Red velvet cupcakes from beets

I love to try new and unusual recipes. This one was published in October issue of Sunset magazine and immediately attracted my attention since this dessert is cooked using vegetables.

Beets are not a diet friendly vegetable since they are full of carbs. I love however the fact that I am not using artificial food coloring and still have some fiber in my dessert.

To make these cupcakes you will have to roast your beets in an oven.

Just wrap 3 medium beets in foil and roast them  for about 1 1/2 hours at 350'F or until tender. Let your beets cool, then peel and cut them into chunks. Puree with food processor to get 1 1/4 cup of puree. Then follow the recipe to make the cupcakes - the full recipe can be printed directly from Sunset website.    

I've got 24 mini cupcakes and 6 regular ones and they are delicious. I decorated them with lemon buttercream frosting and it added a great touch to the flavor.

Absolutely love the recipe.

The homegrown mushrooms project

Well, we purchased a log of shiitake mushrooms online. 

What a fun project! You don't have to do a lot, just follow the simple instructions, pour some water on the log about 3 times a day and they will grow. 

 The most delicious mushrooms ever!

To live self-sufficiently

There is something interesting I saw recently. We visited  my friend on the way to our day trip up north and found out that her vision of a lifestyle has changed. The young city girl who was planning to become a model suddenly started a small poultry farm.

 She is always getting these new ideas which are intriguing me.

She is growing a shitake mushroom in her kitchen. 

 She is learning how to deal with quail, chickens and ducks. She is juicing pomegranates from her garden to fill her kids with nutritious minerals & vitamins. She bakes bread from scratch in a morning and works hard in a day time.

Where is she getting time for all of this?

Anyway I started to think more and more about it. This is the way to live organically and also learn the basics of living. Farming is a lot of hard work but it makes you happy.

What would you do to live self-sufficient way?