Saturday, Feb 25

Today was a fairly typical day. 

I had a smoothie for breakfast. I did the dishes. I did some work for Timbré, for Area 12, and for school. I also cycled my water kefir, and harvested my green peas, my Lady Cream peas, my garbanzo beans, and my almonds. 

For dinner, I made that Southern-style Lady Cream pea recipe again. 

http://www.mommyskitchen.net/2010/05/farmers-market-find-southern-cream-peas.html

This time I added the green peas in as well as the carrots and used some store-bought beef broth that I had on hand. I also added a seasoning mix recommended for use with Lady Cream peas. 

http://www.camelliabrand.com/recipes/camellias-dry-herb-blend/

I just combined all the dried herbs in one of my Ninja smoothie cups and blended it up, then added it at the end of cooking time. 

Oh! One more thing I did. I decided to use the guar gum to thicken up the sauce. It was the first time I've ever used guar gum and for whatever reason, the package had no instructions I could find. So I treated it like corn starch: I put a teaspoon into 1/4 cup of the beef broth and stirred it up. 

Well, entirely UNlike corn starch, the guar gum thickened the liquid IMMEDIATELY while I was stirring it! I had to add another 1/4 cup of beef broth before I could pour it into the pan!

Despite that little hiccup, the beans and bacon dish was delicious. Brianne had hers over top of some of the rice I made in the crock pot today. 

 

After dinner, I realized I didn't have anything other than garbanzo beans in the fridge, so I started up some more beans for sprouting:

 

Left to right: 1/2 cup mixed beans, 1/2 cup Lady Cream peas, 1/2 cup English green peas, 1/4 cup mung beans + 1/4 cup lentils. 

The mixed beans are from the sorting I did earlier this week, combined with the remainder of the white beans I already had. They contain two (maybe even three) different kinds of white beans, speckled and red pinto beans, black beans, and black eyed peas. 

Oh, and speaking of the rice I made in the crock pot, here it is separated into 2 cup portions (approx one pound each). This is in addition to the portion Brianne had with dinner. It's a combination of brown rice and wheat berries. I didn't put in the wild rice, but will cook that up separately. 

 

Once these have thoroughly cooled, I will pop them into the freezer for Brianne's future use. 

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