One of my favorite snacks is flax crackers.

I add one pound of brown flax seeds, one pound of golden flax seeds, and one pound of ground golden flax seeds together in a bowl.

I then pour one cup of filtered water into the bowl for each pound of seeds, and stir the mixture until it turns into one big clump.

I divide the clump/ball into equal sized clumps/balls, one for each of my dehydrator trays, and then add seasonings.

I’ve recently been experimenting with various seasoning combinations. I add no more than 2T of Celtic sea salt to any tray. Sometimes I’ll add 1/4c agave and 1T of cinnamon, or 2T of basil and 1T of red pepper flakes. The key here is to experiment with the seasonings you like and see how it turns out. Have fun!

Once the seasonings are rolled throughout the ball, I spread it across the sheet. You can use wax paper to start, if you don’t yet have Teflex sheets.

Place the trays in the dehydrator. You’ll want to turn the temp up HIGH for an hour, and then turn the crackers over onto mesh sheets, otherwise you can run in to problems with bacteria. Once they’re turned over, I turn the temp down to 105F.

The time it takes to dehydrate them completely will vary, depending on how thinly you rolled the dough, how much water you used, your local relative humidity, and how crisp you like your crackers to be. You’ll discover what’s right for you.

I killed the SCOBY, but I did not kill the yeast, it seems.

I have no idea what I did wrong with my kombucha SCOBY, but somehow I killed the bacteria, leaving just the yeast. I ended up making beer, instead of kombucha, on my last several batches.

Since I don’t drink alcohol, the beer was not very useful. As I don’t have any spare SCOBYs, I decided to try something I’ve heard about, using commercial kombucha to raise new SCOBYs.

I bought a Synergy kombucha and poured it into two quart jars with a little raw agave, covered them with cheese cloth secured with rubber bands, and placed them in a cool, dark place. I will report back to you when I see how well it works.

Because I didn’t know whether the bacteria was still alive, I tossed out the two cultures that were in the jars I had started using the last bits of previous batches.

Please share your kombucha dreams or kombucha nightmares!

I harvested the rejuvelac over the past couple of days, and it tastes great!

I sprouted 1/2 cup of locally grown organic hard winter wheat in a glass
jar sprouter. Once they were sprouted, with tails that were one inch long,
I filled the jar with filtered water and left it to sit on the kitchen counter.

After two days I poured off the liquid and saved it in a large jug, which I
put into the refrigerator. I re-filled the sprouting jar and poured off the
liquid after one day, and then re-filled and poured off after one more
day.

The rejuvelac tastes like it should be healthy (not very tasty the first time
I tried it), but the flavor grows on you. Knowing what’s in it helped me to
learn to love the taste after a while.

I freeze the sprouts to add them to my next batch of flax crackers.

You can use other grains as well, but I have found the wheat to be the
most reliable sprouter and to have the most consistently good flavor.
I have also used rye with good results.

I have been in love with Matt and Angela since I began my living food journey and have watched them bloom and flourish as they live the living foodist dream. They have worked very hard to realize what they’ve accomplished, and they’re just getting started.

Here is a video of them in their new home in Ecuador:

Since the beginning of this year you have seen the staple foods that I’ve been eating, lots of veggies and seeds, and no desserts, the recipes I’ve been sharing with you.

I’ve managed to remain at about 90% vegan with about 75% of that being raw. I haven’t paid very much attention to calorie or fat intake, as I’m adding one discipline at a time. Exercise will be next!

I’d like my blood sugar to be below 100 for two weeks before I start my juice feast in the spring. We’ll see if I’m able to do that.

Week 8 Weigh-In
Weight: 331.0 (-3.8)
%Body Fat: 39.0 (-.4% total)
%H2O: 44.5
Bone Density: 8.8
Fasting Blood Sugar: 113mg/dL (+11mg/dL)
(-3.2 so far this year, -57# since 12/1/07, -94# since 12/1/97)

I was first exposed to cultured vegetables when I was a Tibetan Buddhist monk, living in a monastic community in Maryland about fourteen years ago. One of the monks in our house had digestive issues, and was fermenting vegetables to help with his symptoms. I didn’t hear anything more about cultured veggies until I began investigating the raw vegan lifestyle only three years ago.

When I was at the co-op the other day with a friend, I spotted an interesting variety of cabbage, it was light green with red veins. I thought it would make a very nice sauerkraut, so I also grabbed some purple kale, bok choy, a head of anise, and a head of celery to include.

I had seen a video with Sandor Katz all about Fermenting Vegetables at home, and wanted to try his “no water added” method. The juice from the vegetables provides the liquid for the brine, and there’s no need to add pro-biotic to the mix.

Here’s what I did with the batch pictured in this post. I chopped up the vegetables I got at the co-op and massaged them, just like Sandor does in the video. I added two tablespoons of Celtic sea salt for each 1/2 gallon Mason jar. There were enough veggies in this batch to fill two 1/2 gallon jars.

When I was visiting my good friend, Julia Child Award-winning cookbook author, Rebecca Wood (Twitter) (Facebook Fan Page), I noticed many Mason jars on her kitchen counter, each with a tapered water glass inserted to keep the fermenting vegetables in the jar from contacting the air.

I thought this was genius, not having to crack the lids on the jars to let the CO2 escape. With her system, the vegetables stay down and the gas seeps out around the edges of the glass. I’m trying this system on this batch to see how well it works.

If you don’t want to risk having sauerkraut juice slopping onto your counter, you can always pick up a Perfect Pickler or two. I haven’t used one yet, but Angela and Matt Monarch rave about them.

My most recent batch of raw onion bread was a complete success! I measured the square inches that were yielded by this recipe, and found that for every pound of onions used, I got 100 square inches of bread.

This batch was a little less chunky than the last, which had to do with the order in which I combined the ingredients. I prefer the chunkier texture, but the flavor is still the same, totally amazing! Once sweet onions come back into season, I’ll start using them. This time I used organic red onions, and the bread turned out just fine.

You can find the recipe at Raw Onion Bread.

I’m big on smoothies, and have been falling in love with the Truly Raw Cacao I recently began using for my cacao smoothies.

Here’s the smoothie I just made myself for lunch:

1 banana
2 cups Raw Walnut Milk
1/4 cup Shredded Coconut
2 T Truly Raw Cacao
Ice Cubes

I blend the ingredients on the Beverages : XL Smoothie setting on my Blendtec blender. It’s always extra tasty!

I was just noticing this morning how many gallons of living food are vying for space in our TINY kitchen.

There are five half-gallon jars of kim chee on one counter, three half-gallon jars of mung bean sprouts on another, and one half-gallon jar of kombucha brewing. There are several bottles of kombucha “aging” on top of the fridge, too!

That’s a lot of living happening in one place, nearly five gallons! I know that it’s well worth giving up the precious space. It means that I’m getting the very best of nutrition. Food can’t get more “living” than when you grow it yourself.

It has been a lot of fun adding these living foods to my kitchen and to my diet. What other living foods to you have growing in your kitchen? Inquiring minds want to know!

I’ve been enjoying store-bought kombucha for years, ever since I started down the living food path. The number of brands and the variety of available flavors has increased a great deal since then, as has home brewing.

I received my first SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) as a gift just a few weeks ago from my good friend, Rebecca Wood, and have been going to town ever since!

Before I started brewing, I completed the free 7-day course made available by Dave at my favorite kombucha supply store.

The course covers all of the bases and I’ve been a very happy home brewer as a result. The variety of supplies and support available from Dave and his team is amazing.

I’m currently on my fifth batch (two quarts every five days), and eventually would like to work my way up to two quarts per day or more. To learn how to brew your own kombucha at home, sign up for Dave’s free course. Watch for the popup, moments after you get to the site.

Happy brewing!