Kitchen Experiments

I opened up this screen to tell you about my kitchen experiments this week. I actually have not been cooking a lot -- seriously, that curried rice and stir fry made a TON of food. I still have a whole gladware full of rice. I also had a lot of veggies that needed to be eaten, so I've been focused.

I am sitting here looking at the screen, though, and hearing a line from Kiera Knightly's version of Pride and Prejudice in my head: "Don't you judge me, Lizzy. Don't you dare judge me."

And the reason for that is my kitchen experiments have been truly bizarre, and .... So, don't judge me, it was really just an experiment.

Experiment #1: Making saurkraut
I know, why would you want to? But I saw this video a while ago, and thought "Wow, that's weird." And then, after making the curried stir fry, I still had more than a half a head of cabbage leftover. Now, the total cost of the cabbage was $0.33. So realistically, I could have just thrown it away and considered the money well spent. But no, I'm opposed to throwing food away.

So I decided to make saurkraut. Carraway seeds are what is used in rye bread, so as soon as I opened those up I was like, hmm, smells like pumpernickel, no, not pumpernickel, rye!

And actually (now that I have waited the requisite 3 days for said experiment to ferment on my kitchen counter), it is better than any saurkraut I have ever tasted in my life. So maybe that was worth the 1/2 of $0.33.

Experiment #2: Making Muesli
In Italy, I used to eat muesli for breakfast. It was sold at the grocery stores in a bag like cereal or granola. I have been thinking about something else that I could do for breakfast, because the yogurt doesn't last through my morning classes. Ok, I know, I eat all the time, but yogurt isn't lasting through my first morning class.

Side story: One of my students was saying she has poison ivy, so the doctors put her on a high powered steroid. And I said, "Oh, my gosh! I am so sorry! I was on that ALL summer. Are you sleeping at all? Because I didn't sleep for a month." Another student said, "Did it make you hungry?" And I kind of thought, and then, "Hm... I don't know. I eat all the time anyway." And she said, "Well, I know you like to eat. But it can make you really hungry." And I thought, "Oh boy..."

I could probably find a store that sells muesli, but not gluten-free. So I saw this recipe for muesli. I spent way too much on the gluten-free oatmeal (gotta love Bob's Red Mill though. Thoughtful company), so I omitted the buckwheat (which despite the name is gluten free).