Holy @#$% it’s the White House!

 

I got an email from the Senior Adviser of Making at the White House. Now it was mentioned to me, by friends at Adafruit, that they would be putting my name in with a list of Makers for the White House to connect with. Still it just hit me as I responded to the email that I am responding to an email from a senior staff member at the frig’n White House!

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I have never been in this kind of position before. People normally think I am a crazy man when I go on about how important the Maker movement is to our future. We are the world’s new R&D community and the best of us share information and collaborate with everyone else.

Makers are kicking ass all over the world and I am just glad to be a part of it.

Kombucha Harvesting Time!

IMAG0674_BURST002Recently a fellow maker, Jon, gave us a Scoby so we could make our own Kambucha… 2 weeks later and it is ripe for drinking. I got a bottle full in the fridge for tomorrow and the rest will be bottled for secondary fermentation.

IMAG0673_BURST002_COVEROur first attempt found us brewing up a bunch of caffeine free green tea. This was not so good for Scoby growth, but it did spawn a second mother. So now we are going to try and get a second pot going as well.

IMAG0676_BURST002As far as the secondary fermentation goes, we have added some ginger and I put on some frozen Rasberries and Blue Berries. We will see how it goes.

 

Low Carb enchiladas… kinda

Emily and I are trying out low carb. While I do miss potatoes and crackers, it has forced me to be a little creative with my cooking.

A friend gave us a recipe for this crackpot pulled pork soup that used enchilada sauce. Well I am done eating just meat soup so I decided to try making enchiladas.

I won’t really get into the filling part of this since you could use whatever. Slow cooked and seasoned chicken, beef, pork, fish, or even Tofu would work. Once your meat has cooked, you will want to boil a head of cabbage. Be sure to boil the entire thing because we want the leafs intact. This will likely take one hour in a large pot of water.

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With a spoon, try and separate the leafs in the pot to help cook the innermost leaves. I used purple cabbage just because it looks nice, but any type would do.

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Drain out the water when the leafs are nice and tender, then rinse them off in cold water so they are easy to handle. These leafs will be used as your enchilada wrappers.

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Scoop about 2 large spoon fulls of filling into one of the cabbage leafs. Be sure to leave more room on once side to wrap the filling up with.

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Place your wrapped enchilada into a baking dish. Place these into the dish with the overlapped part of the cabbage leaf facing down.

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Once you have a few of these packed into the dish, it’s time to add some cheese. Emily loves the cheese. We used Jack cheese for this one, but cheddar or whatever will work.

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Now it’s into the oven with you. Bake for one hour at 400° should do it.

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You will want to check on things just before the hour is up. You want to see bubbly cheese with a bit of browning on top.

Let that cool for at least 5 minutes, then add sour cream and chow down. The cabbage leafs should be tender enough to cut with a fork.

We made a larger dish for weekday lunches.