Pintesting in the Kitchen - Eggplant Caviar

Making the adjustment to having gestational diabetes isn't easy. Still in the stage where all I knew was that I had to eat and that I had to be even more mindful of what I was putting into my body I really had no choice about trudging forward and trying to make this work.

Today's pintest comes to us via this pin and the information found here - in French.

Ingredients you're going to need:
3-4 small eggplants - I chose to just use 1 large one

 3 tablespoons tahini / tahini / tahina (or sesame paste)

1 clove of garlic
Juice of one lemon
1 dash of olive oil
1 c. in s. of Labane or buttermilk
1/2 c. to c. ground cumin
salt
 
Description 

Preheat oven to 200 °.

Wash and prick the eggplants all over with a fork 

and place them on a baking sheet.  

Bake 20-25 minutes, turning halfway through cooking. By the time my 25 minutes was up, because I used a large eggplant the center wasn't cooked as well as I was going to need. I cut it open, removed a few seeds, and put it back in for another 12 minutes and 30 seconds. 

I was getting nowhere really fast and my headache and hunger was only getting much more intense. I flipped the eggplant over, turned the heat up to 300, and set my timer for 15 minutes and 30 seconds. I removed as many seeds as I could 

and hacked up the insides 

and put it all back into the oven for another 15 minutes.

Let cool, peel by holding the stem and remove the seeds. Keep only the flesh. Yes yes it is a bit tedious but the result is much better without grains!

Then mix together the flesh of the eggplant with garlic, tahini, lemon juice, cumin, Labane (or in my case buttermilk), a drizzle of olive oil and salt.

Stay far, far, far away from this time consuming recipe. Nothing about this was worth it for me.The taste was no good and I just about wish I could get that time back.

Homemade Vitamin Water

I used to love vitamin water, but I had an incident where someone slipped drugs into mine and it left me unable to stand the taste of it. Years before that even happened my husband, a die-hard sports nut, told me that under NCAA guidelines vitamin waters contained banned substances and that college athletes were being told they couldn't drink it.

These banned substances included taurine, L-theanine, green-tea extract and glucosamine. Withing a week of the link I provided you above vitamin water was given the green light. Hmmmmmm.

After dealing with the intense thirst that accompanies gestational diabetes I decided to try my hand at making my own.

For starters I chose to only make two.

One contained frozen pineapple and mango chunks along with some fresh mint.

The other contained a frozen mixture of berries (raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries).

Making these was simple. Just put your fruit in your chosen glass container, fill it with water, and then put it in the fridge for a minimum of 1 - 4 hours to let the water infuse. I left mine overnight.

The resulting concoction was okay but not what I was hoping for. We did however find that the drink tasted even better later in the day than in the beginning.

Still very interested a few days later I made a couple more.

The one on the left has (frozen) blueberries, line, and cucumber. The one on the right has cucumber, lemon, mint, and ginger. These were pretty disgusting. The one on the left had way too much lime and the one on the right was just a bit of an amalgam of nasty.

I'm going to have to try this again with fresh fruit.

Two Pintests In One! Chemical-Free Cleaning

The other day I saw a lemon bar recipe I really wanted to try. After spending an entire day feeling awful I decided I would make some lemon bars for my husband and myself. My lemons were about ready to be thrown away but the zest still looked viable - or viable enough.

After standing in the kitchen for an indeterminate amount of time zesting lemons my husband told me he didn't like lemon bars. He'd eat a few - but isn't a lemon bar fan. Completely uninterested in wasting lemons, possibly overloading the worms I'm planning to use in composting with citrus, or being left to eat all of the lemon bars myself - I remembered a couple of pins I felt would be useful.

The first pin provides some info on how to whiten your whites that have become dingy.

The second felt like a good plan about what to do about my lemon rinds.

I cut off all of my lemon rinds and placed them in a Mason jar for later.

Meanwhile I cut up my lemons. Placed them in a large pot.

Filled it with water and dropped in about half of the lemons I now had.

Once the water began to boil I put some of my husbands dingy shirts into the water. It appeared I'd been too cautious about water displacement and ended up needing to add more very hot water to the mix.

I let the water come back up to a boil. Turned off the heat. Put a lid on my pot and let it sit for an hour.

After that first "load" I decided to do another containing minky inserts for my little lamb's cloth diapers.

I didn't have any clean Mason lids so I had to clean some. Once they were ready to go I filled the Mason jar containing the lemon rinds with vinegar.

If you  noticed in my first photo I have the lemons on one of my UnPaper towels. I chose to cut them on that because I didn't feel like doing any dishes or getting out my cutting board. Cutting the lemons this way left me with a nice lemon cloth that I used to scrub my kitchen sink!

When I finally finished boiling whites I strained the lemons to be composted later.

The instructions for your new vinegar cleaner is to let your jar sit for 10 days. So . . . . I guess I'll be concluding this in around 10 days?

Kitchen Testing - Winter Sore Throat "Tea"

Some months ago it seemed that a great deal of the women I know on Facebook were all "like"ing the same "Farmer's Pal" post. But of course, that's really how it works isn't it? One person "like"s it and then we all see it and then people start following suit.

What was all the hubbub about? "Winter sore throat 'tea'"

I mentioned recently that my little lamb and I got sick. My sore throat far outweighed the annoyance of my ever dripping nose.

This is a recipe you should really make months in advance but who can really remember what you had going on months ago that kept you from doing it? Besides - there are still more winter months to go!

I bought ginger with the intention of using it in some kimchee for my mother, but my piece was large enough that I could spare half to make some tea.

I sliced it up and then got out my lemons.

Layer lemons and ginger.

Then pour honey over top and watch it drip through the open spaces.

Now I play the waiting game. This mix looks so wonderful I almost hope for a sore throat. By the time this post goes out it will only have been in the fridge six days. The original post says to wait months but I'll be trying to keep an eye on it to see when it congeals.