Sourdough Success!

I have finally established a healthy sourdough starter!  Since my attempts at starting one from scratch didn’t pan out, I decided to purchase a a whole wheat sourdough starter from Cultures for Health.  After about a week of careful tending, my starter was bubbling happily.

Activating the starter required discarding about a cup of starter a day.  This is so wasteful, but I had no idea what to do with it otherwise.  Moving forward I hope to find more productive uses for the extra starter.

I made my first loaf of bread last weekend.  It was tasty but got hard very quickly so J turned the bread into croutons for our salad.  I plan to try out this sourdough pizza recipe tomorrow.

Weekly Menu – 2/19

Day	Dinner	To Do
Sunday	Dinner with family	Thaw beef; thaw chicken
Monday	Italian wedding soup	Make stock; make yogurt; thaw buttermilk
Tuesday	Batter fried chicken salad	Make ranch dressing; thaw black beans
Wednesday	Black bean taquitos
Thursday	Potato soup
Friday	Pizza
Saturday	Moussaka

For more menu ideas, check out Menu Plan Monday at Organizing Junkie.

Adoption: Officially Waiting!

We received word yesterday that we are finally “in the book”.  Our profile will begin to be shown to birth families, and we just have to wait to be picked.  We are praying that our wait is short!

On a related note, J and I recently started a group for potential adoptive parents in our area through Meetup.com.  We’ve had two meetings so far, and it has been great to talk with others in similar situations.  We have two women who have already adopted (one through an agency and one via a private adoption) lined up to speak at our March meeting.

Annoyed With Whole Foods

I don’t shop much at Whole Foods as I find most items very expensive and my local store is inconveniently located.  However, one thing I love about Whole Foods is the bulk bins.  The wall of dried beans, nuts, and coconut flakes always makes me smile.

Photo by bcmom

Usually I use my cloth produce bags to purchase dry goods from the bins.  This past weekend, all of my bags were in the laundry, so I decided to take a few mason jars with me.  Once I arrived at the store, I headed to the customer service desk to have my jars weighed.  However, I was informed that Whole Foods has no way to tare the jars and so the weight of the jars would be included in the price of the goods.  The guy “helpfully” suggested that I could use the plastic bags provided, check-out, dump the goods into my jars and then recycle the bags.  What?!  If I wanted to use plastic, I would just buy a prepackaged bag of beans and not bother driving across town to Whole Foods.  Given Whole Foods’ supposed commitment to the environment, I was taken aback by the lack of a system for using reusable containers.  Is it just my store that has this problem?  Has anyone been able to successfully use glass jars at Whole Foods?

Pulling The Plug On Cable

No more Food Network, Bravo or HGTV.  No more DVR.  No more Real Housewives of Beverly Hills or Top Chef.  As of Friday night, we no longer have premium cable.  We had intended to cancel cable all together, but oddly enough, it’s cheaper to have internet + basic cable rather than just internet.  We cut our bill from over $120/month to just over $60/month.  That’s pretty significant.  I immediately increased our savings auto-transfer amount to account for this extra money.

For those times when we want to watch something together, we have an Amazon Prime account (free because we are both in school) which allows us to stream certain movies and TV shows at no cost, and we currently have a free month with Netflix’s streaming service.  So far, we’ve been a bit disappointed with the selection offered by both of these services.  Maybe it’s for the best though because I’m really hoping that this change will prompt both of us to spend more time reading and pursuing our hobbies.

If You Need Something…Just Ask

My mom has everything.  If I need something (a new blender, a card table, etc), I usually ask her before running out to buy something.  With four kids moving in and out over the years, a penchant for shopping at estate sales, and a large basement, my parents have accumulated quite the collection of stuff.

With that said, I did not even occur to me to check with my mom when we were looking for a large glass jar for brewing kombucha.  (As I mentioned, I think our mold problem with our first culture was due to the plastic spout on the glass jar I used.)  J and I kept our eyes open while out and about hoping to find something suitable for a good price, but we didn’t have any luck.  I finally broke down and ordered a jar for $12.99.  I got an email this morning letting me know that the jar has shipped.

We went over to my parent’s house this evening for dinner and to watch the first half of the Super Bowl.  My mom had mixed up a big batch of sweet tea and asked me to pour it into the glasses.  Check out the container she used.

This is exactly what I’ve been looking for – a one gallon glass jar with a wide mouth.  Turns out she has lots of these jars, so she gave me two!  So not only are the jars free, they are re-purposed.  Fantastic!  Should I keep the jar I ordered or send it back?

My new kombucha culture arrived in the mail last week, and I set it to rehydrating Friday evening.  It will take a few weeks for it to be ready to go, but I hope to jump right in with brewing gallon-sized batches.

Fermented Cod Liver Oil…What To Do?

I screwed up.

A little over a year ago I started taking Green Pasture’s Butter Oil/Fermented Cod Liver Oil Blend (as recommended by the Weston A. Price Foundation).  As you might imagine, it tastes terrible.  The trick is to keep it in the fridge so it becomes somewhat solid, take it off of a spoon without touching it with your lips and then wash it down with a ton of water.  Easy enough.  A few months ago I ran out and just now got around ordering more.  The site I buy from does not seem to carry the blend any longer, so I just ordered two bottles of the regular Fermented Cod Liver Oil.  As you can see, it comes in a narrow neck bottle with a syringe.  Seriously? I did some quick googling and found that the FCLO does not have the same gel-like consistency as the blend; it’s a straight liquid. The thought of that oil coating my mouth makes me gag; however, at $44/bottle, I need to find a good way to get this down.  Any ideas?