lotus-life

This recipe is based on a very nice recipe on the Cultures for Health site. It is an easy and satisfying way to use your sourdough starter. These waffles are moist, tasty, a little bit tangy, and great for breakfast or lunch (as sandwich bread!) or an anytime snack. Freeze the extras, and then toast whenever you want one. I have a "defrost" button on my toaster, which is very handy. Ingredients/preparation: Preheat waffle maker. In a mixing bowl, combine: 2 cups sourdough starter 1 tables...

Crepes are pretty easy to make (especially if you don't mind what they look like), though they take some time, since they are cooked a one-at-a-time. They are also a very handy use of ‘discarded’ starter (what you need to take out before feeding). They keep well for a few days in the fridge, and can be served almost ANY WAY. For a sweet treat, spread/fill with jam, berries, whipped cream, syrup, chocolate, honey, cinnamon and sugar, etc. For savory, optionally omit the sweetener in the crep...

Happy New Year! Thinking about how to eat healthier? Join the club. :) Seriously, what can you do to improve your diet? A great start is to look in your cabinets and start [re-]reading product labels. How many ingredients do they contain? How may can you pronounce? How much violence have they likely suffered before they reached you? Even if it is “organic", how much does the product resemble something you have seen in nature? The industrial processing of food not only frequently adds junk ...

Here is a sourdough pancake recipe [mostly] from What's Cooking America, perfect for using up starter (you might want to bulk up your starter just for this). The batter is a little goopy, so tricky to get onto the griddle without making a mess--but worth it! The texture is excellent. I made these pancakes recently with 3 cups starter and two eggs, and bumped up the other ingredients by about half. I had plenty left over for the freezer. Pop them in the toaster (or just let them thaw) and they...

Quinoa is a cheap, nutritious, easy-to-cook pantry staple. It was an important crop of the ancient Incas, and has been a staple in South America for thousands of years. These days, it is widely available in North America. Hooray! High in protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals, quinoa is technically a seed (not a grain). However, it easily takes over for grains in my kitchen. It comes in red and the more common, plain ‘white’—my family prefers the white. I often make it to go with dinner (unde...

Along with cleaning out my pantry, breakfast is one of the first big challenges I tackled. What would we do without our old favorite standby, cold breakfast cereal with coconut-almond milk? I started with overnight-soaked oatmeal (“porridge"), and also started serving more (pastured!) eggs. Granola was still an option, but I ditched the nut milk, since it has all kinds of extra stuff in it. Going back to cow’s milk, I found that there are at least a couple of brands at Whole Foods that are...