A few days ago I made a "sugar-free carrot cake" from a recipe at veganchef.com. Very simple; whole wheat flour, baking soda & powder, dates & raisins for sweetness, spices, grated carrot and walnuts.  It's makes a lovely, dense and chewy treat; hubby, who is a major carrot cake fan, thought it was pretty tasty despite not having the obligatory cream cheese frosting.  Even my finicky mother liked it, although she pointed out that it has a slight bitter aftertaste that we figure is either the flour or the walnuts.  I put a dollop of my grainy yogurt on a slice and it was quite tasty; the tang of the yogurt was a nice offset to the sweet of the cake. It is a definte addition to the cookbook.  Next time I'm going to try using unbleached flour or oat flour for part of the whole wheat. 

I checked out a book from the library, "Wild Fermentation" by Sandor Ellix Katz.  It's a great book that explains how fermented foods "happen."  In the section on yogurt, Sandor says that heating milk isn't necessary, but doing so creates a thicker yogurt.  As I mentioned earlier, in the past I've made yogurt following directions for heating the milk, and always came out will a slight cooked flavor that I didn't like.  This batch I just made has gotten a wee bit thicker over the past couple days, and it's now just a little thinner than stirred-up commercial yogurt.  This consistency is fine by me; I figure I can always strain some of the whey out using a cheesecloth in order to thicken it a bit.  I'd only do this to make sauces though, where I'm adding watery ingredients that will thin out the yogurt.

On the last front, I dipped into my sauerkraut crock yesterday, and oh my gosh is it good!  It's been about a week since I first put everything together, and the kraut is crunchy and mildly sour.  It still has some time to go before it's sour enough to cook with, but it's perfect right now for eating uncooked.

This is the third batch I've made, and is by far the best.  The first batch was good but not very sour.  The second batch was the only time I'll ever use my Salad Shooter to grate the cabbage; it came out in little chips instead of long strings.  The taste was good, still not as sour.  Neither of these batches experienced the "bloom" I so often read about, the white moldy stuff that grows on the water surface.  I don't know if it was a temperature thing or what, but this time I used my brand-new cabbage stomper purchased from Lehman's to pack the shredded cabbage tightly into the crock.  Before I was using a flat-bottomed cup to push the cabbage down, but that did NOTHING compared to the 3 foot long stomper (you can see them on lehmans.com). This time around, I have a lot of bloom on the surface, plus a smell that the previous two batches didn't have; the unmistakable odor of fermenting cabbage.  I don't find it distracting, but after I've been out of the house awhile it sure is obvious when I open the door and take a deep breath!  I'd love to find a better place than the kitchen, but it gets so hot here in the summer that the only place that stays even MODESTLY cool is in the house.