What Does the Zeal Say?

Because we received this amazing hat from Lauren and Tommy...

because it's the penultimate day of my maternity leave...

 because we have imovie... 

just because.

May All Children

A few minutes of tenderness during music class:

Birthdays, Birthdays!

Chris just turned 40 last week (!) and Christine turned 33 this week. It's been a very exciting week of special meals, presents, and garden work parties. Well, just one garden work party, but it was pretty fantastic. 9 adults, 7 kids, 2 hours, and 6 cubic yards of mulch.  We mulched the front yard and back yard.

William built us a little fence from tender plum branches.

This is the end of the shoveling, but you just imagine two mountains of mulch stood here just 2 hours before.

A blooming nectarine

Fermenting the Cuteness

Zeal is spending most of his time on his belly, crawling around, so we savor the moments when he still acts like an immobile babe.

And here is Avery in his treehouse, pretending it's a boat.

Last weekend I (Christine) took another fermentation class at the Sticky Art Lab in Berkeley. We learned how to make kefir, cultured butter, and naturally pickled veggies using whey. Below is a short lesson for those who want to try something like this at home.

To make cultured butter, first make creme fraiche using a jar of heavy cream and one TBSP yogurt or buttermilk. Sit on counter 2 days. Then put some kind of agitator in the jar (like a metal napkin ring or baby spoon) and shake shake shake. Suddenly, the butter will become a big mass and the leftover liquid is .... buttermilk! The butter is cultured the way yogurt is, for example, so it's even better for you than just regular 'ole butter. We ate our butter with a bit of salt on some fresh bread. And we saved the buttermilk for a muffin recipe later in the week.

Less complicated but just as fun: we Greekified yogurt by straining it for half a day. 

What you get is Greek yogurt in the sieve and whey in the bowl below. You can use the whey for soaking all your grains/flours the night before you use them. This improves the health benefits of your grains greatly.

Kefir. The kefir grains can be seen in the spoon above. You must get these grains; you cannot create them. They are gelatinous, small nuggets made of yeast and bacteria. These grains ingest the lactose in milk and leave a drinkable yogurt that even you lactose-intolerant folks can enjoy. And what's even cooler is that the probiotic benefits from drinking kefir are superior to yogurt and other fermented foods because for some mysterious reasons, the probiotic bacteria actually take up residence in your gut instead of just passing through and communicating with the bacteria already in your gut.  

We are now getting about this much kefir ever two days. Avery likes his with a small dollop of Elvie's jam stirred in.

And then on to the veggies! Cut.

You can use whatever you have.

Jam into jars.

Add mustard seeds, 1 tsp of salt, and 4 TBS of whey, and fill jars to the brim with water. 

Cover with lid and wait at least 5 days (or up to 3 weeks) until veggies are tender and pickled. YUM!