Devin's Art Gallery

She has been so much into drawing, painting, coloring, cutting out shapes and all other artsy stuff in the last 6 months or so. She constantly asks me to draw something and I am so not good at it. But at least I can color with her for hours; that I can do and that is about all when comes to arts :). I think we need some arts and crafts classes soon.

100% Kissable

Baby Love. LOVE, LOVE babies! And especially this one.

The smelly fruit Durian

Durians at the Asian Market

Daiva and I smelling the fruit.
See, the seeds on the side? They are edible if you roast/boil them.

Finally I got to try fresh Durian fruit. It looked cool. The spikes were sharp and you already could smell the fruit without even opening it yet. Once we opened the smell was strong, some people would say kind of stinky :) The fruit meat was sweet but strange flavor. After eating a little bit I could not eat more. My taste buds were so not used to such a strange flavor, consistency and smell. I friezed up most of the fruit. I heard they make great smoothies. The fruit comes from Indonesia and you could find them in Asian Markets. I highly recommend to try it just for such a uniqueness of it. Thanks Daiva for my Christmas present!

Lithuanian Sauerkraut

Using food processor to shred the cabbage. We make a mess but have fun!

Putting shreded cabage in HARSCH stone fermentation pot

We got half of it full.

5 days later we are eating it

The recipe:

4 heads of hard winter cabbage

4 carrots

1 apple

A handfull of fresh cranberries

A spoonful of fennel seeds

Salt to taste

Shred the cabbage and carrots, apple with the food processor. I alternate a couple of blades: half of it make it with one that makes long stripes and half of it that makes short ones. Mix it all with fennel seeds, cranberries and salt. Than you need to press it all untill you get some juice. If you do not get enough juice add some water. Put some cabbage leaves on the top and add the stone weight that comes with the pot. The water(cabagge juice) has to go above the weighting stones-very important!! Close pot with the lid and pour some water in the groove. Leave pot in your kitchen and listen for bubbling sound. Your sauerkrout will be ready in about 5 days. Take it all out, put in glass jars and keep in the refrigirator for a long time if you want. We eaty it pretty quickly..

Raw Cranberry Jelly

If you live in Southern California you know that is hard to find fresh cranberries here (not a right climate to grow them here). I tried buying it online but because the berries are pretty heavy it is costly to ship them. But every year around Thanksgiving Trader Joe's gets pretty good fresh cranberries. I like juicing them with pineapple or apples or making raw cranberry jelly. Here is the most simple recipe to make it. I like simple, quick and healthy recipes.
24 ounces of fresh cranberries
1 to 2 sweet apples
1/2 cup of water
honey to taste
Blend it all with Vitamix or your blender and pour it in the jar. It can sty in the refrigerator for days. I like to put it on the toast. Toast with cream cheese and cranberry jelly goes nicely with it too.