Kimchi Experimentation and a Book Review

2 Quarts of Kimchi

I purchased a small jar of kimchi so I could try it, and I found it very pleasant, very flavorful, a nice little addition to a meal. I looked at several recipes online and just kind of cobbled them together to make my own vat. So this is how I made mine, can't tell you how it tastes as it now needs to sit for three days and ferment.

I took two heads of napa cabbage and mixed in 1 cup of coarse salt and then covered everything with water, placed a plate on top of the cabbage to weight it down, covered the bowl with saran wrap, and then set the bowl in the basement overnight. This morning I drained and very thoroughly rinsed the Napa cabbage. I cut up 8 ounces of daikon radish into matchstick size pieces, finely chopped ginger, probably 2 ounces, a bunch of green onions chopped, a few leaves of mustard greens chopped, 2 tablespoons of garlic, 1 tablespoon of sugar, and almost half a cup of ground red pepper. I mixed everything together for a while, then jammed the whole lot into a half gallon mason jar. The jar is now sitting in the fridge and I will leave it alone for three days and hopefully have some good tasting kimchi on Tuesday. My Kimchi is vegan, I did not had fish sauce, or shrimp sauce, this is a standard ingredient in most Kimchi, I also did not add soy sauce as I didn't want to continue to boost the salt level of the mixture.

Kimchi is good for gut health as the fermentation process produces good microbes for your gut, a little bit goes a long way, it sure is a powerhouse of flavors, and it will keep indefinitely in the fridge. I assume it will just become more flavorful the longer it sits.

 Granddaughter Alivia in her "bright stripe" sweater

I finished the sweater I was knitting for Alivia, I like how it turned out, I have started a second sweater for little sister Aubrey.

Bean - Book Reviewer

I mentioned in my last post that I finished reading Fall of the Giants by Ken Follett. I would now like to review the book.

I was not a big fan of the characters in the book, they were so obviously plot devices to be the eyes of each major historical event, and they continually kept crossing each others paths in a way that seemed unbelievable, and of course one or more where always present at all major historical events during the time period covered. But that said, I feel that I learned a lot about WW1, and other political issues going on during that time period.

I learned a lot about the suffragettes and how initially only women age 30 or older, who owned property worth more than five pounds, and/or were married to a man who owned property at the value or more were finally allowed the right to vote in 1918, in fact the 100 year anniversary just occurred and I knew what a battle that limited right was, and all thanks to the book I read.

I learned that the average working man did not have the right to vote, all decisions favored the wealthy and they had all of the power and all of the say in the governing of Great Britain, and unsurprisingly laws favored the wealthy and did nothing for the working man but keep him poor and in his place.

I learned that WW1 was a war started for no really good reason, and it kind of ran out of steam because no one really knew what they wanted as an end result. The average working man had no say whatsoever about going into war and they were literally slaughtered by the tens of thousands in a completely unnecessary war. 

I learned a lot about the Russian revolution, how desperately impoverished the Russian people were under the thumb of the Tsars, and how they managed to unseat the Tsars and to get in new leadership, the Soviets (a word that means council) only to find that for the most part they were no better off. I guess as they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

So, I would recommend this book because it is jam packed with historical facts, it shows the impact of historical events on the elite, middle class and working poor, and sadly makes you realize that 100 years later the world is still just as confusing and power hungry as it ever was.

I will be starting the 2nd book in the trilogy in the next week or two and will review when finished.

January In Review

Here we are already a week into February, craziness!

In January I made some new year resolutions and so far have kept them!

1. Dry January - best thing I did - and now I am having a dry February, and other than the first week or two of January I have not missed my evening glass(es) of wine! Win Win for Bean.

2. Healthy vegan diet, and exercise - check - in fact I have added strength training and after a month of weights, crunches, push ups, leg lifts etc. I am feeling quite buff and definitely feel stronger and look more toned, this is a fantastic addition to my exercise regime. I still walk or run 5 plus miles most days of the week.  And, Dave has started lifting weights too, so evenings of relaxing with an alcoholic beverage are replaced with a trip to the basement to strength train.

3. The Garden. Well not much happening yet, it is only February, the snow is falling and spring seems a long way off. But Dave did go out and step off the gardens so we can begin to plan what we want to plant and where we will plant it. I plan to grow the foods I eat, I will do a lot of Roma tomatoes, like 50 plants, these will all be canned, I eat tomatoes every day, lunch and dinner. But I would like some Big Boy tomatoes planted in the second garden, maybe half a dozen, so we have some to enjoy fresh from the vine. I will grow Kale and Collard Greens, Turnips, Rutabaga, Cucumbers, Green Peppers, Radishes, all things I eat almost daily. We will grow some potatoes, Yukon Gold, and Red, and I would like to try some of the purple fingerling varieties, and we like to grow sweet onions and a little bit of corn and some melons. I can't wait to get out and start digging over the gardens and getting everything ready, another month and we should be able to get started, potatoes can go in on Good Friday.

4. Not buying stuff - well I did very well in January, only purchases were groceries. February I splurged a whole $4.84 on a book, the used book cost .85 cents, and shipping, from England, $3.99. So, all in all, I am for the most part doing well with this resolution.

What book did I order, Seasons Of My Life by Hannah Hauxhall. I learned of Hannah last week, she was mentioned in British newspapers as she had recently died at the age of 91. So who was she? Hannah was a unique woman with a strong constitution. The only child of Yorkshire farmers, she lived on an isolated farm in the Pennines, her life was hard. Hannah was left to run the farm on her own at the age of 46 after the deaths of her parents and uncle. Life was frugal to the extreme, in 1972 she was living on around two hundred and ninety pounds a year, she had no electricity and no running water. Hannah raised cows for a living, this involved a massive amount of physical work, hauling water by hand, hauling hay, and then just the struggles of day to day living, washing clothes in the stream, hauling her own drinking water. The one luxury she had was an organ in the living room which she enjoyed playing. Hannah became a sort of celebrity when she was featured in a film in 1972 that exposed her frugal, hard working life. The winters are brutal in the Penninnes and Hannah was quoted as saying, "in the summer I live, in the winter I exist". I am looking forward to reading her book. If you go to youtube and search Hannah Hauxhall you can find the hour or so long television program about her life on the farm.

Another goal I have this year is to read, and read, and read. I finished the first in a trilogy of books by Ken Follett, Fall of The Giants, a 1000 page read about World War I, I have the second, equally long book, Winter World, which continues the story in the interim years of WW1 and WWII, then the third book is Edge of Eternity, which I assume is about WWII.  I recently read Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Okay by Gail Honeyman, a very quick read, a very sad book, a good story. I really enjoyed Eleanor Oliphant and highly recommend it. I am now ready The Stories of Muriel Spark, what a fantastic writer Muriel is, she just has such an ability to show just what makes people tick and sees exactly what the real motivations are for why people do the things they do. When I finish with the Muriel Spark book I have Tales of The City by Armistead Maupin, I am looking forward to reading it, I have recently listened to a dramatization of the book on BBC4 radio and enjoyed it very much, so much so I decided to read the book. This is the same reason I stumbled across the Eleanor Oliphant book. I have a book ready for pick up at the library called Harvest by Jim Crace. I heard an interview with the author recently on BBC4 and he was interesting to listen to and although they were speaking about a more recent book he has written, they mentioned Harvest and  I read some reviews and decided I wanted to read it. So my goal to read more this year is going well.

I am going to experiment with making some Kimchi, it is a Korean food, apparently served with everything. Essentially it is fermented cabbage, but not sauerkraut. Using Napa cabbage, a very mild, tender, quite delicious cabbage, some scallions, daikon radish, ginger, garlic, red pepper and coarse salt, and if you like a few leaves of mustard greens, you make the Kimchi. The cabbage, scallions, radish are put in salted water and left to sit overnight, then the other ingredients are mixed together, then added to the drained and rinsed cabbage mixture. The whole lot is put into jars sealed with a lid, and left in a cool place for three or so days, then kept in the fridge indefinitely. The health benefits are for the gut, the microbes produced in the fermenting process are good for gut health. And, it is a tasty, high fiber, low calorie flavorful side dish. Traditional Kimchi has fish sauce in it, I will skip this as it is not vegan.

Well that is all for now,

Bean

Friend-ectomy

I just listened to a BBC radio sitcom, All Those Women, about four generations of women, great grandma, grandma, mother, teenage daughter, living under one roof. The premise of the episode is that the mother is invited to lunch with an old friend who she really doesn't like but accepts the invite to be nice. The other family members urge the mother to do a "friend-ectomy" as the "friendship" isn't really that at all, it is in fact a dysfunctional relationship that serves no positive benefit.

Cut to the chase, the "friend" is not really friend, she simply likes to meet up occasionally and make lots of backhanded compliments about the mother and her family, in fact, seemed to thrive on patronizing the mother in order to make herself feel better. It made me think about friends in my life who have wandered in and out.

Some friendships were great for a time because both myself and the other person were at the same point in life, perhaps having small children at home, so it is nice to meet up at the park with the kids, do play dates etc. but as the children grow up and life gets the busy the friendship sort of loses its point. Others were workplace friendships, but once the "glue" of shared employer and day to day experiences goes there is not much else in common. The same can be said for neighbors, while living in the same neighborhood the friendship flourishes, but when one friend moves away the cause of the friendship, close proximity, is gone.

I can only think of two people in my life that I have "friend-ectomied" one became an extremely heavy drinker and just kept making terrible life decisions and I decided I did not need the drama in my life and there was nothing I could do to change the situation if the person could not see how self-destructive their behavior was. The other was a "user" (not drugs), simply a person who would call if they had no one else left to call, call only when they needed something, would always put phone calls, texts, facebook, etc. first, so you would be visiting, having been invited, and then spend a large amount of time simply sitting while the individual took phone calls, texted etc. Conversations always involved a lot of "name dropping" and only one topic was ever discussed - the individual. I put up with this relationship for years, and I am not sure why. I would be volunteered by this person to do things and be told about it later. Always suggestions would come along phrased in this way, "We should do ...? Well translate the We into me, I would be doing while the individual sat idly by issuing orders and doing nothing themselves. This person would go out of town, and then text to ask that we take care of household and outdoor animals, and never a thank you. Lets face it, I allowed myself to be shamefully used for many years. About six months ago the final straw occurred and I thought what exactly am I getting out of this "friendship" and I realized absolutely nothing except annoyance and frustration, and decided to stop interacting. At first I felt very guilty, but the guilt ebbed over time, I get a very occasional text or call from the person, but I never initiate contact, and I disengage immediately. I have NOT lost anything in my life at all, in fact, I have gained a lot, no more aggravation and annoyance, no more feeling horrible about falling into yet another trap and being used, and no more hurt, it is truly the best thing I did for me and my family :)

If you have a toxic relationship with someone why do you hang on to it?

Red Light, Green Light, Who Cares?

Driving to work today I found myself approaching a green light and noticed that I said out loud, "Pleeeaaase, Pleeeaaase stay greeeeeeeeen", then I wondered why am I always worried about traffic lights and wanting them to always be green? Why so stressed? I wasn't late, I wasn't in a hurry, it wasn't an emergency, good grief what a little thing to get all hyped about.

People pray to God, "Oh Please Lord let the light stay green?", I am guilty of this, I hope God just chuckled at my plea and got on with real prayer requests.

Why are we so obsessed with Green Lights? A few minutes waiting here, a few minutes waiting there, it really is nothing in the big scheme of things. But we are oh so very impatient.

I thought to myself as I drove through the light, that did remain green :), that never again would I give a darn about the traffic light color. If I can go I will go, if I have to stop I will stop and not grumble, because it seems a really stupid thing to get all riled up about.

So patience my friends, patience, enjoy each moment of each day because we only have so many moments to enjoy.

Namaste,

Bean

Winter - I am ready for Spring

Boy has it been a cold winter, we had a very brief reprieve from the arctic blast and then it returned for another week. It is supposed to warm up a bit over the next few days and I can't wait.

New Year resolutions are going really well, all kept so far!

Our youngest daughter, Emily, became a certified EMT this month when she passed her state exam. Next Monday she starts work as an EMT, she is really excited about her new job, and we are really proud of her. Next step is to get certified as an advanced EMT, while she continues to go to college to train as a paramedic.

Trying on her EMT jacket for her new job

Tomorrow our oldest son, Matt, turns 34. It is really strange to think about 34 years passing since we had our first child, the memories are so fresh in my mind, yet 34 years have passed. Time is a strange thing, it can really drag when you are stuck at a red light, but it seems to just slip through my fingers and it is hard to comprehend a 34 year span of time where so much as happened but all my memories are so vivid it seems as if they couldn't have happened so long ago.

Matt

This week I am working on cleaning out the freezers, It is surprising how many things just kind of accumulate. So for the next few weeks I am basing all family meals on what is in the freezer, tonight I am making everyone ham and potato soup with cornbread. Me, I will have my usual bowl of vegan goodness, or as my mom calls it my bowl of weeds :)

Vegan bowl of goodness!

Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Odds and Ends

Good morning,

Well I am doing well with my New Year resolutions, I should say we are doing well, as Dave and I are both doing dry January, and it is going very, very well.

It has been a strange winter so far, it started snowing on Christmas Eve, then arctic air descended on Indiana and for two weeks it was sub-zero, including one morning where we awoke to a low of -13, that day the high reached about 2 degrees, BRRRR. On Sunday the weather started to change, we have had more normal highs of upper twenties to low thirties, today we are going to reach the mid forties, and tomorrow the mid fifties. As they say in Indiana, if you don't like the weather stick around a day or two as it will change!

This morning I went onto Facebook and saw an event advertised, The Indianapolis Veg Fest, it is FREE (bonus) and on Saturday, March 31, I asked Dave if he wanted to go and he said he would go with me, he is definitely not vegan :) he is a good guy and always supportive of me.

Yesterday on YouTube I found a great song by the poet Benjamin Zephaniah, it should be the vegan anthen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8UfTJoFr9w . If you have never read any Benjamin Zephaniah poetry, well you should, it is excellent, I have listened to a few interviews on BBC radio with BZ, he is an interesting man, very salt of the earth.

At the moment I am knitting a couple of sweaters for my two granddaughters, I am using a very bright variegated yarn and am enjoying the way the yarn knits up.

I am reading a book by Ken Follett, Fall of Giants, an almost 1000 page novel, but such a page turner, I just started it a few days ago and am already half way through. A epic saga about WW1, a mix of romance, family upheaval, and historical fact about how WW1 began and all of the behind the scene political maneuvering that ultimately pushed everyone into the war, it is very interesting. My big take away so far is here we are one hundred years later and NOTHING has changed. Those at the top make decisions that keep them at the top and wealthy, the rest of us are to a large extent simply pulled to and fro by the decisions of the elite. Well that is depressing, sorry about that.

No caption required! HAH!!

Well not too much else going on this week.

Peace be with you,

Bean

Happy New Year - 2018

Happy New Year - may everyone be blessed with good health and contentment in 2018.

Do you make new year resolutions?

I do and here are my goals for this year!

1. Buy nothing

Well obviously I will have to buy some things, food, basic household items, pet food and probably a few other things, think 9 grandchildren with birthdays. But, my goal is to not purchase items, new or used, unless absolutely necessary. I don't need any clothing, in fact I plan to have a pretty good clear out of my closet and dresser, there are items in there that I just never wear. 
Exceptions to my rule will be replacing items that break, but only after careful evaluation. For example our hot water heater is possibly on its last legs, it will be replaced and that requires making a purchase of something new, but it is a necessity, so when the time comes we will have to make a purchase.  Other items can be evaluated, if my coffee maker breaks down, I have two stove top percolators in the basement, I would go back to using them. You get the idea.

2. Enjoy a glass of wine once in a while, not daily

My husband has always been a beer drinker, and he enjoys a couple of glasses of wine, but we both feel we drink too much, it is an expensive habit, and it is NOT good for your health. So to start we are doing a dry January, and then, as Dave pointed out Lent begins shortly after (February 14), so we may continue on to Easter. I will still enjoy a glass wine outside of January and Lent, but I want it to be something enjoyed once in a while, not every day. Because one glass becomes two, and sometimes more, and that is not good.  

3. Really make the most of our garden this year

Last year we put our garden in late, we had a cool wet summer, and between deer eating our tomato plants and a somewhat neglectful attitude, the whole project was a bit of a bomb. We enjoyed cucumbers, peppers, cantaloupe melons and acorn squash, but we had nothing to can. The year before our garden simply suffered from neglect, watching 8 grandchildren two of whom were babies that summer, I did not have the time or the energy to keep up on the garden.
This year I am determined that we will have a fabulous garden as we did in previous years. I eat a lot of tomatoes so want to can many, many jars of them, I eat a lot of kale and collard greens, they are both easy to grow. I eat turnips and brussel sprouts every day, and both are easy to grow, and of course cucumbers, radishes and green peppers. I eat a lot of lentils, I don't know if I can grow them in Indiana, but I am going to research and see if I can grow some. 

4. Continue on as a Vegan, and keep daily exercise a priority in my life

This is my easiest resolution, it is how I live, so nothing to add here, just keep on keeping on. Oh, and be more disciplined in posting to my blog :)

I would love to hear your plans and goals for 2018.

Peace be with you,

Bean