Last week, I went over to the my friend Denise’s home for a mid-afternoon snack and chat. Little did I know how awesome an afternoon it was going to be, full of fermented foods. We ate a number of kimchis, had some pancakes made with kimchi, and enjoyed a fermented soda. She did a great job making the fermented products, and got me all excited again about making ferments.
The first kimchi I tasted was a water kimchi. This is a lesser-known kimchi in the US (I’m really familiar with the cabbage kimchi), and is very light. She made it with primarily some kind of leafy green.
Next was a kimchi made from butternut squash. The squash was not cooked beforehand, but you’d never know it – the squash was soft but not without substance. It was a little sweet, a little savory. Really wonderful!
The final kimchi I tasted was the kind I’m used to – cabbage kimchi with ginger, garlic, hot peppers, etc, though not made with napa cabbage. It was very good. We used some of the juice in the mung bean pancakes.
Then I tasted a bit of this corn salsa she made back in the late summer. Wowza, it was delicious! I am going to make this next year.
I love to bake, and have a long history of being a baker. My mom’s side of the family is known for its tasty cookies and brownies, and I grew up with homemade puddings, cakes and cookies at home, many of them made by me. I developed quite the sweet tooth as a result.
When I began to eat traditional, unrefined foods, I started to analyze my connection to sugar – I realized that it was unhealthy and dysfunctional, and I came to the conclusion that I had to get the sugar out. I went through a handful of cold turkey periods, and now I’ve found ways to manage my sugar cravings that work for me. It also helped that after enough times of eating sugary sweets and having my GI tract revolt, I got the message my body was sending, loud and clear.
These days I find that I just have less of a sweet tooth, and that has happened naturally as I’ve moved toward this new way of eating. Increasing my intake saturated fats, which deters carb and sugar cravings, no doubt has contributed to this happy development.
As a result of cutting out refined sugar, most things taste a little sweet, therefore conventional sweets are often cloying to me. When I do make sweet things at home, I use unrefined sweeteners – raw honey, maple syrup, sucanat/rapadura. They have less of a negative effect on my GI-tract. That being said, sweets are really a treat at this point, and I don’t eat sweet things regularly anymore.
I’ve been experimenting with using sprouted wheat flour, too. It’s been fun working with it! I will use it as much as I can – it digests as a vegetable, which is a kind thing to do to my body.
When I went to go pick up milk this weekend, there were containers of wild raspberries for sale! I love raspberries so I bought a container. Man, were they ever good. I ate a bunch yesterday, and knowing they are highly perishable, I wanted to do something with them that involved cooking. Muffins seemed like a good choice.
So, I went hunting for a recipe for sprouted flour muffins and came across a recipe from Wardeh – it served my purposes perfectly! Happily, I had everything I needed on hand – plus, since it’s summer, the coconut oil is liquid and the extra step of melting it is unnecessary.
It’s a very easy recipe to follow, too – wet ingredients mixed, then dry, add together and stir in the fruit. I love low-key recipes like this.
The muffins came out beautifully – gorgeous to look at and delicious. Not very sweet, which was what I expected, and nice and moist. I’ll likely eat a few, then freeze some of them to have for later, too. I look forward to experimenting with the basic recipe and adding all sorts of tasty things to it.
These muffins contain all sorts of good, healthful things – pastured eggs, unrefined sweetener, sprouted flour, and coconut oil. These muffins are tasty and great for you!
2 tablespoons raw apple cider vinegar
1 cup raw milk (if you can’t get raw milk, whole milk from grass fed cows would be the best option)
2 local, pastured eggs
1/2 cup evaporated cane juice or Sucanat or other solid natural sweetener (optional: powder in food processor if coarse – I didn’t do that)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup virgin, unrefined coconut oil (melted if solid at room temperature)
2-1/4 cups sprouted spelt or wheat flour
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons aluminum-free baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1.5 cups wild raspberries
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
In mixing bowl, combine eggs, milk, apple cider vinegar, vanilla and sweetener. Whisk well. While whisking, add coconut oil.
Combine flour, salt, cinnamon, and baking powder in a separate bowl and fluff with a fork. Add to wet ingredients and mix until smooth.
Add wild raspberries to incorporate.
Fill oiled muffin tin, or paper-lined muffin tin, with the batter to a generous three-quarters full each.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean and muffins are gently browned.
Take out of oven and transfer muffins to a cooling rack. Store in an airtight container when fully cooled. They can also be stored in the freezer.
