The Long Awaited Pickles Arrive!

My brother-in-law Jeff embodies what many hipsters aspire to be. He's a lumberjack. He turns wooden bowls. He can grow a mustache.

Most importantly, Jeff makes his own artisan beers.

I am not as skilled as Jeff. The last tree I lifted from this mortal coil was the rose bush I puked on that withered and died a couple weeks ago. I can't turn wooden bowls. I am literally allergic to beer.

But after reading a stirring biography of Dom Perignon, I figured that if a 17th century Benedictine monk and my brother-in-law could find the time and storage to ferment, why couldn't I? I mean, what's my excuse? Dom Perignon didn't have the internet.

YOU CAN PICKLE, I PROMISE: A RECIPE AND MEMOIR

DAY 1, HOUR 1: ACQUIRE CUCUMBERS

We had about 10 kirby cucumbers from May's CSA membership, as well as two long, soft, anonymous cucumbers that were withering away quietly in the back of the fridge. They would see glory before they died.

Above, the cucumbers have been sliced into spears and COVERED in salt. We rubbed it in. We then covered and refrigerated it. We then refrigerated it for six hours-twelve hours. We probably watched reruns of Doctor Who for the duration of this process.

DAY 1, HOUR 6 OR 12:
Construct your brine. We used this recipe with McCormack brand pickling spice because it was $4.79 a jar, and to use the more delicious recipe, it would have been like $16 and we would have had excess celery seed that would have taken years to use up. The best way to do this is to use a recipe like Martha Stewart's Dill Pickle Chip recipe and purchase the seeds at your local bulk spice distributor.

• 12 3 to 4 inch long pickling cucumbers
• 2 cups water
• 1 3/4 cups white vinegar
• 1 1/2 cups chopped fresh dill weed
• 1/2 cup brown rice syrup
• 8 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 1/2 tablespoons coarse salt
• 1 tablespoon pickling spice
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dill seed
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste
• 4 sprigs fresh dill weed

May took the reins from here on out. She heated the water and vinegar and spices until it boiled, and let it cool.
DAY 1, HALF AN HOUR AFTER THAT:
We rinsed the salt off the pickles and tossed them with chopped dill sprigs. May then packed them artfully into recycled jars, where they would nestle 'mongst the brine and spices which have been ladled in subsequently, for the next 3-4 days.

DAY 4. SUNRISE:
It feels like Christmas morning. You run to the fridge, throw open the doors and grab the nearest of seven jars of pickles. It might look a little cloudy. That's okay. From the top down, it looks gorgeous.

Wow. What we're seeing here are cucumbers, dill sprigs, cloves, crushed garlic cloves, and little balls of mustard seed floating around the jar. It really is killer for looks.

I drained out the liquid here so you can see how great it looks. It was time-consuming to wait four days, but we've been enjoying them for nearly a week and a half, and have a billion cucumbers to share with friends.

Looking back, I wouldn't use the McCormack pickling spice. It's so sweet that it's really better suited for corned beef hash. When we pickle next week, we're springing for the dill seed and celery seed to get a more savory, more dill-ish pickle. But that was easy! And it would make a KILLER Christmas present if Christmas was in August!

A Vegan Trapped in New Jersey

Last week, I went to the Jersey Shore. You may recognize it from its recurring role in television and pop culture. There was fist-bumping. There was high hair. There were people of Caucasian descent who had laid out on the beach so long that their forefathers were roasting in their respective graves.

As soon as I saw my first sorority girl in yoga pants with rhinestone angel wings on each cheek, I knew that if I wanted to find anything resembling a vegetable in New Jersey, I should take a fork to the astro-turf on the mini golf courses.

TAKING MISO THROUGH HOMELAND SECURITY

Many of you are probably familiar with South River Miso. If you aren't, you're missing out on one of the macro diet's great delights. It's incredible, flavorful, and creative miso with beautiful packaging and an amazing presence in food. It's the macro chef's secret weapon. It's also only available in most parts of the country October through April. Thankfully here in New England, we're able to get it directly in grocery stores year-round.

I thought I'd surprise my mom with a tub of the amazing Chickpea Miso, and satisfied that it was neither gel nor liquid nor firearm, I packed it in my shiny gold purse. When you've got a food allergy, flying is a nightmare. You can get trapped in airports for hours with no food, and the only thing you can hope to find is a $7 bowl of naked lettuce with no dressing, an apple, and some incredibly rancid nuts.

I got through the scanner when I saw the all too familiar congregating of security agents, whispering, pointing, and button-pushing. I remembered this from the Great Adzuki Bean Debacle of 2010, but this time I was ready. I had 11 months of retail and service industry rage built up, and I was ready to rumble. They were going to peel that miso from my cold, dead fingers.

Not to get all crazy conspiracy theory on y'all, but really, there's no recourse when it comes to things like "national security." I understand that there are terrorists out there, front line of defense and all that, but let's be real: a lot of this is just posturing to make people think these things are more effective than they are. Case and point: I had to talk to two heads of airport security to get my miso un-confiscated and fished out of the trash, and ten minutes later, a guy got all the way through airport security and boarded a plane with a taser gun.

I arrived in New Jersey and my mom and I headed to the grocery store where we stocked up on tons of macro veggies like bok choi, kale, collard greens, mushrooms, onions, and brown rice. We cooked most of our own food during the week, because the concept of olive oil is truly lost on this proud race. I was informed that my broiled fish at dinner had "nothin' on it 'cept butter."

The entire island served nothin' that didn't have butter. I went to breakfast and had fruit and a sunny side up egg... with butter. A steamed potato... with butter. I think because it was an island and they're constantly slathering their backs with sunscreen, it just feels wrong that food should be some kind of exemption.

After about two days, my stomach and intestines were expressing their discontent. I had all but given up hope, and had just completed my fourth round of mini golf when I saw it, sitting there on the boardwalk.

Pure Tacos.

It was situated between a funnel cake shack and a purveyor of hermit crabs. It was like a mirage. I thought I was hallucinating. The funnel cake shack had a banner that said, I kid you not, "NOW WITH GUMMY BEAR TOPPING." Because when I look at funnel cakes, the thorn in my eye, the gaping hole that gnaws at me, is the painful and pointed absence of gummy bears on top.

I saw it. "GLUTEN FREE." "VEGAN." "ORGANIC." I thought it was some kind of sick joke by the funnel cake man. I looked closer, and it was tucked away in a deep, zen red crevice. It was a burrito shop that had only organic and gluten-free taco ingredients. It was amazing. My mom and I were blathering idiots at the counter, stammering like teenage girls at a Justin Bieber concert about what a huge deal this was and how huge it was to meet eat them.

The food was pretty good. As you can expect, the place was totally deserted, while there were lines out the door at the curly fries joint and the home-fried donut shack. We were freaking out about napa cabbage while some little girl walking by was eating a green sno-cone that looked like nuclear runoff.

I have to say, if you're vegan and looking for a holistic retreat, I probably wouldn't recommend the Jersey Shore. I'd probably recommend Northampton or San Francisco or Santa Fe or even Detroit before I'd send you to the Jersey Shore. It was an awesome weekend with my family, but the food situation was... well, you get the point.

Whoops... I've been eating the wrong vegetables

Greetings friends.

I write today a humbled woman who has discovered why one of my recurrent infections has returned. I'll be following the diet very closely for the rest of the week to see if I can't knock this thing out before it gets too bad.

I've been eating the wrong vegetables. There's this great macrobiotic tome that we have at home called something like The Natural Guide to the Medicinal Qualities of Vegetables and Fruits and Which Ones Have Bad Juju, or something along those lines. It was pretty easy for me to refer to it in times of question to see how the ingredient I had just purchased landed on the scale of Macro. I've kind of been going on intuition here in Boston, and apparently my intuition has been pretty off, which is most likely why I'm feeling cruddy.

I've been eating a ton of chard and beets because that's what's been in season up here, but apparently, those are incredibly acidic. I had really banked on those nutritionally, because I only have time to cook one hot meal a day, so I've been using what's local and fresh, but apparently I shouldn't have used those. I now have a raging flare-up of one of my favorite past infections, and I know that it's my fault... Urgh.

This week I'm going to cut back on my beloved lattes and cut out the bread and popcorn that are my greatest weaknesses in an attempt to recenter my body. I'd really like to get off sugar again. I feel like it makes me mercurial and tense, and I'd love to kick this infection where it hurts.

Sometimes I feel really frustrated because I tell myself, "But I eat healthier than 80% of Americans at least!" But that's not productive thinking at all. I need to look at all the unhealthy things that are in my diet and remind myself that even one thing with sugar or honey in it per day is one thing too many. My body has gotten pretty puffy and I've put on a little weight in the past few months, so I know that my body is sending me the message that it's time to simplify again.

I'm really going to try to do this, and I'll keep writing on here to be accountable to you guys, but it's really something I struggle with, so your continued reading, support and prayers as I work to achieve good health are incredibly meaningful to me. God has blessed me so many times over by setting this lifestyle as the course for my life, so I am praying for the strength to be more focused and be better so that I can live the purpose He intended me to live!

Hair!

Hey all! Sorry for the long hiatus. I've been working non-stop up here and undertaking journeys and working on um... THE COOLEST NEW MACRO APPLICATION EVER!!!!

Well, maybe it's not the COOLEST ever, but it's dead useful and should make everybody's life a little bit easier.

Anyways, I've been wanting to do this post for a really long time, so today's the day!

My favorite, FAVORITE health impact from making the switch to a whole foods diet has been...

HAIR!

In the year since I've become macro, I've developed thick, strong, shiny hair. It's AWESOME.

My senior year of college, I was on three full-time prescription medications (with another 3-4 waiting in the wings that I would take about once a month), and my hair looked awful. It was stringy, patchy, and brittle. There was a bald patch on the side of my head at one point. I was pretty self-conscious about it. Granted, this is nothing on a lot of people I've met who have had cancer and have lost their hair, so please keep in mind that this is written from a place of personal insecurity, mindful of the fact that this problem is, in the grand scheme of things, really not the end of the world.

I began to notice last summer that after about six months on the diet, my hair was growing really quickly. The thin areas were beginning to fill in, and the hair was growing much faster than it had before. Ginny had firmly put the kabosh on my pathological dependency for hairspray and leave-in chemical conditioners, so I was putting much gentler products on my hair. Because all the oil from meat and dairy was gone, my hair was much less oily, so I didn't have to wash it as often as I did before.

I also started to play around with natural beauty remedies like avocado oil and cosmetic clays. I don't really do these things as much any more, because here in Boston time is at a premium, but the fact that I don't have to wash my hair every day is awesome. I have this sneaking suspicion that a lot of this is from the sea vegetables and deep leafy greens and all the nutrients they provide.

Anyways, I feel so much more confident than I did before, so I'm really thankful for all this.

LET THE BEET DROP.

Har har har.

Last night, China and I cooked some of the myriad beets currently residing in the fridge. They came as part of a CSA, and it seems like nobody can cook them fast enough... they just keep coming! May had to use about ten of them in a roast the other night, which I am jealous I didn't photograph, because she used three varieties of beets and the resulting rosemary-sea salt bake was quite lovely.

So I got some oil on the lens of my cell phone camera... occupational hazard of shooting photos while cooking, so some of these look a little blurry.

We removed the beet greens from the beet, because they leach nutrients from the beet and go bad more quickly when they're attached. If cooked separately, they're quite nutritious. I'm cautious with how many beets I eat, because they are high in oxylic acid, which causes kidney stones. As my kidneys look like a zen garden, I'm cautious with my beet consumption.

Beets go in. I put them in a tin-foil airtight pouch and baked them for about 45 minutes.

Martha Stewart claims it's easy to pull beets out of their skins if you only refrigerate them. Things that are not true. She drove China to distraction.

Here's a closeup of the salad. Sorry it's kind of blurry... my camera lens has olive oil in it. Ansel Adams never had to deal with that.

RECIPE:

10-15 fresh beet roots

----dressing----

2 tbsp. grain mustard

1/4 c. white wine vinegar

Squirt agave nectar, to taste

1/4-1/3 c. olive oil

Fresh cracked salt and pepper to taste

----salad----

Mix of fresh summer lettuces. Here we used Bibb and Butter lettuces

Wild Rice Tempeh

Red onions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. After thoroughly washing beet roots, slip them in an airtight aluminum foil pouch and bake at 400 for 45 minutes. When they come out, slip them immediately in the freezer for 10-15 minutes to cool, then pull them out of their skins. This sounds easy. It's not. It's infuriating, and if you quit and decide to eat popcorn for dinner, no judgement.

While the beets are cooking, slice your tempeh into 1/8 inch thick strips, and fry like bacon in a skillet. Try to use minimal oil here. Think of Michio Kushi watching you, clicking his teeth every time you reach for the bottle. I seasoned my tempeh with a sprinkle of sea salt.

Slice your raw red onions. Assemble your dressing. Add your beets, and enjoy your salad!

Done! This is a beautiful salad filled with fresh ingredients from the garden. What a blessing to have so many fresh ingredients and wonderful people to cook for. Thank you guys for sharing your vegetables and your meal time with me!

Food and People! BBQ Con't.

My friend Ajay took these amazing pictures at the Macro BBQ that I wanted to share. They make me so happy!

In case you were wondering, this is how much pressure you need to get the tofu so flat:

This was truly a household collaboration. My law school roommate provided the Constitutional Law book, my art school roommate provided the Harry Potters, May provided the Biological Psych/Neuroscience books, and Ajay provided the chemistry books. The dorky Robert Jordan book on top is, of course, mine.

The tofu is between the two cookie sheets.

A Macrobiotic Barbecue!

I hope you guys had a safe and fun Fourth of July! Our house gathered together to make an amazing Macro BBQ that was vegan, gluten-free, and full of 4th classics!

Speaking of America, I'd like to look at Macro Accessibility for just a minute. A dear friend of mine is beginning her journey for health, but like 90% of this country, she doesn't live by a natural food store, and can't just duck into Whole Foods for a tub of miso and some umeboshi plum vinegar. In a country where Good Housekeeping, Better Homes & Gardens, and the Joy of Cooking are our standard sources of recipes, it can be incredibly frustrating to find recipes that won't freak out our family and friends and can be purchased at Kroger's.

The unexpected resource that made all of today's macro cooking possible was MarthaStewart.com. It's amazing how many recipes on there are packed with fresh veggies, gluten-free, and vegan. Martha Stewart Living is available at most grocery stores and book stores. Each issue features a healthy cooking and lifestyles section that contains recipes that have been consistent with the place I'm at in my diet.

May was the firepower that made this meal happen. I had to work on the 4th, so she stayed behind and cooked and did prep for 6-8 hours. I was on standby with my phone at work, so when the Great Potato Crisis of Noon happened, I was on it.

Note: The vegetables and ingredients here are a little "wide" for the traditional macrobiotic diet. It is a holiday, and I wanted to make some food that was accessible to a larger audience (potatoes, tofutti, white wine vinegar, etc.). I hope you enjoy the recipes in that context :)

MENU

Click dish for jump to recipe

Cool Cucumber Dill Salad

Tangy Potato Salad with Scallions

Balsamic Marinated Mushrooms

Oven Roasted Corn on the Cob with Cilantro-Lime Rub

Caramelized Onion and Rosemary Cornbread

BBQ Tofu Strips

Cool Cucumber Dill Salad

May in front of the Cucumber Dill and Potato Salads (respectively). Every time in this document that I write "We made" replace that with "She made." She seriously did all the work.

This is a recipe from Martha Stewart that we modified to make vegan. It's gluten-free, and I love it because it doesn't require any heat to cook. This is Martha's picture because in our picture, the food got whited out by the sun unfortunately :(

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup tofutti vegan sour cream
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (from 1 lemon)
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill, plus more for garnish (optional)
• Coarse salt and ground pepper
• 4 to 6 Kirby cucumbers (about 1 pound), halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, combine sour cream, lemon juice, and dill. Season with salt and pepper, and whisk well to combine.

2. Add cucumbers, and toss to coat. Garnish with more dill, if desired. Serve, or refrigerate, covered, up to 4 hours.

Tangy Potato Salad with Scallions

This was our FAVORITE dish. Amazing, no substitutions, alkaline (except for the potatoes, which are not strictly macro, but I have a feeling you could do this with some steamed root veggies for a more strict adherence to the code).

Ingredients

• Coarse salt and ground pepper
• 4 pounds Yukon gold or other waxy potatoes, scrubbed, halved, and sliced 1/2 inch thick
• 1/2 cup white-wine vinegar
• 4 scallions, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup olive oil

Directions

1. Set a steamer basket in a large pot. Fill with enough salted water to come just below basket. Bring to a boil; place potatoes in basket, and reduce heat to medium. Cover, and steam, gently tossing occasionally, until crisp-tender, 10 to 15 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, combine vinegar and scallions in a large bowl; season with salt and pepper. When potatoes are cooked, transfer to bowl with vinegar mixture. Toss to combine; let cool, tossing occasionally.

When potato mixture is cool, mix in oil; season potato salad with salt and pepper. (To store, refrigerate, up to 1 day.)

Balsamic Marinated Mushrooms

So I feel like a huge tool using this picture from my cell phone when Martha's version looks like this:

Here's the recipe. This thing takes no time, is great the day of, and is even better the next day.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 12 ounces white mushrooms, halved (quartered if large)
• 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1 teaspoon coarse salt
• 1/4 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
• Freshly ground pepper

Directions

Heat oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms, and cook until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Stir in vinegar, salt, and red-pepper flakes, and season with pepper. Cook 1 minute more. Transfer to a bowl, and serve.

Oven Roasted Corn on the Cob with Cilantro-Lime Rub

Here's a picture of the work-in-progress:

And here's the final corn:

Ingredients

• 4 ears corn
• 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) Earth Butter vegan margarine, room temperature
• 2 tablespoons coarsely chopped cilantro
• 1/2 teaspoon grated zest of lime
• 1 1/2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lime juice

Directions

1. MODIFIED BY BECKY: Remove husks and silk from corn. Rub with the below butter combination and wrap in tin foil. Bake in foil for 25 minutes at 425 degrees.

2. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, stir together butter, cilantro, lime zest and juice, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and a pinch of pepper until blended.

We replaced the butter with Earth Balance vegan margarine and it was awesome. We also couldn't grill the corn and thought that microwaving was crass, so we buttered the ears of corn, wrapped them in tin foil, and baked them at 425 for 25 minutes. The corn was phenomenal.

Caramelized Onions and Rosemary Cornbread

We've done this cornbread before for this blog and it's worked out really well. Just follow this link over to that recipe... Before you put the cornbread in, caramelize your onions for 1/2 an hour to 45 minutes, break some rosemary sprigs on top, sprinkle some fresh-cracked salt, and you're good to go!

BBQ Tofu Strips

This is the one I'm pretty devastated I don't have a picture of. I think my roommate has a pro-level picture of this, but somehow the picture I took of the tower of books got erased and I'm totally sad about it! Here's a glimpse of the process:

There was a stack of about 15 textbooks to press this tofu, including:

Biological Psychology, Neuroscience, Anatomy, Constitutional Law, Harry Potter 4-7, and A Game of Thrones

INGREDIENTS

2 Blocks Extra-firm Tofu

Olive Oil

BBQ Spice Rub

BBQ Sauce

DIRECTIONS

Get started early, because this is time-consuming. Squeeze all the liquid out of the tofu. We did this by putting it on a baking sheet under a cutting board with 15 textbooks on top. After tofu is pressed, slice into 1/4 inch strips, place another cookie sheet on top, and replace cookbooks. I tilted the sheets at an angle so the juice would run off.

We then rubbed the tofu strips with this Memphis-Style Williams-Sonoma BBQ Rub. We baked in the oven for probably 20 minutes, and were thrilled when the strips began to puff and rise and get crunchy and crispy. We used a minimal amount of oil, but it tasted fried. We then covered it in BBQ sauce, and it was delicious!!

LAID LOW: A Stomach Flu Story

"I haven't been eating enough macro food lately." I thought to myself.

Five hours later, bok choi, some dandelion greens, a handful of toasted pumpkin seeds, some brown rice, and carrot-daikon relish were indecorously deposited on a neighborhood rosebush.

My biggest regret was that I was vomiting macro food. To quote the Dixie Chicks School of Philosophy, "If I fall, you're coming down with me." If I was going to be sick, I wish it had been from really delicious food, like beer and cupcakes. It's no fun being punished for eating health food.

Was it celiac? Was it food poisoning? Was it the flu? I'm not sure. All I know is that I haven't thrown up with violent unpredictability on a street corner since I was in first grade and our teacher left the class Christmas party unchaperoned for fifteen minutes. I went to go visit a friend named Forrest after that (who I believe now has an illustrious career as a venture capitalist), leaned out of my mom's BMW, and threw up all over his driveway. Forrest held himself together. That's probably why he's a successful entrepreneur and I am an impoverished writer. It all comes down to pyloric sphincter control in the end.

I am back on solid foods today, and am hoping that all is well by the Fourth of July so that my Macro Barbecue can go as planned. I'd also like the opportunity to thank May for keeping me strong and on the macro path and encouraging me to try macro remedies instead of reaching for the anti-emetics. I'm SO glad I didn't take the anti-emetics!!!

And I'd like to share the fact that Bok Choi is probably one of the worst foods in the world to throw up. It's disgusting. It'll be about a year before I can feel okay about Bok Choi again.

Four Great Macrobiotic Blogs

As much as I love my own blog and think I'm pretty freaking fantastic, here are a few blogs that have really blown me away. I love each of these for their own unique reasons:

MACROCHEF:

http://macrochef.wordpress.com/

A visually stunning blog with mind-blowing, professional level recipes and beautiful pictures. It's the great divide between gluten-free cooking and taking it macro. In particular, check out these muffins: Whoa.

THE KIND LIFE

http://www.thekindlife.com/

Alicia Silverstone's FANTASTIC macrobiotic blog. It covers everything from sustainable fashion to the great Yogurt Myth... I have a personal vendetta against yogurt, both for feminist reasons, as well as for macrobiotic reasons.

COOKING MACRO THE ITALIANO WAY

http://macromarinelli.blogspot.com/

If you guys haven't checked out Marisa's blog, you MUST! It's a fantastic primer to macrobiotics, and it's a really clear and straightforward, great presentation of what a healing journey can look like.

CROHNS + TEENAGER + DIET = HEALING?!

http://harley-crohns.blogspot.com/

I always really enjoy reading Harley's blog. She's really young to have experienced so many health challenges, and reading her story is so inspiring! I can't imagine going through middle school and high school being as sick as she is... That period of life is hard enough as it is!! She's so brave and you guys should TOTALLY check out her story!

I hope these blogs provide y'all with some interesting reading material!

Pumpkin Seed Dressing!

I'm mighty chuffed to present the following recipe to you guys. It's a family favorite, and I recently made it for May, who declared it to be her Favorite Macrobiotic Dish, Ever. There are some great pictures of us eating it that'll be added to this post soon.

This week, I've been on the continued recovery track, but things have been pretty good and I'm blessed with strong health. Last week my recurrent skin problem came back, and the last two times that happened, I had to get surgery and go on antibiotics costing a thousand dollars that I definitely don't have.

This time around, I treated it macrobiotically, and experienced healing in about four days. This is really huge, because the last two times this infection came up, I had to have it surgically removed, and I went from healthy to needing surgery in about four days. It happens really fast.

Here's what I did:

-Burdock Root Tea, Nightly for three nights.

-1/2" Green Clay Compress, applied for 12 hours at a time, three days in a row

-Cut dairy, sugar, and reduced soy and "snackro" foods for a week in favor of the real whole foods I probably should be eating all the time. I'm a big fan of eating gluten-free "fake" foods, like gluten-free pizza with soy cheese, but I know it's just a short-cut, and that these can be damaging to your health as well.

To celebrate at the end of all this, I cooked a huge macro meal with mixed rices, fresh garden greens, pickled bean sprouts, and PUMPKIN SEED DRESSING!!! Here it is!

Pumpkin Seed Dressing and Greens

Watercress and a bitter green (Dandelion greens, collard greens, kale, swiss chard, etc.) steamed

1 1/2 c raw pumpkin seeds, roasted by you at 375 for 10 minutes or so. Keep an eye on these because they burn quickly!

2-3 tsp. ume plum paste

3-4 minced scallions

Water as needed to achieve desired consistency

Pour your roasted pumpkin seeds in a coffee grinder. As these grind, add them to a large bowl and combine plum paste, scallions, and water to bring to a hummus-like consistency. Eat with green veggies or as hummus type dip.