How does a Witch celebrate the Season?

I LOVE this time of year!

Autumn is my favorite, I get to pull out my boots & sweaters, and the FOOD! It makes me happy!

It is a few days before Thanksgiving, and you have surely noticed the GIFT messages everywhere. Gifting season is here!

I have made a Goddess Holiday Gift Guide this year, incorporating wonderful gifts, made with love, for your favorite Kitchen Witches, treasure hunters, vintage fans, or green witches :).

Enjoy!
Much love,
Heike

Quick, & very fattening. The best Cheesecake ever!

Many, many moons ago I visited New Orleans. During that stay I bought a fundraiser cookbook off of a nice lady I met :).

I LOVE this cookbook! It is about a million years old, a bit stained, a bit tattered, but it is still one of my favorite. Everything in there is SIMPLE :).

Everyone one in my house has a birthday cake favorite. Yesterday was my husband's birthday, and he wanted cheesecake.

Here is the recipe, hold on to your buttons!

3 large packages of soft cream cheese
4 eggs
3/4  cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 pint sour cream
1 box zwieback or ginger snap crumbs

Cream cheese and add 3/4 cups of sugar and eggs one at a time. Add vanilla. Pour into greased spring pan lined with zwieback on bottom. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Whip 1 pint sour cream 1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar and pour over cake. Return to same oven for another 10 minutes. Put in refrigerator for a least 3 hours and chill before serving.

Divine!!!

The original recipe says 2 hours chilling, but you will see in my pictures that 2 hours just does not set the cheesecake enough. Over night is what I usually do, but I was not on schedule yesterday and we could not wait any longer to dig in :).

Serve with strawberry sauce, or like us, plum sauce (that is actually supposed to be jam, but it did not set. Tastes fabulous!!)

Enjoy!!

Super Salad, Healing Wonder

The nights are getting longer, the days are getting a bit chillier.....I LOVE this time of year!!

Lots of opportunity for making "healing" foods :). Foods that nourish the body & the soul.

This is one of my favorite salads. It is raw, healthy, easy & quick to make, and tastes better the next day. So make a big bowl!

You will need:
red beets
carrots
parsley
fresh ginger
olive oil & apple cider vinegar
salt & pepper

You can determine your own ratio, but for this large salad I used 4 medium beets, and 6 large carrots. We like ginger, so I used about a 2 inch piece of fresh ginger cut small.

If you have a KitchenAid, grate the ginger and carrots. Transfer into a large bowl. Add ginger and chopped parsley. I usually just pour olive oil & vinegar over everything, add salt & pepper, and MIX!
You can make the sauce separately, if you wish.

This salad is crunchy, and is great as a side to pasta, or I just made it to along side of chicken curry.

It tastes even BETTER after it has soaked overnight. You can add feta cheese, mix it with salad greens, or even pour over pasta.

Enjoy!

GIVEAWAY!!! Pickle it!!!

I love fermented foods, especially sauerkraut. Fermented foods offer so many health benefits, they are yummy, and they extend the shelf life of veggies without having to can them.

I have tried various ways to ferment my own kraut. I even bought a beautiful stone crock must for making mounds & mounds of sauerkraut. Unfortunately, my crock does not come with a fitted top, so I had to improvise. Let me tell you the kraut story I will never live down:

One day, kept smelling "gas" in my kitchen. I live in an old house, built in 1950, so gas smells are always taken seriously. I called PG&E, and they had someone out within the hour to check. He came and smelled it too, but could not pinpoint a leak anywhere. After checking all the pipes and deeming the house safe, he left. I returned to the kitchen, and while walking into my pantry, I got a whiff again! I looked over,  and there stood my crock with kraut in it. I lifted the towel, and realized it was the benign, but smell culprit!

Now I have discovered  a fantastic, and non-smelly, way to make kraut. I love it because I do not have to worry about my kraut creeping out of the brine. All you need is a Mason Jar, and you can go from cabbage to kraut in 4-5 days! It also looks real cool, and fascinates little (and big) scientists, watching the bubbles as the concoction ferments!

I wanted to take a picture of our finished kraut, but this little bowl is all we had left when I went to take pictures. My kids ate it already. We are on our third batch.

 I was so excited to share this with you, I contacted Kayleigh, the fabulous owner of "Pickle-Biotic", and now you have a chance to win your own fermentation kit!! Just enter the Rafflecopter below!

You can find all kinds of cool recipes on Kayleigh's website. I just cut up the cabbage, pounded it into a 1/2 gallon Mason Jar, added the brine water, and 5 days later we have crispy kraut. I put my jar in a bowl to catch any overflow.


You know how much I love SIMPLE.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Kitchen Floor Therapy

The first time my kids saw me on my hands and knees, with a bucket next to me, wiping the floor.....they asked if someone had puked :). Now, they know to leave me alone when they see me wiping.

When I ditch the mop, and get back to my roots, either:
1. I am bonding with my Oma. She lived, and I grew up, in an old browstone. There were 10 apartments in her building, and each week one apartment was responsible for wiping down the stairwell. Yep, all flights of stairs and entry lobby. And don't you DARE not do it! My Oma was a neat freak. When she got older, I would take over her wiping when I visited. I would also wipe her floors where she did not have rugs.  I never used a mop until I got to the U.S., we did it with a bucket, and a rag :). Her picture hangs in my kitchen, and she is watching me with a smile on her face. I think we could have done surgery on her floors.

2. Need thinking time. When I scrub my kitchen floor, I think. The kitchen is "my place". It is the heart of the house, this is where I brew & stew, and this is where I go to ground. When I scrub that floor, I don't listen to music or talk, I just silently scrub & ponder.

When I am done, I feel happy. Yes, my knees hurt, as I am not 18 anymore, but it doesn't matter. I have tried to meditate for many years, completely failed. This is how I meditate. If I really need some grounding and simmer down time, I do the whole house (this is when the family flees).

I use hot water and vinegar, and throw in some essential oils and a few sprigs of rosemary. My favorite scents are rosemary, peppermint, lemon, lavender, or today I used Super Immune, a mix I purchased :). The EO's clear my mind as I scrub.

Before the floor dries, the dog trapses across it to say hello, and at least one child will instantly poof away if they don't immediately get some water or food. It is never ending :).

I always finish with a happy sigh and an ice cold brew. Perfect ending.

Much love,
Heike

Squash is taking over the world, are you ready?

Fresh from the garden :)

This year I thought ahead, and planted only TWO squash plants :). Plus, I chose a mediterranean squash (sounded mysterious :)...), and a spaghetti squash instead of our standard zucchini & yellow crookneck. I know I will get both left in anonymous baskets on my front porch not too long from now.

The funny round squash is already bursting. One day I will go out and there is nothing, and the next day there will be a few of fabulous little green pumpkin looking surprises.

I love to ferment, and when I googled, sure enough, I found a Lacto-Fermented Summer Squash recipe. If you’re wondering what to do with it all why not ferment it which improves flavor, digestibility, and keeps for months in cold storage. Quick & simple too, my favorite. And friends, this is what you are getting for Christmas & Yule, as my magic squash plants are promising with lots of flowers......

Lacto-Fermented Summer Squash from Culturesforhealth.com
(original recipe here)

Ingredients:

• 1-2 medium sized summer squash, cut into 1/2″ chunks (just enough to fit in a quart jar)

• 3 cloves garlic, smashed and peeled

• a few sprigs of flowering cilantro.

• a couple of mesquite, oak, or grape leaves (to keep them crunchy)

• 1 quart of filtered water

• 2 tablespoons sea salt

Instructions:

1. Combine water and sea salt, stir well and set aside.

1. Add the crushed garlic and one sprig of flowering cilantro to the bottom of a quart jar. Fill jar halfway up with chunks of summer squash. Add a bit more garlic and cilantro and fill the jar with squash chunks up to 1-2″ below rim.

1. Pour salt water brine over the squash. At this point you want to weigh the squash down in order for it to remain below the level of the brine and ferment evenly. This isn’t an ideal solution, but I like to use a narrow-mouthed lid in my wide-mouth quart ferments. Just press it down until enough brine covers it that it weighs the squash down. You could also use a cabbage leaf or a cleaned rock.

1. Cover tightly with a canning lid and ring. Allow to sit out at somewhere near room temperature, ideally 60-80 degrees. Check your jars and burp them every 12 hours or so by loosening the lid and allowing some gas to escape.

1. Let ferment 2-5 days, depending on temperature and then transfer to cold storage (refrigerator, root cellar, etc.).

P.S. If you are in the need of grape leaves, and live in Sacramento, I am happy to share. I have LOTS. Not sprayed either :). Stuffed grape leaves is next....

Easy DIY Laundry Soap

I do a lot of laundry. Trust me, detergent is put to the test in this house, especially the laundry of my 11yr old son.........

About a year and a half ago, I came across an easy recipe for laundry soap. Bonus: it WORKS! Once you do this, you most likely will never go back to buying detergent.

1. It is easy, grating the soap is the most tedious part, and that is what we all have children for.
2. It is cheap, and if you do as much laundry as I do, you will appreciate that.
3. You can be rest assured that there is nothing in your laundry soap that will slowly diminish you.
4. If you forget the laundry in the washing machine for a few hours, or even overnight, it will NOT smell like moldy socks!!

Our water tends to be hard, so I put white vinegar in the rinse cycle (when I remember). Also, if the laundry is SUPER DIRTY,  I will add a scoop of OxyClean.

Recipe: (you will see why it is so easy to remember, you won't even have to save this post!)

1 bar of Fels Naptha soap.
This is what I use, but some people use Ivory soap. If you are very sensitive, you could use Dr. Bronner, but that would make it costly. Grate the soap with a cheese grater. The smaller the pieces, the better they will dissolve. I bought a grater at the thrift store just for soap. Don't use your kitchen stuff, your cheese will ever taste the same.....

2 cups Borax
2 cups Super Washing Soda
2 cups Baking Soda

Layer it all in a big gallon size jar (old pickle jar?) and SHAKE. You can add some essential oils to this if you like. The soap is pretty smelly, so I don't. You will need between 3 and 5 tbls of detergent per wash, depending on your wash load & water. Experiment and see what works best. I get my supplies at my local ACE Hardware most of the time, but if I am ordering something from Amazon, I use them. Great deals on bigger sizes. Costco has a great price on a 13.5lb bag of Baking Soda, which I use everywhere, so BIGGER is BETTER!