On the food front, finding food for us to eat for 3½ days is a bit of a struggle. This year, I packed various homemade food over the past two months that I had frozen in advance for vacation. The potato latkes from Chanukah, for example, were OK since I had packed little applesauce cups as well, so they had a nice condiment to go with them. Spaghetti pie (recipe in Honest Pretzels by Mollie Katzen), however, normally one of my daughter’s favorite dishes did not freeze and defrost nicely into a tasty dish. Most of it got thrown out, unfortunately. The homemade mushroom barley soup was a hit, but the prepared Tabatchnick’s frozen mushroom barley soup not as much. My kids normally like macaroni and pizza slices, but how many of those can one eat? Ditto for Streit’s canned minestrone soup – all my kids like that soup, but not for every meal. My family eagerly consumed leftover chicken soup last night when we got home.

For myself, I made brown rice in the crockpot two nights in a row (1 part rice to two parts water). I bought scallions and parsley in a supermarket right before we got to Stratton. Scallions are an improvement over bringing an onion and a knife and then ignoring the onion for the duration of the trip. You can cut scallions with a plastic knife, if necessary. Also, one year I brought lettuce on our winter trip, only to find it had frozen and wilted on the journey. Parsley holds up better in the winter weather. I’ve also learned to bring a few bags of frozen vegetables – easy to store, easy to prepare.

If you bring your own food on vacation, what tips do you have for storing, preparing or serving the food?

• 1/2 cup steel cut oats (double for more)
• 1 cup of water (double for more)

Grind the oats – I use my coffee bean grinder. Soak the oats overnight (or longer). Cook for about twenty minutes in twice as much water as the measurement of the starting oats (so 1 cup of water if you started with 1/2 cup of oats). Stir every five minutes, more toward the end.

How do you like your oatmeal? I eat this straight, but my family members like oatmeal with maple syrup. Some people like a pat of butter or a teaspoon of cinnamon in their oats.

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Now I will tell you how I came about this version. A few years ago, my father decided steel cut oats would be a good to try, for nutrition reasons. We found it took about 40 minutes to cook, however, and it was still gritty. Then I was reading a book about fermenting grains, and I decided to soak mine. That helped, but they were still somewhat gritty. Finally, I read this post about a man who had healed his own cancerous tumors with a mixture of grains and seeds, including oats. He ground his first, and in the comments I found this note by Eileen Weaver: “One of the reasons this worked well was that the grains were soaked overnight, after being FRESHLY ground. The soaking activates the enzymes that would have sprouted the seeds/grains.The activated enzymes begin to convert the storage forms of protein/starch/minerals to active forms, and dramatically increase the vitamin content. All seeds, whatever form they are in are better for soaking because of this.” Eileen convinced me. I’ve been hooked ever since.

More on soaking grains.

And why steel cut oats? “I would argue that cut oats are better for you simply because they are processed less than the rolled variety.”

Quick Oats, Steel Cut Oats, or Regular Oats: What’s the Difference?

Radish, Kale, Parsely in watercolor by Leora Wenger, 2011

So here are some salad dressing ideas:

• Olive oil, raw apple cider vinegar, sea salt, turmeric, pepper and garlic powder
• Olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper
• Ilana-Davita’s Sweet and Tangy Dressing (balsamic vinegar, olive oil, sweet chili sauce, salt and pepper)
• Rachel: crushed garlic, dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, dried oregano (if your kids don’t mind “green stuff”) and olive oil
• Rachel: lemon juice, cumin, salt and pepper, and olive oil
• Olive oil, honey, mustard, a little orange juice and a little vinegar, salt and pepper.
• Ilana-Davita: balsamic vinegar, olive oil, soya sauce, lime juice, salt and pepper
• Sandy: Cilantro or basil in the blender with vinegar and olive oil.

Get the idea? How do you dress your salad? If you comment and it fits the olive oil category, I’ll add it to the list.

lentils in a jar turned upside-down so the water drains

Equipment

• 1 mason jar
• 1 screen lid (I bought this green Sprouting Strainer Lid from Amazon)

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup brown lentils
• 1 cup water

Place the lentils in the jar and screw on the screen lid. Let the lentils soak for about 12 hours. After that, drain and rinse out the lentils every 6-8 hours (I confess, I sometimes waited 24 though not on purpose and the lentils were fine). You drain the lentils into the sink and then rinse the lentils. You turn the jar upside down unto a plate and let it drain again. Repeat in about 8 hours. The lentils are ready when they sprout little tails (in about 3 days). You can then store them in the refrigerator. They will last for at least one week.

Why sprout?

• It’s fun.
• The lentils are tasty and add crunch to a salad
• Of course, there seem to be numerous health reasons to sprout.

I covered the lentils with a sock to keep them out of the light. Most of the recipes seemed to suggest this is not necessary, so I left the sock out of the post. Here was one simple post I found that talked about sprouting in general.

We are in the middle of the Nine Days – that is, the days before the 9th Av when traditional Jews do not eat meat except on Shabbat. Last night I prepared a successful meal, so I thought I would share what I made:

• Homemade rye bread – half white flour, half rye flour with a little dried oregano
• Mushroom barley soup – with shiitake mushrooms, carrots and sauteed onions
• Salmon, grilled on the stove top with a bit of lemon and some dried oregano
• Salad: lettuce, grated carrots, chopped beets tossed with olive oil and raw apple cider vinegar
• Fried noodles with cheese (that really made my kids happy)
• Steamed cauliflower
• Bean dip: cooked northern beans pureed with fermented garlic, lemon juice, sea salt and olive oil

I don’t usually make meals that varied in the middle of the week!
What have you been cooking?
You might want to try these fish cakes.

photo of Leora in 1999 on our one and only family camping trip

And now, the pearls of wisdom from Dottie:

It’s always helpful to have a few dishes prepared ahead of time. Bean soups are usually enjoyed by everyone … and they are so quick to heat up over either over camp fires or portable burners.

Salad lovers love our boiled & pressed salads, especially if a yummy dressing is used. People who enjoy Japanese cuisine readily accept our non-seafood nori rolls, while people who like roast beef & potatoes, like our nishime carrots & turnips. If your family enjoys fresh fruit, well, that’s a great, EASY dessert.

Stir-fries are also an easy camping dish, and many people are used to eating them. You could remove your portion, and then cook a bit of pre-cooked meat into the stir-fry for the meat-eaters. lol… or if you have your daughters well-trained, add tempeh or seitan, instead of the meat.

Pancakes are a great breakfast for everyone…. Of course, you might be lucky that your family wouldn’t mind steel-cut oats with raisins & walnuts. Depending upon how much time I have, before we start traveling, I’ll cook the oats at home, and then warm them up while traveling. At other times, I actually have more time while camping, so I measure out the oats & water at home, and pack them to cook later. OR to make things very simple, I just have rice porridge from left-over rice for breakfast.

Pasta & noodles are easy camping food… they can be added to soups, salads, stir-fries, or used on their own, with a yummy sauce.

If things are very time-limited, Nori rolls, miso soup, and canned chickpeas over a raw or boiled salad is a quick, tasty meal. Adding a few finely chopped greens to the soup as I serve it, is a good way to “freshen” it. Having freshly cooked greens are a great way to de-stress our bodies from the assault of traveling. Most importantly, have fun, enjoy the adventure, and make beautiful memories.

• • •

What kinds of healthy food have you brought with you on your vacations?

Why use these special mushrooms? Why not just stick to white button mushrooms? In addition to the excitement of having something new in one’s soup, maitake and shiitake have medicinal benefits. Here’s a post on the health benefits of maitake (slows tumors, protects healthy cells from becoming cancerous, may reduce the need for insulin and more). This post on the health benefits of shiitake mushroom is on cancer.org. Susun at Planet Thrive writes about medicinal mushrooms in general.

Here are a bunch of maitake mushrooms.

This is a shiitake mushroom. Sometimes I put a shiitake mushroom in a mug of hot water and drink it the way someone would a cup of tea.

I’m going to use them in mushroom barley soup tonight. If I have leftover mushroom barley, sometimes I stuff it into my Friday night chicken. I’ve also made mushroom lentil soup.

Do you have any favorite mushroom recipes?

Purple Crocus in the Spring Snow

Bud of a Small Willow Tree in Our Backyard

Magnolia Bud on My Neighbor's Tree - March 15, 2011

For more Nature Notes, visit Rambling Woods:

In “unnatural” news, I was upset to hear of a terrorist attack in Jerusalem – this came one week after the brutal massacre of a family in Itamar, Israel. For some upbeat news, you can watch Autistic Child Fully Recovered with Biomedical Treatment for Autism.

This was my first kraut, which had chopped garlic and carrots in addition to the cabbage. Note the large cabbage leaf on top.

Ingredients and Supplies

• Cabbage – any kind will do
• Sea salt – a few sprinkles for every time you chop up some cabbage
• 1 large glass jar
• 1 small glass jar that will fit inside the large jar – I used a baby food jar.
• Knife, cutting board, large bowl

How to Prepare the Sauerkraut

Put aside one or two large, outer leaves from the cabbage for later. Chop the cabbage. When the cutting board is full of cabbage, put it in the large bowl and sprinkle on some sea salt. Each time you fill the cutting board with cabbage, sprinkle on some sea salt. If you prefer amounts, in his book Wild Fermentation, Sandor Katz suggests 3 tablespoons per 5 pounds of cabbage.

According to Sandor Katz, you can’t use table salt, as it may not work in the fermentation process. More about sea salt vs. table salt on this article. You can buy sea salt in Highland Park at Anna’s Health Food Center for about $3.

Once the chopped cabbage is in the bowl, you press it with your hands until the water from the cabbage starts to leak out. In one video I watched, the sauerkraut preparer used a potato masher to hasten the process. In another, the person wore plastic gloves while pressing the cabbage. Next, press the cabbage into the large glass jar. Take the outer leave(s) and press them on top of your chopped cabbage. If the brine doesn’t cover the chopped cabbage, add a little water + salt to the top so it does cover. Press your small baby food jar bottle on top of the cabbage. If you can’t cover your large jar with the cap (and you probably won’t be able to until the cabbage has settled more or has been eaten a bit), cover it with a cloth and a rubber band.

Place your jar on a high shelf in your kitchen or in your basement or some other cool, dry place. Do not refrigerate yet – that will stop the fermentation process. Feel free to try the mixture every few days. We ate some after one week, and then we ate the rest after two weeks. If you have the patience to wait a month, maybe it will be even better then!

Benefits of Fermentation

Sandor Katz writes: “Fermentation not only preserves nutrients, it breaks them down into more easily digestible forms.” Some of you may have heard of priobiotics and its many benefits — think of fermentation as creating your own probiotics. A Finnish study found fermented cabbage could be even healthier than raw or cooked cabbage for fighting cancer.

For more information:

• See the videos in this post on Fermentation Experimentation
• Read Sandor Katz’s book Wild Fermentation;
  check out his recipe: Making Sauerkraut is Easy!
• Healing Properties of Cabbage
• Plant-Derived Biomolecules in Fermented Cabbage

Last night I found these two videos, with a fellow named Steve:

There are more videos by SteveMackOnline (that’s his YouTube username).

Notes: you do most of the work one day, and then a week or a month later you enjoy the results. That works well for those who like to plan ahead. Also, you will note both these videos talk about mold growing in the fermenting process (and Steve’s shows him throwing it away). Hmm, guess one has to get used to such things! My vegetables didn’t produce as much liquid as Sandor’s. But his recipe with cabbage, carrots, garlic and onion already tasted much yummier than the cucumbers in seaweed I tried last week. I hope to update you next week with photos of my finished product.