Adventures in... Amazake!

AMAZAKE! Even the name sounds awesome. I ran across this little gem randomly a couple months ago... some recipe in the blogosphere recommended using amazake in place of milk for gluten-free baking that is fluffier than the typical gluten-free fare. Since I love to hear about new stuff, I immediately started googling it.

As it happens, amazake is a fermented rice beverage, that is fermented for a much shorter time than the sake you think of when you think of fermented rice. With amazake, you use the same starter culture as sake, but only ferment said rice for a day or less. The culture breaks the rice down into simple sugars, which makes it sweet and tasty. Apparently this Japanese drink is a holiday beverage; from what I gathered at the Japanese grocery store, they drink it over the winter holidays, the same way we think of eggnog as a winter treat.

I love anything made with rice because it's one of the few grains I can tolerate, and I just loved the idea of a cultured rice that would make my gluten-free cooking more fun. But it turns out that amazake is still in the "underground" here in the US. I found ONE brand of it at a health food store, and it was super expensive for a 12 oz bottle. And when I went to Japanese grocery stores around town and asked if they had either amazake OR the koji rice starter needed to make it, I was greeted with blank stares. I was a LITTLE surprised by this, because the koji starter is used to ferment miso, too, and my internet searches suggested I could find koji light rice starter at my neighborhood japanese grocer. Alas, the ATL is clueless about amazake.

So, to the internet I went, and I purchased a koji spore starter pack. That was the cheapest option I could find. It came in the mail on Thursday, and I was so excited! It turns out, this is more complicated than I initially expected. All I got was little pack of spores, with instructions on a 48 hour process of combining these spores with rice to create koji rice. THEN I store the koji rice, and I can mix THAT cultured rice with other cooked rice in a 24 hour process to make some amazake. Phew! This is going to be intense. Luckily, I will be home for the next 4 days, three of which make up a long weekend. Perfect timing for an insane culturing project!

Since the internets seem pretty oblivious to culturing koji rice and making amazake, I think I will need to document this process and, if it's successful, post about it so that there's some more info out there for the culture-loving internets. I mean, even Instructables doesn't have a tutorial on making amazake. I guess I'll have to be the first!

Tonight my task is just to rinse 6 cups of white rice VERY WELL, then soak it in water overnight. Tomorrow the more intense process of making koji rice begins. I will probably save it all up until my amazake is made, then put together a good tutorial post or two after all is said and done. Let the adventure begin!

Culture Happy

I've been reading lots of blogs about healthy eating lately, so my thoughts have been on building up a healthy body lately. Basically, the idea is that there are no "neutral" foods. Anything you eat will either heal or harm your body in some small (or not so small) way. I've learned this the hard way, as foods like wheat and potatoes harm my body in a VERY noticeable way. But this has made me mindful of the not so noticeable ways that the food choices we make either heal or harm our bodies, and not just in a "gain weight" versus "lose weight" kind of way.

So while I am still one to grab a bowl of haagen dazs chocolate ice cream when the craving strikes (as it did tonight), I am also trying to consider what other food choices I can make consistently that heal rather than harm.

One of the ways we can do this is with eating foods with probiotics. We get probiotics from a number of fermented foods. The one you hear about on all the TV commercials is yogurt, but there are other types of fermented beverages that are chock full of beneficial active cultures... although most of them are pretty expensive if you buy them prepackaged at the store. Their benefits have often been overhyped, but ultimately they are tasty beverages that can be used for cooking and baking as well as drinking, and that work to heal and build up your body rather than tear it down.

I am not going to go into all the benefits of these things. There are plenty of excellent bloggers who have already done it and that's where I learned it from anyways. Below, I've provided a "recommended reading" list for those of you who want to learn more.

But in the next few days I'm going to tell you about my adventures in culturing. I'm getting pretty excited about it so I wanted you share in my excitement! Also, although this stuff is pretty common in the world of healthy food bloggers (at least, all the ones I read), most people don't know what this stuff is or that you can make it at home. So my goal is to spread the knowledge outside of that realm a little bit.

Recommended Reading:

• Health Benefits of Yogurt from Kitchen Stewardship
• Kombucha-licious from Making Love in the Kitchen
• Kefir from Cultures for Health (scroll down for the details)
• How to make Amazake from Homegrown Evolution

Fatten up your Baby

This one is short and sweet and for all you mommas out there whose pediatricians are a little concerned because your baby is in a lower weight percentile.

This is what I fed Zeke when our doc was concerned about his weight when he was 6 months old. What can I say, the kid has a high metabolism, and his momma produces 2% milk instead of cream. When I needed to get some more fat in my little man's diet, pretty much the only solid he would eat was bananas. So this is what I came up with:

Zeke's Chubby Cheek Breakfast Mush:

• 1/2 of 1 banana
• 1/4 of 1 fresh avacado
• 1 tbsp flax meal
• dash of cinnamon (optional, only if you know your baby can handle cinnamon. Turns out mind is allergic to it.)

That's it! Mash it all up together and then serve. Flax and avacado are both full of healthy fats, and omega 3s. Fantastic for brain development along with being a great way to add some chub to those cheeks.

When Zeke got chubby enough (after some time, people actually started remarking how he'd put on some some pounds!), I started easing off the avacado. I would cut it into chunks and freeze the chunks, then set down one chunk to thaw every night so it was ready for breakfast in the morning.

Now that Zeke is older, I put the avacado chunk, banana, and flax in his daily smoothie (along with extra goodies like blueberry, spinach, and carrots).

Let the chub begin!

Green Smoothie weekend - belated reflections

Wow, I've been meaning to add more reflections on the green smoothie cleanse, but life just keeps... well, you know, happening. I pretty much only get to reflect in the car, the kitchen, or the shower. And my laptop just isn't too handy in either of these places. But tonight the boy is asleep, the hubby is away, and I've got another night or two before freelance will take over my life again, so here I am.

(If you don't care about my rambling but do care for the recipe for my rich tasting superfood snackalicious smoothie, jump on down to the bottom of the post).

So I think what I was really hoping to get out of the weekend was some sort of noticeable health improvement. More specifically, my hands have been breaking out for a LONG while now, and nothing I do seems to help. I've got my cleaning regimen down to very few, all-natural ingredients, and the only soap I use is homemade, unscented, organic goats milk castile soap. Yet my hands still itch and crack and drive me crazy. So I was hoping that they would clear up some over the weekend and I'd be able to use that starting point to figure out a food that's doing it. No such luck.

In fact, from the second day of the cleanse and straight through the next 10 days or so while I was still having a smoothie a day, my throat was sore and weird. So if anything I've discovered that I'm INTOLERANT to something I was putting into smoothies... and with so many ingredients in them, it was impossible to figure out what was doing it.

So I have officially gotten off the green smoothie bandwagon for a while. Gotta slowly keep an eye on what I eat and figure out what's doing the throat stuff.

Zeke, on the other hand, is still rocking about 16-20 oz of smoothie a day. He loves it and I love that he loves it. I'm slowly modifying his recipe to get an optimal mix that doesn't break the bank, and isn't too sweet. For instance, I'm trying to cut down on how much blueberry goes into them, but it seems he won't drink them without blueberries. (In case you haven't noticed, blueberries aren't cheap!) And since likes to eat his bananas, I don't want to put another whole banana in his smoothie... I've been dropping about a cup of frozen organic spinach in each day's smoothie for the high calcium value. But again, that ain't cheap. So now I'm experimenting with adding two tbsp of hulled sesame seeds and chia seeds for their high calcium content. And since these are for Zeke and not me, the high fat value of the seeds isn't a problem at all... in fact, I'm always looking for ways to bulk this skinny minnie up a little bit. So the Zeke smoothie is still going strong.

I also realized that when I'm making smoothies, I basically put all the same food in it that I would eat in installments throughout my day as snacks (a banana, some greek yogurt with fruit and honey, some almonds... you get the picture). Only now they're all packed into my morning smoothie and it doesn't fill me up and so then I'm eating MORE food throughout the day. Not really what I'm going for. Plus it takes more prep time in the morning than just throwing those items whole into containers and taking them to work to much on slowly throughout my day.

So there you have it. I'm an oddball and smoothies don't work for me. However, I will say that I am kind of hooked on the not-quite-so-green dessert smoothie I came up with during the cleanse. It's a good alternative to ice cream or a chocolate bar when I need something chocolatey and sweet....

Kendra's Not-So-Green Superfood Smoothie

• 1 cup almond milk (preferably made from scratch)
• 2 tbsp raw cacao (not to be confused with cocoa)
• 1 tbsp chia seeds
• 4-5 sprigs of fresh mint (yummy yummy yummy!)
• 4 soaked dates (or 1 tbsp honey if you don't want to wait on soaking the dates)
• 2 dashes cinnamon
• 1 banana
• 1 tbsp almond butter
• (optionals: 1 tbsp almond butter, 1/2 zucchini, 1/2 cup decaf coffee)

Blend it all up in your blender, transfer to a cup and sip away!

Remember that this is a rough template. I always go with what you have on hand and what I think I "need" from said smoothie.

While we're at it, Meghan's got a recipe for a chocolate pudding with a similar ingredient list.

Green Smoothie weekend

This weekend is my Green Smoothie Cleanse weekend! It actually kinda started Tuesday, which was "vegan" day. Wednesday was grain-free, and Thursday was all raw... which led me to Friday and the beginning of the all-smoothie, all the time weekend.

Since this has been taking up quite a bit of my thought process for the week, I thought I'd talk about it a little bit.

I should begin by saying that as long as I am using ingredients I like in a good combination and blending them up sufficiently, not only do I enjoy green smoothies, but I feel like I'm doing something good for my body and getting some good nutrients and energy for the day when I drink one. I also love that Zeke enjoys them (again, as long as they contain some essential ingredients such as a banana, blueberries, and spinach or kale). I have enjoyed getting the two of us into the habit of each drinking a nutrient rich, calcium rich green smoothie every morning (well, Zeke's 16 oz is stretched between breakfast and a mid-morning snack). So even in preparing for the cleanse, I learned a lot, and I've been inspired to make one major change in our daily eating habits.

The other thing I like about this cleanse is that I'm not starving myself for it... I can eat as many smoothies as I need (which it turns out is about one less than I expected to need, for a total of 4 a day).

Now for my whining! First off, along with the general rule to eat at least three green smoothies a day (and ONLY eating smoothies), the cleanse also has a schedule of other activities that you SHOULD do, including getting 8 hours of sleep, drinking lemon water an hour before the breakfast smoothie, spending time meditating, exercising, etc. HA! This is all the stuff that I sort of laughed at. Sure, without a 15 month old I might be able to dedicate my whole 3 days to this cleanse and force myself to do all this stuff I normally don't do, but... even 8 straight hours of sleep is still unrealistic for me. Still, I tried to do any of the items that seemed reasonable. I even TRIED to get 8 hours of sleep, although my first 2 days of that have been unsuccessful.

But pretty much, aside from eating smoothies, I've only managed to get about 30 minutes of exercise each day, drank plenty of water and herbal tea, and took psyllium before bed. Oh, and I did the dry skin brushing. Yep, that is all. Alas, I do the best I can.

And oh man, I gotta say this green smoothie thing takes more of an investment in TIME and CASH than I imagined. I'm sticking with it and happy to be doing so, but my wallet is hurting... it costs a whole lot more to eat all veggies, fruits, nuts, and superfoods than it does to eat lots of rice, legumes, and beans supplemented with the veggies, fruits, and nuts. And the food prep and smoothie blending both seem to take more time than just cooking up some meals. Sticking with it, but to be honest I'm glad it's only 3 days of smoothies, 5 days of raw total... my wallet couldn't sustain it any more than that. And time... Thursday night I got Chris to help me prep my veggies (washing, cutting, soaking, etc... getting things organized in the fridge so I can just toss stuff in the blender when it's time to make them), and it took the two of us about an hour to do. Then each night I've made two smoothies for the next day's lunch and snack, and THAT has taken about an hour each night. Not to mention I think I'm seriously wearing out my cheap blender.

So those are my main takeaways from this experiment. That doing green smoothies requires more of a time and cash investment that I have on a regular basis. It's more of an upper middle class event, it seems. Even the time and energy investment is a bit more taxing than I like. But as I said, I'm still glad I'm doing it, and I hope it helps me feel better and gets me back in good eating habits overall. And I do love that making one a day for Zeke ensures that he gets the nutrients his needs, even if he feels like being picky over the rest of the day's meals.

Raw goodies

In a couple of weeks, I'll be participating in a 3 day Green Smoothie Cleanse (tutorial available Jul 20), to try and get my eating habits back on track, and just do some general good things for my body. I've been feeling pretty cruddy lately and I'm hoping that will help.

So the same girl who is hosting the Green Smoothie Cleanse (I already got my tutorial, and man is it JAM PACKED with goodness), is doing a promo for a raw snacks company in Canada. I can't buy any of their tasty snacks being way down here in GA (they don't sell them down here yet), but I am hoping to win some with her giveaway. She's also giving away all her other tutorials... now that I have the Green Smoothie Cleanse tutorial, I know I would love the others, too!

Speaking of which, anyone want to join me doing the smoothie cleanse, Aug 6-8? It's always good to have moral support.

Glass Straws?

For those of you who are big fans of straws, I just learned about a company who makes glass straws that you can carry with you. Kind of an interesting idea, from a conservation and anti-plastic standpoint.

One of my favorite bloggers is hosting a giveaway now, in case you want to check it out. And let me know in the comments if you do!

Gardening Update

left to right: basil, tomato, parsley, dill

If I had read my blog feed yesterday before potting my tomato plant, I would have seen this excellent post on how to plant the best tomato plants, and I wouldn't be back out there re-potting it this morning while Zeke napped. I didn't do ALL the stuff in the blog post, but I did plant the stem down farther, throw a banana peel in there, and put the plastic container around it to keep worms away. It already had composted manure and some organic fish fertilizer in it. While I was at it, I also replanted my basil in a better pot, and added the aquaglobes for watering that I got super-cheap on woot.com.

I'm particularly hopeful about getting some tomatoes this year, because growing my own is pretty much my only hope for pain-free tomatoes. You see, I suspect that my intolerance to nightshade veggies stem from a sensitivity to the alkaloids they contain. If that's the case, then I wouldn't have a problem with tomatoes that had ripened on the vine for three days. But pretty much the only way to get three-day vine ripened tomatoes is to grow 'em yourself. So when I saw these tips for great tomatoes, I figured I should put them to good use. At least, the ones that were fairly easy to execute. Here's hoping for a tasty harvest!

Oh yeah, and I made a little bird feeder with a couple pine cones, peanut butter, and millet (upper right, it's a bit dark in the photo). I thought it would be neat for Zeke to see the birds up closer. If this works well we might buy a bird feeder eventually.

Plants!

As spring came along, I was pretty jealous of all my friends with space and time to plant a garden. I figured next year I'd try my hand at some container gardening again, but I just didn't have the time to go looking for organic plants (forget about trying to grow things from seed, I just don't have the skills!)

So imagine my excitement that I have 6 plants this year, and all I've paid for is the dirt! Friends from church have passed along some extra plants they had growing, so now I have parsley, dill, basil, rosemary, and a sweetie tomato plant. And my awesome sister-in-law got me started with a sweet potato plant. I'm so excited to have some fresh herbs more immediately, and hopeful about the tomato and sweet potatoes to come.