat! Nice for on a salad, to make it more colourful (or a soup)

Vitamins and minerals
Vitamin: very much vitamin A, C, B1,B3, B5, B6*
Minerals Iron, magnesium, potassium, sodium, copper and manganese*

TCM=Traditional Chinese Medicine
bitter, sour, sweet.Anti-inflammatory, cools wet heat of the bladder, strengthens lung yin.

*source mens en gezondheid
**qifood

how to make sourdough (starter) bread easy but long way……..

Posted on 24 October, 2013 by saskia

After I read many recipes about how to make sour dough I found a perfect recipe. It’s easy and you won’t throw anything away! Because I saw on a Dutch TV program how to make sour dough starter, but every day they threw away 100 gram of the mixture, so that will be 700 gram a week, nonsense I thought. (the program also showed us how many sour dough bread aren’t real sour dough bread, but bread with yeast and the taste of sour dough bread at least in the Netherlands). I made also one from the bread bible, you can see on a earlier post. But now I wanted to make every day sour dough bread!
Why sour dough bread?, because the phytic acid will be demolished by a long fermentation process, yeast bread is still full of phytic acid what isn’t really good for us.
I have the recipe for the sour dough starter from this site and if you are Dutch it is a great site about living self-sufficient.

The recipe of the starter
100 gram of meal (I used spelt but they say rye is really perfect as a starter)
100 grams of water

Kitchentools
a spoon to stir
a glass jar who is big enough for the dough to double in mass

Lets make………
Just put 100 gram of spelt meal and 100 gram of water together. Mix it very well till it’s a little sticky dough. Put on top a towel and some elastic to cover, set aside on a shelf. It must stand for one week, I stirred every 2 days the mixture. After one week you see bubbles in the mixture and the mixture is smelling sour! Every week feed this starter with a 1/2-1 cup of meal and 1/2 -1 cup of water and stir. He says this starter could get 20 years old, by only feeding him!!! Leave them outside the fridge and you can make the next day a new bread with the starter) otherwise put them in the fridge to keep it healthy. Before use you must see some bubbles in the starter, you see it’s active otherwise store it on a warm place for a while!
Anyway the starter is ready!

How make sour dough bread with the starter!
Ingredients
100 gram of the starter
100 gram of corn meal (you can also use 300 gram of spelt/wheat meal instead of 100 corn and 200 gram of spelt)
200 gram of spelt meal
100 gram of wheat flour
2 cups of water
(some seeds if you like)
(a pinch of salt if you like)

Kitchentools
a big bowl for let the bread raise
a moisten towel to cover bowl
a kneading machine or dough hook to mix the bread well
cake pan with some oil on the sides and bottom

It take a long time………..
So lets start to make the dough put in the meal and mix it with the starter and seeds of course in the big bowl. After poor in the water very slowly and stir well. Now you will have a nice not too sticky dough and not too dry of course just a elastic dough
I make dough at night so it can stand in the sill window cover for over night. (8 hours to raise is great for the bread)
In the morning I take the dough and again I knead it with my hands on the counter what is covered with a little flour so the dough won’t stick on the counter.
Give it a great massage and put the dough in a cake pan, the cake pan must be a little oily. Set aside for 1-2 hours again. Covered with a moisten towel.
Time to bake the bread after 2 hours, I bake it on +/-200 degrees Celsius for 20-30 minutes. The bread taste a little sour but I really like it!

ben howard………..miso soup

Posted on 18 October, 2013 by saskia

listening to Ben Howard, children are playing in the house and it’s raining outside again. Yes we live in the Netherlands……
Busy with my sour dough bread to make it perfect, and yes it’s going to be perfect….All the time waiting for the kimchi to get ready and in the meanwhile thinking about a nice warm cup of miso soup. I don’t make it often but still the miso paste is laying in the fridge to be used again…
So lets make it…it isn’t maybe the original like in Japan but really nice to eat.

Ingredients for 1 litre of miso soup (4 persons)
2 headed tablespoons of dark miso paste
a string of kombu (seaweed) like 3 by 15 cm
3 spring onions cut in thin slices
handful of munge beans sprouts
handful of radish sprouts
a piece of parsnip (like 1/3th of the root) cut in thin cubes
maybe some shi-take mushrooms if you like, cut in thin slices
1 litre water

kitchentools
a knife
a cutting board
a pan for 1 litre soup
4 bowls

lets begin…..
First wash the kombu witj a paper towel ,cut the spring onions and get the cooking pan. Fill this with water the onions, parsnip and kombu. Bring it to a boil.When it’s boiling simmer for 10-15 minutes. You get a dashi (bouillon). Put off the heat
Get the kombu out of the pan (throw away, and also 3 tablespoons of dashi, poor this in a bowl and mix it with the miso paste till it’s smooth and dark. Miso paste is not allowed to be cooked, the nutrients will get out of it. Poor the mixture into the dashi, and also the shi- takes. Get the 4 bowls fill them with the miso soup and on top you sprinkle some fresh sprouts, it looks great and taste great!

Enjoy/ボナペティ

productive day……….a coco/banana/orange ‘cheesecake’

Posted on 13 October, 2013 by saskia

Rain and rain, does it stop today? Typically the time of the year, fall has become the season…On this days I can be very productive and yes today I was. I made kimchee and a nice pie, the pie I want to bring to someone who has a big celebration this afternoon, I wanted to make this sugar free, because the last I made wasn’t (and sometimes sugar is ok, but if I can avoid it!). Now I bought the plain soy yoghurt and mixed some fruit in it. The kimchee I put in jars made from glass, so I give here also 1 jar, I think it’s a great present. This recipe of kimchee I will put later on the blog for now you get the sugar free coco/banan/orange ‘cheesecake’.

Ingredients for the coco/banana/orange cheesecake (spring 9 inch)
175 gram of biscuits/cookies (I had one without sugar with taste of coconut and lemon)
1 cup dried grated coconut
2 oranges rip of their juice and juice of a lemon
500 gram of plain soy yoghurt
3 bananas
11/2 tablespoon of rice syrup
1/3 cup of coconut oil
2 gram of agar-agar

Kitchentools
food processor with s-blade
spring 9 inch
a saucepan to heat up the oil, and to make the mixture for the second layer

Ooh lalala………
Get the saucepan and heat up slowly the coconut oil, in the meanwhile crush the biscuits/cookies in the food processor (I made them like sand, put of course you can make the pieces also bigger if you like), leave one cookie/biscuit outside of the food processor, so you can make decoration on the pie. When the coconut oil is soft poor this into the food processor, together with the biscuits/cookies. The cookies/biscuits are getting darker!
Get the spring and make the bottom from the mixture! (press it to the bottom and make sure the bottom is totally covered)

Time to make the second layer!
Mix the soy yoghurt with one banana, the other banana you cut in thin squared pieces (chunks, nice to bite)

Clean the saucepan, get the juice of the orange and lemon and get the agar-agar.
Put in the saucepan the juice and agar-agar, heat up slowly and bring it to a boil, when its boiling, let it simmer for a short time and stir occasionally, you see the juice is getting thicker, when this is happening poor in the soy yoghurt mixed with 2 bananas. Poor also in the grated coconut, 1 tablespoon of rice syrup and the chunks of banana. stir carefully. The mixture is getting a little thicker after 5 minutes or something like. Take of the pan (from the heat) and poor it over the cookie bottom. Decorate the pie, with some slices of banana, dried grated coconut and the cookies you saved from getting crushed 😉

Let it stand for at least one hour in the fridge, in this time the pie is getting hard!

Enjoy the nice taste of banana!

how to make sauerkraut……

Posted on 12 October, 2013 by saskia

So nice to make, I learned at the urbaniahoeve. And I want to share with you. Sauerkraut is a fermentation process, it is made of cabbage. Here is the recipe

ingredients for 2-4 persons sauerkraut
1 white cabbage
1/2 – 1 tablespoon of sea-salt (depends on what you like)

kitchentools
a knife to cut the cabbage
a food processor with a knife who make strings of the cabbage
2 big clean jars (I used one what was origin a jar for peanutbutter)
a big bowl

How to begin
First get the knife and cut off the ass of the cabbage (the hard ‘stem’ on the end), so you can take 2-3 big leaves from the cabbage. Put the leaves aside you need them later.
Now you can cut the cabbage in half, and the half pieces you cut in 3 equal pieces.
I used the food processor for the next step, because you need to cut the cabbage in thin strings, some use a special slicer, I didn’t had. You can also use a normal knife.
When all the cabbage is in thin strings, get the big bowl and poor the salt into the bowl over the cabbage. With your hands you knead the cabbage, so the salt will be into the cabbage. Do this like 5 minutes and wait 10 minutes, you can also taste in this time if you taste the salt a little (just a background taste, the salt is food for the bacteria). If you don’t taste the salt you put in a little more.

Time for round two, again knead the cabbage, crush, rub the cabbage against each other till you get some juice. The juice is a good sign, just knead like 5-10 minutes, you see it is very relaxing and good for the muscles in your hand 😉
Get the jars, and get two hands of sauerkraut and put in the jar. With your hand go into the jar and push the cabbage all the way down so the water is above the cabbage, again take like 2 hands and push again.
Do this again and again till you are like1-2 centimeters under the top of the jar.
Get the cabbage leaves you set aside.
Take one and put this on top of the cabbage, so you make a lid (you can push the sides with your fingers down, look the way the leave is bending). Push the cabbage leave down and the water must be upon the cabbage leave!!
Get a cork and put upon the leave, in the water. Now close the jar!
Set aside after 4 days or something like (when the process is going on) store in some cool place and wait like 3-4 weeks maybe more, and smell if the cabbage is sauerkraut!
Sometimes there will be on top some mold (in the water), get a spoon and take this out, don’t worry the process can still go on.
So your sauerkraut is ready to be eaten.

Enjoy!

visitor with big belly ;)……viva la orange/redbush ‘cheesecake’

Posted on 3 October, 2013 by saskia

Today a friend is coming, she is pregnant. And we of course have some stuff for her and her little baby. I wanted to make something sweet and not too much sugar, and after thinking I came by the idea of making cheesecake. When I wasn’t vegan at the time, I liked to eat it, but I forgot it a little.
After searching on the internet I found some recipes, so I tried today to make it and yes I like it!
So thank you Suzette for a little help. My own ingredients, based on the recipe of Suzette.

Ingredients for the viva la orange ‘cheesecake’
500 grams of orange/redbush soy yoghurt (or the taste you like) I could only find one with sugar
200 gram of coconut/lemon cookies (without sugar)
1/3 cup of coconut oil
1/2 cup of water
2 grams of agar agar powder
some raspberries for decoration, or whatever you like

Kitchentools
a little saucepan to heat up the water
a spring ( I used a gugelhupf shape 9 inch) but it was a little too big so a smaller is better!
Food processor for crunching the cookies

How to make the pie!
First crunch the cookies, this is for the bottom. Safe two cookies for decoration on the pie. Heat the coconut oil in the saucepan till it’s like water.
Poor the oil into the crunched cookie mix (you see it will get a little darker of color and a little ‘wet’)
Put the cookie-mixture on the bottom of the spring. Time to make the second layer…
Clean the saucepan and poor in the water and agar agar powder, bring it to a boil and simmer for a couple of minutes, stir occasionally. It will get less liquid, poor in the soy yoghurt and simmer for a couple of minutes more. Then it’s ready to poor on top of the cookie layer!
Cool down, and after put it into the fridge for at least 1hour, I decorate the pie with some cookie-parts and raspberries from the garden.