A dried bean appears to be dead. Hard as a rock, void of nutrients. Add water, and you can revitalize the bean and transform it into a creamy, nutritious mush. Still, although I love all kinds of beans, beans are still full of starch. However, a sprouted bean is just beginning to create new life — you’ve created a perpetual mini garden in your kitchen to feed your family “fresh food.”

It’s like an “indoor garden” right on your own counter.

I’ve been buried in a bevy of cookbooks lately, Raw Food Cookbooks

touting the benefits and “how-tos” of sprouting beans and grains. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

• We’ve all heard that beans are full of nutrients. However, there are amino acids in the bean that binds with calcium, magnesium, iron, copper, and zinc, making it hard to impossible for you to absorb those nutrients. When you sprout the beans, you are neutralizing these amino acids — which makes it easier for your body to gain access to these nutrients — especially protein.
• “The process of germination not only produces vitamin C, but also changes the composition of grains and seeds in numerous beneficial ways. Sprouting increases vitamin B content, especially B2, B5, and B6. Carotene increases dramatically-sometimes even eightfold.” Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats
• Sprouting activates nutrients that are bound up in the seeds, making more protein available in the food. For example, a grain of wheat, increases its vitamin E content 300% after only 2 days of growth and the B2 vitamin riboflavin jumps from 13 milligrams to 54 mg in the sprout. In general, b vitamins can increase 300% to 1400% depending on the variety.
• Sprouting also makes the bean easier to digest and eliminates the gasses traditionally found in beans.

So, I began the process of bringing my dried beans to life — not just through “rehydration” but actually turning the bean into a plant… live food.  Here’s how I proceeded.

Admittedly, I started with probably the hardest bean to sprout — the garbanzo bean. If you want to try sprouting, pick a softer bean — like a lentil, which can sprout in almost a day. My family loves garbanzo beans, and I’m a very patient person, so I rolled up my sleeves and forged ahead.

I made this sprouting process as simple as possible. I refused to buy any extra “sprouting” equipment.

I simply soaked the garbanzo beans overnight — probably about 36 hours. Garbanzo beans are VERY hard — rocks, really, and required to be soaked longer than most beans. I changed the water at least every 12 hours. (Soaking them in the refrigerator may have eliminated this fresh water changes.)

Then, when the garbanzo beans were done soaking, (just beginning to soften), I rinsed them thoroughly and just set them up in a colander. I rinsed them every few hours. Sprouting took a couple of days. But once they sprouted,

they were beautiful.

Now, here is where I made my mistake.

I immediately began to process the beans in my food processor. I had read too many over-zealous raw cookbooks, who had convinced me that heat destroys all the nutrient value of any food. I added the garlic, salt, the tahini, the lemon juice, and just whizzed away. The soft beans actually did turn into a creamy hummus — without much effort!

The taste, I will admit, was Putrid! I was quite disappointed… and I wouldn’t even let my family taste this raw concoction… for fear that I would turn them off sprouted food forever.

Back to square one, after realizing that I have been eating cooked food my whole life, and I haven’t died yet. A little heat would have done this hummus some good. Besides, what good is a nutritious food is no one is eating it?  So, I’m working on this again — this time, cooking the garbanzo beans after sprouting. Sprouting, they tell me, will cut the cooking time in half. If you’ve ever cooked a garbanzo bean, you know that’s reason enough to sprout.

The process was simply, really. I had read other stories of people using enzyme cleaners, like Bac-Out, to wash their floors and discovering that ants, bugs and lizards didn’t like the smell.  Surprising, really, because Bac-Out doesn’t smell bad it all — it’s smells like citrus, and does a great job of getting rid of bathroom odors. Really? Pine Sol smells worse — and even that doesn’t permanently get rid of ants.

I can’t help myself. If I see an ant, I grab it an plop it into a carefully prepared bowl of sugar mixed with a lethal dose of Diatomaceous Earth (not lethal to humans). Same thing I use to handle pantry moths. 

Inspired, and curious, I started moping my floors with enzymes. Within seconds of distributing the enzymes on my floor, ants that I didn’t even know I had, came scurrying out of the woodwork. I swear, if I could hear them, they were saying,  ”Get me outta here!”

But are the floors clean? One person commented that the grout on her tile floor gets progressively whiter every time she cleans with enzymes. Guess what? My grout, is now  back to “cream-colored” so bright and pretty.  I’m talking about the grout in our first floor bathroom that gets a tremendous amount of traffic from the boys and their friends, constantly. I had accepted it would be “gray” forever.

So, you know where this is headed, don’t you? I couldn’t resist. I bit the bullet and started making my own, garbage enzymes. I just wanted to see if I could do it — you know, kind of an experiement.  How hard could it be? I’m already saving citrus peels for my own do-it-yourself Citrasol.

Why do this? I know, you can simply go out and buy Bac-Out. But, making your own garbage enzyme makes a “mash” that is so good for cleaning the sludge out of your drains, which also eliminates fruit flies.

More on that in the coming weeks. In short, the benefits of the “mash” is worth the trouble. In the third-world, Garbage Enzymes is the latest craze to save the environment. A  Study of the Garbage Enzyme’s Effects in Domestic Wastewate by the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, helped me sleep better. Garbage Enzymes are the “new compost.”

“It makes good use of kitchen waste which would otherwise end up in landfills and generate methane, a potent greenhouse gas. It is something that housewives can do. And the enzyme also reduces our reliance on chemical cleaners, detergent. The Star.

Yet, The whole time I was preparing the materials, I was saying under my breath, “You DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS,” but the other voice kept saying — “but enzymes are so powerful, you need the extra cleaning power, and making  your own is practically free!”

The battle raged in my mind for two weeks, until the first batch of garbage enzymes was completed. That battle stopped once the first batch of garbage enzyme was done, and I saw for myself how simple it was to make. The whole process, hands-on time, was probably about 10 minutes, tops. Now the enzymes “make themselves” over a period of two weeks. Think of it as yeast rising a bread, except this takes longer.

I know this sounds terribly complicated, and most of you have already stopped reading by now. Who wants to go to all the trouble to “make” a cleaner.  But, if you’re still with me, keep reading. Again, this is pretty much a “hands-off” process, and one that I highly recommend.

Here’s what you’ll need to get started.

• A plastic container with a lid, large enough to hold 2 liters. Plastic is best. I used an old pickle jar… but be sure to leave the lid slightly ajar, as the gases in the concoction need to expand. This goes for plastic and glass.
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon yeast. Without this, the garbage enzyme will take 3 months to ferment.
• 1 liter water
• 2 cups citrus scraps. Technically, you can use vegetables and fruits. But, let’s be honest. Do you want to clean with tomatoes? Let’s keep it sweet-smelling by only using citrus.
• If you don’t have 2 cups of citrus peels, just keep adding them to the container until you have two cups. The enzymes will start being created on the day you have the full two cups.

1. Mix all the ingredients together.
2. Mark the date you created the mixture on the container.
3. Shake once a day for one week.
4. After one week, just let it sit.
5. Keep the lid slightly loose, to let the gas escape for the first week.
6. After two weeks, strain the mixture and store it in an empty container. Once, I let it sit an extra 10 days, and it was still in perfect shape.
7. Keep the leftover pulp, the mash. Flush it down your toilets to clean out the drains.

This post has a lot of information. But this is not the last thing I have to say on the topic. I’ll continue to give updates on how great it is to have your own garbage enzyme around your house.

Quite a bit of time has passed, years, really, since I sat with mothers of children my own age to marvel at some new development in motherhood. There hasn’t been any. We’ve all been there, done that. We can handle those new developments now, realizing, through our years of experience, that there are uphill climbs, and downhill climbs and new progressions require a meager shift in our lives. We have learned to yield, rather than, to create a mountain of what could be a simple mole hill.

Except for this one thing. Naps. Our children dropped them years ago by the age of 2, to our dismay. However, like all things, we got over it, and learned to juggle the daily domestic responsibilities with toddlers in tow, which soon gave way to having children in school.

Nevertheless now, we are amazed that we can take naps in the presence of our children. It is simply amazing. Once again, we as mothers, who put aside such “child development” conversations long ago, are discussing them, because we are so bewildered. We discuss how and where it happens:

• There was actually room for me on the couch, so I sat down.
• We were watching a movie together, and then, I just dropped. Exhausted.

It is odd, too how the kids react. This is new for them. They are as quiet as cotton. They do not want to do anything to cause a disruption in this peaceful slumber, so foreign to their eyes.

Of course, none of this could happen without our kids being old enough to handle themselves all by themselves. And second, we have handled just about any mess they kids could come up with anyway. We just don’t care what happens while we sleep. We just want some sleep.

Except for when the moment comes, about 20 minutes into the nap, when he really needs “something.” He creeps over beside me and begins to talk to my eyelids, as if there is a part of me that is always awake, and he merely needs to tap into that dimension, while the rest of me just goes on sleeping.

This new wave of “true” reality shows (how true would you act at your job if someone were following you around with a camera?) provides a new level of entertainment to TV. I watch one, in particular, with the manly men in my house, with horror. The Deadliest Catch must be as close to hell on earth as you can get.

Heralded by the shows’s writers as the most dangerous job in the world, these men face the harsh reality of trying to make enough money to support their families and literally keep their businesses afloat. There is blood and cuts and stitches that go untreated…there is just not enough time in four months to worry about such trivialities.  Fishing for opilio or “snow crab,” causes the men to face some of the harshest conditions any of them have ever experienced in more than a quarter century of fishing.

Here’s what I’ve observed about these men — God love them for trying to support their families:

• No sleep. I thought nursing a newborn was bad. These men operate on no sleep, so dizzy they can’t stand up, doing HEAVY labor. And, don’t forget to watch the boom and that flying anchor, or you could loose a nose.
• Stuck on a boat for four months at a time. You CANNOT run out to the grocery store just for a break in a boat-ful of testosterone.
• Seasickness would be my constant battle… as I watch the ship toss in a cyclone of thunderous waves.
• HEAVY crates are hoisted out of the water — via pulleys, as wind and waves thrash again and again against the boat.
• Throwing that anchor out to drop the crates — did you see that poor guy that got hit on the side of his face with the anchor — his nose was moved to one side of his face. No medical support was called. Just a band-aid and time. CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT KIND OF PAIN? Makes my eyes water.
• The food. Did you see that mess? They eat like kings, in a second rate kitchen. They are ravenously hungry, and thank goodness for those men, they is an unlimited supply of vitals. They need it.  Right after that, they showed us the clogged toilet on the ship, that finally exploded …. and then, I remember being seasick.

When I think I can’t take another second of this show, I notice myself. I’m seated comfortably on the sofa. My feet are dry. There is no wind. I am warm. I am SOOOO comfortable. I am dry. My toes are not pruned.

I am in heaven. I have seen enough… no problem in my day can match what these men are facing. I curl up in my DRY bed, that sits on a floor that is not moving, and I sleep like a baby.

Life is good.

I’ve had quite a few readers email me because they can’t figure out how to pin a photo onto Pinterest. Other than providing inspiration for your own life, by looking at other people’s boards, you can create your own boards, by adding photos you find on the internet. But how?

To pin photos you find, you will need a Pin button loaded onto your Internet browser. It doesn’t matter what you use — IE, Firefox, Chrome or Safari. To get one, simply go to this Pinterest goodies page, and drag the words, highlighted in light blue, that says: ←  Add this link to your Bookmarks Bar. Drag it straight to the top of your search bar, and place it where you want to button to appear. Once you’ve found the sweet spot, a little plus sign will show up.

It is VERY important (for copyright reasons), and if you want to find the post again,  that your browser address is to the page that contains the post that holds the picture you want to pin — rather than the website’s home page. Read on to ensure you are pinning to the correct URL.

Pinterest allows you to create a virtual bulletin board around any topic you heart desires. You can view other’s boards for inspiration, and collect those pins onto your own boards. Pinterest can help you solve life’s pressing problems. You can also pin any image or video you find on the Internet to post to your own board, share with friends, tweet about it, or share the pin on Facebook.

However, this “incorrect” pinning that is covering the Pinterest boards is driving me crazy. I feel compelled to reach out and try to correct the madness, because it isn’t doing anyone any good if we can’t find the link you are pinning.

The problem centers on the “permalink” of the post that features the image or the words you are trying to pin. The permalink is located in the address bar of the page you are on — the url, or web address. While the url of susiej is susiej.com, the look of the posts on that page will vary as I add more stories. If you want to remember how to make a lemon aid shakeup, you will want to save this url address:

http://www.susiej.com/make-fair-style-lemon-shake-ups-at-home/

The permalink of the post you are seeking to pin is unique to each specific post. That permalink is where the exact photos and text are located for the story you want to pin –and this does not change.

How do you find the permalink? Simply click on the post’s title… your screen will refresh, and the url in your browser will get a bit longer (sometimes it includes the post title or date, or both) but it is distinctly different from the home page url, and all of the other stories will drop off the page once the permalink is revealed. That’s where you pin.

Here’s an example of how this works.

I pinned this image onto my lighting board, on how to turn a Clementine into a candle. To read more about how to do this, I click on the source of the pin, which is in the upper right-hand corner of the pin. See Exhibit A.

However, when I clicked on that link, this is what appeared.

This link was actually an “email” that was sent to someone’s private email address… and I couldn’t open it, becuase it was not sent to me.

Determined to find the source, I googled, “how to turn a clementine into a candle, ” and found that the post originally appeared on Apartment Therapy. Problem solved.

Or is it? Now, we run into another problem with pinning on Pinterest and Permalinks. If you click on http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/, I can guarantee that you will not see a burning clementine. Did they pull the post? Where is it? As more posts are added and updated, the home page changes. Apartmenttherapy.com is not the permalink on how to turn a Clementine into a candle.

But this is the permalink:

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/how-to/how-to-make-a-clementine-candle-001453

Notice, that the permalink includes the post title, and a number… much different from http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/

But this is the permalink:

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/how-to/how-to-make-a-clementine-candle-001453

Notice, that the permalink includes the post title, and a number… much different from http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/

How did I find it? I simply clicked on the title of the post. When you are sure you are on the post’s permalink page, then, and only then, do you hit that little P button circled in the image below, on the upper right hand side. To learn how to get that P onto your task bar, which the Pinterest video tutorial.  Easy.

By using permalinks, you will be able to find the exact location of all of your pins, and so will your followers.

My husband beat the 87 degree temps at the Boston marathon today. Time 3:46… And yes, there were no lifeguards on duty.

Boston won. D. Ortiz is our hero.

Despite the chaos he

created

in  our

kitchen at the very last minute,

I just might miss

this winged friend. Honestly, I’m a overwhelmed with relief to see him go make a nest with his science teacher… somewhere far away from here.

There was an event at school… the kids were asked to fill out name tags for their parents, so that we could talk together in a group discussion… and know each other’s names.

This was what my kids wrote on my name tag:

They say we need 8 tall glasses of water everyday… and it will make us look like a tall glass of water. Or do we? A report on NPR identified the Five Myths of drinking water — I was starting to believe it, until I got to Number 4. It states that other non-calorie options to drink are fine — such as diet sodas. What about those being full of sodium and other chemicals that mess up your metabolism? Hardly an equal substitute for non-calorie water.  Then, I found another study from Scientific American, that states the 8-glass a day is actually a miscalculation:

a person should consume one milliliter of water (about one fifth of a teaspoon) for each calorie of food. The math is pretty simple: A daily diet of around 1,900 calories would dictate the consumption of 1,900 milliliters of water, an amount remarkably close to 64 ounces. But many dietitian and other people failed to notice a critical point: namely, that much of the daily need for water could be met by the water content found in food.

Still, we need to drink some water… whether we believe that 8 glasses is a myth of not.  For many of us… this is difficult. Water is bland. They also tell us that lemon water is even better for us. This can be sour.

I’ve found a solution — it may work for you.

I drink my lemon water warm. I warm up the kettle, as if I’m going to make tea… but I don’t let the water get too hot. Then, I pour the warm water into a tall glass, squeeze in some lemon juice… and just for fun, sometimes I had a bit of ginger. Then, I add a splash of Stevia — a bit of sweetness that makes it taste like warm lemon aid. I’m not sure why warming the water tastes so much better than cold water… but it just does.