Sprout Farmming, Round 2

So I realized that I forgot to take pictures of the actual process. They should actually sprout within 3 days which I find amazing. We bought additional different kinds of sprouts to try them out. This time we are trying sunflower sprouts, I have no idea what they are but am very excited to try them as I love to use sunflower oil in my cooking. We also bought clover sprouts and a little package called broccoli sprouts, I am not a fan of broccoli but am open to trying new foods at least once, I don't like the texture of broccoli but maybe I will like it in sprout form.
The bottom left is the sunflower sproutlings, the right is the clover and the upper left are the broccoli sproutlets.

Ok signing off, more tomorrow on our sprouts.

The Sproutie City Mousie

Coconut Yogurt

This weekend I took a shot at making yogurt using coconut milk. I am sitting here today enjoying the fruits of my labor. I think I still have a little experimenting to do to make it thicker and creamier, but as a first attempt I find it to be palatable which is an excellent step in the right direction.

What I used:
2 13.5oz. cans of light coconut milk (next time I will use regular, I think that will help with the thick and creamy issue)
2 tbsp honey
2 bananas, finely diced
shredded, unsweetened coconut, approximately 1/2 cup
In my blender I blended the coconut milk to warm it to the right temperature, it came close, but was a little under, this may also have made a difference in thickness
Once it was approximately the right temperature I added the honey, some shredded coconut and let it blend a little more. Then I added the yogurt culture and pulsed the blender for 5 long pulses.
Next i added approximately 1tbsp of shredded coconut to each yogurt cup and 1tbsp diced banana to each yogurt cup and i poured the coconut milk mixture int each. I gently stirred the cups to mix the fruit into the liquid.
I left the individual lids off each cup, put the main lid on and let it do it's yogurting for about 10 hours.

Ok I am going to finish my yummy yogurt now
City Mouse ;)

Beer!!!

We are making beer!!!! It has been brewing for about 2-1/2 weeks at this point. After our bad night at the local bar which gave us nasty headaches we purchased the necessary equipment and started our first batch of beer.

There have been a few mis-steps along the way, but hey, life is a journey and sometimes there are bumps in the road. All in all I think it will turn out alright. For our first batch, we choose to make an amber ale, a nice middle of the road beer that we both felt we would enjoy. We ordered the 5 gallon bucket with all the cool hoses and tubing necessary, the only upgrade we decided upon was to have a glass carboy instead of a second plastic bucket, I feel that plastic tends to hold flavors and thought a glass container would help to eliminate this problem. It will also double as a vessel for making wine in someday!

Currently our beer is fermenting in it's bottles (which we recycled from beers we had already consumed) and should be ready around July 16!!!!! When I did the math on this, the savings from brewing our own was huge. Normally we pay about $9.00 for a six pack. By making our own beer it came out to approximately $3.37 per sixer, or $0.56 per 12 oz beer. Oh being sustainable is such a savings!!!

Stay posted for the great beer tasting!!!!

signing off
~ the beer"mouster" (c'mon, I had to;)

Sprouts!

We are sprout farmers!

Well not exactly farmers, we have no land and no garden, heck we live in an apartment in the middle of Brooklyn. But still we grew sprouts and it only took 3 days! They look great, fluffy, green and delicious.

I stumbled upon this last weekend when we were at the store and I wanted to buy seeds of some sort and try to grow something. Apparently sprouts are the easiest thing in the world to grow, they did not need dirt or and fancy prep. We had to rinse them and drain them three times per day and then expose them to sunlight on the fourth day. Then viola! We had sprouts. I will include a link below which has good information on sprouts themselves. Apparently they are extremely nutritious, they continue to gain vitamins after being harvested. We chose not to refrigerate ours so that they can continue to develop. The thicker stemmed ones taste very much like green beans to me and I love green beans.

There are some other seedling packets at the store that I will be getting to experiment with, but for now I am happy with the sprouts and can't wait to throw them into a salad or wrap and munch away.

More on the "farming" another day!
City Mouse

p.s. here's the link: http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/sprouts.htm

of course i am sure there are many others, i thought this one was pretty informative.

Have You Checked your local restaurants cleanliness lately?

I just did and what I discovered was......well let's say, I will think twice before ordering from some long time establishment favorites in the future.

This all started because we ordered dinner from a little local place where we sometimes grab breakfast before heading into the city. I ordered meatloaf with mashed potatoes (a favorite of mine). When it arrived, it was large and delicious looking, upon taking a first bite I completely changed my opinion of this meal sitting before me. Strangely enough MY MEATLOAF TASTED LIKE FISH! I know, this makes no sense you say, I agree. I sniffed around and took another bite....FISH! At this point I was starting to feel like a crazy person. I started to eat my mashed potatoes instead as I pondered my fishy meatloaf. Then I spotted it, a fish scale! Mr. Mouse confirmed this with me and I immediately flipped out. We called the place and they assured us that there was no way this was possible, instead of simply refunding our money the guy insisted on sending over a completely new meal (as if i would even look at it). When the delivery boy came with the meal we handed him the fish parts on a little lid and asked him to take them to his boss. Although I know that they were probably thrown into a gutter, it made me feel better to show them to someone from the establishment. What we think happened was the breading that was used in the meatloaf was also used on the fish and some of it got mixed into the meat.

After dinner I was still a little mad and wanted to file a complaint with the health department so I went to the website to see what I had to do. Out of curiosity I wanted to see if this restaurant has any other violations........it does, it has a lot of them, but not as many as some other restaurants in my area. http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/rii/index.shtml. If you need information on restaurants in NYC check that web site. We found out that one of our favorite restaurants while being delicious and having a great atmosphere is also clean (YAY!). We found out that a different place we order has 89 violations!!!!! yuck! the restaurant that started this little adventure has only 23 reported violations, one of them includes cross contamination of foods.

We have been getting lazy with our purchasing of fresh groceries and making our own food, perhaps this is the wake up call that we needed to get back into our healthy eating habits, but geez did a perfectly good piece of meatloaf have to be ruined in the process of this little reminder???

Signing off

A grossed out City Mouse

Farmgirl Fare: A Tiny Tail For Mother's Day

Farmgirl Fare: A Tiny Tail For Mother's Day

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