I have died and gone to heaven to have finally, after years of experimenting, developed a recipe for a sprouted, high-fiber bread that is gluten-free. Throw in that it is vegan and absolutely delicious with a mellow, nutty flavor and a moist yet firm texture (you know how hard that is to come by if you have made gluten-free bread), and I have to admit this bread is just about perfect. I won’t need to stray from this recipe for years.

It isn’t that the gluten-free breads on the market aren’t good, they are. It is that there are none that are sprouted and truly high in fiber. I look with envy at those who can eat Ezekiel or Essene bread because sprouted grains are much easier to digest and full of enzymes and increased nutrients as the sprouting proccess brings the grain kernel to life for germination. “Sprouted” grain breads can be flourless. Further, most gluten-free breads on the market are laden with fruit juices, and I’d rather use agave because it is much lower on the glycemic index.

Note that flax seed meal is a perfect vegan (or otherwise) egg substitute when simmered with water, because it develops into a gel-like consistency.

Soak the millet, quinoa, and sesame seeds for 24 hours in enough water to cover. Hopefully the grains will begin to sprout, but may not. (They will still soften considerably, making them easier to digest.)

Ingredients

1 cup millet

1 cup quinoa

1 cup sesame seeds (for fiber and protein)

½ cup coconut flour (very high in fiber)

½ cup rice flour

2 tablespoons flax seed meal (egg substitute; high in essential oil Omega-3)

1-2 cups low-fat almond milk (for a vegan version, or milk for non-vegan)

½ cup water

4 tablespoons coconut oil

2-3 teaspoons agave, or to taste

½-1 teaspoon sea salt

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

Directions

1. Strain and rinse.

2. Preheat the oven to 350F.

3. Divide and puree half of the mixture in a blender with half of the almond milk, and pour into a large bowl. Repeat with the other half.

4. Stir in the rice and coconut flour, sea salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

5. Add the flax seed meal, coconut oil, and water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and let simmer until the flax seed is very glutinous. Pour into the bowl with the other ingredients.

6. Stir thoroughly to blend.

7. “Grease” a standard-sized bread pan with coconut oil, and pour the ingredients into it.

8. Bake at 350 F until done, and an inserted knife pulls out clean, about 1 hour. (Cover with a sheet of aluminum foil if the top is browning too fast and the center of the bread hasn’t cooked thoroughly.)

YUM!

Dear Annie,
I am such a fan of you and your wonderful books! I do have a question for you….in the Clean & Green book, you suggest the Auro Organics brand of boiled linseed oil for some of the recipes in the book. I have had a difficult time getting in contact with this company, so I “goodsearched” “raw petroleum free linseed oil” and found the following product/link. I am hoping to find out if you are familiar with this brand, and if it would be a good choice…..or if there are any other brands you could recommend. This site Solvent Free Paintoffers the raw & boiled lineed oil.
Thank you for the good work you do & for your time!
–Christy B.

Dear Christy,
Wowza, I am so excited about that site! Thank you *SO* much for the reference. The site is fascinating, such as that their paint is “zero waste” and that organic linseed oil actually gets better over time. They write, “In old time painter manuals you could find recommendations for the painters to store the cold pressed linseed oil for 2 years before it was made into paint. Linseed oil is basically like fine wine, it gets better over time.” I personally adore the nutty smell of linseed oil soap, which they also offer. I am really grateful for the information about this product line. I am going to try their linseed oil exterior paint. Thank you! The company seem to search the world for manufacturers of old-time, chemical free formulas that work.

Dear Annie,
I see my local farms starting to tap their maple trees. I have a couple big maples in the back yard. Is this something I can do at home?–Susan, NH

Dear Susan,
A true (if guilty) pleasure of my childhood was going for a cross country ski on logging roads around my house in NH, and when thirsty, raiding a neighbor’s sap bucket to drink some sap. What sweetness! However, I haven’t tapped myself, so to answer this I asked Joe McHale, who started tapping maple trees at home as a way to teach his children about nature and the origin of food, and has a cool website about it called Tap My Trees.

Here is what he said:
Tapping maple trees is not limited to farms and commercial operations. If you live in the Northeast and have a mature maple tree (at least 12 inches in diameter) in your yard, you can enjoy this experience. The sap flows in maple trees during late winter / early spring (generally late February into April).

When days are warm (above freezing) and nights are below freezing, the sap will flow. The process involves drilling a hole into the tree, inserting a spile, and attaching a bucket and lid.

When the sap is flowing strong, you can collect a couple gallons of sap per tap per day. Other days you will not get any sap. Collecting the sap is the easy part - boiling it into maple syrup is where most of the work lies.

Sap is boiled into syrup based on a 40 to 1 ratio (40 gallons of sap will produce approximately 1 gallon of syrup). Any significant amount of sap should be boiled outdoors, as it will generate a considerable amount of steam.

It’s a fair amount of work, but your pancakes will never taste better than with home made maple syrup. For more details on the process, take a look at www.TapMyTrees.com which provides a detailed explanation of the process.

Dear Annie,
When I saw this lamp, I thought of your work space. As your friend and colleague, I know the area where you write your books, articles and blogs is bathed in natural light and abuzz with activity during the day. Since I write about green home design (see below), and like you, have no stake in the products that I sometimes write about, I thought you might want to share this product with your readers. The lamp is just about to hit the IKEA stores. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to harness all that illumination for the cool spring evenings?

This lamp is designed by Nicolas Cortolezzis and is called the SUNNAN .It features solar cells to transform sunlight into electrical energy. It requires no electrical connections. The lamp runs on solar cells that transform sunlight into electricity.

Annie, I know you and I do everything in our green power to save energy and reduce our family’s environmental footprint. I like the whole idea of this lamp because LED light consumes 70% less energy and has at least 4 times longer life than incandescent bulbs in similar decorative lighting.

Here’s the kicker…It is $19.99 and comes with two rechargeable AA batteries for solar cell driven products! The recharging time is 9-12 hours in sunlight, but over 12 hours on a cloudy day.

The colors are eco-chic enough for you and I, and the price is right for our kids on a college budget. Just think about how cool they would think we were if these lamps landed in their college postboxes!

What do you think?
–Ronnie, Author of EcoNesting blog

Dear Ronnie,
Wow! I think the lamp looks great and surely eco-friendly. While the lamp isn’t a replacement for natural light, natural light power’s the lamp, and that is great. Thanks for giving us the heads up about this.

One of my sisters gave me this beautiful shawl. One of my favorite colors is purple, and she knew I would adore the color and style. I do. The challenge for me was just about how it smelled when new. Given that it is imported, it was impregnated with some sort of disinfectant to cross the border. I expect most of you are familiar with it as it smells a bit like incense? What to do?

I first filled the sink with cool water to which I added 1 cup of white distilled vinegar. I gently swirled in the shawl until it was fully emersed and let it soak for an hour. I next washed the shawl by hand using Ecover’s wool detergent. After carefully rinsing I smelled the shawl, found the smell removed, and lay it out to dry. If it still had some residual odor I would have followed all the steps, above, but substituted baking soda for the vinegar. (I’d first have dissolved the baking soda in very warm water before adding to the cool water.)

Making responsible choices for your diet according to their impact on the health of our friends and family, the health of the community, and ultimately the earth, is the process that leads to establishing a green kitchen.

Once you have established sources of good, year-round, local organic food, the new green diet becomes one of simplicity and convenience. If seasonal, local food determines our menus, half our work is done. If we allow our taste buds to savor the full flavor of freshly picked vegetables and fruit, we naturally begin to turn away from packaged and processed food by choice.

Step 1: Eat Organically Produced Food
Organic agriculture strives toward being sustainable, meaning that which can be continued indefinitely, without depletion of resources beyond a rate that they could be renewed.

Step 2 and 3: Eat Local, Seasonal Food
Eating local, seasonal food supports local farms and saves the energy that would be used to refrigerate and transport food many miles.

Step 4: Eat a Variety of Food“The loss of genetic diversity—silent, rapid, inexorable—is leading us to a rendezvous with extinction, to the doorstep of hunger on a scale we refuse to imagine,” writes Kenny Ausubel in the book Seeds of Change: The Living Treasure. Organic farms grow a wide variety of plants to keep the soil healthy and preserve diversity. Industrial farms, on the other hand, monocrop, meaning they grow nothing but a few commodities.

Step 5: Eat Low on the Food Chain
Humans can eat both high and low on the food chain and be adequately nourished. Residues of persistent chemicals such as DDT, PCBs, dioxin, and many pesticides concentrate in animal fat.

Step 6: Eat Whole Foods with Adequate Fiber
Whole foods are nutritionally complex and complete. Refined foods have had much of their nutritional value and fiber removed.

Step 7: Avoid Processed Food
The average American eats 150 pounds of additives a year, much of which is sugar and salt. Three thousand additives are intentionally used in processed food. Many of these additives, such as hydrogenated oils, can cause health problems.

Step 8: Reduce Packaging for Public Health and the Environment
Chlorine and dioxin are just two chemical compounds that are released in the manufacture of many packaging materials. Toxic chemicals can also migrate to your food from packaging.

Adapted from The Green Kitchen Handbook, by Annie Bond and Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet.