Kale Chips - Dehydrating Vegetables

Kale is not my favorite vegetable. Not sure why, just don't care for it. So, when I heard people talking about Kale Chips, and saw packages of them in the stores, I didn't even them. They did not appeal to me one single bit. Then one day a friend gave me a bunch of kale and since I did not know what else to do with it, I decided to give Kale Chips a try. I think it was the nutritional yeast and salt that sounded good. Anyway, I fell in love with my Kale Chips. Now I take them to potlucks, in the car on the go, or munch away at my desk.

Now I like Kale! I tried doing the same with carrots, beets and other veggies. Good!

Wash and dry a bunch of kale. Tear leaves up into small pieces, removing the stem.

Toss in about 1 tbsp of olive oil, 1/4 to 1/3 cup nutritional yeast, and a tsp of salt.

Place on teflex tray and dehydrate for about 4 hours. You can also place them on a cookie sheet and bake them in the oven at a very low temperature for a couple hours. Toss now and then if needed.

It is amazing how they shrink and change color. Makes you wonder if this is what happens to our cells when we don't keep ourselves hydrated.

Raw Oatmeal Date Apple Cookies

These cookies are so good, great for a "pac & go". They are hearty and fill you up. They are sweetened with dates, raisins and apples.

Ingredients

2 cups oat groats

¾ cup dates

½ cup dried raisins

½ cup walnuts

2 or 3 apples, grated

½ tsp salt

Optional: Cinnamon

No need for any soaking of groats, dates or raisins. It is good if you can soak the walnuts for a few hours, but not absolutely necessary. Drain and rinse after soaking.

Prep:

1. Grind dry groats in a blender into fine powder. A food processor may work as well.

2. Chop raisins and dates (remove pits from dates)

3. Grate apple on course part of grater (careful not to grate too fine like applesauce).

4. Rough or medium chop walnuts as desired.

Transfer groats to a bowl and add the raisins, dates, walnuts and apples. Mix well. The dry groat powder will be soaked up by the apples.  Add cinnamon if desired.

Press into cookie rounds on a teflex dehydrator tray and dehydrate for about 10 hours and then remove teflex tray and turn for a couple more hours of dehydrating. Dehydrate until the cookies reach your desired texture.

Use the juice of an orange or lemon to dip your fingers into when pressing the dough into rounds. This works well to help keep your fingers from sticking to all the dough.

Cookies can also be baked at a very low temperature in the oven on a cookie sheet. You may want to turn them half way through.

These cookies are the bomb and work well for a travel snack. Enjoy!

Easy Raw Cacao Truffle Recipe

By popular demand! Here is the recipe for these simple and yummy Raw Cacao Truffles (you can use any unsweetened cacao powder as well). They are luscious and creamy and make for a great afternoon pick up. Need I say more? Blend all the ingredients below together. No need to cook. When refrigerated/stored they last for a long time. They also firm up in the fridge and best when served at room temperature.

Recipe below is a basic recipe that seems to always vary. Mix ingredients to taste and explore other flavors with spices, nuts and seeds.

Main Ingredients:

1/2 cup Coconut Cream (sundried coconut meat ground into a butter-Artisana makes one as does Wilderness Family Naturals - online).

3/4 cup water (warmed)

1 to 2 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup maple syrup

3 tbsp coconut oil

2 tbsp raw sugar or honey (more to taste)

1/2 tsp salt (more or less to taste)

Optional: 1/2 cup cacao nibs - 1/2 cup shredded coconut - or any other nuts or seeds you would like to add. Seen in the picture above, Golden Yukon Berries (sour type raisins) are added. Cashews are great to garnish with as well.

You can also use cinnamon, cayenne, chili powder and other seasoning to make your own truffles.

Directions:

Begin by blending the coconut cream and coconut oil in warm water. Once blended, add maple syrup, sugar and salt or seasonings. When creamy, add cacao powder through a sifter to alleviate lumps. Blend in a little at a time. Mixture will thicken to a point where it is difficult to stir. If too dry, add a bit of water. Remember they will firm up when refrigerated. They will also thicken a bit when the cacao nibs, coconut and/or other nuts are added.

Roll into balls and place nuts or Golden Yukon Berry on top with slight pressure. Chill. Best to serve at room temperature.

These travel well, but remember to package in a container where they can soften and still hold their shape.

Yum!

Watch Premiere of "Hungry For Change" online Free

You must take advantage of this amazing opportunity! This Wednesday the 21st, Food Matters are launching their latest film 'Hungry For Change', and you can watch it online for FREE.  I have seen this film and it is fantastic. Here is the deal: this film will dramatically change the way you view food that you may be eating every day, and it will dramatically effect the way you view the word "Diet". Do you know of someone that would benefit from this film? Or do you know someone that you have tried to convince that Food Matters, but they won't listen to you, or can't hear you. This film will do the work for you by helping them see the larger truth about about food. And, how awesome that money will not be an excuse for not watching it. Now you and they can watch it for free during this online promotion.

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The film boasts an all star line up and is guaranteed to make you NEVER look at the word 'diet' the same way again.

The film exposes the marketing which surrounds diets and that in fact they are doing the opposite of what they promise!

Powerful Cultured Veggies-A TED Talk on Bacteria

Want to learn more about bacteria? Get ready for a ride with this TED talk with Bonnie Bassler. Listen carefully and you will come to realize just how important good bacteria are to put in your body. It is all about out-numbering the bad guys. Profound TED talk. Listen up. Listen twice, maybe three times. See this "living" sauerkraut, or cultured veggies so alive that it is moving and ooozzzing out of the jar. This is one way to feed your gut some good guys! It is affordable and tastes good too. Learn how on my DVD "Cultured Veggies & Kefir Kitchen".

Cultured Veggies, Coconut Kefir and Sea Veggie Mineral Mixture

Now we're talkin! Here is Irene's beautiful collection of cultured foods. She has been taking the Essential Cuisine Dietary Makeover and I think she made over her whole kitchen. Wow, everything she made is delicious. The Tumeric Tonic? As soon as I learn more I will tell you! Isn't this beautiful. Way to go Irene. I tasted most of it and, wow!

Learn to make yourself "Chef Teton's Kefir Kitchen DVD"

Here is what Irene said, "My Coconut Kefir, made from fresh coconut and drank in, of course a coconut bowl!"

Love living in Maui, so lucky are we.

Cultured Veggies & Kefir from Coconut Milk & Hemp Milk

Yeah for our Dietary Makeover students!! Today one of my students dropped by a coconut kefir and her cultured veggies. Oh my, they were so good. On the left is a picture! Now, here is what is extra cool. She used fresh coconut milk, which means she combined coconut water with coconut meat. She also let it ferment for 3 days, which is more time than I would have allowed. So, it is extra tart, but just delicious. Her veggies are red from the red cabbage. They are salty with a nice bite to them. In other words they have some heat. What amazed me is that they tasted great together.

Here is another student's (who lives on the mainland) picture of her coconut kefir made from pre-packed coconut milk. Here is what she says about how she made it:

"I made coconut milk kefir! This was my first try so consider this an experiment - Ingredients: So Delicious Coconut Milk (regular, contains 6g sugars per cup, source is organic dried cane syrup)and Yogourmet brand kefir starter - just followed package directions which were exactly as on the Chef Teton DVD. I blended with fresh, orgainic, locally-grown strawberries for delicious milkshake. Taste is excellent- like the coco milk with a tang to it. I was just a bit surprised that it wasn't thicker. When I have purchased prepared kefir in the past, it was creamier and thicker. Maybe I should have allowed more than 24 hours before refrigerating?" (Chef Teton, "I think that 18 to 24 hours is fine, depending on the temperature)

Here is my Kefir made from the following ingredients:

1/3 cup hemp seed granules

2 tbsp organic raw honey

1 quart of water

Blended ingredients into a milk, then added 1 package of kefir starter from Wilderness Family Naturals.

I let it sit for approximately 20 hours. You can see in the picture how the milk separated. Once I blended it, it stayed blended and tasted quite good. I am enjoying it as a light beverage in the morning or afternoon, or as a milk in a bowl of: chopped apple, banana, flax meal, coconut flakes and raisins. Yummmmmmmm.

Here you can see the hemp milk all blended up. This has been a lot of fun, and it is just beginning.

Learn how to make Kefir and Cultured Veggies on my DVD "Cultured Veggies and Kefir Kitchen".

Happy Culturing!

Green Smoothie - Dietary Makeover Step Two

What a way to start a day. Step two of the Dietary Makeover is to bring green smoothies into your daily life. This Vita Mix container is full of sunflower sprouts, red pepper, parsley, celery and a whole apple and lemon. Kelp and dulce flakes were added for extra minerals. Drink a glass and store the rest in a glass jar for a great afternoon snack.

Cultured Vegetables-Dietary Makeover's 1st Assigment

The 4-week Dietary Makeover begins with making cultured veggies. In following along with the class, I am making a big batch, which I do once a month anyway. This month's recipe is going to be a bit spicy, as in hot spicy. I will harvest them on March 12th, giving them 10 days to ferment. Stay tuned for some harvest pics then. Yum! I did not use a starter with this batch as I have found that I don't need one if they can stay in the crock and ferment for about 10 days. You don’t really need a starter even if they ferment for a shorter period of time. They get a little softer over time and a little richer with flavor, which is how I like them.  Sea salt, kelp powder and a little raw sugar were added for fermentation purposes, as well as flavor. These veggies often turn out like a relish. Upon tasting them, many people say, "Oh my God, these are good, I wish I had a hot-dog". Of course "hot dogs" are not the ideal food, but if you are eating a clean version of a hot-dog or any other food for that matter, the meal will be enhanced with the aliveness of living Cultured Vegetables.  Personally, I love mine with almost everything I eat.

Cultured/Fermented Vegetables Recipe

2 large heads of cabbage

5 Maui onions

8 carrots

8 jalapeno's

1 bunch of kale

1/4 cup salt, 1/4 cup Mineral Mixture (sea veggies), and 1/4 cup raw sugar, 1/8 cup sea kelp

Clean all the veggies thoroughly. Remove outer leaves of cabbage and save them to make canopy to put over the veggies when preparing the mixture for fermentation. Remove seeds from jalapenos unless you want a lot of heat.

Process the cabbage, carrots and all other veggies in the food processor to a rather fine chop (you can chop/process as large or as fine as you like).

Mix in salt, sea veggies, kelp or any other spices you like into the mixture.

Put veggie mixture in to a clean ceramic crock, large glass bowl, large food grade plastic bucket or individual glass jars (no metal or plastic dishes)

If fermented in a crock, large bowl or bucket, cover the mixture with a canopy of cabbage leaves to protect it from the outer world. I like to make this canopy about 1/3 inch thick. Then place the plate and/or stones (if you have a crock) on the top of the canopy creating a cover and a weight in the case of the stones. If you don’t have a fermentation crock, and use a plate then you will have to use a rock or stones in addition to create some weight or pressure for the veggies. Place the rock on top of the plate.

Make sure the inside of the bowl above the canopy, plate and rock/stone is clean so as not to attract mold.

I like to pour a cup of very salty water over the entire mixture (plate, stone and all) when I am done assembling. This insures no mold to enter below.

Cover the crock with the lid, or bowl with a towel and let sit in a dark place for as long as you like (minimum four days, two weeks is yummy).

To harvest, pour off extra liquid above, then remove stones, plate and canopy. Under all this you should have some beautifully cultured vegetables to transfer to glass jars and store in your fridge to eat at your hearts content. I hope your heart wants them every day as they will aid you in your digestion and provide you with powerful probiotic natural healthy flora. In addition they will provide nourishment to the taste buds as well and finish off a meal with complete satisfaction. Read about the value here in this profound article about cultured/fermented foods.

If you are trying to quit eating sugar, Cultured Veggies are one of the best foods to put in your diet to help stop cravings.

If you want to learn to make cultured veggies by watching, please get my DVD called “Cultured Veggies and Kefir Kitchen" here. The DVD will show you exactly how to make the veggies and kefir as well.