In the Kitchen

I was expecting to make a lemon mint chickpea salad with the can of beans I thought was in the cupboard. With the cupboards chickpea-less, I searched the interwebs for an alternative. I settled on this lemon mint lentil salad. If I make it again, I'll cut the salt by half -- and I do like salt. I used sea salt rather than the kosher salt called for in the recipe. (In retrospect, I think I may have once read somewhere that kosher slat is less salty than other salts*, so if you substitute, you should adjust the amount. Is this true?) I didn't have fresh thyme, so I doubled up on the bay leaves (mine are gigantic). I added a little turmeric to the dressing and, because I didn't have red onions and because the Hubs isn't big on raw onions anyway, I subbed minced boiled onion that I fished out of the lentils when they were finished cooking. Oh, and I used three colors of bell peppers because I had a variety bag of mini bell peppers. Because the salad's a bit too salty, I mixed it with lemony rice to serve. Pretty darn good tasting and satisfying.

I also made super simple, super yummy granola. I cut this recipe by 1/3 (so it fits on my 2 smallish sheet trays and makes just enough to fill one jar.) *Wouldn't you know, it's this granola recipe that contains the note about kosher salt substitutions.

Also cooking in the kitchen is my jar of iron water, which after an additional couple weeks had built up a bit of pressure. I cut the piece of wool felt on the right from the end of the peachy piece that's underneath it. The cut piece went for a swim in the iron bath overnight. After washing and drying, you can see how the iron changed the color. It's not photographing well, but that peach color is pretty intense, too electric for yoni usage. The iron knocked down the color to something I will use. After doing this little experiment, I was flipping through Eco Colour by India Flint and The Modern Natural Dyer by Kristine Vejar. Flint expresses concern for the safe disposal of iron salts (recommended method is to evaporate the liquid so only a small amount of sludge is left to dispose) while Vejar notes that iron water can damage protein based fibers (i.e. wool). She recommends never leaving any fiber in iron water for more than 30 minutes.