Real Food, My Way

Lima Bean Soup

2011-04-17T19:36:00.000-07:00

April is a month for babies, isn't it? I mean, I'm sure perfectly lovely children are born in other months of the year, but the height of spring seems a perfect time for new life like chicks, lambs and babies. A friend of mine had twins at the beginning of the month and in addition to taking her dog hiking last weekend I made her a soup. She is a vegetarian so I was looking for something hearty enough for someone eating for three, simple and frugal enough that I could make a giant batch for two households, and that would be delicious. I decided on a lima bean soup using home made vegetable broth and dried lima beans. At the bottom of the recipe are some non-vegetarian options for those of us who appreciate the nourishment that comes from bone broth.

Veggie Lima Bean Soup

1/2 pound dried lima beans, sorted, rinsed and soaked in water overnight.

For the veggie broth:
1/2 a yellow onion
2 stalks of celery, broken to fit in the pot
1 carrot, chopped in two or three pieces
1 small potato, scrubbed and quartered
2 cloves garlic, cut in half
Small bit of arame seaweed (optional)
A couple pieces of dried mushroom
1/2 tsp herbs de Provence and/or Italian seasoning
A couple peppercorns
Salt
Trimmings from the vegetables for the soup

For the soup:
Olive oil, butter and/or coconut oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
4 stalks celery, sliced
2 large carrots, chopped (note: should be about equal on those three)
2 cloves garlic, minced
herbs de Provence and/or Italian seasoning, red chili flakes if you'd like
black pepper and salt
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tbs lemon juice
red wine, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar

Start by making the veggie broth. Cover all the vegetables and trimmings with water, bring to a boil and simmer for about 40 minutes. I didn't add very much salt to the broth because I am always afraid beans will stay hard if well salted. The above made about 2 quarts of broth.

When the broth is done or mostly done, start heating the cooking oil over medium heat in a large enameled, cast iron dutch oven. Turn the oven on to 300 degrees. When the fat is hot add the vegetables and dried herbs. Add some salt and pepper at this time. Again, I under-salt because I'm afraid for the beans. Stir and cook until they are starting to turn golden brown. Add the garlic at this time and stir another minute until fragrant.

Strain the veggie broth into the soup pot and turn the heat up to high. When the broth is close to boiling add the drained lima beans, a splash of soy sauce, and a splash of lemon juice. When the soup is just coming to a boil put the lid on the dutch oven and put it in the oven to cook.

Check the beans at 1 hour to see if they are tender. If not, continue cooking and checking every 30 minutes. I didn't time mine but they couldn'tve take more than an hour and a half. When the beans are tender bring the pot out of the oven and adjust for seasoning. Add salt at this time, and maybe a splash of wine, more soy sauce, some Worcestershire sauce and/or vinegar. Hot sauce would be nice if you are into that kind of thing.

You can drop some tender greens like chard or spinach in the pot at this time, or add the raw or cooked greens to each bowl to get wilted. Serve with toast, croutons, sour cream, sauerkraut or any condiment that sounds good.

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I actually really appreciate the pure and simple flavors in this soup. The beans are so soft and delicious. How did lima beans get a bad rap? I guess generations of moms have made spinach taste bad too. Criminal.

When I had some of this for my own lunch I fried up some bacon and crumbled that on top of the soup (ok, I also drizzled some bacon grease over top too...) If I were making this for myself I would do any number of the following:

*Use chicken stock instead of the veggie broth. Though, I gotta say, the veggie broth really does leave the dish very pure and light. But still, chicken broth for me.

*Add some bacon, sausage or chicken. Beans and pork are a classic combination, but again I love the pure flavor of this dish so I might use bone-in, skinless chicken thighs instead.

*Use chicken fat instead of the olive oil and butter.. though, refined coconut oil is a fine, neutral flavored oil for sauteeing veggies.

All that being said, this is delicious and as easy as falling off a log, especially if you have chicken stock in the freezer already. And it was greatly appreciated by my new mom friend and her boys.

Instead Foods

2011-02-25T00:53:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago my sister was going through a phase where she only wanted to eat hot wings. OK, so that phase has lasted up until the present (we've gone to Fire On the Mountain, THE place to get wings in Portland, OR twice in the last five weeks), but it kind of used to be worse. When she was trying to loose weight her friend suggested she make "hot wing salads" of baked chicken breasts over lettuce with hot sauce and blue cheese dressing.

This is an example of what I call an instead food - instead of eating the thing that is really not good for you, you eat something that kind of fills that craving you are having. Unfortunately, like the hot wing salads, most instead foods just aren't quite the real thing.

I have recently been in need of an instead food for my ice cream addiction. Firstly, no one needs to be eating ice cream at the rate I can put the stuff away. Sweet, creamy and chocolate are my three favorite things and there's a grocery store in my neighborhood that sells Hagen Dazs at less than 3 dollars a pint. Secondly, I am coming to the realization that with my third decade of life is coming less and less tolerance for conventional dairy products. Especially fatty and sweet dairy products. Sadness.

So I began the hunt for my chocolate ice cream instead food. Coconut milk is a wonderful substitute for creamy and sweet so I looked into coconut milk ice creams. There is one good quality, all natural brand here in Oregon called Luna and Larry's Coconut Bliss that really is blissful but at 7 dollars a pint or more that is just not gonna cut it. So Delicious makes a coconut milk ice cream that is more reasonably priced, but is full of guar gums and "natural flavors". I was lamenting this situation on Facebook when a friend of a friend said that she makes ice cream in her freezer without an ice cream maker. I immediately turned to google to see if this miracle could be true. Sure enough, David Lebowitz has a recipe for ice cream made in a shallow pan that you stir up every 45 minutes or so. I combined his method with The Nourishing Gourmet's recipe and ended up with an amazing product. Who knew it could be so easy?!?

I wondered what else I could accomplish with this amazing coconut milk and chocolate combination and my mind immediately turned to pudding. I didn't grow up eating pudding but have come to appreciate it's creamy texture and the fact that it comes in truly single serving size containers. I this recipe from vanilla & lace and was very pleased with the flavor and set of the pudding. For the ice cream I had used a canned coconut cream but for the pudding I used So Delicious brand coconut milk. It comes in a tetrapack, is much lower in fat and more like cows milk in consistency. It doesn't give the same really creamy texture as the coconut cream, but the cornstarch does a fine job of creating the pudding texture that fools you into thinking its really fatty and creamy. I poured the hot pudding into 1/2 cup sized tupperware containers and had my own pudding packs in the fridge.

The main problem with my first batch of pudding was the lumps of cornstarch that come from adding the cornstarch to the hot chocolate milk. For my second batch of pudding I used Martha Stewart's recipe that has you whisk small amounts of milk into the cornstarch at the very beginning of the process to form a paste, then add the rest of the milk. I also added a little cinnamon to the pudding for a refined, adult flavor and again poured it into small plastic containers for individual servings. The recipe was 100% successful and definitely a dessert worthy of eating alone in front of a rerun of Sex in the City or serving at the end of a dinner party.

Photos by stu_spivak and llsimon53. Please click on their names or photos and see what else they've been cooking up!

Saturday Baking

2010-11-08T15:43:00.000-08:00

Doesn't it seem like as soon as the weather turns cooler you just want to turn the oven on? Well, the weather started changing around here around the middle of October and sure enough I spent two Saturdays in a row baking lovely things for breakfast and sharing. The warm sweet aromas coming out of the oven and the occasional burst of bright sunshine through the orange and red leaves makes fall a not so bad time of year after all.

Making sweets or baked goods while following a traditional foods lifestyle can be challenging for a couple of reasons. Evidence is stacking up from all sides that sugar and simple carbohydrates in refined flour are just not good for you. Sally Fallon recommends the use of rapadura, an unrefined cane sugar, instead of refined white sugar or adapting a recipe to use honey or maple syrup. These sweetners, while still very high in sucrose and fructose that can wreck havoc on all but the very most stable blood sugar levels, do contain some of the trace nutrients of the original plant material. Traditional wisdom reminds us that tempering our sweets with adequate fats can help regulate our blood sugar so I always try to include nutritious ingredients and a full compliment of butter, eggs or coconut oil.

The other problem with baking is the problem of grains. Sally Fallon teaches us that though whole grains are more nutritious than refined grains, they need to be processed properly in order to neutralize anti-nutrients and release their full potential. The usual methods for neutralizing phytates are soaking in an acidic medium, sprouting or fermenting using sourdough methods. I won't even get into gluten free baking, oy! Sprouted flour can be used in any recipe that calls for wheat flour with minimal or no changes to the process. Soaking and fermenting require completely different processes and honestly, are a bit outside my range of motion on a typical Saturday morning. I take comfort in the knowledge that white flour, though not adding much nutrition, is not removing vital minerals through the action of phytic acid. My baked goods are treats, not staples in my diet, and so I don't worry too much.

This recipe, though, circumvents most of these problems by being grain free and refined sugar free. It is based on a recipe in the great cookbook White Trash Cooking by Ernest Matt Mickler, a lovely collection of authentic recipes reminiscent of the author's childhood in rural Mississippi. The original is called Sweet Potato Pone and is a mix of baked sweet potatoes, heavy cream, molasses and eggs baked into a sweet treat. I subsituted the sweet potato for canned pumpkin and the heavy cream for coconut milk to make a healthful, easy baked treat for any Saturday morning.

Pumpkin Molasses Custard (or Pone, if you prefer)

1 can canned pumpkin (or 2 cups mashed cooked pumpkin, winter sqash or sweet potato)
1/2 can coconut milk (or 1 cup heavy cream or evaporated milk)
3 eggs (or 2, if that's all you got)
1/2 cup molasses (give or take - a big hearty glugg out of the jar will do)
spices to taste - I used 2 tsp cinnamon. Nutmeg, ginger or cloves are not out of place here.
1/2 tsp salt

Combine everything in a mixing bowl and then pour into a greased 8x8 baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 to 50 minutes or until set and browned to your liking. It really can be eaten anywhere from still a little jiggly to brown and firm so take it out whenever you just can't stand it anymore.

Serve with whipped cream, cold heavy cream, chopped nuts or just a spoon. It's very rich but very tasty.

What do you like to bake up on these cool, rainy, autumn mornings?

Care and Feeding of Your Kefir Grains

2010-06-15T18:41:00.001-07:00

This is a letter I wrote to a friend when I gave her kefir grains last week. I hope it is useful to you, as well!

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Congratulations! You are now the steward of an amazing life form, kefir, that will provide you with cultured milk very little work on your part. You are the next a long and unbroken line of stewards that stretches back into the mists of time. Interestingly, no one really knows where kefir comes from or how it first came about. It is believed that the first kefir drinkers came from the mountains of the Caucasus where it is considered a gift from the gods. They may be right because no one has been able to grow kefir in a lab without a starter. Every kefir grain in the world is descended from those original grains.

Kefir grains, as they are called, are not really grains or seeds at all. The spongy “grains” are a colony of yeast and bacteria that convert the sugar in dairy milk into their own spongy outer covering, energy to live and reproduce and a whole host of acids, vitamins and alcoholic byproducts of their metabolism. The grains will grow and reproduce in any dairy milk and like to stay at room temperature so no heating is required. You can also use the grains to ferment other sweet liquids but the grains won’t reproduce. For more information on the microbiological make up of kefir grains, or for any other kind of information you could want about kefir, be sure to check out Dom’s Kefir In-Site.

Care and Feeding of Your Kefir Grains

The Very Basics

2 tbs of kefir grains
2 cups of milk

Place the kefir grains and milk in a glass jar with a lid and leave at room temperature until the milk thickens and sours. Strain the kefir, reserving the grains. Add the grains to fresh milk and store the finished kefir in the fridge until you use it.

See, wasn’t that easy?

Beyond the Basics

They also like to stay at a comfortable room temperature, somewhere between 50 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit. That being said, they are resilient buggers and can bounce back from a lot of abuse.

The Milk

Kefir grains are at their happiest in dairy milk that is as close to the way it came out of the animal as possible. They love raw milk but do just fine in pasteurized milk. They do fine in cow or goat milk (or any other type of dairy milk you happen to have) and prefer whole, full fat milk. Low fat milk would be fine, but do not keep them in ultra pasteurized milk (which is actually shelf stable, they just sell it refrigerated because Americans won’t buy shelf stable milk), or non-fat milk for extended periods. If you must buy these types of milk treat them as non-dairy milks, discussed below.

Oh – someday you should try popping your kefir grains into whipping cream. You will never look at sour cream the same way again. Yum!

The Grains and Separating Them

It is suggested to use 1-2 tablespoons of kefir grains to 2 cups of milk and let it ferment at room temperature for 24 hours. You will learn to adjust the amount of milk based on how your kefir grains are doing at culturing milk, the ambient temperature and how many grains you have available. Remember, these guys are hardy and will culture your milk as best they can in a wide variety of circumstances.

You don’t need to rinse your kefir grains (except in special cases as talked about below), just transfer them. They should be clearish white, quite puffy and complex and soft to the touch with a slimy coating. If they are hard, or yellow or smooth they are unhappy and you should check with Dom’s Kefir In-Site to see how to help them, or if they are beyond help.

To separate the grains from the finished kefir you can either strain the kefir through a wire mesh (or plastic, or bamboo) strainer, or fish them out with a spoon or fork. For a long time I fished mine out with a small wooden fork and liked the ease of this method. Any grains I didn’t ‘catch’ just stayed in the kefir and got blended when I made smoothies. I now tend to strain and like that method for two reasons. One, it catches all the tiny baby kefir grains that start to grow in the kefir and two, it helps break up and smooth out the curd of the finished kefir.

Utensils and Jars

I culture my kefir in glass jars with a screw top lid. I tend to ferment mine with the lid on tight because I am afraid of knocking it over and spilling it, but many people suggest leaving the lid slightly ajar, or using a towel or coffee filter over the top of the jar instead of a solid lid. A tight lid allows the kefir to get more fizzy and may alter the amount of alcohol in the finished kefir. Check Dom’s Kefir In-Site for more information about various ways to effect the final fermentation.

It is fine to use stainless steel strainers or utensils to handle kefir, but please make sure they are clean and not left in the kefir for an extended amount of time. Do not use any reactive metals like brass, aluminum, cast iron, or copper. Kefir is acidic and these metals are bad news with acidic food. Plastic or bamboo are other fine choices for handling kefir.

How do I know it’s Ready?

You will know the kefir is ready to strain because the milk will have thickened and smell sour rather than sweet. At first it will be like the consistency of buttermilk, store bought kefir or drinkable yogurt but eventually the kefir will curdle and separate. When this happens you will see a thick layer of white curds floating on top and a thin yellowish liquid below. Taste your kefir at various stages to see which you like to drink – most people prefer it when it has just thickened but I don’t mind curdled kefir, myself.

If the kefir has curdled I make sure the lid is on tight and shake the jar to break up the curds. Then I separate the grains through a strainer and the finished kefir is perfectly good for baking or sweetened smoothies. Remember, kefir is a mix of bacteria and yeast so it will always have a bit more of a yeasty flavor than yogurt or even store bought kefir (which by law is not allowed to have yeast in it). Experiment with more milk or less time if your kefir is too “ripe” or sour for your tastes.

Photo by David Niergarth.

Resting Your Kefir Grains

Your kefir grains will keep fermenting milk into kefir indefinitely as long as they have good milk and proper temperatures. But sometimes you need a break either because you have too much kefir or you won’t be able to strain the grains every day. Luckily, you can refrigerate the kefir grains for up to a couple months with no detriment to the grains.

When you are ready to give your grains a break put them in a clean jar with the same amount of fresh milk that they have been fermenting in a 24 hour period. Dom recommends this amount of milk for resting your grains for up to a week. He suggests increasing the milk by about 30% for each additional week of storage, or you can simply strain the kefir out each week. I have kept 3 tbs of kefir grains in a cup of milk for a couple months at a time and the grains have bounced back just fine. The kefir you strain off the grains after their rest in the fridge is perfectly safe to drink, though it may be thinner or more sour than usual.

Do note that different strains of bacteria and yeast respond to cold storage differently so kefir grains usually require a little care when coming back to full fermenting strength. They should also get to come out of the fridge and ferment at room temperature for a week or so every couple weeks or months so they don’t get too out of balance.

When bringing kefir grains out of the fridge strain them off the old kefir and put fresh milk over them like normal. I usually use a smaller proportion of milk than usual, and change the milk as soon as it seems sour, even if it is a slightly different consistency than usual. The kefir should come back to what you expect it to be within one or two cycles with fresh milk.

Culturing Non-Dairy Beverages

Kefir grains need dairy milk to grow and reproduce but they will culture any liquid into a probiotic beverage. There are two ways to culture non-dairy beverages – switching the grains back and forth, or sacrificing some of the grains to the non dairy beverage.

If you are going to make non dairy kefir only occasionally it is best to switch the grains back and forth. I occasionally make coconut milk kefir by plunking the strained grains into canned coconut milk and let that ferment for 12 or 24 hours. When the coconut kefir is ready strain out the grains and put them back in dairy milk. I often rinse my grains before putting them back in the dairy milk thinking that the surface of the grains needs to be in good contact with the dairy milk. Dom cautions against rinsing in most situations, and I am careful when rinsing to not contaminate the grains.

If you want to continuously ferment non-dairy kefir you should hold back a portion of the grains in dairy milk and use another portion for the non-dairy milk. Use the grains in soy, almond or coconut milk the way you would in dairy milk just being sure to note when they are no longer healthy looking or fermenting properly. Keep another portion in dairy milk so that it keeps growing and you have some to replenish your non-dairy grains when they no longer ferment properly. I’ve never done this method myself, but have heard of others doing it with great success.

You can also play around with fermenting juice or sugar water as well. It often goes alcoholic, but sometimes turns out very tasty.

What To Do With All Your Kefir

Kefir is great in smoothies and baked goods and in a million other dishes. It can basically be used anywhere you would use buttermilk, but it does have a bit of a yeasty flavor that can be unwelcome in some dishes. In other dishes you’d never know the milk was cultured. Here are my favorite ways to use kefir.

*Smoothies. Combine the kefir with frozen or fresh fruit, juice, ice, and sweetner of your choice in a blender to make a delicious smoothie. Add coconut oil, nut butter or good quality egg yolks to boost the protein and fat content, or use more juice to make it lighter. You can blend the kefir with a little fruit syrup or pulp to make it more like the flavored kefir at the store. Experiment with green smoothies!

*Blender Batter Pancakes. This is a method for making pancake or waffle batter by soaking whole grains in kefir overnight and then grinding in your blender. Here is Sue Gregg's original recipe, and here is my blog post on the recipe.

*Kefir naan or flatbread. This is a neat recipe where you combine kefir and wheat flour, knead it like regular bread dough, then let it raise overnight. The natural yeast in the kefir is all the leavening you need. It is a very sour dough but tender and delicious. Cook like naan or pita on a griddle, use as a pizza crust or bake as rolls. Here's the link to the website, and here's a photo and write up of the time I did it.

*Macaroni and cheese. Just use kefir instead of milk for boxed or real cheese sauce.

*Clafouti. This is a delicious, rustic French dessert (or decadent breakfast) that is essentially an eggy pudding studded with fruit. Here's the recipe I use. I just substitute kefir for the milk and use whatever fresh or frozen fruit you have.

This post is a part of Real Food Wednesdays. Check out more real food blogs at the carnival!

Kimchi

2010-05-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

I just broke into my latest fermentation experiment, a fantastic kimchi with lots of goodies, including arame seaweed. Kimchi is a fermented cabbage condiment that originates in Korea but is similar to sauerkraut. The main difference is seasoning - kimchi most traditionally is seasoned with ground red pepper, onion, garlic and ginger in addition to the salt. It can include any number of additions or substitutions including cucumber, carrots, different types of onions, root vegetables like radishes, fruits like apples or raisins or even stranger things like shrimp paste or raw shellfish. Koreans have hundreds of variations and these photos by eryoni taken in South Korea show just some of the diversity of Korean pickled vegetables.

This batch I made included the exotic addition of arame, a type of seaweed. Seaweed is a great thing to add to anyone's diet for the trace minerals and rare proteins and sugars. Arame, the common name for the kelp Eisenia bicyclis, is a rich source of calcium, zinc and iodine. It is also a good source of lignans which help fight cancer according to some studies. As expected, its taste is hardly noticeable in the highly flavored kimchi, though it is visually apparent as black threads in the cabbage mix.

Kimchi with Arame

Green/white cabbage
Carrots
Green Onions, or sliced white onions
Arame
Ginger
Garlic
Ground chiles
Sea Salt

Note on amounts: I don't give any. That's not the important part. To make one quart of kimchi I filled up a 3 or 4 quart mixing bowl with shredded veggies and seasonings. I would expect this is about 3/4 of a medium head of cabbage, 2 good sized carrots, 10 big green onions, a handful of arame, 3 inches of ginger, 5 cloves of garlic and enough chiles to make it red and spicy. Enough salt to make it "too salty to be tasty, not salty enough to be gross". See my blog posts on making sauerkraut, making pickles and my pickle FAQ for more information on my methods.

I used a mix of ground whole dried peppers and commercial New Mexico chile powder. In the past I have used a mix of chile flakes (like for pizza), cayenne, New Mexico Chile powder and paprika. You should use however much of whatever you have. This is artisanal cooking!

Shred the cabbage to your liking and either chop, plank or ribbon the carrots with a vegetable peeler. Chop up the green onions however you see fit and mince the ginger and garlic into matchsticks or tiny specks, as you see fit.

Put the handful of dried arame into a bowl of warm water and let sit for 5 or 10 minutes.

Toss all of the veggies together with the ground chiles and salt in a large mixing bowl or cooking pot, tasting as you mix. Pull the arame out of the water, squeezing it as dry as you can and leaving all the grit behind in the bowl. Mix that into the veggies and continue mixing, tasting and adding salt or chile powder as necessary.When the veggies and seasonings are mixed together well and good and salty you can either leave it in the bowl for an hour or so, or start packing it right away. I have gotten lazy and been leaving it in the bowl for a while to allow more liquid to come out of the veggies and make packing it easier.

When you are ready start spooning the mixture into your clean quart sized jar. Really pack it down in there. I use a regular mouth half pint jar to push it down into a wide mouth quart jar, but I've also used wooden meat mallets and those Chinese soup spoons to pack the veggies down. You really want to squeeze all the air out of the jar and let the liquid come up over the veggies. If you are squeezing and squeezing and still not getting liquid over, or at least to the top of your veggies you can add some more brine - salt added to water until it is too salty to be tasty but not so salty it makes you gag. You will end up with a wetter kimchi, but it will ferment just the same.

Put the lid on your well packed veggies and leave them on the counter for a couple days. I find that ferments with ginger in them seem to get fermenting much more quickly. I did this kimchi a day after doing a plain cabbage kraut but the kimchi was ready to go in the fridge a day earlier. It was fizzy and the lid was popping and it was smelling quite sour. Put it in the fridge and start eating it whenever you want something spicy gingery sour salty.

I have been eating this kimchi with everything. My favorite is kimchi and macaroni and cheese, but I was also really impressed with kimchi and colcannon - mashed potatoes with sauteed cabbage and collard greens. It's of course great with any stir fried vegetables or Asian flavored meats, and I tossed a fair amount into a bowl of instant rice noodle soup the other night. I think the trick to incorporating fermented vegetables into your diet is just putting a spoonful on your plate with every meal. No matter what the food you are eating is, try it with some sauerkraut, pickles or kimchi. Maybe you won't like it and you don't eat that spoonful. Then again, maybe you will love it and have discovered a whole new taste sensation. And isn't that what life is all about?

Oh - while you are thinking about kimchi you should check out the Ultimate Kimchi Recipe. The listed ingredients may or may not be the actual ultimate kimchi but the directions certainly do. Enjoy.

This post is a part of Real Food Wednesday, check out everyone else's real food posts!

I Love Oregon.. and Cheese

2010-02-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

February 14 is not only that hallmark holiday all decked out in pink and red, it is also the anniversary of Oregon becoming a state. Since I love Oregon much more than I love pink hearts I am very happy that a friend of mine has a tradition of a "Oregon, Be My Valentine" cheese and wine party each year. We play Pin the Heart on Oregon, take prom-style photos in front of a giant map of Oregon, wear green instead of red and generally love up on our very lovable state. Oh, and eat a ton of local (and otherwise) cheese and wine. Oregon is known for both.

For two years running I have made cheese logs. Not only are they retro and delicious, they're a great way to stretch a little high quality cheese out to feed a party. One recipe I've made is the classic cheddar cheese log and then I made two others with blue cheese and goat cheese. Here's the cheddar recipe, with variations for the other two below it.

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Cheddar Cheese Log for the 21st Century

8 oz cream cheese or homemade yogurt cheese (see below)

6 oz shredded cheddar cheese (see below for links to directions to make it, or buy the best quality you can find. The sharper the better)

1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce (look for High Fructose Corn Syrup free brands)

1/2 tsp ground mustard

1 tsp seasoned salt (like Chile Grill Salt)

1/4 tsp ground black pepper (optional)

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (to taste, optional)

1/4 tsp turmeric, if your seasoned salt doesn't have it in it

1/3 cup finely chopped almonds, walnut or other nut of your choice

*Combine the cream cheese and shredded cheddar in a bowl with a fork, or with a mixer. Sprinkle the seasonings in and continue mixing until everything is uniformly combined.

*Use plastic wrap and your hands to form the cheese mixture into a ball, log or several small balls. Wrap in plastic wrap or parchment paper and refrigerate until firm, at least two hours.

*Unwrap the cheese and roll it in the finely chopped nuts. Serve with crackers or sliced apple.

Herbed Goat Cheese Log

-8 oz cream cheese or yogurt cheese

-6 oz soft goat cheese, with or without herbs

-Up to 2 tsp of two or three of your favorite dried herbs or a tablespoon or so of your favorite fresh herbs chopped finely. Try oregano and thyme or basil and rosemary or herbs de Provence.

-Salt and pepper to taste

-1/3 cup chopped pine nuts, hazelnuts or other nuts

-1 tbs ground sumac

*Combine cream cheese, goat cheese and herbs in a bowl or mixer. Use plastic wrap to form into a ball or log and refrigerate until set.

*Roll firm cheese log in either the nuts or the sumac, or a mixture of both. Serve with pita bread or sliced pears.

Honeyed Blue Cheese Log

8 oz cream cheese or yogurt cheese

6 oz soft blue cheese

salt and black pepper

1/3 cup chopped pecans

2 tbs dark honey

*Combine the cream cheese and blue cheese with a fork or mixer, adding salt and a little black pepper as you would like. Form, wrap and refrigerate.

*Unwrap the cheese and sprinkle liberally with black pepper. Roll in the chopped pecans and place on your serving platter. Drizzle the honey over the cheese and serve with sweet, crisp apples.

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Cheese is a healthy food when you choose the right kinds. Those right kinds, as Kristen the Food Renegade reminds us, are made from whole milk from healthy animals and not much else. Anything that says "cheese product" or "protein concentrate" anywhere on the package is not the kind of cheese worth putting in your body. Find a good grocery store or cheese store and start tasting different kinds of real cheese. Better yet, find a farmer who will sell you their homemade cheese or learn to make your own.

Making cheese is not terribly difficult but does take some time. I've never made hard cheese but drool over the directions on Dr. Fankhauser's cheese page regularly. I have, however, made cream cheese out of yogurt many times. Kelly the Kitchen Kop wrote up some great directions here, which is really handy since cream cheese is an integral part of making cheese logs.

These cheese logs were a huge hit at our party, and I bet they will be at yours as well. The cheddar log has a comforting, familiar taste while the goat cheese one is a little sophisticated without breaking your budget. Everyone raved over the blue cheese log this year. I think it's a particularly inspired flavor combination. I hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

This post is a part of Real Food Wednesday! Check out this week's Mr. Linky for tons more great real food recipes.

How to Dress a Salad

2010-01-19T11:42:00.001-08:00

When people are switching over to a more traditional or healthful diet the how-to of salad dressing almost always comes up. Commerical salad dressing is usually a nasty brew of polyunsaturated oils, high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, gums and starches. For some people switching to a healthier diet they are the first thing to get tossed out of the fridge. For others they can be the last. Healthy, homemade salad dressing SHOULD be easy, right? It's just oil, vinegar and seasonigns, what can be so hard? I can hear the healthfood wanna be's laughing now.

I had the hardest time with salad dressing until just recently. It was always too oily, or too vinegary, or too salty, or not salty enough. Then I discovered an old cookbook, snitched from a public library untold years ago, in my mom's basement. The Savory Way, by Deborah Madison, one of the leaders of the Berkeley health food movement in the 1960s and 70s. The book is vegetarian and elegant, but homely too. These are the kinds of foods someone who has spent years perfecting their sense of flavors and textures makes at the end of a cocktail party, or for her own Sunday afternoon supper. Flipping through the book makes me long to live next door to her, to have the luxury of dropping in for a bowl of this or a nibble of that. Generally simple, but perfectly composed, her salads are a highlight of the book.

In one of the salad dressing recipes she mentioned her trick to perfect sald dressings - a simple ratio. She uses a ratio of 3:2, oil to acid for all of her dressings with adjustments in ingredients and additions, but not that base ratio. Three to two is almost identical to 5:3 but using that ratio allows you to mix and match your oils and acids in even more variations. A ratio also allows you to make various quantities ranging from a quarter cup of dressing for dinner for two to a quart of dressing to keep in the fridge to have on hand. Simply adjust your measuring tool. I often use tablespoons or teaspoons when making dressing for one or two, but quarter cups would make a family sized batch.

A few words about ingredients before I get into some recipes. One of the reasons we are ditching the commercial salad dressings (aside from cost - they are expensive compared to homemade!) is the polyunsaturated fats. In my post on fats I linked to a couple of articles about the health impacts of polyunsaturated fats - as in, they are really bad for you and you should work towards eliminating them completely - and also talked about the cooking fats I do use in my house. Most healthy fats are solid at room temperature, though, making them unsuitable for salad dresssings.

Olive oil is the classic choice for salad dressings. It is high in monounsaturated fat, a fat that has real health benefits, and low in polyunsaturated fats. Use caution when buying and storing olive oil, though, many olive oils are adulterated with cheaper vegetable oils, and the monounsaturated fatty acids are fragile and thus go rancid more quickly than animal fats. Buy from a reputable source and keep the oil in a cool, dark place.

Sometimes you just don't want your salad to taste like olive oil, though. Sometimes you are going for an asian flavor, or your kids balk at the olivey flavor. Check with your olive oil source and see if they have a light or second pressing oil with a more neutral flavor. You can also use some nut or seed oils (sunflower, sesame, walnut, almond, etc) for salad dressing as well. High oleic sunflower oil is a particularly good choice because it is high in monounsaturated fat and low in polyunsaturated, but it is hard to find. When buying nut or seed oils be sure to read the labels carefully for the levels of polyunsaturated, monounsaturated and saturated fats in the oil. Ideally, you want something with low poly- and higher mono- and saturated. In any case, remember that these seed and nut oils are fragile foods that should be used in strict moderation. Buy small bottles, keep them cool and dark, and don't use them for much of anything except salad dressing. Keep cooking with your good, healthy animal fats.

Here is an example of a simple dressing and a few variations using Deborah Madison's magic ratio. I will use tablespoons for all my measurements because I usually make just enough for one or two meals, but feel free to scale up if you are feeding a crowd.

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Simple Italian Dressing

3 tbs olive oil
2 tbs red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp dijon mustard
1 small garlic clove, pressed
goodly pinch of salt and grind of pepper

In a small jar with a lid combine the vinegar, mustard, garlic, salt and pepper. Stir with a fork until well combined. Add the oil, screw on the lid and shake until well incorporated. Taste, on a leaf of lettuce, and adjust salt or vinegar as necessary.

Asian Dressing

3 tbs high oleic sunflower oil or un-toasted sesame oil

1 tbs rice wine vinegar

1 tbs lime juice

1 tsp grated ginger

1/2 tsp grated or pressed garlic

1/2 tsp soy or fish sauce

a few grinds of black pepper

chile flakes, to taste

Combine everything but the oil in a small jar with a lid. Stir to combine and then add the oil. Screw on the lid, shake to combine then taste and adjust as necessary.

Fruity Vinaigrette

1 tbs extra virgin olive oil

2 tbs light olive oil or high oleic sunflower oil

1 tbs fruit infused cider vinegar (raspberry, blueberry, cherry, plum, etc)

1 tbs red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp honey, or to taste

a pinch of garlic powder

a very generous amount of black pepper

salt

Combine everything but the oil in a small jar with a lid and stir well to combine, getting the honey really incorporated into the vinegar. Add the oil, put the lid on, shake to combine and adjust seasoning.

Balsamic Roasted Garlic Dressing

3 tbs olive oil

1 tbs balsamic vinegar

1 tbs white wine vinegar

2 or 3 cloves roasted garlic

1/2 tsp dijon mustard

salt and pepper to taste

Mash the roasted garlic with the mustard and the salt and pepper. Stir in the vinegar until it is well combined then shake it up with the oil.

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The variations here are endless. Add herb, fruit or spice infused vinegars or oils, different fresh or dried herbs, different sweetners or spices. Sometimes I like to use the brine from my home pickled vegetables. Pickled beets make a particularly beautiful and tasty salad dressing. You can stir in grated parmesan, crumbled feta or blue cheese, yogurt or sour cream. The sky is the limit here.

What is your favorite salad dressing? What is your favorite salad recipe? Have you suceeded in copy catting a favorite commercial dressing? Who do you buy your olive oil from?

This post is a part of Real Food Wednesday. Check it out for more real food recipes and stories!

Soup Weather

2010-01-13T11:55:00.000-08:00

Around here it's been cold. And wet. And dark. Did I mention wet? And cold? The perfect weather for soup! Every culture has a multitude of soups and for a very good reason. Soup is a cost effective way to get nourishing, warming food into lots of people. Warm food is so important in this cold time of the year. Many doctors and parents are coming to realize the health implications of not keeping our bodies, especially our children's bodies, warm. Being chronically cold can affect growth, attention, and even the course of diseases and infection. And we all know how important keeping those bodies well nourished is.

"But isn't making homemade soup difficult?" people ask. Not if you do a little prep work, keep certain ingredients on hand, and use a little creativity in your soup making. The key to good homemade soup is good homemade stock or broth. Canned stock or broth is just salty water with artificial flavors. It is not healthful or nourishing. Real stock made from bones and meat trimmings is healthful, nourishing, has fantastic flavor and mouthfeel. It does take prep work, but it's all prep work you can do in advance. For information on how to make bone broth check my blog here, my other blog here, Cheeseslave's blog here, or Kelly the Kitchen Kop's blog here. A tasty and relatively healthful vegetarian broth can be created with dried mushrooms or a well chosen assortment of vegetable peelings gently cooked, but check out Cheeseslave and Kelly's blogs for a hundred and one reasons to make bone broth.

Once you've got your bone broth a soup is as simple as sauteeing onions, adding meat and vegetables and adjusting the seasonings. Here is a basic stovetop "chicken" soup recipe with variations.

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Chicken Soup with Variations

*1 yellow onion, chopped into 1/4 inch pieces

*3 ribs of celery, sliced fine

*2 medium carrots, chopped fine

*Coconut oil or other healthy cooking fat

*1-4 cloves of garlic, pressed or sliced

*1/4 tsp ground sage

*1 tsp oregano

*1 tsp ground, dried rosemary

*salt and pepper to taste (really depends on how salty your broth is)

*2 quarts chicken broth or diluted chicken broth

*1-2 cups assorted chopped or frozen vegetables - green beans, zucchini, peas, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc.

*1-2 cups raw or cooked chicken meat

*1-2 tbs apple cider vinegar

Heat the cooking fat in a 4 quart soup pot and add the onion, celery and carrot. Salt and pepper lightly and stir over medium heat until the vegetables start to soften. Add the dried herbs and continue to cook, stirring occasionally until the onions are translucent. Add the garlic and cook, stirring constantly until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Add the broth to the pan, scraping up any browned bits and turn the heat to high or medium high. Add the vegetables and meat and let soup come to a boil. Turn heat to low and let simmer until the vegetables are cooked and everything is hot. Taste soup after it comes to a boil (carefully! burned tongues ruin dinners!) and add salt if necessary.

When the vegetables and meat are cooked through taste the soup again for salt, pepper and acidity. Add a tablespoon of vinegar and see if you like the flavor. Add more if you would like, along with more salt and pepper if necessary.

Allow soup to cool slightly and serve with sauerkraut or other pickled vegetables, buttered or cheesy bread, a salad and a homebrew. Er.. or whatever you would like to serve it with. Hehe.

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Variations on this soup are endless. You can adjust the vegetables, the meat, the broth, the cooking fat, the acid and the seasonings. You can add tomatoes or cream. You can strip the soup down to its most basic. Here are a few of my very favorite variations.

Garlic Soup:

Omit everything except onion (reduce to half an onion, chopped very fine), garlic (increase to 6, 8 or 12 cloves, minced or sliced), cooking fat, broth and vinegar. Serve over a toasted slice of hearty bread, with or without cheese, or with a poached egg in a shallow bowl.

Cajun Soup:

Use cajun seasoning instead of the dried herbs (perhaps with some thyme and extra cayenne), omit carrot but increase the celery, and use green beans, peas and sweet potatoes along with chicken or spicy sausage. Serve with sauerkraut and hot pepper sauce.

Taco Soup:

Fry up some ground beef (with organ meat?) with taco seasoning, garlic and onion. Add some tomato, corn and black beans with the chicken broth. Finish with lime juice and serve with sour cream and tortilla chips.

Curry Soup:

Use curry powder instead of the dried herbs, use cauliflower, potatoes and green peas as the vegetables and use lemon or lime juice instead of vinegar. Use virgin coconut oil if you have it.

Bacon and Bean Soup:

Fry bacon first and use bacon grease as your cooking fat. Omit carrots and use drained, cooked pinto or kidney beans instead of the other vegetables. Use the fried, chopped bacon, hot dogs, sausages or no meat and season with a little rapadura, molasses or maple syrup if you'd like. Beef broth is great instead of chicken. Still finish with some vinegar.

Creamy mushroom soup:

Use bacon fat as your cooking fat and add a cup or three of sliced mushrooms in with the onions and celery and cook until the mushrooms have released their water and then gotten dry and browned. Increase garlic if you'd like and use thyme as a main herbal seasoning. Use beef broth if you have it and maybe a splash or wine or brandy. Use red wine vinegar to finish and add sour cream or heavy cream at serving time.

I like to make soup in batches that will provide at least two or three meals at a time because re-heating soup is an easy way to get healthful food on the table fast. You can always freshen up or change the flavor of the soup by sauteeing more onions with seasonings before adding the cold soup and heating it up.

What kind of soup do you like best? How do you work to keep warm, nourishing food on the table during these cold months? Whats your favorite soup garnish or topping?

This post is a part of Real Food Wednesdays. Check out more real food blogs here!

Huge thanks to These Days in French Life, Oz4Caster, Stubborndev and Greygoosie for their beautiful photos! Click on the photos and surf their flickr streams!

What to Do with Green Tomatoes?

2009-11-25T12:31:00.001-08:00

A month or so ago I pulled the last of the straggling tomato plants out of my garden. The weather had turned and nothing else was going to ripen so it was better to bring them inside and see what could be salvaged. What to do with a table full of green tomatoes? Luckily, I found a few things!

The first thing I tried was fried green tomatoes. It's a simple, classic preparation that turned out great. I used kefir instead of buttermilk or sweet milk to moisten the tomato slices, a mixture of flour and cornmeal to bread them and fried them in a mix of refined coconut oil and bacon grease. They were fantastic hot, topped with some Secret Aardvark Sauce, and also cold on top of a lettuce salad.

The best thing I've done with them, however, is this fantastic green curry with shrimp recipe I came across. The original recipe calls for making a shrimp stock and augmenting the curry with lemongrass but my simpler version was still amazingly good. I've been a fan of yellow curry for a long time but this was my first time working with green curry paste. It is fiery hot but with really interesting sour flavors as well. I found more lime juice and sugar, as well as mixing in some yellow curry paste, really helped mediate the heat. Give it a try!

Simple Green Curry with Green Tomatoes and Shrimp

coconut oil or other cooking fat

1/2 yellow onion, sliced thin

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tbs ginger, minced

2-4 tbs green curry paste (I like Mae Ploy brand)

1 can coconut milk

2-3 cups shrimp, chicken, or vegetable stock, or water

1 cup green tomatoes, halved or quartered into 1 or 2 inch chunks

shrimp*

brown or raw sugar

soy sauce or fish sauce (optional)

1 or 2 limes

*I used pre cooked frozen small shrimp from Trader Joes. Because it was a splurge item I used a fair amount of shrimp. Use as many of whatever kind of shrimp you want. Adjust how long they are in the curry based on how much cooking or heating your shrimp need.

Sautee onion and ginger in coconut oil in a medium sized sauce pan. When the onion is soft but not brown add the garlic and cook for another minute then add the green curry paste. Continue to cook for another minute or two until fragrant. Stir in the coconut milk and broth until it is the consistency you like - I like mine like a thin stew or thick soup.

Bring the curry to a boil and add in the green tomatoes, a spoonful of sugar, a dash of fish or soy sauce and a squeeze of lime juice. Taste the curry and see if you think it needs more or any of those seasonings. Allow to simmer for 15 minutes or until the tomatoes are tender. Stir in the shrimp and allow them to get cooked or heated through. Adjust final flavor with more sugar, lime or fish or soy sauce.

Serve over jasmine or basmati rice with more lime juice squeezed over top.

This recipe posted as part of Real Food Wednesdays. Check out the other posts for more ways to incorporate healthful, real food, into your diet.

Homemade Cider Vinegar

2009-11-18T14:01:00.000-08:00

Some people love vinegar and other people can't stand it. I'm in the former camp. I add vinegar to just about every sauce or soup I make, love it on cooked greens and raw salads. Sometimes I get a hankering to drink cider vinegar raw. I usually come to my senses first, but it is healthful and good stuff. Imagine my relief when I found out just how easy it is to make it at home!

Vinegar is a bacterial ferment that turns alcohol into acetic acid. Remember, alcohol is a yeast fermentation that turns sugar into alcohol. Some people make cider vinegar by allowing raw, fresh pressed cider to do it's own thing with wild yeast and bacteria but I like to shepherd the process along with some simple technology and starters. You can start with raw, pressed cider, pasturized store bought juice or apple scraps and sugar. I used the scraps because that's what I had, and the vinegar turned out great.

I highly recommend that you start by reading the beer, wine and vinegar chapters of Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. Try making a beer like the one I write about in my Alewife blog post, or try a wine from one of Sandor's recipes. Once you've tried a beer or wine ferment, vinegar is an easy next step. It's a lengthy process but like all fermentations it's mostly waiting. Take an adventure, give it a try.

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Scrap Cider Vinegar ala Broderick Cellars

Hardware:

*A one gallon or so sized bucket or wide mouthed glass jar with a lid

*1 nylon mesh bag, food grade (could use cheesecloth, I guess, but I have a 2 gallon nylon bag I got at a brew store for not very much money)

*A pot, 6 quart or larger

*a stainless steel long handled spoon (or other easily cleaned spoon-like device)

* a cup or jar, pint sized or so

* a measuring cup or kitchen scale

*A one gallon sized glass jug with a narrow mouth (you can buy these at brew shops, or you can buy a jug of Carlo Rossi wine or apple cider invite your friends over and have a party :)

*An air lock and stopper (avaliable at homebrew shops for cheap - Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz has DIY options, but I say buy an airlock, it'll work great and costs like a buck)

*A funnel and strainer and/or a siphon/racking stick/length of food grade plastic piping

Software:

*Apple peels and scraps - about a gallon OR one gallon apple cider

*Sugar and/or apple juice concentrate - see below for amount

*Water, good quality.

*Wine yeast, avaliable at homebrew shops or online

* Unpasturized vinegar like Braggs, a glug or three

Phase One: Make Hard Cider

Day One: Making the Must and Adding the Yeast

If you are using scraps and sugar, follow the directions in this first paragraph. If you are using cider, then heat the cider to pasturize it, cool it to body temperature and skip down to where you add the yeast.

Make a mock apple juice with sugar water and/or apple juice concentrate by heating up water and sugar until the sugar is dissolved and the liquid is just boiling. I use the amount of sugar in apple juice as a guide so 24 g of sugar per cup of juice. That equals about 2 tablespoons of granualted sugar per cup or a half cup sugar per quart of water. You could probably get away with less sugar because there is sugar in the apple peels, but I would add at least a little. (Online Conversion.com is an amazing website to help you convert weights and volumes of common food items... very handy for off the cuff cooking!) You need about a gallon of boiling hot apple juice sugar water.

Put your peels, cores and scraps into your nylon mesh bag and put in "primary fermenter", aka your bucket. If you wanted a wild fermentation you would let the sugar water cool to body temperature and then pour over the apples, cover with a cloth and let ferment. I like to guarantee alcoholic fermentation by adding wine yeast. Take out a cup or so of the sweet water and let it cool to body temperature in a small jar or cup. Pour the rest of the hot sugar water over the apples in the bucket and stir to combine everything well. Put the lid on the bucket and let everything cool to body temperature. Body temperature means it feels neither hot nor cold. It's a little cooler than bath water, about 100 degrees F.

While the apple must (juice ready for fermenting) is cooling add your wine yeast to the small jar of body temperature sugar water. It will start to get frothy and smell yeasty after 10 or 20 minutes. When the must is body temperature and the yeast is primed (active and ready to work) then pitch(pour) the yeast into the must and cover the bucket with the lid again. The lid shouldn't be air tight, but it should be closed. The guy who taught me to brew used a 5 gallon bucket with a small hole drilled in the lid as his primary fermenter. He covered the holewith a clean coffee filter and then the whole lid with a clean dishtowel. I have a glass jar with a glass lid that doesn't fit down tight and that works fine, too. Day one is completed. Your must is beginning to ferment?

Day Two: Check Fermenting Cider

Now you will leave your fermenting cider to do it's thing for a couple days. On the first morning check it the next morning to make sure it's frothy and fermenty (if it's not, email me and we'll make an emergency plan B) Every day or so clean off your "easily cleaned spoon like device" and stir the cider around making sure to mush any floating fruit back down under the liquid. Do this quickly and try to keep the lid on as much as possible while stirring. The active fermentation will make it difficult for contaminating bacteria or yeast to get a foothold in there, but it could happen. 5-10 days after you started fermenting it is time to "rack" (move the liquid offthe solid stuff) the cider into your "secondary fermenter" (jug with an airlock- isn't brewing lingo fun?!?).

Day Three: Racking into Secondary Fermentation

On racking day clean up your whole kitchen, your kitchen sink and the secondary fermenter and funnel/sipon tubing. I use hot water and soap with three rinses of hot water, but others would have you use bleach or some more serious disenfectant. Have a trash bag or compost bucket handy. With your primary fermenter situated near your sink and garbage take the lid off and pull the nylon bag out of the liquid. With clean hands squeeze it a little to get most of the liquid out of the fruit. Put the fruit in your garbage or compost and set the bag aside to clean later (but not too much later. Don't forget, ask me how I know. It was gross).

Now you have to get the cider into your secondary fermenter. One way to do this is to siphon it. Stick the clean tubing into the primary fermenter until most of it is in the liquid, put your thumb over the end of the tube and pull it out ofthe liquid until the part of the tube with the liquid is below the bottom of the fermenter (like in the sink or on the floor below the counter), put the tube inyour secondary fermenter and take your hand off the end of the tube. The liquid will pour through the tube into the jug. Magic. This guy has pretty good instructions with photos. The other way to do this is to gently pour the liquid out of the bucket into the strainer in the funnel and into the jug. Either way works.

Once your jug is filled up to about the shoulder of the jug then put the airlock on it. There are a couple varieties of air lock but all involve filling a small portion of the lock with water and putting the stopper and lock on the mouth of the jug. Put the jug back in a safe, dark spot where it won't be disturbed or have major temperature fluctuations (ie: basement good, back porch bad). Label it well with what it is and the date you started fermenting and the date you racked it (the labels on my jugs are my record keeping system, what exactly goes on your label is up to you)

Aaaaand, now we wait a few months. Like three, or six. You will know the cider is done fermenting because you won't really see bubbles coming up out of the airlock anymore. Also, the cider should clear up as the yeast die and fall to the bottom of the jug.

Thanks to Anthony at Homestead Pretty for the gorgeous photo. Go check out their post on making honey wine!

Day Four: Racking Off the Yeast

When you have a relatively clear cider and hardly any bubbles coming up through the air lock then you can taste the cider. The easiest way to do this is to stick a small amount of tubing or a straw into the jug, put your finger over the top and pull the liquid out. A syringe with some tubing would work too. You don't want to disturb the yeast bed. Does your cider taste alcoholic? If not, come back for emergency plan B, but most likely it will. It may not taste good, but it should taste alcoholic.

At this point, you can rack the cider off the yeast bad (carefully, with the tubing - a commercial racking stick works great here because it is stiff and has holes in the tubing half an inch up from the bottom so you pull the liquid from above the yeast bed. Tubing can work with some careful holding to keep the end off the yeast bed) and either bottle it to age for drinking as hard cider, or make vinegear.

Congratulations! You are done with phase one!

Phase Two: Making Vinegar

You've racked the cider off the yeast in the secondary fermenter. You can rack it into another jug, into your original bucket or into a number of smaller jars. Ultimately, you will want to get the liquid into containers with relatively wide mouths because vinegar is an aerobic (with oxygen/air) fermentation. We used the airlock to keep oxygen out of the alcohol fermentation, but will work to get air into the vinegar fermentation. I put my cider into 3 or 4 quart sized mason jars and recommend that, but you can find containers that work just right for you. It should be glass, though.

Pour the cider into the container(s) you are going to make the vinegar in. It is OK, and even a good thing to let this pouring incorporate lots of oxygen intothe mix. Pour it from as high up as you can, let it splash around a bit. Add a goodly dose of raw vinegar to your cider.. I'd say 1/8-1/4 cup vinegar per quart of cider. If your vinegar has a mother in or on it - the rubbery or stringy floaty bits - then add those to the cider, too. That's the good stuff.

Cover the container(s) of cider with something that will allow air in and out, but keep out bugs and dust. I put two layers of coffee filter over the mouth of the jar and held it in place with a mason jar ring. Cloth and string or rubberbands would work too. Label, label label.

A note - this ferment should be kept away from any other alcohol ferments you are doing like beer or wine. You might also want to keep it away from kombucha ferments, though I don't. Vinegar bacteria can spoil alcohol ferments(make them vinegar when what you really wanted was wine) and could potentially cross contaminate with kombucha. My vinegars have turned into kombugar and I don't care if my kombucha becomes vineguchaor, but some people might.

In a couple weeks or a month or whenever you think about it, see how your vinegar is doing. Is there a mother on top? It looks kinda like a kombucha scoby but might be quite thin like a film. Does it smell vinegary? It's OK, maybe even adviseable, to lift the mothers off the jars (carefully keeping them a side to add back) and pour, mix and aerate the vinegar. I had three jars going and would get out a fourth and pour everything back and forth among the jars, mixing and aerating everything. Then add the mothers back to the jars, cover with the paper or cloth and let them sit another few months. When it is vinegary to your liking, it's vinegar! :)

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It sounds super complicated, but it's not really, I promise. Like I said, check out Wild Fermentation for good, simple instructions with clear illustrations. Google "home wine making" for more info and make friends at your local brewstore. They're friendly folks there, no doubt. Your vinegar will keep in the cupboard for close to forever so don't worry about making too much. I have recently been infusing my vinegar with different flavors - rosemary, oregano and blueberry are my favorites so far.

If you have any questions, pleae leave a comment. I tried to write this as clearly as possible, but maybe I didn't. The best way to learn this stuff, of course, is to meet someone who can show you. Good luck with your vinegar, and all your kitchen brews!

Posted as part of Real Food Wednesday! Check it out!!

Nothing Says Lovin' Like Something From the Crockpot

2009-10-21T12:43:00.000-07:00

As the wheel of the year tips into autumn there is nothing so wonderful as coming home to a hot meal ready and waiting for you. Since I don't have a significant other/housekeeper/cook/slave to do my cooking for me I've had to rely on menu planning and my trusty crock pot to keep me warm and fed. What? You don't have a Crock Pot? They cost like 20 bucks. Go get one. You've never liked any food that came out of a Crock Pot? Well, I've got some tips and recipes for you to try right here.

My aunt bought me a crock pot a few years ago for Christmas but it took me years to get the hang of it. I tried recipe after recipe, but everything had that overcooked "Crock Pot" flavor. Stuff was dried out, smelled burned, was generally gross. One of the hardest obstacles to overcome was the fact that with an 8 hour work day and commuting time I am often out of the house for 10 hours at a time. Very few dishes require 10 hours of cooking in a crock pot, and even fewer are edible after that long. Also, so many recipes I found called for cream of whatever soup, velveeta cheese or other foods that don't belong in my kitchen.

The second problem, though not completely solved, has been gotten around with some well chosen recipes. Though she doesn't always use 100% real food I absolutely love Stephanie over at A Year of Slow Cooking. Her writing and recipes gave me permission to throw some slop in the crock pot and call it dinner. Thanks! On the other end of the spectrum are the Cook's Illustrated slow cooker recipes. As with all Cook's Illustrated recipes they are extensively tested and rather complicated. The upside is that if you follow the recipes, you get a really good dish every time. I also am a big fan of Leanne Ely's Saving Dinner recipes. She uses real food and uses a slow cooker at least once a week in her autumn and winter meal plans. She also sells ebooks of slow cooker recipes on her website.

For the other problem I was relying on a rather unreliable boyfriend or housemates to turn on the crock pot after I left the house. After one too many teary evenings of cold food and a hungry me, Dave finally came home with a lamp timer. It was a brilliantly simple solution. You plug the crock pot into the timer and the timer into the wall, set the little pins and voila - crock pot turns on and off when you tell it to! You do have to make sure you have set the timer correctly, and that the crock pot is in the "on" position, but I have been so happy with the results. No more 10 hour chicken, no more crock pot flavor!

One of my very favorite crock pot recipes is so simple it's hardly a recipe. It's just a whole chicken, seasoned as you see fit, and shoved in the crock pot. The result is tender, moist chicken meat, well seasoned and way, way cheaper than one of those grocery store rotisserie chickens. If you shove the bird in with the legs down and breast up you even get a decent amount of almost crispy skin. Home and cooking gurus like to talk about Rubber Chicken meal planning (getting three or 4 meals out of one chicken) and the crock pot makes it so much easier. In addition to the chicken meat I got 2 cups of gelatinous chicken broth, bones for more stock, about 1/4 cup of chicken fat for cooking AND I roasted a head of garlic in the cavity of the bird. I'll be eating off of last week's chicken well into next week.

The last time I did chicken in the crock pot I seasoned the bird with Chile Grill Salt with extra garlic powder and black pepper on all sides. I shoved a little butter up under the breast skin and cooked him for 8 hours. My other favorite seasoning is to put a quartered lemon in the cavity of the chicken, season with salt, pepper and maybe some oregano and put as much of a rosemary branch as will fit into the crock pot all wrapped around the chicken. Serve with a little extra lemon juice for fantastic greek chicken.

Last night I made another well loved crock pot recipe, tamale pie. This is a chili topped with cornbread batter and baked or crock potted until the chili is hot and the cornbread cooked. I made a chili the night before out of ground bison, canned beans, random tomato products, garlic, onion, and chipotle in adobo sauce. I also mixed up some cornmeal and kefir for Sue Gregg's Blender Batter Cornbread. In the morning I poured the cold chili in the crock pot and went to finish the cornbread batter. Oh wait, my blender broke. I realized I could just mix everything up by hand since I was using cornmeal instead of whole grains. Hooray! I poured the batter in, set the timer so the chili would cook for six hours and be done when I arrived home and off to work I skipped. I came home to perfectly cooked cornbread, hot chili and a very happy me. Topped with spicy carrot pickles, sour cream and garden tomato it was a fantastic late autumn meal.

So what's cooking in your crock pot? Do you use yours regularly? What are your family's all time favorite crock pot recipes? What recipes have been a total bust? Any tips or tricks for doing real food in the crock pot?

For more real food tips and recipes, check out Real Food Wednesday!

Special thanks to Kamphora and (Cup)Cake Eater for their fantastic photos. Go check out their flickr streams for more!

Street Food, Portland Style

2009-09-21T10:22:00.000-07:00

For years Portland, Oregon has been up and coming in the food world. It is a fantastic climate to grow a wide variety of produce and meats so we are known for our local, organic, sustainable and otherwise virtuous food. Chefs like to pair local specialties like salmon, hazelnuts, raspberries and lamb with our world renown wines. There are restaurants specializing in local foods at almost every price point ranging from Higgins and Wildwood at the top, The Farm Cafe and Laughing Planet in the middle all the way down to vendors at farmers markets and street carts like Addy's Sandwich Shop.

Today, though, I went for something a little different. A little more Asian. I spent a day last week reading through Food Carts Portland.com and found myself daydreaming about a Thai cart they reviewed downtown. If you throw a rock in the air in this town you will hit a decent Thai restaurant or food cart, and as you know I do love Thai food. This one, however, is a little different.

Nong's Khao Man Gai has only one dish on the menu... khao man gai. Just one dish, you ask. And this one dish is chicken and rice? This doesn't sound daydream worthy. But just wait until you taste it. First off, it's served wrapped up in white butcher paper with the fork and napkin tucked under a rubber band. Too adorable!

Then you open the package and smell the delicate, heady scent of the chicken and rice. Whatever seasoning Nong uses in her broth is absolutely fantastic! The cucumber and cilantro add a nice crisp, cool crunch to the warm soft chicken and rice and look beautiful against the mound of brown. Then you open the little sauce cup and the ginger soy chili smell momentarily takes over everything. But you are ready. You take a fork full of chicken and the flavor sensation begins. A little chicken, a little rice, some sauce. Or no rice, just chicken and sauce. Cucumber and rice and sauce. A sip of the winter melon soup served on the side. Yummmmm. Everything is subtle, and flavorful and absolutely delicious.

I don't often spend this much time waxing poetic over a single dish, but this stuff begs for it. It is the epitome of that Asian juxtaposition of simplicity and complexity. I know where I'm going to eat the next time I am feeling a little under the weather, or just in need of some interesting comfort food. Next time, I might try adding the chicken livers or fried chicken skin, or I might just try to make it at home. Khao man gai, my new favorite food!

Egg Tacos, Ole!

2009-09-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you find a recipe that is more than a sum of it's parts. A way to prepare simple foods in an interesting way with lots of easy variations. Sometimes this recipe suprises you and you find yourself eating it every meal for three days straight. This recipe is all of that and more. Smitten Kitchen calls it Huevos Rancheros, I call it Egg Tacos.

I've seen two kinds of huevos rancheros recipes in this world: the traditional fried egg with tortillas and chile sauce, and eggs poached in a chile sauce served with cheese and tortillas. I was actually served the latter while on a cross country trip on the Green Tortoise bus. 30 international travelers, two hippy drivers and me for 3 weeks driving across the U.S. We had huevos rancheros for breakfast one morning at a hot spring resort in New Mexico. It's one of those food memories I will never forget.

This recipe is unlike either or those and is much simpler. Basically, it's an egg fried ON a tortilla with cheese and whatever toppings you like. Couldn't be simpler, couldn't be tastier! It's hard to translate this food concotion into to "recipe" because you can make it different each time. I've made it with one egg on the tortilla and two, I've made it with different cheeses and I've topped it with everything from refried beans and salsa to grilled zucchini and chutney. Give it a try!

Egg Tacos

1 or 2 corn tortillas
A small pinch of grated cheddar or jack, or crumbled cotija cheese
1 or 2 farm fresh eggs
Salt and pepper, fat for the pan

Toppings of your choice including seasoned whole or refried beans, cooked rice, more cheese, avocado, tomato, red or green salsa, sour cream, hot sauce, pickled chiles, lime wedges, grilled veggies, ketchup, chutney, chocolate sauce (OK, just kidding about that last one.. kind of).

Heat a well seasoned cast iron skillet and warm up the corn tortillas over medium heat. Allow one side to start getting browned and a little crispy. Use only as many tortillas as will fit in your pan with minimal overlap. For my Ikea skillet it's one. With a 10 inch skillet I could fit two.

Flip the tortilla once it is starting to brown and add a pinch of cheese to the top of the tortilla. Crack the egg directly onto the tortilla, trying to keep it mostly on the tortilla, and cook until the white is starting to set. Carefully flip the tortilla over and cook the egg to your liking. Serve with toppings!

As I made these tortillas I came across one major problem - keeping the eggs from sticking to the cast iron skillet. Non-stick pans would fix this problem but we don't use those kinds of pans here at Real Food, My Way. (For an explanation of why and healthy alternatives check out this article this article from Mercola, this one from Tuberose.com, this one from Marks Daily Apples, or even this article that was front page of the Oregonian newspaper FoodDay section recently.) A very well seasoned cast iron skillet is clearly the answer, but you don't always have that as well. I tried using tons of butter, like I do when I scramble or fry eggs normally, but the tortilla kind of sucked all the butter up. Once I did successfully lift up the tortilla, melt some butter under it and flip the egg into the melted butter without spilling egg white all over the pan. Just note, this is a recipe to make one a day your cast iron seems to be cooperating.

This recipe is so easy, so tasty and so variable. I am not joking when I say I made it for five meals in a row and never got bored. Thanks, blog-o-sphere!

For more great recipes and tips from the blog-o-sphere, check out Real Food Wednesday!

Pickle FAQ

2009-08-26T12:54:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I posted my pickle making tutorial and last winter I posted my Kraut 101 tutorial. Since then I have had many, many requests for a FAQ to answer some other nagging pickle making questions. So here they are, but remember, I'm just one pickle maker. My answers are not definitive and generally not "researched". They are synthesized from what I have read and what I have experienced over the years. The best way to answer you own pickle making questions is to start making pickles!

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1) How do I know my pickles are fermenting? How you know they're ready to go in the refrigerator?

In the pickle tutorial I recommend that you open the jar to smell and taste the pickles every day after you start them. This way you will get to see the changes that start happening right away. Signs of fermentation include fizzing or bubbling of the brine, the lid popping when you open it and sour smells or tastes in the brine or vegetables.

Sally Fallon suggests that your pickles or kraut stay on the counter for 3 days before transferring them to the fridge. I say, give them a day or two after they show signs of fermentation. Exactly when they go in the fridge is one of those variables that separates artisan products from industrial products. It's up to the artisan to decide based on their own experience and intuition. If it has been warm and the fermentation has gone quickly I am more likely to put them in the fridge as soon as they start fizzing. If it's cooler and it has taken a few days for the fizzing to get going I might wait another day or even two before putting them in the fridge. Remember, fermentation will continue in the fridge just at a slower pace. I feel it is important to give the microbes enough time in the "nursery" of the room temperatures before putting them in the cold temps to age.

2) My grandma's favorite pickle recipe calls for vinegar. Why don't your pickles have vinegar in them?

There are two kinds of pickles in the world, vinegar pickles and brined pickles. To show the relationship between vinegar pickles, brined pickles and other fermented foods imagine a Venn diagram (remember those from like 3rd grade?). One circle is fermented foods like yogurt, beer, vinegar and sourdough. The other circle is pickles like vinegar pickles, Asian vinegar pickles, homemade pickles in a vinegar brine, those British pickles like Branson pickles and pickled onions and any kind of pickled fish or egg or pigs feet in vinegar. Where the two circles overlap are fermented pickles like sauerkraut, kim chi, kosher dill pickles and anything made with my recipe for brined pickles.

The bottom line is that the English word pickle simply means something preserved in acid. Vinegar pickles use vinegar (a product of fermentation) to preserve the food in a completely shelf stable form. Brined pickles use salt to set up an environment in which lactic acid producing bacteria thrive and preserve the food in the acid they produce when they eat the sugars in the food. Brined pickles are a living thing (unless you cook them or can them) that can last a long time in the proper storage conditions, but are not shelf stable indefinitely.

There is nothing wrong with vinegar pickles, especially home made vinegar pickles. Home made pickles still benefit from you knowing exactly how they were made and who grew the vegetables, and are free of industrial sugars and colorings so often found in commercial pickles. If your family loves Grandma's bread and butter pickles, by all means, keep making them! But try fermented pickles, too.

Lastly, I have heard of some people adding small quantities of raw apple cider vinegar to their brined pickles because they like the flavor. They say they taste more like the vinegar pickles their family is used to. So long as your pickles show signs of fermentation then you are making fermented or brined pickles. If you don't like the way your salt only pickles taste, try some vinegar. They're your pickles, after all.

3) Sally Fallon's recipe calls for using whey but you use just salt. What gives?

The recipes in Nourishing Traditions for fermented vegetables all use whey from raw milk, yogurt or kefir as an inoculant to jumpstart the right kind of bacteria. Her instructions say that if you can't tolerate dairy to use extra salt instead of the whey. In all my reading I've never seen these instructions elsewhere, but I have seen instructions to use brine from a previous batch as an inoculant. My guess is that Sally saw these instructions and made the intuitive leap that whey would do the same thing. Artisan foods made by artisans all have slightly different methods of production.

I don't use whey because a) I never seem to have any around and b) because when I do I am not as fond of the results. I believe that a jar of fermenting vegetables is like a forest ecosystem after a burn or a clear cut. New populations of bacteria colonize the environment and change the environment making it possible for other populations to grow. In order to get the most diversity this succession should happen relatively slowly. For a jar of sauerkraut I think letting the bacterial populations develop over the course of 2-5 days (or more) leads to the a diversity that causes interesting depth of flavor, lack of mushiness and generally a higher quality product.

I feel like adding too much inoculant in the form of mature brine is like planting native trees in the burn area. Those trees aren't supposed to be there yet, they were supposed to come in after other shrubs and herbs prepared the soil for those trees. It may turn out just fine, but you may get an imbalanced ecosystem. Using the same metaphor, adding whey is like planting non-native trees in that same burned landscape. They're not supposed to be there now and they aren't supposed to be there later, either. You may end up with a really diverse and interesting landscape, like a suburban neighborhood with a mix of native trees and non-native ornamentals and fruit trees, but you may also get a really off balance ecosystem.

Again, just like with the vinegar, there are plenty of folks who use whey and get a great product. Others report cheesy flavors or mushy pickles. If you have whey available give it a try! You might end up with a great pickle. If you have leftover brine, try using that. If you have none of the above, or even if you do, try some with just salt. You are the artisan, make your own pickles the way that works best for your kitchen, your vegetables and your tastes.

4) Sandor Katz uses crocks with weights to ferment his vegetables but you and Sally Fallon use jars with lids. What's up with that? What about those Harsch crocks or the Picklemeister?

The bacteria we invite in to ferment our vegetables require some specific habitat. They want a certain level of saltiness, a certain temperature range and a certain amount of oxygen to do their job properly. Lactic acid fermentation is basically an anaerobic fermentation, which means our little bacterial friends like very little oxygen around when they are doing their work. There are many ways to keep oxygen away from the fermenting vegetables.

The traditional method for keeping your fermenting vegetables anaerobic is to use a crock, brine and a weight. The vegetables go into the earthenware crock (which is non-reactive to the acid and stays nice and cool), salty brine is poured over them or created by the salt drawing water out of the vegetables and the the weight keeps the vegetables under the water. The water is a relatively anaerobic environment and fermentation can happen very effectively there. Usually a cloth is placed over top of the crock to keep flies and dust out and the brine is topped up if it evaporates out.

Sally Fallon and I use jars with tight fitting lids to keep our ferments anaerobic. By packing a jar almost full of vegetables and brine and keeping a lid on most of the time keeps the oxygen out. I do sometimes push shredded vegetables down into the brine with a whole leaf because I notice some discoloration or excessive mushiness when I don't. At the same time, vegetables like mushrooms seem to float like corks but still ferment just fine. I have found that opening the lid every day to inspect or taste the pickles doesn't cause ruin. The pickles seem to keep on fermenting with no problem. In fact, it is a good idea to check the pickles regularly because there is no way for gas to escape from the jars. You can end up with some highly carbonated pickles and serious spill over (think shaken up soda bottle) if you aren't careful. I recommend opening your jars over the sink until you get a hang of how they are going to react.

The Harsch crock is a new twist on the old crock method. It is an earthenware crock with a stone weight and a lid that fits into a water filled lip. You fill the crock with vegetables and brine, weight them down with the stone and put the lid on. The water filled lip acts like an air lock to allow gas out but not allow oxygen in. The Picklemeister is a glass jar with a plastic lid fitted with a true airlock. This is a bit of plastic tubing with water in it that allows gas out but doesn't allow oxygen in. People who use these products report great success with their pickle making and since I've never used them I can say nothing for or against them. Well, actually, I can. Harsch crocks go for over 100 dollars even for their smallest size (approx 2 gallons) and the Picklemeister goes for about 20 for a 1 gallon jar. I don't believe you need to shell out that kind of cash to make good pickles, and sometimes I like making a pint or a half pint at a time. If you really want to buy one of these products I'm not going to stop you, but unless you are regularly making gallons and gallons of fermented vegetables at a time I think your money would be better spent on good quality produce.

5) It's summer in L.A./Phoenix/Florida/Equitorial Africa and I finally got motivated to try making sauerkraut. It was bubbly the afternoon after I made it and I'm afraid it's going to turn into a sauerkraut monster. Help!

Like all organisms that don't make their own body heat our friendly pickle bacteria need a certain temperature range to do their jobs properly. If they are too cold they can't metabolize very quickly but they work better the warmer it is up to a point where they die from the heat. Luckily, standard room temperatures are good temperatures for lactic bacteria. If it is above 80 degrees or so you get into the range where the bacteria are eating and producing acid and gas so quickly we can run into problems. If we go back to that forest succession metaphor, excessively warm temperatures are like 24 hours of sunlight or super fertilizer in that new forest. The growth is quick and spindly instead of steady and robust. The only time I've ever had pickles or kraut go "bad" was when I started a batch of kraut during a heat wave. They ended up being mushy and smelly and gross.

What to do about excessive temperatures? The obvious solution is to wait until the proper season and let nature do the work of keeping everything the right temperature. Sauerkraut making is traditionally an autumn activity to take advantage of both the cabbage harvest and the cooler temperatures. In Korea they make a summer kim chi that is used quickly as opposed to the autumn kim chi which is stored all winter. If you can't wait you could try to find the coolest place in your house. Perhaps your basement is cooler, or an interior closet. You could also try a cooler with ice packs or cool water. If you come up with a great solution, let me know!

6) The instructions say to store the pickles in the fridge. My fridge is already full of food, what are my other storage options?

Buy another fridge. Joking! But only a little. I actually have two fridges and have both of them (plus their freezers) full of food and ferments. Not exactly the most economical or sustainable option, but it's what I have. What you need is a place where the temperatures are cooler than room temperature, but above freezing. Refrigerators are a simple way to get these temperatures in this land of electricity and manufactured goods, but not the only way.

Traditionally, fermented vegetables would be kept in a crock in a root cellar. Root cellars are unheated rooms with earth floors and proper ventilation to keep them below 40 or 50 degrees F, but not below freezing. Unlike refrigerators, root cellars need to have high humidity to keep the vegetables stored in them in prime condition. Earthenware crocks stay cool and the open top of the crock allows for gas to escape without human intervention making them perfect for long term storage of fermented vegetables. There are lots of articles available on the internet to help you transform an unheated basement into a root cellar or to build one separate from your house. If keeping ferments in a root cellar you might want to experiment with extra salt in the brine. This will keep the bacteria population lower and slow fermentation. This might extend shelf life. Experiment and see what works for you.

If you don't have either of these options you are, again, going to have to use nature to do the hard work. An unheated room or porch that stays cold but not freezing would be fine winter storage for fermented foods. A cooler and ice could work too, but would require plenty of supervision to make sure it stays cool. If you don't have room in your fridge for lots of jars then you are going to have to get creative with when and how you make fermented vegetables. Remember, using the jar method you can make them in any size quantity you want from babyfood jars to gallon jugs.

7) My pickles are mushy. Ga-ross. How to keep them crunchy?

This is the 64,000 dollar question in fermenting cucumbers. Someone knows the secret, it just isn't me. Sandor Katz's recipe for sour cucumber pickles calls for two things different than my spicy carrot recipe. One is the addition of grape, sour cherry or horseradish leaves, and the other is more salt. I have heard of this grape, sour cherry or horseradish leaf theory before and even tried it. The idea is that the tannins in the leaves don't let the pickles get mushy. Other people have used tea or oak leaves as they are also very high in tannins. Sandor's recipe calls for 3 tbs of salt per quart of water to make the pickle brine. This results in a brine considerably saltier than my "too salty to be tasty, not salty enough to be gross" method. I recently made a batch of cucumber pickles with Sandor's recipe and about 6 fresh grape leaves and still have mushy pickles. Any of you know the secret?

A couple other things I think about when I think about mushy pickles. One is speed and temperature of fermentation. Especially with sauerkraut (which I have had success in not getting mushy) I find a slow, cool fermentation best for the taste and texture. Again, doing these ferments in the fall or winter will help. Unfortunately, cucumbers are ripe in the heat of the summer. Also, firmer, less watery vegetables do best at staying crunchy. I've never had a mushy fermented carrot, but cucumbers are very prone to mushy. Slicing cucumbers are worse than pickling cucumbers. In my last batch I had one tiny little gherkin sized cuke that was not mushy at all, and another larger cuke that was a little old and it was really mushy. But again, folks make crispy fermented cucumbers out of larger sized cucumbers, so what's the secret?

If you have any thoughts, or any tips, let me know! I'd love to know the secret, and I'd love to be able to pass it along. Keep experimenting out there, and let's see what we can come up with.

8) My kids love sweet pickles but fermented pickles are always so tart. Do you have a sweet pickle recipe?

Nope, I haven't liked sweet pickles since I was about five. I spilled a jar on my third favorite stuffed animal and it always smelled like sweet pickle. Gross. A quick google search has given me some ideas on sweet pickles, though.

This raw vegan blog has a cucumber bell pepper fermented relish that might work for you. Other folks on the DiscussingNT yahoogroup have used kombucha vinegar or raw cider vinegar to pickle cucumbers with or without stevia. These might not be true brined pickles, but they would have live probiotics from the kombucha or raw vinegar. Shannon over at Nourishing Days has a canned vinegar sweet pickle recipe that would not be probiotic at all, but calls for honey instead of sugar. If you've got a sweet pickle recipe worth sharing, let me know!

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If you have more questions about fermenting or about your pickles or kraut, let me know! There may be enough for a second pickle FAQ in another few weeks!

And don't forget to check out Real Food Wednesday for more recipes and posts from real food kitchens!

The Making of an Alewife

2009-08-12T18:19:00.000-07:00

Almost two years ago now I met a very lovely man who I like to call the Brewmeister. The Brewmeister had recently come back from a 9 month program in Berlin to learn to brew beer but had previously thought about earning a bachelors in fermentation science at Oregon State University because he loved making wine and mead almost as much as he loved making beer. Before too very long the Brewmeister and I were cohabitating and fermenting like crazy fools. It wasn't all unicorns and rainbows so when spring rolled around this year the Brewmeister moved to Alaska and I kept a fair amount of his brewing supplies. Who said men are good for nothing? :)

This summer I have been putting the skills I learned at the Brewmeister's side to use in making my own beer and wine. Brewing alcholic beverages has an acient history and some say it might even have been the ultimate factor in humans deciding to stop wandering and set down roots and build a civilization. The theory is that people grew grains not to make bread but to make beer, and once you are making beer you need storehouses for the grain and the beer... plus pubs to drink it all in. Until the 1516 Reinheitsgebot, the German beer purity law, was enacted (and even well after it in many places) beer was brewed with a wide variety of grains and herbs, often by women in their own homes. On it's surface the Reinheitsgebot, which restricts beer ingredients to malted barley, water and hops (plus yeast, but that wasn't identified as a crucial ingredient until the 19th century) is a trade protection law to reduce competition with both local bakers and brewers in other regions. Digging a little deeper it probably also had anti-pagan, anti-"drug" and anti-women motives as well. Many of the old style beers were made with herbs that were psychotropic and used in ancient cermonies that predate the puritanical Christianity that was gaining popularity at the time. Hops, a common but not at the time universal bittering and preserving agent in beers, are actually a depressant and anaphrodisiac. People who drink hopped beer don't generally have the energy for all night frolicking like those who drank the ancient gruit ale. No matter the reasons behind the Reinheitsgebot the results were clear - a Teutonic culture of pure beer, made in factories by men using chemicals and precise measurements. This is how the Brewmeister tended to brew.

Being a disciple of Sandor Katz and uncounted generations of alewives brewing in their kitchens I have adopted a much more free flowing style. All of my experience making fermented vegetables had led to me have faith in the microbes. If you give them a reasonable place to set up shop, they will! My first beers were literally "a little of this, a little of that, throw in some yeast". Honestly, that first beer is quite drinkable. I did actually cave and buy a kitchen scale after the first brew day and my second beer is much better.

My first two beers are fir tip beers brewed with both hops and the young tips of Douglas Fir trees. Doug Firs are the state tree of Oregon and insanely common where I live. I collected the tips in March and April from trees growing my parents' yard and my everyday dog walk park. They have imparted a lovely acidic and tannic flavor to what would otherwise be a rather boring amber ale. Here is my recipe and instructions. These may look complicated but they are not. In fact, brewing can be a lifetime pursuit and there is always more to learn. But the first step is just brewing some.

The ingredients to make beer are neither expensive nor exotic. If there is a home brewing supply store in your town you are all set and if you don't I'm sure everything can be found online for a reasonable price. Right now I am making beer using malt extract which is basically a molasses or syrup made from malt sugar. The more advanced method of making beer involves extracting the sugar out of malted barley yourself. This involves considerably more equipment and skill but yields a much more complex beer. Malt extract is avaliable in many colors at home brew supply stores or over the internet. Hops are the other main ingredient in beer and both they and brewing yeast are also easily found at brewing supply stores. The variety of hop is not too important in this beer (some hops have lots of bitterness and little aroma, others the other way around) so get something middle of the road if the brewing supply folks ask what you need. I used an American ale yeast, but again it's not terribly important. Anything that isn't a specialty yeast will work just fine.

I will list out both the hardware and the software you need but you can certainly get away with less or load up on more, especially in the hardware department! I will give instructions for a one gallon batch as opposed to the more common five gallon batch because I think it is easier to start small. As soon as you get the hang of it, scale up. I highly recommend reading all the recipes, forums and books you can get your hands on (I highly, highly recommend Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation) and then just give it a try. Remember, the yeast will make alcohol, all you are doing is setting the table for them.

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Broderick Cellars Fir Tip Ale

Step One: Brew Day

Hardware:

*Cooking pot with a lid

*Stainless steel long handled spoon

*Cheese cloth or other mesh "hop bags" or a strainer

*Kitchen scale or other device to weigh a couple ounces of plant material

*A second pot or 1/2 gallon glass jar

*A small glass jar, coffee mug or pot

*Timer

*Funnel and strainer

*1 gallon glass jug - this is called a carboy or fermenter

*Air lock and stopper

*A stove or other device to heat water to boiling and keep it there, as well as running cold water, *A tub of ice water or some other way to cool a volume of liquid relatively quickly.

Software:

*Pale or amber malt extract - 1 pint (it is usually sold in 7 or 14 pound tubs. It stores forever so don't worry about buying too much)
*Hops - 20 g of whole hops (Any variety that is not a specialty bittering or aroma hop)
*Fir tips - 40g (Be sure to collect only the young, soft, light green tips. They have a lovely citrusy, christmas tree smell but less tannin and bitterness than the older, dark green tips. The young tips of any edible conifer would do. Spruce is traditional but many pines are edible too)
*1 packet of dry ale yeast (Don't let them talk you into "pitchable yeast". Since you are making a 1 gallon batch you want to be able to use less than a whole packet. Any American or non-specialty yeast will do)
*Good drinking water. People always claim that their water is the reason their beer or wine is so good. If your tap water is icky, buy bottled water. Or better yet, find a well or a spring.

Method:

Start heating a half gallon plus a pint (10 cups) of water in a good quality cooking pot and 4 cups of water boiling in a second pot. Measure out your hops and divide them into two hop bags. One bag should have 15g of hops in and the other one should have 5g. Measure out the fir tips and put 20g in a third hop bag and the remainder in your glass jar or other container that can hold at least cups of water. When the smaller pot has come to a boil pour the boiling water over the fir tips in the jar and let steep. This is your fir tip tea.

As the larger pot of water gets hot pour in the malt extract. Carefully swirl hot water in the measuring cup to get as much malt out as possible. Stir to help the malt dissolve and pull out one cup or so and put that in your coffee mug and allow it to cool. Continue stirring or watching the pot until it comes to a full boil. It may get frothy so be careful with it. When it is boiling add the bag with 15g of hops and the bag with the fir tips in it to the boiling malt water. Stir or push them under the water and then put the lid on the pot and turn the heat down to where it maintains a strong simmer/low boil, but isn't boiling over. (OK - they say you shouldn't boil your wort with the lid on because it can cause off flavors. When I boiled with the lid off I had such great loss of volume I had a hard time topping it off. Read some other recipes and do whatever feels best to you). Again, be careful because all the sugar in the water may cause it to boil over. Set your timer for 55 minutes.

Check the coffee mug of sugar water to see how cool it is. When it is body temperature - when you touch it it feel neither cold nor warm - pour approximately 1/2 tsp of the dry yeast into the cup. Let the yeast dissolve into the sugar water and start to feed and bloom. By the end of the boiling period your yeast should be starting to get frothy and it should smell like yeasty bread batter. Fold up the packet, put it in a zip top bag and store it in the freezer until you need more.

Clean your carboy and funnel with hot water and soap. Many brewing books and experts suggest sterilizing with bleach water. Sandor Katz and I say cleanliness not sterility. Stephen Harrod Buhner, author of Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers uses a hop tea to disinfect his brewing supplies. Do whatever makes you feel most comfortable.

When your timer goes off drop in the second hop bag, reset your timer for 5 more minutes and put the lid back on. When the timer goes off a second time turn the heat off and start fishing out the hop bags with your stainless steel spoon. Use a second spoon or some tongs to squeeze as much liquid out of them as possible and set them aside (don't forget to empty and clean them as soon as they cool. Ask me how I know).

Fill your sink with cold water or ice water and put the pot, with the lid on, in the sink. Stir the wort (as your unfermented beer is now called) with a clean spoon, and swish the cold water around to cool the wort quickly. You don't want to get any of the water into the wort so keep the lid on. If your fir tip tea is not cooled to body temperature then put that jar in the cold water and swish it around too to cool it off. When both liquids are body temperature or a little cooler, around 80 degrees F, then pour them through a strainer and a funnel into your jug with the yeast. Pour the wort first, splashing it around a bit, then the yeast, and top off with the fir tip tea. Fill the air lock with water up to the fill line and pop the stopper on top of your jug. Put your jug in a dark place with a stable temperature and clean up. Don't forget those hop bags! Brewing day is done!

The next morning check your beer to make sure active fermentation has started. The air lock should be bubbling away and there should be froth on top of the beer. If there is not active fermentation by 24 hours then proof another 1/2 tsp of yeast in warm sugar water and add that to the wort. It'll be fermenting, though, don't worry. Let it sit for 3-4 weeks until primary fermentation is finished. You will know it is ready for bottling because there will be a clear layer of yeast at the bottom of the jug and it will take about 2 minutes for a new bubble to come up out of the airlock.

Step Two: Bottling Day

Hardware:

*Plastic tubing or racking cane (tubing with a stiff end specifically designed for siphoning beer or wine)

*A second one gallon jug or a cooking pot that will hold 1 gallon (a second jug is a much better choice)

*6 22 oz beer bottles or 11 12 oz bottles. I prefer the ones with a flip top because then you don't need caps and a capper. If you don't want to spend for the flip top bottles you can reuse beer bottles that were not twist tops. Buy a capper and caps at the same supply house you bought malt and hops at.

Software:

*4 oz by weight of malt or corn sugar, or white sugar. That's 4 tbs malt sugar, 2/3 cup white sugar or 3/4 cup corn sugar. The malt or corn sugar can be bought at the brew supply store or sometimes for a whole lot more money at a health food store. White sugar gives a different flavor, but certainly can be used.

When primary fermentation has slowed (layer of yeast on the bottom of the jug and about 2 minutes between air lock gurgles) you are ready to bottle your beer. Start out by washing and santizing your jug, bottles and racking hose. Again, use hot water and soap, bleach or hop tea as you see fit. If you using bottle caps instead of flip top bottles be sure to read up on how to use them.

Heat about a cup of water in a small pan on the stove and stir in the sugar. Bring to a boil to dissolve and sterilize and then let cool a bit. Pour the cooled sugar water into the clean second jug. This sugar is going to mix with the beer and give the yeast a second wind in the bottles forming carbonation.

Bring your fermenting beer out of the closet and put the jug on the counter with the second jug on the floor or a bench below the counter. Insert the racking cane into the beer and either follow this guy's instructions for sterile siphoning or do like I do and swish your mouth with scotch and suck the beer into the tube. Have a glass handy to pour the first bit of beer into and then put the end of the tube into the jug with the sugar water in it. Try not to let it bubble and slosh too much, but you can gently stir the beer to mix it with the sugar water. As the beer is siphoning into the second jug get your bottles all lined up in the sink or on a easily cleaned surface lower than your counter. Taste your uncarbonated beer from the glass. How does it taste? Anything short of disgusting and you are well on your way to good homebrew.

When all the beer, but not much of the yeasty sediment, is in the second jug put the airlock back on the first jug and bring the second one up to the counter. Insert the racking cane and start the beer flowing again, this time into the bottles. Again, try not to splash or slosh the beer as you fill the bottles to within an inch or two of the top. With only 6 or 12 bottles this won't take too long and you can flip the flip top when you are done (or use a capper to cap them, which won't take too long either). Rinse or wipe your bottles off and stash them away in a dark, coolish spot and clean up.

The yeasty sediment in the bottom of your fermenter can be saved and used for your next brew. Swish the yeast and leftover beer together and pour into a glass jar with a tight fitting lid. Stash it in the fridge and on next brew day wake the yeast up by mixing the contents of the jar with warm sugar water while you boil the wort. You may never have to pay for ale yeast again!

Store your bottles in a dark spot with a stable room temperature. During the next three weeks the yeast will eat up the sugar you gave them and produce carbon dioxide to carbonate the beer. After 2 or 3 weeks pop a bottle in the fridge overnight to chill and open it to taste it. If it's carbonated put the other bottles in the fridge and drink up. If not, either drink the beer (it's still homebrew!) or pour it on your compost pile and wait another week to try again. Darker beers will continue to age over time while lighter beers are more at risk of spoiling. I've had some of this beer in the fridge for 2 months and it is still changing flavor and still getting better. The worst thing that can happen is it doesn't taste good anymore and you'll need to brew another batch.

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So there it is, one alewife's guide to brewing a 1 gallon batch of beer. I highly recommend reading Wild Fermentation and Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers as well as spending time on the homebrew forums or chatting with the fine folks at your local brew supply store. You'll learn lots more about brewing beer and maybe figure out some better ways to do it!

Brewing beer is not that difficult. In a future post I will talk about making wine, which is a very similar process. Wine is possibly easier to start but takes months, if not years, to finish and age. Beer takes a little more work up front but is ready to drink is just over a month. In the end it is all just setting a table and inviting the right yeast to the party. It's not hard, it's not expensive and the results are well worth it. Even a middling homebrew is better than a fine commercial beer.

Prost!

Roly Poly, Daddy's Little Fatty

2009-07-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

I never bought into the whole low fat diet thing. My parents didn't buy into it and it just never made any sense. Why would you want to eat margarine, which comes from a factory, rather than butter, which comes from a cow? Why eat sugar and preservative laden low-fat cookies when you could just eat real cookies in moderation? When I read Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions I finally had some words and some ideas to back up my vague feelings that a low fat diet was inappropriate. Fat isn't evil... in fact, fat is necessary for health and hapiness!

Traditional cultures have always prized fat because it is calorie dense and nutrient dense. From early American and European pig lard to SE Asian coconut oil to Inuit seal blubber fat has been the most sought after and important food stuff around the world. There's a Nature episode where Julia Roberts visits the nomadic people of Mongolia and learns about their culture. My favorite part of the show is how in one frame she is commenting on how gross the traditional butter tea is and in the next wondering how they survive such bitter cold temperatures. It didn't occur to her than the one is directly related to the other.

But in modern America something went wrong and has drastically changed how we view fat. In the middle of the 20th century a number of researchers promoted substituting unsaturated vegetable oils for traditional saturated animal fats and lowering dietary fat intake in general in order to reduce coronary heart disease. One of the best known of these researchers was Ancel Keys who published what became known as the Seven Countries Study which corrolated the lower fat diets of Post World War II Europe and Japan with that of affluent post war United States. Keys' statistical strong association weakens when other countries are added to the Seven, and almost fall apart completely when one takes into account that the Italians and French he studied had a long tradition of animal fats that had simply been put on hold by the devastation of decades of war.

In his New York Times piece What If it's All Been a Big Fat Lie Gary Taubes goes over the science and pseudoscience behind low fat and low carbohydrate diets (his research point to pro low carb and anti low fat diets). He lays out a very convincing story that a combination of imperfect human researchers and impossibly complicated human bodies have led us down a path towards obesity and disease. There is also more and more evidence that our modern diet is excessively high in polyunsaturated fats which are not a part of traditional diets. Polyunsaturated fat in the form of vegetable oil is cheap to produce and with the advances in chemically separating the oil from plant seeds, removing toxic chemicals and deodorizing the oils it has become a staple in every American home, restaurant and food processing plant.

Low fat, high fat? Unsaturated, mono-, poly-, just plain saturated fat? Omegas and LDLs and all that... what's a girl to do? Look to the past, that's what I always say. What would people use for cooking fat if they didn't have mono-cropped soy beans and giant food processing factories?

Using this criteria I have put together a fat primer for you. I present it to you with the reminder that we all do the best we can with what we have. I eat out sometimes, I eat at people's houses sometimes and sometimes I even get a pack of chips out of a vending machine. I am not a whole food Nazi, but when I can I prefer to use the most healthful, traditional cooking fats. Here's what I do in my kitchen... on my best days.

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Fats for Cooking by Type of Fat

Unrefined coconut oil: This is the work horse of my cooking fats. It is almost flavorless and can be used at pretty high temperatures so I use it anywhere you would use "vegetable oil". It is solid when the weather is cool and liquid when room temps are above about 70F but since it comes in a wide mouth jar I just use a spoon to get it out. It's a little spendy to use for deep frying, but it would be good any other time you are cooking with fat. I usually buy Omega Nutrition brand but that's just because it's available at a good price at my local health food store.

Virgin coconut oil: I treat this as a special fat with amazing antimicrobial properties in addition to lots of medium chain fatty acids and a fantastic smell. It is pretty expensive and cooking might destroy the beneficial properties so I cook with it when I am doing something where coconut would be appreciated, like Thai curry. I melt it for use in baked goods occasionally when the flavor would be appreciated and use it along with butter on my popcorn. And sometimes I make coconut bark. Yuummm. I also use it for a number of body care products like skin cream (coconut oil and jojoba oil with a little scent) and deodorant (coconut oil and baking soda with scent). I buy pint jars at my health food store, but lots of people like Wilderness Family Naturals for 5 gallon buckets.

Butter: Mmm... butter. In addition to slathering this on bread and pouring it over popcorn I do cook with this occasionally. I use it, often mixed with coconut oil, when pan sauteing veggies or frying eggs. Butter does have some amount of water and protein in it so it will burn, but I don't have major problems with that. Ghee or clarified butter is an all purpose cooking fat in French and Indian cooking and can easily be bought or made at home. Raw, pasture raised butter is best but even regular store butter is better than margarine or vegetable oil. Look for imported butter like Kerrygold from Ireland or Anchor from New Zealand. Organic Pastures has a "pastured" butter and most stores sell organic butter these days.

Rendered animal fat: I am still working my way through the 3 pints of goose grease I rendered when I cooked a goose last winter. It's pure white, about butter consistency and has a slight poultry flavor. I enjoy cooking with this anywhere it's flavor would be appreciated or tolerated. I've also used chicken fat and would gladly use lard or tallow if I had it available. Each of these will have different flavors and smoke points but all would be good for general cooking (sauteing veggies, frying onions, browning meat, etc). A note on rendered animal fats.. these are not fats you can buy at any old grocery store.

Do NOT buy lard from a regular grocery store. The stuff they sell there is usually adulterated with hydrogenated lard and preservatives. It is not much better for you than crisco. These are fats you need to produce at home or buy from a specialty dealer/farmer. Of course, these fats are best from pastured, organic,happy animals but even grocery store chickens will make fat that is better than hydrogenated lard. You can save scraps from the meat you eat, skim fat from stock making or see if you can buy un-rendered fat from a butcher or farmer. Google around for instructions on rendering it yourself. It's not hard and the rendered fat will keep in jars in the fridge or freezer for a very long time.

Bacon grease: I collect bacon grease and keep it in a mason jar next to the stove. I use it for cooking anything a bacony flavor would be appreciate - which is lots of things. It's the best for starting soups or frying eggs. Mmm...bacon grease. And someday I'll get it together and make that bacon grease mayo recipe that's been floating around....

Olive Oil: Olive oil one of the few traditional liquid oils and is the classic oil for mayonnaise and flavored dipping oils. Buy the best quality you can afford because olive oil is subject to going rancid if not stored properly, and is probably much more adulterated than we would like to think about. It really shouldn't be cooked with. I do, sometimes for flavor, but rarely. Olive oil is much better for you when used in salad dressings or other raw applications because the monounsaturated fats are much more delicate than saturated fats. Extra virgin is the most flavorful, but feel free to use not-extra-virgin as long as you are using oil from a reputable producer.

High oleic sunflower oil: I just found this in the store, finally! It is a high monounsaturated fat oil that should be as healthful as olive oil, but with a different (less olivey perhaps?) flavor. I haven't opened the bottle yet so I can't tell you what it's like but I would use this anywhere I would use olive oil. It would be especially nice for mayo or other salad dressings where you don't necessarily want the olive oil flavor.

Spectrum palm shortening: I bought this years ago and found it tasted horrible.It is made of deodorized palm oil and is low in polyunsaturated fats, so should be an acceptable fat. Probably a compromise fat because of how processed it is, but low in bad fats anyway. They say it can be used anywhere regular shortening would be used but the pie crust I made with it tasted like soap. Anytime I've used it for cooking I've also gotten a gross soapy flavor. I used it to season my cast iron pans last winter, and sometimes throw a glob in a wiped out cast iron skillet to grease it up and protect it. I might try it on a BBQ sometime. too.

Sunflower, safflower, sesame oil: I have bought these oils in small bottles to make salad dressings with. They are all higher in polyunsaturated fats than we would like to be consuming (especially since I probably still get a fair amount of poly unsaturated fats from factory farmed meat, eating out, eating at friend's houses and occasional packaged foods), but sometimes you have four heads of lettuce in the fridge and really don't want an all olive oil salad dressing. Now that I found the high oleic sunflower oil I won't buy these guys anymore. When looking at bottles in the oil isle at the health food store look for oils with the lowest polyunsaturated fat level and the highest monounsaturated fat level.

Red Palm Oil: I've never used this but I hear it's pretty neat. It's solid like coconut oil and deep red in color. The color indicates a high level of carotene vitamins and the saturated fats keep it stable at high temperatures.

Canola oil: This stuff really is gross and the devil in so many ways. My roommate has a bottle of it that I moved to under the sink and he hasn't missed it because he hasn't cooked in months. I busted it out when I grilled the other weekend just because I wanted to have fun and it was easy. I drank a Budweiser that night too. So sue me! :)

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Cooking Fats by Type of Cooking

Pan frying/sauteing: expeller pressed coconut oil, virgin coconut oil, butter,bacon grease, rendered animal fat, olive oil. Depends on the flavor. Be careful with butter at high temps.

Baking: butter, virgin coconut oil or expeller pressed coconut oil. Depends on the flavor, and how the fat is used. I would use either, along with parchment paper, for "greasing" the pan.

Deep frying: you would want to use rendered animal fat like lard or tallow there. These fats have the highest smoke point so are able to get good and hot to fry the food without letting it get greasy.

Seasoning cast iron skillets: Lard if you have it, palm shortening or crisco. I believe that a long baking in the oven would polymerize the fat and turn it into a coating rather than a fat that gets into your food so this would be a way to use up that jar of crisco you still have. I use palm shortening or coconut oil to grease up a pan between uses if I am not going to actually bake the fat on.

BBQs or Grilling: Well... yeah, about that. I still use canola oil for this. Expeller pressed coconut oil should be fine because of it's high smoke point, but it's awfully expensive for swabbing all over a grill top. I might try the palm shortening next time. I think ideally you would have a slab of un-rendered pork fat to rub all over the grill :)

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There is lots of good information out there about which fats to use and why. Check out all the links I used in this post and then check out the following resources:

*Weston A. Price Foundations Know Your Fats Index

*Cheeseslave's and Kelly the Kitchen Kop's Posts on Fat

*Nina Planck's Real Food book

*Bryan's Blog Stay Healthy, Enjoy Life. Specifically his post about fats.

Fat is a prized food for a reason. It is full of vitamins, energy giving calories and protective molecules. Remember, every cell in your body is encased in saturated fat and your brain is mostly saturated fat. The hormones that make you happy and sexy are made of saturated fat. Don't sell yourself short by going low fat or eating unhealthy, non-traditional fats.

Be sure to check out Real Food Wednesday for more posts from folks who aren't afraid of fat!! Also, be sure to click on all the photos I used to see more from my amazing, not fat-a-phobe, Flickr friends!

What fats do you cook with at home? What's your favorite way to get more fat into your diet? Whats the best butter you've ever tasted?

Of Probiotics and Pickles

2009-06-23T16:42:00.000-07:00

If you are in anyway connected to the world you've probably heard more and more about probiotics and beneficial bacteria. People are selling probiotics as pills, liquids, juices, yogurts and other fanciful items. Most of you have probably seen the yogurt commercial with the slightly disturbing animation of an arrow on a woman's stomach and you might even be able to hum the jingle for that product. What's all the big deal about probiotics anyway? And do we really need to spend top dollar to have them added to our foods?

The term probiotics refers to bacteria and yeast found in food that are good for your body. Our skin and intestinal tract are completely covered in bacteria and the idea is that inviting the right kind of bacteria into that system has health benefits. The human gut can contain over 2 lbs of intestinal microflora (beneficial bacteria) and they do some pretty important work there. They help digest food and create vitamins, they make it hard for bad bacteria to live there and stimulate the part of our immune system that is in our digestive system. In fact, there is more and more evidence that everything from acute intestinal upset to allergies to autism can be helped by normalizing gut bacteria and using probiotics. There are lots of good commercial probiotic foods and supplements available (as well as some not so good ones) but being the DIY kinda girl I am, I like to make my own.

Yogurt, kefir and buttermilk are all very common probiotic foods. These are all fermented dairy products that are eaten while the bacteria are still alive. Vegetables and fruit can also be cultured into probiotic foods through a process called lacto fermentation. A couple months ago I wrote a tutorial for making sauerkraut, one of my favorite kinds of lacto fermented vegetable. Sauerkraut is a great way to start in on fermented vegetables because most Americans at least know what sauerkraut is and many even already like it. I've been surprised at how many of my friends are excited to try my sauerkraut because they grew up eating sauerkraut. Sauerkraut is not the only pickled vegetable out there so don't despair if you don't like the kraut.

Vegetable pickles are possibly even easier than sauerkraut and allow for as many variations as your imagination can come up with. The basic idea is to cover vegetables with a salty brine and allow the bacteria to do their thing. I'll give you a recipe-tutorial for my very favorite pickled vegetable recipe and list some of my favorite variations here and then I'll answer some common questions in a follow up post.

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Spicy Carrot Pickles

I like Spicy Carrot Pickles so much because they come out great every time. They are salty, spicy and a bit sour and always have a great texture. You can adjust the amount of spiciness to your liking using different kinds of peppers. These are based on the pickled carrots usually served at autentico taco places so they should be sort of familiar to a number of people.

Step One: Jar and Vegetable Prep

Find a glass jar with a tight fitting lid. A pint sized mason jars with a metal or plastic lid is great but an old pickle jar work just as well. Wash the jar and lid with hot soapy water and rinse well.

For a pint (two cup) jar you will probably use 1 1/2 - 2 medium carrots, 1/2 an onion, 2 cloves of garlic and half of a jalapeno. Have more carrots available in case I am underestimating and adjust the garlic and pepper as your family would like. I find half a jalapeno adds heat but is not blinding, but you may have widely different tastes. You can use a hotter pepper like Serrano or Habanero (if you dare) or a milder pepper like an Anaheim, a Hungarian pepper or a pizza pepper. Be sure to adjust the "half a pepper" accordingly to the size and heat of the pepper you choose. You could also use a pinch of red pepper flakes instead of fresh peppers.

Wash the carrots but don't peel them. Slice them into long ovals by slicing on a steep diagonal to about 1/4 inch thickness. Peel and slice the garlic cloves and slice the onion longitudinally (from pole to pole, not around the equator) into 1/2 inch slices or into chunks. Slice the jalapeno into rings. Layer the vegetables in the jar to within an inch of the threads.

Step Two: The Brine

There are all kinds of recipes out there for brine strength ranging from a specific measurement in the jar to percent salinity. After reading The Ultimate Kimchi recipe and Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz, I decided to do this the old fashioned way - use my taste buds.

I make a brine by adding salt to water until it is "too salty to be tasty, but not salty enough to make me gag." I understand that this is a very vague description of how much salt to use, but it works. I promise. Start with a teaspoon in a pint (two cups) of water and taste it. You can hardly taste the salt, right? Add another teaspoon and taste again. Then increase by half teaspoons until the water is really gross. Add a splash of water and taste again. Somewhere in between tasty and gross is the right amount of salt. It always seems a little saltier than seawater to me.

Oh - and use the right kind of salt. You should use sea salt because it is pure and has lots of trace minerals that are really good for you. I personally use RealSalt because it lists the trace minerals on the package and sells for a reasonable price. Other sea salts would be fine too. You can also use kosher salt or other salt as long as it has no iodine and no anti-caking ingredients. One caution about Celtic or grey salt - moist salt is sometimes known for carrying bacteria and mold that can ruin your ferments. If you want to use moist Celtic sea salt then you should bake it first until it is dry. Seriously, though, who needs to go through that much work for pickles. Just buy some lower quality sea salt for fermenting and keep the Celtic for sprinkling on your potatoes.

Once you have your brine made with the right kind of salt to the right saltiness then pour it over the jar full of vegetables. The brine should cover the vegetables but still be below the threads of the jar. Screw the lid on tight and set it on the counter to begin fermenting.

Step Three: Fermentation

Just like in the Kraut 101 tutorial I recommend you check your pickles every day and learn to look for signs of fermentation. The day after you make your carrot pickles open the jar and listen for popping, fizzing or hissing as you open the jar. Smell the contents and then taste a sip of the brine (you can take some out with a spoon or just sip it out of the jar like I do... but then again I'm pretty cavalier about things like that). Is it at all sour or fizzy or still just salty? Put the lid back on and let it sit out for another day.

It usually takes 2-5 days for signs of fermentation to really show up. Exactly how long depends on everything from the quality of your vegetables and the ambient temperature to whether you sacrificed to the proper deities. I'll address some of these variables in the next post and in the end it doesn't really matter how long it takes, just that it happens. Be patient, it will.

When your pickles are popping, fizzing or starting to taste sour then move them to the fridge. Carrot pickles usually taste best after another two or three days in the fridge (you should try them every day to see when you like them best) but will last for months without getting mushy or gross. The onion will start to get a little mushy after a month or so but whole garlic cloves are still virtually raw until at least a month in the brine.

I like to eat these pickles in anything even remotely Mexican in flavor. I love them in quesadillas and burritos as well as on salads. The pickle brine can really brighten up a soup and makes a fine salad dressing when substituted for vinegar in any recipe.

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Once you've run through this recipe once then you are ready to start thinking about pickling other vegetables. Here are some of my favorites.

Cucumbers: pickled cucumbers are a classic. I have used whole pickling cucumbers as well as sliced eating cucumbers (remove part of the skin, it is tough and bitter). Pack the jar with cucumbers, dill seed, garlic cloves, black peppercorns and maybe some sliced onion and/or mustard seed. Cover with brine and follow the steps above.

I didn't use cucumbers as my master recipe because I've had mixed luck with fermenting them. Cucumbers, being so watery, are at risk of getting mushy and even when they aren't mushy they never taste quite the same as vinegar pickles do. I like the fermented flavor but have not yet perfected the crunchy cucumber pickle. Some people add a grape leaf to the jar and others soak the cucumbers in salty water first. I'm going to experiment this summer and I'll let you know.

Turnips, Radishes, Not Spicy Carrots: Slice them into planks or chunks and cover with brine. Try these will dill seed and garlic or with mustard seed and red pepper flakes. Turnips tend to be a bit spicy when fermented, but are great on salads.

Beets: I recently made up a jar of sliced raw beets and carrots with no extra seasoning at all. The liquid is thick, sweet and deep red and the vegetables are now tender, sour, sweet. Fantastic.

Green Beans or Asparagus: Trim the veggies to fit in the jar and add a garlic clove and maybe one of those small, dried red chiles. Try doing the same with okra. A little juice from one of these jars is the secret to my Bloody Mary. Fantastic!

Mushrooms: White or baby 'bella mushrooms can be pickled in brine into a very tasty appetizer. I like to add black peppercorns and mustard seed as well as a small garlic clove. The mushrooms will float like corks but it has never seemed to be a problem.

Summer Relish: Last summer I made a jar of relish using canned corn, chopped green tomato, red bell pepper and onion with mustard seeds. It took a month or so for the flavor to develop but I was sad when it was gone. It was long past green tomato season and I've been daydreaming about it ever since!

Pickled Garlic: Peel the cloves, fill the jar and cover with brine. It will take months (as in 4 or 5) for the cloves to ferment fully but it will be worth it. They ferment into this mellow, garlicky, almost sweet tangy condiment. Perfect for salad dressings and topping soup. And exceptionally good for you!

Of course you can mix and match. I almost never make a jar of just one vegetable, I use whatever I have around. I will often add turnips or carrots to sauerkraut, or get lazy and throw brine over cabbage as well. Give any vegetable you have a try in the brine and see how it turns out. Experiment with seasonings, garlic, onion and different flavor combinations. You'll be amazed at what you find you like. I serve pickled vegetables with almost every meal and pretty soon you will be too!

This post is part of the Real Food Wednesday Blog Carnival. Be sure to check out the other posts for more great real food ideas!

To see more photos of my lunches, others with home made pickles in them, check out my Flickr page.

Breakfasts of Champions

2009-06-17T13:38:00.001-07:00

This last weekend I made two fantastic breakfasts for myself. I love a good cooked breakfast more than just about any other meal. Omlette with goodies tucked inside, hashbrowns or homefries, bacon, sausage, ham, hollandaise sauce! I lived with a boyfriend for a while who loved cooking breakfast as much as I love eating it and we got in the habit of eating bacon, fried eggs and toast even on weekdays. Now that I'm cooking for one again I rarely do that, but I do make a point to cook a good breakfast meal at least once on the weekends. Even better is going out for breakfast! I have heard that going out to breakfast is a real Portland thing and that means I'm a real Portland girl. I love breakfasts.

The first breakfast of the weekend was a puffy omlette with wild mushrooms. A friend from work gifted me some wild mushrooms that her friend had collected. Some were unquestionably morels and I happily sauteed them up but I wasn't sure what the other was. It might have been a king bolete but as I continued looking at it and googling like a mad woman I decided that I didn't really want to eat it. It was a little past it's prime, and mushrooms are just one of those things. Oh well, the morels were fantastic.

I read about puffy omlettes on this fantastic blog I found last week called Beyond Salmon. The author talks about her dilema in teaching a cooking class focused on eggs. She wanted to use authentic french methods to cook an omlette but it turns out no one likes flat, plain french omlettes. So she asked her mom how to make a fluffy omlette. Turns out the secret is a blender. I used her method, with some dill added to the eggs and the musrhooms and Irish cheddar inside. It was fantastic!

Mushroom and Dill Puflette

1/3 cup whole milk
2 1/2 tsp unbleached flour
2 large eggs
1/4 tsp salt
A few grinds of black pepper
A pinch of dried dill
Fat for the pan - a mix of butter and oil or butter and goose fat
2-3 Tbs of sauteed wild mushrooms and onions

Combine the eggs, milk, flour, salt, pepper and dill in a blender and blend until well combined. The original recipe calls for blending for 2 minutes, I didn't blend for anywhere near that long.
Preheat the broiler and set a a 6 inch cast iron skillet (recipe called for a 7-8 inch nonstick skillet). Add your cooking fat and let it heat until the butter has melted and the foam subsided. I used a goodly amount, at least a tablespoon total because I was worried about the eggs sticking but if you have a well seasoned pan you just need a thin coating.
When the foam subsides in the butter add the egg mixture into the skillet, cover the pan and cook for 45 seconds (maybe a full minute for the 6 inch pan) or until the eggs look set around the edges but completely liquid in the center.
Uncover and place the skillet 2-4 inches away from the broiler element until the mixture is puffy and golden on top, 60-90 seconds or until it is puffy and golden on top.
Add the filling, slide the omlette onto a plate and fold in half. The original recipe calls to "Dot with a sliver of butter, spreading it over the top of the omelette as it melts." How wonderful!

The next day for breakfast I just had simple scrambled eggs but accompanied them with a red flannel hash. Red flannel hash is a New England special of pan fried potatoes and beets with or without salty meat like corned beef or bacon. Mine had no meat but did have onion and lots of black pepper. This was really out of control good. Way, way better than I was expecting.

Red Flannel Hash

1 baseball sized beet, peeled and diced to 1/8 inch dice
2 baseball sized yellow potatoes, washed and shredded on a box grater
1/2 onion, sliced thin
salt, pepper
goose fat, lard or coconut oil for the pan

Melt the fat in a 12 inch cast iron skillet over medium heat and add the onions and beets. Lightly salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until the beets are tender.
Add the potatoes, more salt and generous amounts of pepper. Toss and stir until well incorporated with the beets and then smoosh the mass into the pan. Continue cooking over medium heat, stirring, scraping and turning occasionally, until the potatoes are cooked through and starting to get a bit crispy, about 20 minutes. Taste for salt and pepper and serve alongside scrambled eggs or topped with a poached egg.

Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day. Making sure that it is full of good fats and plenty of protein means you don't get hungry early in the day. A good breakfast keeps you productive and healthy AND happy. What do you like to eat for breakfast? .

This post is part of the Real Food Wednesday Blog Carnival. Check out what other folks are eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner over there!

I Tempted Her With Pheasant

2009-06-12T14:24:00.001-07:00

Last month when I was at Kookoolan Farm I bought a pheasant from Chrissie. I've never cooked a pheasant before but thought it would be fun. Like my goose adventure, only with less grease! I find cooking exotic birds to be a bit less intimidating than cooking exotic beasts. They seem more accessable, and like with the goose I ended up with lots of 'extra food' from the pheasant.

Cooking a pheasant clearly should not be a just me for dinner kind of night so I invited some friends over. One friend hemmed and hawed because, it being a Saturday in June, she had three other parties to go to. I finally convinced her to come under false pretenses of homemade mead, but she was happy with pheasant and wine.

Pheasant is a dark meat bird with considerably less breast meat than a chicken. I looked at lots of recipes for roast pheasant and all of them called for wrapping the breast in bacon before cooking. Everything is better with bacon, isn't it? In the end, fearing a dried out, tough bird I opted to braise the pheasant instead of roast it. The recipe I used was a simple one and everyone loved the flavor. I added a split chicken breast in on top of the pheasant fearing there wouldn't be enough meat for all three of us, and though it wasn't necessary it was nice to have the leftovers. I would certainly use this reciepe again, with modifications found below.

Braised Pheasant

1 pheasant (plus a chicken breast or a few chicken thighs)

3 tbs flour

salt and black pepper

2 tsp dried rosemary

2 bay leaves

5 peppercorns

bacon fat and/or goose grease

1/4 cup red wine

1 1/2 chicken broth

1/2 a medium onion, sliced

4 cloves of garlic, smashed or cut in half

1 tablespoon flour

1/2 tsp ground dried rosemary

1) Cut the pheasant into pieces. I cut the leg/thigh pieces off, cut out the backbone and hacked the breast apart into two pieces. I saved the backbone, wingtips and trimmed neck and tail skin/fat for stock later. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

2) Combine the flour with salt and pepper making sure the flour tastes seasoned. Rub the flour all over the pieces of pheasant. Heat the bacon fat and/or goose grease (lard or coconut oil if that's all you have) in a cast iron skillet. Brown the meat skin side down first until it is nice and golden brown. Do it in batches, making sure not to crowd the pan.

3) Place the browned pieces in the bottom of an enameled cast iron dutch oven (or other heavy pot with a well fitting lid). Be sure to keep chicken pieces on top of the pheasant as it doesn't need to cook as much. Tie the peppercorns, bay leaves and rosemary in a cheesecloth bundle and tuck in between the pheasant pieces. Add onion and garlic on top of the meat. Deglaze the pan with the red wine and pour that over the meat. Add the chicken broth and place in the hot oven.

4) Allow pheasant to cook for AT LEAST 2 1/2 hours. Probably more. When the pheasant is cooked through and the wing and leg joints move freely remove the meat to a platter and cover with foil to keep warm. Remove the onion and garlic either with a slotted spoon or by pouring all the sauce through a sieve and catching the liquid in a measuring cup, gravy separator or small saucepan.

5) Make the pan liquid into a gravy by cooking flour and ground rosemary in an equal amount of either fat that rises to the top of the pan sauce or more bacon grease. When the flour is cooked and starting to brown add the pan liquid into the roux and stir over medium high heat until flour is incorporated and the gravy is starting to thicken. Stir constantly and reduce heat to low when it is bubbling and thick.

6) Serve pheasant over wild rice, Israeli cous cous, orzo or mashed potatoes making sure to pass the gravy.

The cook is always most critical of their meal and my guests really enjoyed the experience. I found the pheasant to have a really pleasant flavor but it was tough. I braised mine for just over two hours and think another hour in the pot would have done wonders. A dry roasted hunk or meat or bird needs to reach the proper temperature but not go much above. A braised hunk of bird or meat needs to stay at the proper temperature long enough to melt connective tissue. I didn't give my pheasant enough time and it was pretty tough. I'll also add more rosemary next time. It was a lovely flavor and the original recipe called for branches of rosemary to be placed over the meat and liquid in the pot. I think that is a fantastic idea.

In the end, my guests enjoyed themselves. The gravy helped a lot (my trick to good gravy is to season the flour for the roux well with rosemary, basil, oregano or whatever other herb might fit the situation) and a couple bottles of wine with dinner helped even more. I didn't get any photos of the cooked meal, we were too busy eating it. Here is the lovely flower bouquet that was on the table.

I wonder what's next on my exotic bird cooking tour? Duck? Pigeon? Pastured turkey? Bring it on!

For more great blogs about cooking real food and why it's important check out this week's Real Food Wednesday!

Pokrov Farm Tour

2009-06-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

If you haven't gotten out to tour a farm yet this spring then get yourself in gear! Spring on a farm is a fantastic time. The weather is nice (but not too hot, so the animal smells aren't overwhelming), the vegetables are pretty (but not overgrown) and best of all... there are baby animals everywhere!!

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to visit Kookoolan Farms in Yamhill, OR and this week I got to visit Pokrov Farm outside of Sandy, OR. I met Genevieve, one of the farmers, through my local Weston A Price Foundation email list when she advertised that her farm had CSA shares available for the summer. I jumped on board and am eagerly awaiting my first CSA basket - it comes next week! I happened to be driving by her place last weekend and stopped in to meet her family and tour the farm.

Their farm is set on a hill outside of Sandy, OR on the flanks of Mt. Hood. They are leasing 35 acres of some of the most beautiful farm land in western Oregon. They have green meadows, big trees, a creek and a pond, a couple barns and a lovely farm house. I pretty much want to move in with them. Genevieve is deeply inspired by Joel Salatin and his farming methods and attended a workshop in Southern Oregon last fall that led her to find this farm for her family. She is now homeschooling her children as well as running the farm along with her husband and two housemates. They've only been on the land since November but already have a lovely vegetable garden, about a million chickens, a milk cow and a couple happy pig and goat families.

One of the housemates (forgive me, I've forgotten his name - though I'll probably learn it next week at the CSA pick up) is a certified Master Gardener and in charge of the vegetable patch. It looks like it's growing great with a wide variety of veggies, herbs and even some flowers growing. Have I mentioned that I can't wait for my first basket?

They are using some old fashioned labor to till and fertilize a new extension to the garden - pigs! They've got a pair of pigs and this year's piglets fenced into an area that was weedy and dry just a couple weeks ago. As you can see the piggies are enjoying their mud baths as they dig for roots and insects and enjoy fresh air and sunlight. That is going to be some vitamin D rich lard! I found it really interesting when Genevieve mentioned that another farmer asked about renting her boar to breed with their sow. Apparently it is virtually impossible to find old fashioned pigs to make baby old fashioned pigs because most pig farmers use artificial insemination to breed in "new and improved" characteristics into their herd. Genevieve, with her everpresent optimism and openness said, "Sure! Let me research how to do that!".

Pokrov Farm seems to be crawling with chickens. Happy, outdoor, bug eating chickens! They have two big barns that both have adult chickens in them as well as a big room full of baby chickens! When we were visiting the two housemates were working on a Joel Salatin style chicken tractor so that the babies can move out into the field as soon as they get their feathers. Genevieve was saying that they got hooked in with a Southeast Asian community that wants a couple hundred live birds a month so that they can butcher them themselves. What a great things for a small farm to have such a standing order.

In one of the chicken houses they have a Joel Salatin style rabbit set up with the wire bottom cages over where the chickens are. The chickens scratch the rabbit droppings and keep the area clear of insects that might bother the rabbits. One of my favorite parts of the tour was getting to see the brand new baby rabbits. One mama rabbit had kindled her kits a couple days earlier and the other had kindled the night before I was there. The babies were like little pink blobs with bunny ears.

The other babies I got to see at the farm were baby goats, baby geese and baby turkeys. Genevieve ordered a mixed pack of turkey hatchlings so she doesn't even know what breeds they are. I ordered one for my thanksgiving dinner.... I'm not sure how I would feel about raising them from these tiny fluffy babies into dinner, but I'll be happy to eat them when they come my way! The geese were possibly the cutest things ever, but I didn't get a good picture. They were fuzzy and yellow, like cartoon ducklings. Genevieve is keeping a couple pygmy goats for milk and they had just kidded that week. I picked up one of the kids and it was tiny, like a puppy!

Genevieve's pride of the farm is her Jersey cow, Ella. Ella is producing milk that Genevieve is drinking and selling raw, as well as making cheese. She is planning on holding cheesemaking classes through the summer as well as other workshops. Genevieve was commenting on how they have been having a fly problem with Ella and are having a very hard time finding advice on how to treat external parasites without chemicals. She doesn't want to put poison on the animal that provides milk for her children. She did eventually find a method using pine tar and has the supplies on order.

Genevieve and her family are an inspiration to those of us with homesteading ambitions. She says she had been an urban homesteader in Portland, keeping chickens and digging up her lawn to plant vegetables. She and her husband saw an opportunity to move up a notch and have a real farm and have taken it. They are working hard and have lots more to go before they are assured a financially profitable farm, but they are supplying themselves with most of their own food. I am very proud to be able to support them this summer and have them support me! I can't wait to go out for a cheesemaking class or to harvest apples or fish trout in their pond. On top of it all, Genevieve is one of the most welcoming, optimistic and just plain sweet people I've met in a long time.

Now it's time for you to find a farm to go visit! Buy a CSA share, find someone producing raw milk or free range chickens! Go out there and meet your meat and veg with your veggies!

For more posts about REAL FOOD like the kind you get at small family farms check out the Real Food Wednesdays and Food Roots blog carnivals!

You can please some of the people all of the time...

2009-05-27T16:36:00.001-07:00

and all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

So the saying goes, and so it goes in the kitchen. As a relatively skilled and confident cook who primarily cooks only for myself I usually do pretty good with liking what I cook. I rarely have outright failures and I can usually find some silver lining even in my flops. The exception makes the rule, however.

Two months ago I bought a tub of chicken livers from Kookoolan Farms at our year round farmers market here in SW Portland. I had never cooked with chicken livers before and honestly never really eaten them either. I was a little intimidated but knew I would get around to them eventually.

Liver is quite possibly the most nutrient dense animal food on earth. Oysters may be a close second but liver is an amazing super food. Liver is chock full of vitamins A, B12, and folic acid. It is amazingly high in bioavaliable iron, copper, zinc and chromium. It contains nitrogen compounds that the body uses to produce DNA and RNA. It's also an amazing source of CoQ10. Seriously, this is some healthy health food.

Unfortunately, most Americans aren't very fond of organ meat. We didn't grow up eating it (possibly because our grandparents had to eat it during hard economic times and forced their kids to eat it who swore to never force their kids to eat it) and many folks think it is gross or dirty. There is also advice out there to avoid liver when pregnant because of it's high levels of retinol, a form of Vitamin A that seems to have been linked with birth defects.

Actually, even main stream nutritionists agree that an animal's liver doesn't store toxins, it just repackages them for storage elsewhere in the body. The vitamin A debate seems ridiculous to me. Native people ate liver as regularly as possible and no one died of vitamin A poisoning and if birth defects were common people would have stopped eating liver. The Wise Traditions article by Lynn Razaitis disucsses this issue in depth. She says that studies in Italy and Switzerland in the late 1990s, as well as almost all medical text books written before WWII indicate that liver is fine for pregnant women with doses of 30,000-50,000 IUs of Vitamin A. That's 4-5 oz of beef liver or 7-8 oz of chicken liver. She also quotes the Merck manual in noting that the few cases of Vitamin A poisioning are either due to synthetic vitamin A in multivitamins, or due to eating large portions of polar bear or seal liver. The synthetic vitamin toxicity was at doses 100,000 IU of vitamin A over many months. It takes about 10 oz of beef liver or 16 oz of chicken liver to give you that much vitamin A. Every day. For months.

I don't know about you, but I couldn't get 16 oz of chicken liver in me every day for a month. I couldn't get it in me over the course of a month if my recent liver experience is any indication. Remember how I said I don't usually have flops in the kitchen? Yeah, my chicken liver pate was a flop. I think it tasted exactly like it was supposed to, I just didn't like it. Here's the recipe I used. It's a variation on the recipe from Nourishing Traditions and I think it's a good one. It's just so, well, livery.

Chicken Liver Pate

3 tbs butter
1 lb chicken liver
1/2 lb mushrooms
1 medium yellow onion
2/3 c white wine
2 clove garlic
3/4 tsp ground dried rosemary
1/4 tsp ground dried sage
1/4 tsp crumbled dried organo
1/4 tsp dried dill
1 tbs lemon juice
4 tbs butter
salt and pepper

*Sautee the onion and mushroom, seasoned with pepper and a little salt, in 3 tbs of butter until soft. Add the liver, trimmed of the tendons and cook until firm but still barely pink on the inside. Add garlic and herbs to the pan then the wine. Cook over medium heat until the pan is almost dry. Let mixture sit until cool.

*Pour the liver and onion mixture into a food processor. Grind until a coarse paste and then add soft, but not melted, butter a spoonful at a time. Grind until smooth. Add the lemon juice and taste for salt and pepper.

This recipe actually had a lot of interesting flavor. I think in the future I would increase the herbs a bit but the mushrooms and liver really stood out. The problem is, well, that liver flavor. It's kind of metallic, and kind of earthy. But not in a good way. Luckily my roommate loved it and I found that I could get down a couple tablespoons at a time in a sandwich with radishes, cheese and mustard. I still have about 4 oz in the freezer. Maybe in a month or two I'll be ready to go back for round two.

Photo by These Days in French Life

Do you have a liver recipe you like? Have you ever eaten a liver pate that you really enjoyed? What do your friends, kids, spouse, housemates say about liver? Like runny egg yolks, I'll choke it down until I like it... it's just that nutritious.

For more real food recipes and tips check out the Real Food Wednesdays blog carnival!!

Kookoolan Farm Tour

2009-05-24T20:06:00.000-07:00

I think every kid should get to visit a farm at least once in their life, don't you think? I've been teaching a veterinary science class to homeschooled kids these last six months and recently made sure that these kids had visited a farm. It wasn't just any farm, it was a Kookoolan Farm.

Kookoolan Farm is a small, pastured based farm in Yamhill, OR about an hour outside of Portland. Chrissie and Koorosh, the farmers, keep three Jersey cows for raw dairy, chickens for eggs and meat and have a licensed poultry processing facility there. They also partner with what is becoming a co-op of farmers to get humanely raised, grass fed meat to paying customers in the Portland area. They are a really amazing, real food farm.

The first thing my students noticed was the 3 week old calf tethered in the front yard. He was born on the farm and was tethered out so visitors could pet him to gentle him. One thing I found really interesting was Chrissie's comments on her Jerseys being, em, insistent mothers. As a dog person this makes perfect sense. When we breed a strain of animals to do one thing we get a fair amount of "logical conclusion" behavior. For example, Labradors have been bred to retrieve and many labs have weird mouthy/eating/carrying things around behavior. Jack Russell terriers were bred to chase rats so we see obsessive chasing and visual stimulation behaviors. Well, apparently when we breed cows to do nothing but be pregnant or nursing we get some "logical conclusions" behaviors around mothering. Chrissie says one of her cows gave birth and the other two were mothering the one calf so aggressively that she had to buy two more calves from other local farmers. This is one of her teddy bear calves. He is 5 days old and he sucked on my thumb. Soooo cute!! Baby cows are pretty much adorable.

Next we got to tour the chicken houses. Kookoolan has had up to 500 chickens at a time, though this year they are running a slightly smaller operation. The hens are free range and roost and next in one of two large sheds with some feed along with the next boxes. She noted the symbiotic relationship between the chickens and the cows. They feed a little bit of whole wheat to the cows that they don't digest, but entices the chickens to scratch through the manure. For as many animals as there were in her small yard, there really was very little animal smell.

It was fun to see the different personalities of the different chickens. Some came right up to use to see if we had anything for us while others scattered as we came near. Chrissie is raising another 100 chicks in a brooder with the hopes of having them come into egg laying around Christmas, when her current layers will be on their winter break. This will provide her with a steady supply of eggs through the holiday season, when we humans like to eat eggs in things like pumpkin pie.

We also got to see the milking house and talk a little bit about raw milk production. In Oregon it is legal to sell raw milk on the farm if you keep only a small number of animals and don't advertise. The kids noted some chickens drinking some milk out of a pan on the ground and this led Chrissie to tell us about their testing procedures for the milk. They use the standard milk test of a somatic cell count to determine cleanliness of the milk. This count detects white blood cells in the milk which indicate an immune response in the animal. In Washington and California, where raw milk is legal and licensed by the state, somatic cell counts must be below 10,000 cells per mL, and commercial dairies that pasteurize their milk have an average somatic cell count of around 300,000 cells per mL! At Kookoolan farm if somatic cell counts are any more than a few hundred cells per mL the milk goes to the chickens. That morning Glitter, one of their milk cows was dealing with a cut on her leg which caused her cell count to be higher. The milk was probably perfectly safe for human consumption but like most small farmers Chrissie's product is either perfect, or not good enough.

Another thing that so impressed me about Chrissie and Koorosh is the partnerships they've been able to form with other farmers in their area. They are raising beef with their immediate neighbor who is now 70 years old and doesn't want to work as hard as he used to. He raises the calves on his land and Chrissie and Koorosh market the meat to real-food aficionados in Portland who will pay top dollar. They've formed a similar partnership with a neighbor across the highway who raises lamb. For years he was driving to Woodburn to sell his grassfed lamb for 85 cents per pound on the hoof. By partnering with Kookoolan Farm and tapping into the premium meat demand they are now commanding a considerably higher price, and actually making money on their lambs. Yet another farmer raises pheasants and turkey, and others allows Chrissie's meat chickens to be raised in their orchards and vineyards.

The most amazing part of all of this is that Chrissie and Koorosh have only been doing this since the fall of 2005!! Chrissie says she never even had a pet before they bought their first batch of day old chicks. They had never milked cows or butchered chickens. They were managers at Intel and are simply willing to take the risks required to start a farm. Chrissie says she works harder now than she did at Intel, but is happier and healthier by a country mile.

Every kid should get to visit a farm, and every person should get to eat food produced with as much attention and care as the food produced at Kookoolan Farms. You can see more of my photos from the farm visit on my Flickr page. Also, please check out their website for more information on their practices, their cheesemaking classes and their offerings. And then find a farm like them near you to get your own real food.

Greens, Greens, All the Meadow is Greens!

2009-05-06T16:54:00.000-07:00

I didn't grow up eating greens. Honestly, I'm still getting used to the idea. As a kid we occasionally had spinach, though usually as salads not as a cooked vegetable. These days my dad is known to cook some napa cabbage I'm pretty sure he never cooked collards or turnip greens for us. We probably wouldnt've eaten them.

My first real introduction to greens came a number of years ago when I was working at a school with an organic garden. The woman who had planted the garden had planted about a dozen kale plants and they survived right through the winter. No one I worked with particularly liked kale and the plants were a bit aphid infested so we didn't want to donate them to the food bank. Being the poor AmeriCorps member that I was I decided to take these giant leaves home and see what to do with them.

I consulted my favorite source for basic cooking instructions - Cook's Illustrated. They recommended a steam sautee method where the greens are cooked over or in a small amount of water and then sauteed in flavored oil. Yeah, that's good stuff. Especially when that flavored oil is bacon grease.

Photo thanks to These Days In French Life

This method works particularly well for hearty greens like kale, collards and turnip greens. I prefer a simple sautee for tender greens like chard and beet greens.

Last year as I was learning about edible plants I kept running into a lot of plants referred to a potherbs. These are green plants who's leaves are best eaten cooked as opposed to salad greens. As some of these "potherbs" showed themselves this spring I realized it was time to learn to love greens.

Nettles and comfrey are two greens that grow abundantly in my neighborhood and have found their way into my kitchen recently. I experimented with nettles earlier this spring and love their flavor but hate having to deal with them. They taste minerally and are wonderful well salted. Last week I harvested some comfrey that I had scouted out last summer but hemmed and hawed over eating at that time. Many sources note that comfrey contains chemicals called hepatoxic pyrrolizidine which can cause liver damage. Susun Weed speaks eloquently about how comfrey has gotten this, in her research and experience, undeserved reputation. The basic gist of Susun's article is that the toxic chemicals are found in the wild comfrey, not the cultivated one, and even then mostly in the roots and to a lesser degree in the stems and leaf ribs. The tipping point for me was when I saw comfrey listed in my Joy of Cooking as an eating green. Sauteed greens, here I come!

Steam-Sauteed Hearty Greens

1 bunch of kale or collards or mustard greens or comfrey or a mix

2 cloves garlic, sliced

1 tbs bacon grease, or olive oil, or coconut oil

a shake of red pepper flakes

a pinch of salt

a dash of red wine vinegar

*Clean the kale and remove the leaves from the stem. Chop or tear the leaves into fork sized pieces. Heat a couple inches of water in a pan big enough to hold all of the kale. When it is boiling add the greens, stir a bit with a wooden spoon or tongs and cover. Let the kale steam a minute up to five then drain in a colander.

*While the kale is draining and drying a bit heat the fat in a sautee pan or wok. Add the garlic and red pepper and cook until the garlic is starting to brown a bit. Add the kale and toss and turn with tongs. Cook until the kale is fully incorporated with the flavored oil. Sprinkle with salt and then finish with vinegar.

I used the same steam-sautee method with the comfrey as I do with kale only made sure to cook it well in the water first. With kale I only steam it until it changes color but I made sure the comfrey was cooked through. I also made sure to harvest the smallest leaves I could find and remove all the ribs from the leaves. It was just a gut feeling, but I went with it. Wild vegetables are not terribly interested in you eating them, so it's best to treat them respectuflly. I sauteed it in refined coconut oil with some garlic and chipotle flakes. It was fantastic.

If you haven't grown to love greens yet start with chard. Chard is a sweet, tender little green with hardly any of the bitter flavors or odd texture other greens can have. Use plenty of garlic, bacon or other good cooking fat and a goodly splash of vinegar right at the end. You'll be enjoying greens and ready to move on to potherbs in no time. And if all else fails, eat them with macaroni and cheese. You can handle just about any vegetable mixed with macaroni and cheese.

For more great recipes and real food ideas check out the Real Food Wednesday blog carnival!

Waiter, there is too much pepper in my paprikash...

2009-04-25T10:26:00.000-07:00

I love When Harry Met Sally. I've seen it approximately a million times and had fun imitating Billy Crystal imitating some eastern European fellow talking about paprikash and pecan pies many more times than that. One thing I have never done, however, was actually eat paprikash. Until this week.

Turns out this stuff is good. Really, really good. It's also easy and very nutrient dense. What more could you want in a dinner? And you get to talk like Billy Crystal all night... "have fun storming the castle!"

Chicken Paprikash

3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, sliced (or equivalent dark meat, or chicken pieces)
3 tablespoons of butter, plus some olive oil plus some bacon grease
1 medium onion, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
6 oz of mushrooms, sliced (could be replaced with green bell pepper or omitted)
1/2 cup chicken broth
3/4 to 1 cup sour cream
3-4 tablespoons of paprika*
salt and pepper

Sautee the onions and mushrooms in butter, seaonsed lightly with salt and pepper, until well cooked but not too browned. Remove from pan and cook the chicken in more butter along with the garlic. (If I had had skin-on pieces of chicken I would have reversed the order of cooking here) Sprinkle the chicken with salt, pepper and paprika. Cook until the paprika is well blended into the fat and getting fragrant.

Add the vegetables back into the pan of chicken and add the chicken broth. Bring to boil and then drop to a simmer and cook until the chicken is cooked through (this took just a minute or two with sliced boneless breast, it would take considerably longer with bone in pieces. Add more broth or water if you will be simmering for a longer time).

Lower the heat and stir in the sour cream. Let the mixture heat until it is warm, but do not boil or the cream sauce may break. Taste for seasoning, adjust salt and pepper and serve over butter noodles, spaetzle or rice.

* I only had cheap paprika in the house so I upped the flavor with the addition of some hotter ground pepper. I used approximately 2 teaspoons out of the 3 tablespoons of Ancho, New Mexico and Chipotle chile powders. So that's about 1 tsp New Mexico chile, 1/2 tsp Ancho, 1/2 tsp Chipotle and 2 tbs plus 1 tsp paprika. If you use good quality paprika you will get more flavor out of it so can reduce or eliminate the hotter chiles. I liked the little bit of a kick.

Adventures in Roommates, and Ketchup

2009-04-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

I've lived with a lot of roommates over the years. I counted it up once and the number was over two dozen different people I have shared an address with. Generally speaking I love living with other people and I've had some awesome friends share my homes over the years. Yes, you have to deal with their dirty dishes, and their human foibles and drama but usually it's worth it.

Some of my favorite roommate memories revolve around food (big suprise there, right?). I actually met my first good friends in college because of our love of food - I smelled baking tofu in the dorm kitchen and went to investigate. I remember pigging out on one roommate's meat pie when I was still a vegetarian and pulling a red wagon full of vegetables back from the store with another. Did you know that sweet potatoes go great with black beans, or that black pepper and seasoning salt are just as good on popcorn as butter? If it weren't for my roommates I wouldn't either. One set of roommates and I enjoyed White Trash Dinner nights and perfected our Tater Tot Hot Dish recipe and our tuna noodle casserole (the tuna noodle may show up on this blog someday, but the Tater Tot Hot Dish most likely never will.)

I lived for a couple months once with the most wonderful man in the whole wide world. Eric is one of those people that everyone loves. He is generous, kind and will keep you laughing from morning till night. And if you want an adventure, just make sure Eric is around and adventure will find you. Often Eric and our other roommates would come home in the early hours of the morning after a night of adventuring and meet me as I was waking up for my work day. It was always a fun, bright start to a morning and almost always involved breakfast sammies. Bacon, egg, cheese, english muffin and ketchup... the breakfast of champions.

Eric has moved up to NW Washington to follow his bliss and I am still making breakfast sammies at least once a week. I still like my eggs overhard (yolk broken and not gooey at all, please!) but these days I'm just as likely to use sour dough as english muffins.

I also recently made my first batch of homemade ketchup. It really bumps a sammy up to gourmet status, and is much easier than I expected. OK.. it's easier to MAKE the ketchup, getting the flavors just right is going to take some time. I started with googling "homemade ketchup" and reading every recipe I could find. They're mostly the same - some tomato product, spices of some variety, vinegar and sugar. Which spices and how much sugar are often the big variables and I finally decided to go with a recipe and just try it.

I chose this recipe from Brooklyn Farmhouse, a blog I intend to spend a whole lot more time at in the future. It calls for some pretty basic spices all simmered together with the tomato product. I used tomato puree instead of whole tomatoes partly because thats what I had avaliable and partly to cut down on simmering time. In the end I tweaked the spices a litle bit and am still not 100% happy with the end result. I'm eating it, and making some seriously good sammies, but next time it will be better.

One More Homemade Ketchup Recipe

makes about 1 pint

4 whole cloves

1/2 teaspoon celery seed

1/2 teaspoon chile flakes

1 cinnamon stick (1-inch long)

2 14-ounce cans of tomato puree

1/2 a large onion, chopped,

2 garlic clove, peeled and smashed

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1/2 cup cider vinegar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 of an onion and 1 garlic clove

*Wrap the cloves, celery seed, chile flakes and cinnamon stick in a cheesecloth bundle. Combine everything except the second piece of onion and garlic in a heavy bottomed, 2 quart sauce pan and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for at least an hour.

*Remove the spice bundle and puree the mixture in a blender along with the second addition of garlic and onion. Return the mixture to the pot and simmer again until it looses it's "raw" flavor. Feel free to adjust seasonings and simmer longer to reach your desired consistency.

Like I said, this recipe isn't perfect. It's a little cinnamonny for my liking (the original recipe called for a 3 inch piece, I used a 2 inch, I'm saying you should use 1 inch) and there's still something not quite right. It's also a little chunky but pushing it through a sieve would have helped that as would cooking it longer to reduce the water content.

Eric would like it though, especially combined with some Secret Aardvark Sauce. He was always up for an adventure, and making homemade ketchup is truly an adventure.

Something to Stew Over

2009-03-31T14:16:00.000-07:00

I've never really been terribly fond of traditional stew. Part of it is that I'm not a big gravy fan. Maybe that's the jarred gravy my dad always used, but I am not even that excited about homemade gravy. Another part of it is that I've never really liked long cooked meat. I would rather have a dry roasted piece of beef any day! I would even rather have ground meat chili than chili with stew meat. Call me weird, there's just something about the flavor.

This winter, however, I came across two Cook's Illustrated cookbooks that got me thinking about stew in a whole new way. The cookbooks are the Make Ahead recipe collection and Cover and Bake recipe collection. Like all Cook's Illustrated recipes the stew recipes in these books had extensive introductions that covered all the ins and outs of making that recipe. The authors test dozens of different variations to find the perfect recipe. Whenever I have followed a Cook's Illustrated recipe exactly I have ended up with something out of this world spectacular. If you don't know them, check them out!

A couple months ago I made a beef stew from the Cover and Bake book that was fantastic. The meat wasn't overcooked, the gravy was flavorful and just the right texture. It wasn't gummy or oversalted or watery. I knew I needed to give this stew thing another try. And some things just beg to be stewed... like wild boar

The other day, perhaps a payday, I stopped by City Market NW in the rather trendy Alphabet Neighborhood of northwest Portland. City Market NW is the kind of place you should ONLY stop by on pay day, and only then if the credit card bill is not due that same week. It includes outlets for Pastaworks (gourmet fresh pasta, cheeses and antipasti dishes plus wine and import grocery), Viande Meat and Sausage Co (nationally renknown butcher and chartcuterie), Newman's Seafood (can we just say that it doesn't smell like fish) and produce from a local organic farm (who's name I have forgotten.. sorry!). All in a cute little shop with a crazy flower stand out front. When I am independently wealthy I will shop here every day. Until then, only on pay day and with severe reserve and self control :)

Back to our story. I wandered around, drooled over everything and decided that if I was going to spend a week's worth of gas money on dinner it might as well be good quality meat. I thought about pate, but ended up settling on the wild boar stew meat. A beautiful portabello mushroom, some little red potatoes and a Kinder Surprise Egg rounded out my purchase. What? You've never had a Kinder Surprise Egg? You should... a chocolate shell with a little toy inside. Mine was a whirlygig paper and plastic hippopotamus thing. And it's imported :)

Wild Boar Stew for One (That "One" being Me)

1/2 pound wild boar stew meat (beef would work, or pork, I guess)

1/2 of a medium onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, pressed

1 4 inch diameter portabello mushroom chopped into 1/2 inch pieces (or maybe 6 white or brown mushrooms, sliced)

1/4 cup chopped carrots

Couple tablespoons red wine

1 cup beef broth

Cooking fat (I bet I used goose fat, you could use lard, coconut oil or olive oil)

Couple tablespoons flour

1/2 tsp or so ground sage

salt and black pepper

Half a dozen small red potatoes

Ground rosemary and sage and black peppercorns plus sea salt

Cooking fat (again, goose, pig or olive as you see fit)

* Combine the flour, sage, salt and pepper on a small plate. Taste to make sure it is seasoned well enough - you want it to taste like more than just flour. Toss the cubes of meat in the flour while you melt a couple tablespoons of cooking fat in a heavy bottomed sauce pan or small dutch oven (I used a 2 quart enameled cast iron and it was the right size). When the fat is hot shake off the excess flour and place chunks of meat in the pot. You want it to be hot enough to hear a sizzle and only enough meat to cover the bottom of the pan without too much touching. When the meat is browned on one side stir or flip the pieces and brown on the other sides. Pull the browned meat out onto a plate and repeat with the rest of the meat.

* When all the meat is browned adjust the fat in the pan - I had to add some but depending on how fatty your meat is you might want to remove some. Add the onions and mushrooms and cook until they are soft and starting to color and get dry again, stirring regularly to keep the onions or "fond" from sticking too much and burning. Add the carrots and cook another minute or two then add the garlic and cook until fragrant. Add another spoonful of the seasoned flour and stir and cook for another minute or two.

* Deglaze the pan with a couple tablespoons of red wine and then add the meat back into the pan. Add stock until it just covers the meat and bring everything to a boil. Turn heat down and simmer for an hour or so, or until the meat is cooked through and the flavors have melded.

* Meanwhile, clean and chop the potatoes into serving sized pieces (I think I quartered mine, but they were quite small) while bringing a pot of water to a boil. Salt the water and cook the potatoes until they are done, but not falling apart soft. Drain in a colander and allow to dry while you heat cooking fat in a cast iron skillet in a 400 degree oven.

* Add the dried off potatoes to the hot fat (use an oven mitt to handle the pan and watch for splatters!). Toss once or twice and put the pan back in the oven. After 10 minutes or so check to see if the potatoes are browned. If they are stir them and season with salt, pepper and ground herbs. Allow to brown on the other side and then pull out of the oven.

* Serve stew in a shallow bowl ladled over the roasted potatoes. Perhaps with a generously buttered slice of wheat bread. Maybe a salad, if you don't want to be a purist. Certainly with more of that red wine.

Yup, with stew like this I might just be a convert. Gravy out of a jar? Blech. Wild boar in homemade beef stock... yes please!

Square Foot Gardening

2009-03-25T11:53:00.001-07:00

For this week's Real Food Wednesday blog carnival I'll tell you a bit about my gardening experiment. I've been wanting to garden for years but the school/seasonal job year happens to perfectly bisect the growing season year. It's hard to get excited to plant stuff in April and May when you know you are going to be moving in June or July. Luckily for my gardening aspirations I have a "real" adult job this year and no plans of moving anywhere! I am actually going to be planting two gardens this year, one in the little yard at my duplex and a bigger one in my parents' backyard up the street.

Last fall I bought a copy of Mel Bartholomew's All New Square Foot Garden and have been reading it voraciously. Square foot gardening is an intensive planting method using prepared soil (instead of native garden soil and amendments) that is designed for people who want the joy of gardening without the hassle of huge harvests or the hard work of tilling and weeding. As I do more reading about it I see some draw backs, but for the first year of my garden experiment I am willing to give it a try. The basics of square foot gardening include the square foot grid that you plant within and Mel's Mix soil. Both take a little work up front, but I think they will repay serious dividends over the course of the year.

My garden at my parent's house is a 4x6 foot plot that had tiger lilies in it for the last few years. If you ever want to do some hard work, dig out overgrown lilies. I'm afraid I won't enjoy the blooms this year :) I dug the bulbs out and laid in a couple layers of mulch and peat moss and then covered it with about 5 inches of Mel's Mix from the book.

Mel's Mix is a 1:1:1 ratio mixture of vermiculite, peat moss and mixed compost. At first I was put off by the "buy stuff" nature of the Mel's Mix but I decided to go for it. I tried container gardening in a mixture of wood compost, top soil and native garden soil last summer and all my plants starved to death. I was willing to put out some expense to get usable vegetables this year :) I was able to purchase all three of these ingredients with minimal hassle or expense. I purchased a 4 cubic foot bale of compressed peat moss for 10 dollars, 3 one cubic foot bags of compost (steer, chicken and mushroom) for 5 dollars a piece and the 3 cubic foot bag of vermiculite for 50 dollars. The vermiculite is clearly the expensive part of the formula but it provides good structure and air pockets to the soil and really should be a one time investment. In the future I will have a compost system set up so I won't have to buy compost, and that looks like the only thing you have to add in the future anyway.

Over the Mel's Mix I laid my grid. Mel recommends wood lath to form the grid but I happened to have a bunch of broken venetian blinds laying around so made my grid out of that. The square foot gardening method calls for planting a proscribed number of plants in each square foot, alternating what plants are in each square. It's a block planting system instead of a row planting system, but the plants have the same room around them in the end. For instance, you plant 4 lettuce plants in a square which is equivalent to the "thin to 6 inches" instructions on the back of the seed packet.

The other really amazing part of the square foot gardening book is the time tables in the back for when to plant. He lays out a planting schedule based on weeks before or after your local last frost date so you can use the system almost anywhere. Here in Portland, OR our last frost date is in the second week of April so I am already planting some hardy spring plants. I have already planted snow peas, lettuce, turnips, mustard, radishes and onions, and will plant some chard, bok choy, more onions and lettuce, and kale or broccoli before the spring is too much further along.

Later in the summer I will plant tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini but haven't decided exactly how to fit those into my gardening plans. Mel Batholomew claims you can plant all of those plants in the square foot garden with trellises, but I'm thinking I may use the plot at my house for a less structured garden with more room for each of those big plants.

My next big challenge is protecting the garden. First and foremost I need to protect it from the two big black dogs that share the backyard with my garden. My dad's dog particularly likes to dig but both will tromple right through it given half a chance. Right now I have chicken wire laid over the soil but once things start sprouting I am going to need to change that a bit. I've got some ideas floating around in my head, but we'll see how any of it actually works out :)

I'm dreaming of lettuces and radishes out of the garden, tomatoes warm from the vine and cucumbers plumping in the sun. Spring, however, is wet and long here in the pacific northwest and it will be quite a few months before there are any backyard barbecues featuring garden fresh onions and zucchini. Ya know what though, the rain doesn't seem to bother me quite as much when I know it is watering my garden for me :)

Blender Batter: Cornbread

2009-03-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

You know what's the worst? The absolute pits? When you put stuff in your crock pot in the morning, spend all day thinking about the food you are going to eat when you get home, arrive home only to find that your crock pot didn't cook your food for whatever reason. Sometimes that reason is that your darling boyfriend "forgot" to turn it on like you asked him, sometimes that reason is that your janky house has janky outlets and there was never power to the crock pot. Sometimes you were just in such a rush in the morning that you put everything in but didn't turn the darn thing on. No matter the reason, it totally sucks.

When this happened to me last week I did, at least, have one shining beacon of hope. In addition to putting black beans in the crock pot I had started a batch of Sue Gregg's Blender Batter Cornbread. You knew the blender batter method made great pancakes (because I told you it did and you all ran out and tried it this weekend, right?) but did you know it makes an amazing cornbread too? It does! Sue's recipe calls for whole kernel corn and wheat berries processed the same way as for the blender batter pancakes. I didn't have any wheat berries in the house so I used white flour, which is lower in phytates than whole wheat (if you are really worried about phytates in the corn and wheat then be sure to use wheat the way Sue recommends. Amanda Rose of Rebuild from Depression gives some compelling research results that corn does not have the phytase necessary to actually break down the phytic acid on it's own).

Be sure to check out Sue's recipe and then read on to see how I modified the recipe. Also, a chilling tale of new roommates gone awry, gnashing of teeth and flames. Seriously, keep reading.

Blender Batter Cornbread with Flour

2/3 cup coarse ground polenta
1 cup kefir, buttermilk or thinned yogurt

1/4 cup melted butter
2 eggs

2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup unbleached white flour

*The night before combine the polenta and the kefir in a bowl. Stir to combine and leave to sit at room temperature over night.

*In the morning (afternoon or after work) pour the corn and kefir into your blender and grind. Again, start slow and once the mixture is making a vortex then allow it to grind for a couple minutes. Add the eggs and blend then add the melted butter while the blender is running.

*Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a separate bowl combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Combine the wet ingredients from the blender with the dry ingredients in a medium sized mixing bowl. Stir until they are combined, but still lumpy. You don't want to overmix quick breads or they will be tough.

*Generously grease an 8x8 baking dish and pour the batter in. Cook at 350 for 25-30 minutes or until a knife stuck in the center comes out clean. Serve with lots of butter and honey.

My beans were a bust but the cornbread turned out perfect. It was golden, lightly browned, light textured, deeply corn flavored. I whipped up a soup to eat instead of my beans, cut a piece of cornbread and sat down to dinner. As I was eating my new roommate came into the kitchen and started a pot of water for pasta. I will give him the benefit of the doubt and say our stove is set up strange but all I know is a few minutes later there was a pop like a gunshot. I turned around and the pyrex dish the cornbread had been cooked in was shattered and right before my eyes my beautiful cornbread caught on fire! He had turned the wrong burner on!!

Damage control was quick and some of the cornbread was even salvaged. I was angry and upset for a minute or two (my cornbread!!) and then we got down to the business of digging pyrex shards out of the linoleum. My cornbread! My beautiful cornbread!!

Luckily, I have this awesome recipe, more polenta in the cupboard and my roommate's pyrex dish to cook it all in.

Blender Batter: Pancakes

2009-03-19T16:30:00.000-07:00

I'm very active on a yahoogroup that discusses the book Nourishing Traditions and all things traditional foody and health realted (shout out to DiscussingNT - woot woot!). When people first join the list they invariably ask one of three questions - "How do you do ALL of this??" "How do you make Sauerkraut??" and "Does anyone have a GOOD sprouted or soaked bread recipe??". I've only been blogging for a couple months and feel like I've addressed the first two. Now I'll address the last one.

Most of us in America grew up on some variation of fluffy, sweet, soft bread and pastries. My mom made sure we ate wheat bread, but it was as fluffy as the Wonder Bread my friends ate. And we certainly got bisquick pancakes, doughnuts, and white rice. As I learned more about nutrition I learned of the benefits of whole grains - increased fiber and increased nutrients. Then came Nourishing Traditions and their instructions for soaking or sprouting grains. Whoa - this is getting a bit heavy.

I'll be the first to admit that soaking or sprouting grains before consuming them is low on my priority list. I understand the benefits of reducing anti nutrients, increasing digestability and all of that. It makes perfect sense. Heck, I even believe that grains don't need to be the base of our diet. Humans have only been eating grains for a couple thousand years, compared with meat and vegetables which we have been eating since before we were even humans. That doesn't mean it's easy to implement.

But then I found a recipe that makes it easy. Last year I was introduced to Sue Gregg's blender batter method of making pancakes and waffles. She uses a blender to grind a mix of whole grains and fermented milk into a slurry that becomes the batter to make your pancakes or quick bread. The more I experiment with this technique, the more I love it. I'm going to write out how I make pancakes here, but I highly recommend that you go visit Sue Gregg's site. She has lots of information, her original recipes and links to buy her books (anyone looking to buy me a birthday present? Yeah, email me, I'll send you my address :)

Her site is here: http://www.suegregg.com/

Blender Batter Pancakes

1 cup whole grain*
1 cup kefir, buttermilk or yogurt thinned to the consistency of buttermilk

1 tbs (or more) liquid fat - melted butter or coconut oil, olive oil, etc.
1 egg
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
up to 1 tsp vanilla extract and/or sweetner of your choice (optional)

The night before you want to make pancakes combine the grain and the milk in your blender. Using the pulse button start to grind the mixture. When the mixture starts to make a nice vortex in the middle let it run and grind the grains. Sue has you grind it for a full 3 minutes. I usually don't let my cheap blender run that long continuously and even if it doesn't grind the whole 3 minutes it seems to work just fine. Grind it for as long as you can stand it. If it doesn't make a vortex you can add a little more liquid, but do so sparingly. Chances are you have enough liquid and if you add more your pancake batter will be too loose.

Let the mixture of grain and milk sit on the counter for a couple hours or overnight. If your blender is nicer than mine you can just leave it in the blender jar. Mine leaks at the bottom so I scrape everything into a bowl and let it sit on the counter.

In the morning grind the grain/milk mixture again to loosen everything up. Since I probably didn't grind it a full 3 minutes the night before I give it a good grind first thing in the morning. Add the egg and grind it some more. With the blender running add the melted fat. This keeps the fat from clumping when it hits the colder batter. Add the optional sweetner or vanilla.

When you are ready to cook the pancakes (heat up you cast iron skillet, melt a bunch of coconut oil or butter in it, get everything hot, cook your bacon, etc) add the salt and leaveners. Again, do this while the blender is running to avoid clumping.

Cook your pancakes as usual, being sure to give the first one to the dog. That's traditional, remember? :)

*The cool thing about this recipe is that you can use ANY grain you want. The gluten in wheat is not very important when making pancakes so even if you aren't "gluten free" you can make these that much more healthy by using gluten free grains. I usually use a mix of oats (steel cut or rolled), brown rice (or white), wheat berries, cornmeal, and whatever else I have around. I like adding a tablespoon or more of sesame seeds to the mix and have been known to use my Arrowhead Mills 7 Grain Gluten Free Hot Cereal. Toasted buckwheat, or kasha, makes an amazing pancake! Quinoa, barley, amaranth, kamut, millet - whatever you have or like, use it! Just use one cup total of whatever grains you like.

These pancakes rock. No one would ever guess that they were whole seeds and fermented milk a mere 6 hours before. They generally don't have a "whole grain" texture, are light and fluffy, and incredibly flavorful. You can vary them any number of ways by adding berries or nuts, changing the grains, changing the sweetner and of course changing the toppings. I personally love jam and yogurt, but won't turn down a pancake with butter and maple syrup either.

I recently used this method to make a cornbread and am excited about branching out into other quick breads and muffins. The batter could also make crepes/tortilla-like-wraps if made thinner. I generally make a double batch and freeze the extras for quick breakfasts later on.

I just can't say enough good about this recipe and method. Give it a try, seriously. It's so versatile, and you feel so accomplished. "I used whole grains, soaked them and I can have a real breakfast all week!"

Coconut Oil Killed my Stink!

2009-03-17T14:09:00.000-07:00

This week's Real Food Wednesday is on natural body care products. This is a topic that I've learned a lot about recently, and feel pretty strongly about. This may be the first in a series of posts, we'll just see how things shake out :)

I have lots of reasons for rejecting commercial body care products. I don't like the chemicals, I don't like the marketing and in general I just don't believe my body needs quite so much "care" as Proctor and Gamble or Walgreens would like me to believe. For years I have been using baking soda and dish soap to do almost all of my household cleaning and this winter redoubled my efforts to remove chemical cleaners from my body cleaning routine as well.

This winter I made the switch to a no-poo method of cleaning my hair. I now use baking soda and apple cider vinegar and my hair looks great! I use only simple soap like Dr. Bronner's or local goats milk soap to clean my body and perfume free dish soap in the kitchen. Since I don't color, style or spray my hair I didn't have to worry about products for those "needs." The last hold out was deodorant.

I've spent a number of years accepting, and even cultivating, my "dirty hippy" persona :) I don't shave, I don't gel my hair, and only recently allowed myself to be held down to have my eyebrows plucked. I'm about as crunchy as you can get this side of dreads, patchwork corduroy or patchouli stank. That doesn't mean I particularly enjoy smelling like B.O. I gave up regular deodorant years ago because of aluminum and other health concerns but never felt my other options were particularly useful. I love all that Tom's of Maine does for this world, but controlling stink is not something they do well. I continued to use their deodorant for years because then at least I smelled like I was trying to control the odor but I certainly wasn't eliminating it.

Over the last few months I have kept running into blogs or flickr posts about homemade deodorant. I figured the universe was trying to tell me something so I did a little more research. Turns out, baking soda and coconut oil, two of my pantry staples that I already knew and loved the benefits of, were the base of most homemade deodorants. Baking soda is an moisture absorber and odor eliminator while coconut oil has some serious anti-microbial properties, as well as being a moisturizer and smelling wonderful. I saw that some folks had trouble with irritation when they used either baking soda alone or in high proportion to coconut oil and one recipe combined the baking soda with cornstarch or arrowroot powder. I took that recipe, added some tea tree and rosewood essential oils for their anti-microbial properties and amazing smell, and ended up with some amazing natural deodorant.

I've been using it for a couple weeks now and not only has it completely eliminated the unpleasant body odor on the days I use it (and leave a faint, pleasant natural odor) but it even has eliminated unpleasant odor on the days I don't use it! Wow!

Homemade Deodorant
1/2 cup virgin coconut oil
4 tbs baking soda
2 tbs cornstarch or arrowroot powder, or more baking soda, or none of the above
2 drops tea tree essential oil*
6 drop rosewood essential oil*

Melt the coconut oil gently in a jar with about 1 cup volume (I used wide mouth half pint jar and think it's a great size) either under hot tap water or in a gentle water bath. Coconut oil melts at about 75 degrees Fahrenheit so hot tap water is all you need.
When the coconut oil is completely liquid stir in the baking soda and corn starch one spoonful at a time. Stir well and make sure to scrape the powders up from the bottom of the jar. Add the essential oils and stir to combine.
As the concoction cools to room temperature stir it occasionally to redistribute the powders, which will sink in the liquid oil. There will be a magic moment when the oil is still liquid enough to stir but solid enough to keep the powder in suspension - find that moment and stir like the devil! If you are doing this during the heat of the summer when room temperature is above 75 use the fridge to cool the deodorant.
Allow the emulsified oil to cool all the way to room temperature (it will probably want to be kept in the fridge in the summer to keep the powders emulsified). To use scrape a pea sized amount onto your finger and rub into your underarms. Your body heat quickly melts the ball of deodorant and you can smooth it all in there. I used a fork to break up the mass of oil so I could easily scrape out the right amount.

*I actually used 1 drop rosemary and 2 drops sweet orange in addition to the rosewood and tea tree, but don't recommend going out and buying those if you don't want to. Any essential oil or blend of oils that you like would work. Make sure they are high quality, natural oils. Go to the essential oil shelf of your local health food store and sniff away. Watch the prices though - some natural oils go for 5 dollars for a small bottle, other for 30 dollars.

I really, really like this deodorant. I won't have to make more for a long time - months at least - but when I do I will probably eliminate the cornstarch all together, and reduce the amount of baking soda even more. The first night I made it I didn't know to stir as it cooled so for the first few days I was using only scented coconut oil. It seemed to work just fine.

There are lots of reasons to avoid buying personal care products at the store. Money is a big one and so is the toxic chemicals used to produce those products. If you didn't read the article I linked to about marketing beauty products to women you should - it's bombastic and may be offensive, but so is how women (and men, to some extent) are seen by the people selling everything from shampoo to toothpaste to tampons. I don't have to support any of that when I make my own out of food products like this. Whatever I can do to support my health and a non-consumeristic culture is more than many are doing. And next time someone asks me what that tantalizing scent is I can say "my armpits."

Bone Soup

2009-03-12T12:59:00.000-07:00

I have been making chicken broth for a couple years now and preach the gospel of bone broth every chance I get. Broth made from animal bones and connective tissue is full of healthful gelatin, minerals and - most importantly - flavor!

There is a reason chicken soup is a food for sick people throughout the world. Studies are showing that the gelatin and other proteins found in properly made bone broth are essential in bone, joint and skin health as well as digestive health. In fact, bone broth is the base of the very popular GAPS diet for healing digestive and related psychological disorders. Every Jewish grandmother knows that chicken soup heals, and as is usually true of grandmother's wisdom, science is finally coming around.

Chicken broth is the most common homemade broth (in my kitchen and beyond) because we tend to collect more chicken bones than beef or lamb bones but I recently ventured into the land of beef stock. Last fall in a fit of panic over the economy and weather I went to a local discount grocery warehouse store and spent 75 dollars on food, including two packs of meaty beef "soup bones". I wrapped them up, threw them in the freezer and haven't looked at them since. Finally this last weekend I decided to get out one pack and make some beef stock.

I decided to roast the bones before boiling them as I had heard that imparted such great flavor to beef stock. I threw the bones in a foil lined pyrex into the oven at 500 degrees until things started looking a little browned and sizzly. The browned bones, their meat and accumulated juices went into a soup pot along with half an onion, a few garlic cloves, a celery stick and some peppercorns. A bunch of hours later this humble start turned into one of the most delicious things to ever come out of my kitchen. I used the same bones with more onion and garlic to make a second batch that was equally tasty. Talk about frugal!

One of the tricks to making good tasting bone broth is to skim the foam off the top as it comes to a boil. You need to start with cold water so the pot comes slowly to a boil and the gelatin can seep out of the bones before it sets with the heat. As the stock boils a foam will rise to the top and this needs to come out. It is a protein foam and is made by the same process that makes the foam on ocean waves. If left in the stock for the long simmer the protein will overcook and impart bitter flavors into the stock. Just use a spoon or a wire strainer to get that foam off.

There are two camps in the debate over simmer time for chicken stock. One camp says that after long simmering times, like 12 hours or 24 hours or longer, the minerals from the chicken bones have fully leached into the broth and it is most nutritious. The other camp says that a shorter simmer time gets enough minerals out but doesn't destroy the gelatin. I'm in the short simmer camp for both gelatin and flavor - I find long cooked chicken stock to not have much of the chickeny flavor I am looking for. I usually simmer my chicken stocks for between 4 and 6 hours, sometimes over two days with a cooling period inbetween simmering periods.

Beef broth, on the other hand, both requires and can handle a much longer simmer. My first batch of beef broth simmered for 12 hours the first day, and another 8 the second day. I simply put a lid on the pot, turn off the heat and let the stock sit on the stove overnight. The next day I turn the heat back on, make sure the stock comes to a full boil for a couple minutes, and then let it simmer away. This may freak out food safety officials, but I figure any bacteria growing in the soup get boiled off the next day. When I am done simmering I make sure to use a quick cooling method like a water bath, to get the stock as cool as possible as quickly as possible. Safety first!

I used some of this fantastic broth to make a very simple soup the other night. I sauteed some onions, celery and carrots in goose fat, seasoned with italian seasoning and herbs de provance, added the broth and cooked some egg noodles in the soup. With broth in the fridge or freezer a tasty, nutritious meal is only minutes away. And you can't beat that with a stick.

Thanks to These Days in French Life and Graygoosie for their gorgeous photos!!

I Had Never Made a Quiche Before

2009-03-05T14:37:00.000-08:00

I had never made a quiche before, but now that I have I will certainly make more! It was a very easy and tasty week night meal. This recipe is based on Julia Child's spinach quiche, but changed around a little bit. I used a store bought crust made with non-hydrogenated oil and organic flour, which I felt was a fine compromise.

Sausage and Kale Quiche

1 prebaked and cooled 9 inch pie crust

1 cup chopped chicken sausage - I had andouille - or cooked spicy sausage
1 1/2 cups chopped curly kale
2 cloves garlic
2 green onions (or a small amount of sliced white onions)
salt, pepper
bacon fat

3 eggs
3/4 cups kefir
3/4 cups half and half (or 1 1/2 cups dairy product of your choice)
1 cup shredded cheese (I used fontina and cheddar)

*Brown the onion and sausage in the bacon fat in a sautee pan. Add the garlic and salt and pepper and sautee another minute. Add the kale and toss and stir to get the fat all over the greens. Cover the pan and turn heat to low, stirring occasionally until kale is wilted and cooked. I deglazed the pan with a little vegetable broth, but water could be used. Cook until the liquid is almost all gone from the pan.
*Combine the eggs and dairy, either with a whisk or in the blender. Salt and pepper appropriately.
*Sprinkle the crust with half the cheese and then lay the cooked kale/sausage mixture in the crust. Pour the egg mixture over the kale and then cover everything with more cheese. I sprinkled a little paprika on top for color.
*Bake 25-30 minutes (mine took more like 35). The recipe says to serve immediately but I prefered the texture and flavor when it was cooled overnight.

I'm imagining the quichy possiblities - spinach and ham, broccoli and bacon, tomato and parmesan... mmmm. Quiche!

Edible Weeds

2009-02-26T14:16:00.000-08:00

Last summer I spent an amazing amount of time learning about plants that produce edible leaves or fruit. I'd always been an animal kid, more interested in dogs and ponies and pigeons than in what was growing in the garden. I was also, however, a food person and as the years have passed I have come to have great respect for the plants that provide me food. Someday I'll have animals that provide me food, but until then I will focus on edible plants. And what easier plants to get food from than the ones you don't have to plant or tend?

I started my journey by learning to identify "garden" plants like raspberries, blackberries, apples, plums and cherries. All of these grow rampant here in Western Oregon and late last summer I collected an abundance of fruit from all of them. From there I started learning about garden weeds, and have started doing some reading on wilder weeds. One of the best resources on weeds, wildcrafting and herbal medicine is Susun Weed. Reading her Ezine and articles have been inspiring and I would love someday to be able to take one of her correspondence classes. There are lots of other great herb blogs, websites, books and classes out there. If you are interested in this then be sure to do you research. There are lots of safe, edible plants to be found out there but plants generally don't want you to eat them. Many have come up with some pretty clever ways to keep you from eating them more than once.

This weekend I went for my first herb walk of the spring. I was out looking to see if the nettles had come up yet and was suprised at how many other little green herbs I found. I can't wait to go back in a few weeks and do some actual harvesting. Everything was too small to harvest this week - you can't harvest little babies! :)

Here's what I found:

Nettles!

Susun Weed considers nettles (Urtica dioica) to be one of the most nourishing herbs. She recommends making an herbal infusion by letting one cup of dried herb steep in a quart of hot water for at least 8 hours. She says that nettle weed "builds energy, strengthens the adrenals, and is said to restore youthful flexibility to blood vessels. A cup of nettle infusion contains 500 milligrams of calcium plus generous amounts of bone-building magnesium, potassium, silicon, boron, and zinc. It is also an excellent source of vitamins A, D, E, and K." Can't really beat that with a stick. I'm going back for nettles again soon!

Melissa!

This herb is called either melissa or lemon balm (or Melissa officinalis if you are into that kind of thing) and has one of the most lovely scents in the plant kingdom. It's in the mint family but has a soft, lemony scent that is perfect in iced tea, ice cream or muddled into your julep in the summer. I've got a big bush of this in my parents backyard, but may harvest some next time I'm up on this trail as well.

Sheep Sorrel!

I first came across sheep sorrel (Rumex acetosella) as a weed in a garden at the school I worked at. The kids all called it sour grass - a very descriptive name. It grows like a weed (er, is a weed, whatever...) here in Western Oregon and has a lovely lemony tart flavor. I like to munch on it on walks, but it would be a wonderful addition to a salad. Apparently it is also a major constituent of the Essiac formula, which is alleged to have cancer curing properties. Fascinating.

Plantain!

Lanceleaf Plantain (Plantago lanceolata) is a close cousin of common or broad leaf plantain (P. major) and both are alleged to have amazing healing powers. Plantain is edible as a salad herb or a cooked green vegetable and is also supposed to be wonderful for stings, infections or inflamation. I've read more than one account of chewed up plantain leaf stopping the pain and swelling of a bee sting, or of it relieving the itch of poison oak. I look for plantain everywhere I go and remember prime locations. I have a feeling it will be worth it someday.

I also found some chives and a cabbage plant escaped from the a community garden I walked by. I watch the perimeter of that garden all summer for escaped produce :)

Learning to identify edible plants is not hard. Check out plant ID guides at the library and spend some time looking around at what's in your own yard or a park nearby. I'm hoping that wild plants can be a significant addition to my vegetable diet this summer. Why not? They're free for the taking and so full of wonderful wild plant energy and nutrition.

My Favorite Coconut Recipe

2009-02-18T15:39:00.000-08:00

The Real Food Wednesday topic this week is healthy coconut recipes. When I was a kid I thought I didn't like the taste of coconut, but it turns out that it's actually the texture of coconut flakes that I don't like. Since discovering coconut milk and coconut oil I have come to really love the flavor of coconuts. I use it for lots of things in my kitchen (which I will share with you here) but, as any of you who have read my blog before know, my all time favorite recipe with coconut in it is - yup, you guessed it. Thai Yellow Curry. Today I'll share with you my two home made thai yellow curry recipes. Both are delicious.
For more information on why coconut is so healthful (and it is) check out these links.

The Weston A Price Foundation article on coconut oil.

Bruce Fife's page on coconut - note, he sells coconut products. Not that his research is bad, just that he's got a reason for you to love the stuff.

Kelly the Kitchen Kop's blog on coconut.

Practical Nourishment - a blog I just found and intend to read often!

I always have coconut milk and coconut oil in my kitchen. I use expeller pressed coconut oil from Omega Nutrition anywhere I would use vegetable oil (which I don't use because it is so high in polyunsaturated fats which are not very healthy for you) because it can be heated to medium/high temperatures and doesn't add a coconutty flavor. Here are a few of my other favorite uses for coconut oil and milk.

*Coconut milk kefir. Just drop kefir grains in coconut milk for a sweet, sour, tangy non-dairy fermented treat. Kefir grains will not grow in coconut milk, but they survive just fine as long as they get switched back into dairy milk. SN of Everything Free Eating propogates kefir grains in dairy milk and then uses them in coconut milk until they die to make kefir for her dairy sensitive kids.

* Coconut oil mixed with butter on popcorn. Oooohhhmmmyyyyyyuuuummmmm. Yeah. It's that good.

* Coconut-chocolate bark made with coconut oil, cocoa powder or melted chocolate and chopped nuts. It's candy, and it's good for you, I swear. I've never added butter or peanut butter, but here's a recipe that is worth trying over at Practical Nourishment.

* Jamacian Beans and Rice. A one pot dish adapted from the recipe in Nourishing Traditions. So, so good!

* Sometimes I eat a spoonful of coconut oil off a spoon to tide me over until I can eat real food. It's amazing how well it works at staving off hunger.

And now onto the meat and potatoes, er, coconut milk and chicken. As you can see from my Mission: Yellow Curry PDX entries I love Thai yellow curry. I love how complex it is, and how filling and soothing. It's wonderful for a hang over, not that I know anything about that sort of thing. Amazingly, it's super easy to make at home as well. Remember, a curry is just a stew. Add what you have, subtract what you don't and adjust the amounts or consistency to suit your tastes or the number of folks you are feeding.

You do need one special ingredient to make Thai curry and that is Thai curry paste. Indian curry powder will not do. My favorite brand, and one that a friend who actually lived in Thailand used, is Mae Ploy. I buy it locally at an asian supermarket, but have seen it at other grocery stores in town. You can also get it here on Amazon. Or just google around, maybe some other, slightly less giant/evil corporation will ship it to your house. Mae Ploy makes other flavors of curry paste and all can be substituted for the yellow but the all have slightly different tastes. Yellow curry is the mildest as far as heat goes, so if you have gringo taste buds be careful!

This is the Thai curry that my friend Rosie taught me to make my freshman year of college. It changed my world. Maybe it will change yours as well.

Thai Curry at Home
* 1-2 tbs virgin coconut oil or flavorless cooking fat
* 1/2 -1 yellow onion, sliced or chopped coarsely
* 1-2 cloves garlic, sliced or minced
* minced ginger (I would use about 1 tbs minced, but if thats too much for you,use less)
* chile flakes (optional)
* 3 or 4 tbs Mae Ploy Thai Yellow Curry Paste
* 1 14 oz can coconut milk
* 2 cups water or chicken stock or a mix
* 2 tsp soy sauce
* 1-3 tsp Thai fish sauce
* 2 frozen chicken breasts or equivalent in cooked meat or cubed tofu (I don't recommend it, but that's how I was taught - it's your dinner :)
* approx 2 cups of any of the following, or a mix: yellow, red or purple potato or sweet potato, washed and chopped and/or chopped carrots and/or chopped eggplant or zucchini and/or cauliflower florets, green beans, frozen peas
* Fresh limes for juice
* a spoonful of brown sugar (very optional)

1. Melt fat in a largeish sauce pot (mine is probably 3 quarts.. not quite a soup pot) and add onions (and carrots if using). Rosie taught me to slice the onions longitudinally, and I still like to do it that way for curry. It doesn't really matter though. Cook over medium heat until transluscent. Add ginger and garlic and cook until fragrant (add chile flakes now, but don't unless you know how spicy your curry paste is). Add curry paste to the cooked vegetables and mash, mix and fry until quite fragrant.

2. Add coconut milk and stir to combine paste in with the coconut milk. Add potatoes (sweet potatoes/cauliflower/other hard veggies or eggplant) and chicken (or tofu, or not) to the pot. Add soy sauce, fish sauce and chicken broth and water to barely cover the contents. You can use chicken broth or water. Bring to a boil, lower heat and let simmer until potatoes are tender and chicken is cooked through. Add soft vegetables like green beans, zucchini or frozen peas later in the cooking process so they don't get too mushy.

3. Add a little lime juice to the curry and taste for seasonings. Adding a little bit of brown sugar will mellow the heat a bit. Soy sauce will deepen the flavor. Hot sauce will up the heat. Serve over rice, and enjoy!

I've also made this thai curry recipe from A Year of Crockpotting in my Rival crock pot. I used Mae Ploy curry paste instead of the chili paste it calls for and it was delicious. Here's my write up over at Recipezaar. In any of these recipes you can adjust the amount of hot sauce or chile flakes, curry paste, sugar, soy sauce or fish sauce to your own tastes. I've taken to adding a little bit of turmeric to the sauce too, to counteract the dulling effect of the soy sauce on the color of the curry. Oh, and some places add basil or cilantro to their curry. You might like that.

Coconut milk and oil are amazingly tasty and healthful food products. It is worth perfecting a few recipes to get those healthful products into your repertoire. And pretty soon you'll be sneaking spoonfuls of coconut oil late at night like the rest of us.

P.S. My lunchbox is a Laptop Lunchbox (www.laptoplunches.com). You can see more of my photos by clicking on the photos and viewing my flickr streams.

Mission: Yellow Curry PDX 003

2009-02-13T10:08:00.000-08:00

I work in the Lloyd District of Portland and there are a lot of restaurants around here. I am always on the lookout for new or previously missed Thai places as I drive or walk around. A couple weeks ago I spotted a place on Broadway at 14th that I had never seen before and promptly ordered their yellow curry. It was amazing, and today I went back for round two. Chai Yo.

Chai Yo
1411 NE Broadway, Portland OR
They don't have a website but their phone number is 503 287 0500

What I Ordered:
Lunch special yellow curry with chicken, medium spicy.

Overall Curry Rating: 5

Service: 5
The restaurant is in a convereted old house and is beautiful inside. A little more white tablecloth than many Thai places. I called my order in today but last time I ordered and waited. Both times the service was prompt, friendly and accurate.

Presentation/Packaging: 5
The lunch special curry came in a pint sized plastic container with a lid with the rice in a separate to-go container. No leaks or spills or anything. Perfect.
Oh - there was a bit of a red oilslick on top of the curry by the time I got it back to my office to eat. This doesn't bother me, but it might bother some.

Portion Size/Pricing: 4
6.95 for the lunch special. It was a goodly sized meal, but none for leftovers. Well, maybe that COULD have been two meals, but this is curry for pete's sake. I blog about the stuff, I love it. I'm not going to say no :)

Flavor Complexity: 5
This is some of the most interesting and different yellow curry I've had in Portland. It is redder in color than most other restaurants, and part of that may be the spice level. When you say medium, they make it medium not the "you might be able to taste a little spice" medium of most Thai places in Portland. Other than that it has a great saltyness and you can detect fishy flavors every once in a while. Lemongrass pops out occasionally but this cook doesn't lean on the sweet like so many others do. This place is worth going to just for the experience of eating this curry :)

Overall Flavor: 4
As noted, it's a bit spicy. I actually got a little sweaty and lightheaded on the medium spice, so order accordingly. The potatoes and carrots were cooked through, and they gave me plenty of rice.

Anything Else I Ordered: n/a
I didn't get anything else this time, but last time I ordered their special avocado spring rolls. If you've never tasted melty hot avocado in crispy fried won ton skin you are missing out!

Last Thoughts:
Chai Yo has a mighty fine curry. I can't wait to have an excuse to go there sometim and try some of their other dishes. With the care and complexity they bring to their curry I can't help but be excited for their stir fry and noodle dishes!

Summer, Preserved

2009-02-12T11:59:00.001-08:00

This last summer was the first year I made a real effort to preserve local produce for the winter. It's not that I had never wanted to before, I just hadn't had the motivation or shelf space to really go for it. Summer 2008 was a flury of activity - picking, harvesting, canning, drying, packaging and enjoying. All of this in addition to working a 40 hour job, doing the daily cooking and walking the dog. Oh, and seeing friends occasionally and sleeping. By the end of the summer I was tired and felt a real kinship with the falling leaves. I wanted to fall and let myself decompose during the winter after a hard summers work.

Well, it's winter now and decomposing is something I'm doing a lot of. Do you even know how many great movies there are on Netflix? But I do make it up off the couch and into the kitchen occasionally and my favorite meals lately have included the fruits of my summer labor. There is something magical about opening a jar you put up months ago and being transported back to that time and place. I am totally sold on this food preservation thing if for no other reason than the flavor.

But there are, of course, a myriad of other reasons. I have tomatoes in my pantry that I bought for a dollar a pound and canned myself. I spent less money than I would have on organic canned tomatoes AND I know exactly where the 'maters came from. They were not shipped across the country, or handled by unknown, underpaid workers who don't really care about my health and well being. They were handled by the farmer and by me. Only.

I also have a fair amount of wild or "feral" plant life in my pantry. All of my berry preserves and a couple treasured jars of plum sauce came from plants running their own lives in local parks. Sandor Katz talks about wild energy of wild plants and how eating them can infuse that natural, uncultivated wildness into your own life. I've been watching those plum trees for years and ended up with about 15 pounds of plums in one evening of harvesting. I recently discovered the dried plums I made from some of that fruit hiding in the back of my pantry. They are delicious beyond what anyone would expect a prune to be.

Another great joy of preserving food is having the ability to trade or give it away. I went to visit friends in Southern Oregon last weekend and brought with me a selection of jars from my pantry. One family got applesauce and hot pepper jelly, another plum sauce and blackberry jam. I was able to trade my blackberry jam with another friend for her wild blueberry jam. Both are delicious, and it's all the more exciting to spread a bit of the Southern Oregon mountains on my toast, knowing my dear friend's energy is in it as well. I spent no money on Christmas presents this year either, I just gave away jam.

I recently dug some roasted red peppers out of the freezer to add to my February First Red Soup. My boyfriend brought these peppers home from a U-Pick farm in early September when our dealing-with-food energy reserves were getting low. They looked pleasant enough, even if there were vast quantities of them. And then someone cut into one. Holy moly! We started refering to them as the devil horn peppers. Never kiss a man who has been chopping peppers, not even if he swears he didn't eat any. You will get capsaicin on your face and it will be painful. We made hot sauce, red pepper jelly, and hot relish. We dried them and gave them away and still there were more in the box! Finally I threw the last of them in a baking dish with the last of the tomatoes, some olive oil and some garlic and roasted it until they were soft and a bit charred here and there. I put the fiery goo into the freezer and said good riddance.

Here is this years rendition of my traditional red soup that I make every February First. The roasted chiles added a wonderful kick, and I was glad to welcome them back to the table.

February First Red Soup To Warm the Belly and the Soul

2009 Version

*7 cups homemade chicken broth and/or water

*1/2 cup roasted red peppers

*1 cup red lentils

*1/2 onion, diced

*3 cloves of garlic, sliced

*1 tbs cider vinegar or wine
*cooking oil (goose grease, coconut oil, or whatever you like)

*mustard seed (about a tsp), curry powder (maybe 1/2 a tsp), seasoned salt, pepper and turmeric to taste/color

*In a 4 quart pot warm/defrost the chicken broth and roasted peppers. Puree in the blender once liquid, if you choose. Bring to a boil and add the lentils. Taste the liquid for salt and adjust as necessary. Once boiling drop the heat to a simmer and allow to cook until the lentils are disintegrating.

*In a separate pot or sautee pan heat the cooking oil and the mustard seed. After a minute or two add the onions and curry powder, salt and pepper and stir. When the onions are soft add the garlic and sautee another minute or until fragrant. Add some turmeric at this time if you would like.

*Deglaze the onion pan with the vinegar, stir to get all the browned bits up and pour the vegetables into the pot of lentils. Taste and adjust seasoning and simmer another couple minutes to combine the flavors.

*Serve with curried or turmericked sour cream and red bell peppers as garnish.

Have you ever done any food preserving? What is your favorite part of the process? Are you delighting in any out-of-season-from-your-pantry goodies this winter?

Mission: Yellow Curry PDX Entry 002

2009-02-05T23:48:00.000-08:00

Entry two in the log of my goal to eat yellow curry at every Thai restaurant in Portland. This time I went straight for the big guns - my favorite Thai place in SW Portland. It may seem like a long way to drive for some, but it's right around the corner from my house... and it's good. Thai Roses.

Thai Roses Cuisine
6840 SW Beaverton Hillsdale Highway - and yes, that is a Portland address.
http://www.thairosescuisine.com/

What I ordered:
Out to dinner with a friend so we got yellow curry, medium with chicken, pumpkin curry with chicken, spicy eggplant with pork and both steamed and sticky rice.

Overall Curry Rating: 5

Service: 5
Despite having gotten take out there a number of times this was the first time I ever had a sit down meal there. Lovely Thai themed decor and a friendly wait staff. They were out of the special we ordered but the waitress was very helpful and apologetic. Someday I'll have a meal at one of their outdoor tables. They're kind of in the parking lot, but they've put in a lot of plants to make it seem more secluded. No complaints on service.

Presentation/Packaging: 4
They used kind of modern, square bowls and plates to serve the food and everything came with a cute little carrot flower garnish. The sticky rice came in a super cool wicker basket.

Portion Size and Price: 4
8.95 for the dinner sized curry with chicken. I'm OK with that.

Flavor complexity: 4
Sweet and salty and pungent. I love Thai Roses' curry! I didn't like the flavor of the pumpkin curry as much but it did have basil leaves in it reminding me that I like that flavor in yellow curry a lot. I wonder if I would have missed the basil if we didn't have the other curry to compare and contrast.

Overall flavor: 4
It was wonderful. The potatoes were cooked through but not mushy, ditto on the carrots. The onion still had some crunch and onion flavor to it, and we even got bell peppers! I could taste a little fish sauce in the curry, but not overwhelmingly so. Could have been a little spicier, but it was very very good.

Anything else I ordered: 3 and 5
The pumpkin curry was a bit of a disappointment. The "pumpkin" was actually squash and it was a little dry and not terribly flavorful. Even with the basil it wasn't quite as tasty of a curry sauce. The spicy eggplant, on the other hand, was unbelievable. I wanted to lick the sauce off the plate after we had scarfed all the eggplant and pork down. I settled for dabbing balls of sticky rice in it. The eggplant were buttery and soft and the sauce garlicky, basily and soy saucey. They used sliced pork which I like, but I've had it elsewhere with ground pork and I think I like that even better. Either way, spicy eggplant rocks! Oh - and it was hardly spicy. Next time I might order that hot instead of medium.

Last thoughts:
It may be the forgotten SW, but it's worth a drive out there. There's a New Seasons around the corner so you can pretend like you are grouping errands together. Everything I've had from these guys has been great and they are always friendly and sweet. I love Thai Roses!

Kraut 101

2009-02-04T13:00:00.000-08:00

I've become known in some circles as a bit of a fermentation guru. I'm no Sandor Katz, but I've done a fair amount of pickling and have a pretty decent understanding of the science of fermentation. I have been asked time and time again for help with the basics of making sauerkraut and was disappointed with some of the other kraut recipes out there. I developed this little tutorial to help the beginner kraut maker. I think it's easy, and I know it works. Give it a try.

At it's most basic sauerkraut is cabbage and salt, left to ferment into a tangy condiment. The fermentation is completed by a wide variety of bacteria that turn the sugar in the cabbage into acid that in turn preserves the cabbage from spoilage. The live bacteria in unheated sauerkraut provide immense benefit when eaten including better digestion, increased gut health and an immune system boost. I recently read that the healthy bacteria that live on your skin and in your gut outnumber your body cells 10 to 1 - doesn't it make sense to make sure they are the right kind of bacteria?

Here are my instructions for making one quart of jar fermented sauerkraut. This is a great size to start with because it is big enough for everyone to try it a couple times, but not enough that you feel overwhelmed. After your first batch, make a second and try some variations. I'll list some of those down at the bottom.

Phase one: Shopping
1. Find good quality, organic green or purple head cabbage. Look at the grocery store or at farmers markets. Even non-organic ones will ferment just fine, but buy organic if you can. One 8 inch diameter head will be more than enough, but it's not a bad idea to pick up more than you think you'll need. You can use leftovers in a recipe like this soup from Nourishin Days. Weigh your cabbage at the grocery store and remember this number.
2. Buy good quality sea salt. I use Real Salt and highly recommend it because it is "real" salt with micronutrients, but isn't going to break the bank either.

Phase two: Cleaning and Chopping
1. Get a quart size mason jar with a lid. You can either buy 6 or 12 of them new with lids, or find one at a thrift store and buy new lids and rings at the grocery store. You might even have some at home already. Wash it well with soap and hot water.
2. Core and chop your cabbage. Commercial kraut is often made with really finely shredded cabbage. I prefer a little bigger shreds.. more or less as small as I can get them with a knife.
3. As you chop your cabbage stuff it into the jar.. with no salt.. this is just for measuring. Don't pound it in, just stuff it as stuffed as you can get it. When the jar is full pull the cabbage out into the biggest mixing bowl (or a big cooking pot) you have. Add another handful or two of shredded cabbage.

Phase three: Salting and Packing
1. Remember how much your head of cabbage weighed at the grocery store? Do a little mental math estimating how much of the cabbage you used, and multiply that by 2 tsp per pound. For example, your cabbage weighed 2 pounds and you used 3/4 of the head. You used 1 1/2 pounds of cabbage so you need 3 tsp of salt. Figure out how much salt you need and sprinkle that over the cabbage. No need for a calculator here, just guestimate.
2. Toss the cabbage and the salt with your hands, squeezing and crunching the cabbage. You should start to see some liquid coming out of the cabbage. Keep kneading and squeezing, thinking about how yummy and healthy this kraut is going to be and how much you love your family for a couple minutes. Alternatively, you could pound the kraut with a wooden pounder or meat tenderizer for a shorter period of time like Jungleen is doing in this photo from Cheeseslave. Either way, the point is to allow the salt to draw the liquid out of the cabbage. Don't give yourself carpal tunnel syndrome, but do allow the cabbage to get wet.
3. Taste the cabbage.. it should be distinctly salty. If it is pleasantly salty, add some more salt. If it makes you want to gag add some more shredded cabbage :)
4. Rinse your hands off and start packing the jar. Use a wooden spoon or wooden meat pounder or small ladle to help you really pack the cabbage into the jar. You want to push any air bubbles out. Pack it in a small amount at a time until the cabbage is within 1/2 an inch of the bottom of the threads of the jar.
5. Push on the kraut one last time. If liquid isn't rising above the level of the cabbage then make a brine of about 1 tsp of salt per cup of water (this should also be too salty to be pleasant but not salty enough to make you gag). Slowly pour a little of this over the cabbage, giving it time to sink in, until it is at or above the level of the cabbage.
6. Screw the lid on tight and put in a warmish place in your kitchen. On top of the fridge, the cupboard above the microwave, etc. Do the dishes and leave the cabbage for the day.

Phase Four: Fermenting and Ageing
1. The next day, open the lid of the jar. I recommend doing this over the sink. Did the jar "pop" or fizz when you opened it? If not, that's OK. Taste the kraut. Put the lid back on and put it back in the warm spot.
2. Repeat the last step every day until it truly is popping of fizzing. Taste it again, and then put the lid back on and put that jar in the fridge.
3. Let it sit for at least one more week and then test again. Sour yet? No, let it go anothe week. In the fridge this stuff will last for weeks and months and just get sourer and sourer. Most likely after 2 weeks in the fridge it will be quite sour, but since you've been tasting it the whole time you know what it's like and when you are going to enjoy eating it. I recently found 6 month old kraut in my fridge and it was sour like vinegar pickles. The salty cabbage will eventually get sour, you just need to give it lots and lots and lots of time if thats what you want.

Phase Five: Making the next batch...
Repeat from the beginning, adding some of your sauerkraut juice to the cabbage as your are packing it or instead of the brine.

Once you get the hang of this kraut method you can start making variations. Adding caraway or juniper berries is pretty traditional, as is sliced or grated turnips or carrots. Other vegetable or seasoning options are as limitless as your imagination. Try onions, garlic, seaweed, greens like kale or brussels sprouts, roots like burdock, horseradish or beets. Try mustard seed, dill, curry or hot peppers of some sort. If you add garlic, ginger, chiles and onion you have kim chi but if you use oregano, chiles and cumin you have cortido. I recently made an apple cranberry sauerkraut that is so wonderful. Experiment, it's your kraut!

Please feel free to post comments with your kraut questions, your kraut experiences and your favorite flavor variations. Your question may end up in my future post, Kraut FAQ :)

Mission: Yellow Curry PDX, Entry 001

2009-01-30T12:41:00.000-08:00

I have a goal to eat Thai yellow curry in every Thai restaurant in Portland, Oregon. This may be a herculean feat considering Yahoo local lists at least 116 Thai restaurants in Portland, but I'm going to try. And considering I could eat thai yellow curry once or twice a week, every week, it will be a pleasant challenge.

I've decided to get serious about this goal and start recording my findings. This blog seems like a perfect place to do that first, because it is convenient for me, and also because thai food usually falls within the realm of real food. Thai food is chok full of vegetables, small amounts of meat and seafood, healthy spices and herbs and good fats like coconut milk and peanuts. Fish sauce, a wonderfully nutritious condiment, is almost ubiquitious in Thai cooking. It is also relatively easy to get gluten free meals at thai restaurants becaue of the use of rice and rice noodles (though I would certainly talk to a waiter about possible cross contamination if that is an issue for you). Thai restaurants in America certainly use polyunsaturated vegetable oil for their stir frying and deep frying but if you are good about using healthy fats at home you can probably budget for the occasional Thai meal. If you cook Thai food at home you can make it super healthy with coconut oil, grassfed meat and wild seafood.

Without further ado, I give you Mission: Yellow Curry PDX, Entry 001. Kesone Thai Lao Bistro.

Kesone Thai Lao Bistro
2600 NE Sandy
http://www.kesone.com/menu.htm

What I ordered:
Lunch special yellow curry with eggplant instead of potatoes, medium spicy, with chicken. Also an order of fresh summer rolls.

Overall Curry Rating: 2

Service: 5
The restaurant is very nicely decorated with a pleasant waitstaff. It only took a couple minutes for my order to come. Looks like they have a full bar set up, in case you want Makers Mark with your stir fried eggplant some evening.

Presentation/Packaging: 1
I actually would give this a 3 on presentation but a 1 on packaging. They piled the rice neatly, a nice touch, but it was surrounded by curdled, brown yellow colored vegetables. They also packed the lunch special in one of those clear plastic, hinged, to go containers which, as usual, broke and I ended up with half of my curry inside the plastic bag. Hot, liquid things should not go in those plastic containers! They just don't hold up!!

Portion Size and Price: 4
I paid 6.50 for the curry and 3.50 for the rolls. The curry was a perfectly decent size portion so I'm happy.

Flavor complexity: 1
It smells alright, but it just doesn't have much taste at all. Kinda turmericky. Yeah. Just say no.

Overall flavor: 2
I mean, I ate it all. It's still curry. But as noted before, it was curdled a bit, and had no complexity of flavor at all. The eggplant was well cooked (this can be a problem sometimes) but the chicken was almost overcooked. And the rice wasn't even that good - like they used "long grain rice" instead of jasmine or basmati.

Anything else I ordered: 3
The summer rolls were quite nice - hard to mess those up though. I've had more complex peanut sauces before, but it wasn't unpleasant in anyway.

Last thoughts:
I might give these guys another try - if nothing else was open anywhere else in town. I guess I would like to see how they handle stir fry and noodle dishes, but this curry does not bode well for them.

Goose Trois - The Potatoes

2009-01-23T12:20:00.000-08:00

This is the part I was really looking forward to - potatoes fried in goose grease. It was everything I wanted and more.

To fry potatoes:

1) Cook a goose and render out 1 pint of goose grease.
2) Spend years seasoning a cast iron skillet until it has a perfect patina of use and fat.
3) Spend months developing the perfect, highly nutritious seasoning salt.
4) Peel, chop and cook potatoes in aforementioned grease in aforementioned skillet with aforementioned seasoning salt.

Easy, huh?

I used russet potatoes here and they turned out great. I do like yukon gold potatoes, and you don't even have to peel them. Use whatever you have avaliable.

I seasoned the potatoes, as I season all potatoes with my special, soon to be patented (not really, but maybe - know a patent lawyer?) chile grill salt. It is based on SN from Everything Free Eating's seasoned salt as well as about a million other recipes on Recipezaar. It is chok full of healthful spices and has such an unassuming flavor it can really be used anywhere. Sea salt includes many trace minerals not found in table salt. I use Real Salt, but other sea salts are just as good. Chiles and turmeric are full of antioxidants and cancer fighting nutrients especially needed when grilling or frying food. I use mostly New Mexico chile powder to keep the scovilles down, but a little Arbol or cayenne would kick up the heat nicely. I find Spice Hunter New Mexico chile powder at my local grocery stores. Kelp is a wonderful source of iodine and other sea minerals and doesn't add any noticeable flavors to this mixture. Onion and garlic are also known for their anti-biotic and anti-cancer properties. You just can't go wrong with this stuff!

Alyss' Chile Grill Salt
2 tablespoons sea salt
2 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons mild chile powder, or a mix of mild and hot powder
1 tablespoon turmeric
2 teaspoons kelp powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

Combine everything in an empty glass spice jar. Makes about 3/4 of a cup.

I served my potatoes with homemade sauerkraut, ketchup and cheese. Like I said, it was everything I wanted and more.

I'll Fritter Anything

2009-01-21T16:57:00.000-08:00

I just got home from a 9 hour day. I don't want to cook. I don't even want to think. I know if I eat pizza, though, both my wallet and my body will be sad. What's a girl to do? There are plenty of options out there for getting some real food into your body pretty quickly but it's best if you've done a little work first Most "quick" recipes actually require some prep work, and all quick recipes require you to have at least thought about them beforehand. And then there's zucchini fritters - but more on that later.

My two main go-to meals when I've got no time are quesadillas and soup. Soup is filling, warming, nutritious and ever so forgiving. Kelly the Kitchen Kop blogged about the nutritional wonders of bone broth as well as gave us directions for making stock, and Carrie over at the Thrifty Oreganic wrote up some great "recipes" for throw together soup. I like to sautee up some onions and spices, throw the meat and broth on top and let that simmer while I change my clothes or take the dog for a walk. Then I'm a little more relaxed when it's time for dinner. With leftover rice, canned beans and decent tortillas in the fridge quesadillas take only minutes. I especially like both soup or quesadillas topped with sour cream and homemade sauerkraut.

Today, though, I want to share with you a brilliant fast food dish - zucchini fritters. I originally got the idea from the Joy of Cooking and have been making it for years. The great thing about this recipe is that really all of it, except the egg and the cast iron skillet, are optional.

Zucchini Fritters
* Necessary:
Grated zucchini
Sliced or grated onion
Egg
Flour (white or whole wheat)
Salt and pepper
* Good to have, but optional:
Cooked brown rice and/or bread crumbs and/or crumbled crackers
Crumbled feta cheese or some other crumbled or grated cheese.
* Even more optional:
Dried green herbs (try herbs de provance or thyme)
Chopped fresh green herbs or green onions.

*Grate zucchini and toss with onion. Add in rice or cracker crumbs and salt, pepper and and any other add ins like cheese or herbs. Crack an egg in the bowl and mix around real good. How much egg you need depends on how big your zucchini is (and how big your egg is) - I would say one 1 cup of zucchini to 1 egg, but that is a very rough guestimate.

*When the veggies are all incorporated in the egg then add a tablespoon of flour. Mix around until thats incorporated and then maybe add another. I would guess I usually add 3 tablespoons of flour to one egg, but again, rough guestimate. If you don't add enough flour the fritter doesn't hold together as well, but it's still totally edible.

*Heat up your cast iron skillet (what? you don't have a cast iron skillet?? Then get off the computer and go buy one. At a thrift store. Seriously.) and melt some fat in it. I like bacon grease, or coconut oil. We're not deep frying here, just lubing up the pan.

*When the skillet is good and hot dollop the batter into the hot fat. When the bottom is nicely browned and the top starting to look dry flip it. Cook till the bottom is browned. Serve with ketchup, ranch, mustard, chutney or ice cream. Not really, but maybe... :)

These guys really take just a few minutes, and just a few ingredients. The eggs and zucchini are real food with real nutrition as is cheese if you use it. Brown rice, especially if cooked with bone broth, and the onions are also nutritious. Using white flour is probably actually nutritionally preferable in this case because we aren't doing anything to neutralize the phytates. It's only a couple tablespoons split up between the fritters so I don't worry too much about it. And we here at Real Food, My Way love frying things in good fats like bacon grease and coconut oil. We know we're getting a good nutrition boost when we cook food that way.

Remember - this "recipe" is really, really loose. Don't have zucchini but do have lots of leftover rice? Make rice fritters. Have leftover cooked greens? Greens fritters. Mashed potatoes? Mashed potato fritters! Don't forget to add the bacon to those ones! Tuna or canned salmon? Call them "cakes" instead of "fritters". No food in the house except frozen corn and an egg? Sounds like corn fritters to me.

Goose Deux - Apple Chestnut Stuffing

2009-01-17T18:13:00.000-08:00

After carving this is how much meat one goose gives. It certainly isn't a turkey. I heeded the advice of food writers and made sure to make lots of stuffing and lots of gravy to fill up my guests' plates. Many of the recipes I read also said to actually stuff the stuffing into the goose. I know people have been doing it for forever, and geese are not as prone to nasties as chickens, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. In the end, I'm glad I didn't because the stuffing wasn't completely full of goose fat so was a relatively decent foil to the greasy meat.
This recipe made 8 or 10 cups of stuffing but that turned out to be a goodly amount for the meal. It meant that we had lots to offer dinner guests that evening, and plenty of leftovers as well. Next time around I might even increase the bread cubes, add some more onion and just make a little more.

Of course, use sourdough or soaked flour bread if that is important to you. I used white bread, which is lower in phytates than whole wheat, and figured the whole meal was nutritious enough to call it good :)

Apple Chestnut Stuffing for a Goose
Serves 6-8

*7 cups cubed rosemary bread (or good quality white bread, but then add rosemary along with the other herbs)
*1 onion, diced
*3 celery ribs, chopped
*heart and liver from one goose, optional, or use chicken giblets. (I chose not to use the gizzard because it was so tough, but you might)
*1/2 cup butter
*1 tbs dried, ground sage, or 3 tbs chopped fresh sage
*1 tsp or so salt and pepper
*1 tsp dried thyme or 2 tsp fresh thyme
*1 tsp dried rosemary if you didn't use rosemary bread, or more fresh.
*2 granny smith apples, diced (recipe called for 2 cups, I just used two apples)
*1 can of chestnuts, rinsed and broken (can was probably 13 or 14 oz, or maybe 2 1/2 cups chestnuts. It was an odd sized can but the recipe could absorb considerbly more or less chestnuts depending on what you have avaliable)
*1/2 cup or so goose steaming liquid or chicken broth

Either dry the bread cubes over night or toast them in a low oven until quite dry and slightly golden.
Sautee the onions and celery in the butter until soft, 7 to 10 minutes. Add the chopped giblets, sage, thyme and salt and pepper and cook another three to five minutes or until the giblets are cooked through. Add the apple and the chestnuts and cook another 3 minutes or until the apple is just starting to get soft.
Combine the vegetables with the bread and mix thoroughly. Moisten the mixture with a little goose juice and pack into a crock pot or large casserole dish. I cooked mine in the crock pot on high for about two hours, but suspect it would take just around an hour in the oven to make sure everything is hot and the edges are starting to get a bit crispy. Some recipes used an egg to bind everything together but I found that occasional mashing and stirring of the stuffing the crock pot allowed it to bind a bit so it wasn't just bread cubes mixed with vegetables.

My Goose is Cooked

2009-01-16T16:53:00.001-08:00

I finally did it. I've been talking about it for years. I finally cooked my Christmas Goose. Never mind that I didn't get around to it until January 11, he was still my Christmas Goose.

I bought a 10 pound Schlitz goose from a local meat market. Turns out Goosey is not local at all but they claim they are free range. Schlitz does offer a no-antibiotics brand of goose, indicating that their "plain" geese are treated but I still suspect that geese are a bit more humanely treated than most other fowl. I paid six dollars a pound, but I found the same damn bird at another market for a dollar a pound less two days after I bought Goosey.

I did a lot of reading over the last few months to figure out how to cook a goose. I read this article in the New York Times from December 2008, and this one from NPR in December of 2007 and this one from the Schlitz people themselves. In the end I decided to use Julia Child's method from The Way to Cook. It's a steam-roast method that sounded like the best way to get the fat out in a useable form and still have a tasty bird to eat. Speaking of fat... the first step when wishing to prepare a goose is to buy a new bottle of dish soap. Holy dear lord are they greasy lil buggers! :) From the moment I opened the plastic bag until well into the clean up and leftover-eating process I was up to my elbows in goose grease. On the upside, my hands have never been so soft ;)

Here is Goosey right out of the bag. I removed close to two cups of fat pods from inside the cavity and from extra trimmed skin as well as the liver, heart, neck and gizzards. I trimmed the wing ends off (look at those long wings! This ain't no chicken - he can fly!) and used those and the neck to make some stock. The giblets went into the stuffing. I do think he's a handsome little, er, big bird.

The first step was getting Goosey ready for his steam bath. I pricked his skin, rubbed him with lemon and salt and then put him breast up in the roaster with a couple inches of water. I put the roaster on the stovetop, brought the water to a boil and let him steam for an hour. This method allows the fat to render out and both not drown the meat and still be useable. After the steaming I drained out the liquid from the roaster and got THREE CUPS of fat!!

After the steaming I cleaned out the roaster and strewed some vegetables in the bottom. Goosey went back in, breast down, along with a cup of goose steaming liquid and a goodly splash of wine to spend two hours roasting in the oven at 350. Then the lid came off, the goose got flipped and another half hour to brown, with a little basting for good measure. More fat and liquid came out during the roasting ready to made one heck of a tasty gravy.

I used goose fat and butter to make a roux and then used the liquid from the roasting, seasoned with garlic powder and onion powder to make a gravy. Along with the meat and gravy I served an amazing Apple-Chestnut stuffing and some of my apple-cranberry sauerkraut. The consensus among the dinner guests was that goose is darn tasty, but very fatty. You really don't get much meat off a goose, but what meat you do get is very flavorful.

The real bonus of cooking a goose is the amount of "extra" food I have. Three cups of fat, plus maybe five cups of cooking liquid and another half cup of fat from that, all the fat from the cavity to be rendered and the carcass for more stock and probably more fat. Wow! Oh, right, and all the fat I wiped up off my counter and knives and hands and cutting board... haha. Did I mention they are greasy little buggers?

And for the rest of my life I get to tell the story of cooking my goose ;)

Tips for Real Food on the Cheap

2009-01-14T14:04:00.000-08:00

As promised, here is a list of tips for incorporating real food into your diet even on a budget. This post is a part of Anne Marie (of Cheeseslave) and Kelly's (of Kelly th e Kitchen Kop) Real Food Wednesdays. I think this post is a little different than many of the others in this week's carnival, but it's something I've been meaning to write up for a while.

As I mentioned in my last post the first step to changing your diet is to make a prioritized list of what you want to change first. Use that list to determine which of these tips to tackle first. This list is more or less in the order of my priority list, but don't let that sway you and your priorities.

Fats and Oils

Switch to healthy cooking oils and incorporate animal fat into your diet. Vegetable oils are high in polyunsaturated fats and are regularly rancid by the time they get to your kitchen. Source and learn to use coconut oil, lard, bacon grease and ghee for your cooking.

Switch from canola or “vegetable” oil to expeller pressed coconut oil. It does not have the flavor of coconut but is a healthy, saturated cooking fat. Buy and use butter. Pastured or raw butter is amazingly healthy but even store butter is better for you than margarine or vegetable oil. Save and use bacon grease. It adds a lovely smokey flavor to any and all cooking, and is the best for cooking eggs.

Read labels of any store lard before buying it. Every one I’ve seen contains hydrogenated lard and preservatives that are not traditional in any way. Save fat from pork roasts and learn to render your own lard if you can’t find it from a farmer.

Healthy Meat and Bone Broth

Price grassfed meat locally and online. You may be able to find deals, especially if you can buy in bulk. Meat freezes beautifully so this is an excellent option.

Buy bony cuts of meat and save the bones to make stock. Stock, even made from store bought chickens, is full of healthy gelatin and minerals. Save bones, skin and gristle along with vegetable trimmings in the freezer and make stock on the weekends when you have time.
Use your homemade stock to cook rice and beans. The gelatin and minerals make this cost effective vegetarian fare so much more nutritious. And it tastes delicious!

Eggs and Dairy

Buy the best quality eggs you can find. This is the first thing to find from a real farmer, you’ll never go back to store bought eggs again. Free range chickens that eat bugs and growing grass have vastly more vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids in their eggs. A good breakfast of eggs with bacon or sausage means that you and your loved ones will have the energy to get things done in the morning and not need to eat again until it truly is lunch time.

Learn about raw milk regulations in your state or region. It may be easier to get and/or cheaper than you may have thought.

Look for raw cheese and butter as well as grassfed cheese and butter in stores and online. Organic Pastures just came out with a pastured butter and Kerrygold Irish butter is always from grassfed cows. It's deep yellow color just screams about it's nutrition. Use regular store butter for cooking and as much eating as you can, but get these slightly more expensive products as real, nutritious treats.

Learn to make yogurt, villi, buttermilk or kefir. Culturing even storebought milk restores some of the nutrition that was lost through pasturization. You can use these cultured milk products in the Blender Batter recipes noted below!

Nutritious Plant Foods

Learn to make sauerkraut or other fermented vegetables. Sauerkraut is surprisingly easy to make, costs pennies per serving and goes miles towards improving digestion and overall health. Here are my easy directions for making sauerkraut, and a good article about why lacto-fermented vegetables are so darn healthy. P.S. I’m currently working my way through a quart of apple cranberry kraut made just like the instructions but with the addition of 2/3 of a tart apple, shredded and 1 cup cranberries, quartered, added to the cabbage before fermentation. Wow, so so good.

Master Sue Gregg’s blender batter pancake recipe. This recipe grinds whole grains in your blender with buttermilk, yogurt or kefir and soaks them over night to reduce phytic acid and make the grains more digestible. They can be made with any grain so are easily adapted to gluten free diets, can be made different flavors and can be made in big batches. Once cooked the pancakes or waffles can be frozen and reheated for a quick breakfast or lunch in the future.

Learn to shop seasonally for produce. Yes, this means eating kale and turnips and cabbage in the winter, but it also means eating tomatoes and peppers when they are cheap and taste good. Last summer I bought bell peppers at the farmers market for 5 for 3 dollars and they were delicious! This winter my mom bought one green bell pepper for 99 cents, and it was not very flavorful. It’s too expensive, and it’s just not worth it.

Winter vegetables lend themselves to roasting or creaming. Master the art of oven roasting root vegetables and you will never bemoan the lack of tomatoes in February ever again. Greens like kale, collards and mustard greens are so jam packed with nutrients it’s a crime they are so cheap. Learn to steam-sautee the greens with garlic and your family will thank you.

Learn to do some simple preserving like freezing or making berry jam to save some of the summer harvest. Frozen tomatoes cook up great, and you know exactly where they came from and just how cheap they were.

Sweets

Watch sugar content and make sure sweets have nutritive value. My general rule is that if a recipe for a non-dessert item has sugar in it, I simply leave it out or at the very least halve the amount. Small amounts of maple syrup or honey can be used, but they certainly aren’t necessary. When choosing sweet treats for your family choose ones that have real food products in them. Ice cream is much better nutrition-wise than white flour cookies, and fruit can be a great dessert. There are lots of recipes for desserts that include nuts, fruit, maple syrup, molasses, shredded vegetables, eggs, milk and other foods that provide actual nutrition, not just empty sugar and white flour calories.

Good luck, and I'd love to hear how any of these tips fit into your kitchen.

Starting Out with Eating Traditional Foods

2009-01-14T09:00:00.000-08:00

Eating traditional foods means eating foods the way humans have eaten for thousands of years, eating foods that were around before foods were made in factories or heavily refined. It means eating healthy, natural animal and vegetable products, eating animal fats and bone broths, eating fermented vegetables, focusing on sourdough breads and generally eating real food. It's really not weird, but it is a little outside the mainstream in many American households.

Anne Marie of Cheeseslave.com is hosting a Real Food Wednesday Blog Carnival and so I decided to write a bit about how to eat traditional foods on a budget. When most people first decide to eat real food they run into one major problem: real food is expensive! We quickly realize that eating a healthy, traditional diet rich in animal fats, properly treating grains and a variety of cooked, raw and fermented vegetables goes a long way towards making your family more productive, happy and generally healthy but man, what a price tag! You can buy Hamburger Helper and Campbell's soup for pennies, especially with coupons and in store specials. Grassfed meat, raw dairy and organic produce are rarely part of a blue light special and always come at a premium price. A good diet lowers long term medical costs, increases your energy and ability to do the work and play you want to, and can increase children’s learning and future abilities. How to get this magical diet on a budget (and we all have a budget) is the key to making the lifestyle change stick.

Here is my collection of ideas for transitioning to a more traditional diet and for doing traditional foods on the cheap. This post will explore a couple of ideas to get yourself ready to transition into a traditional diet. My next post will be list of hands in the dishwater, feet on the ground how-to tips on making your kitchen healthier and your wallet a bit happier.

First and foremost: Educate yourself. There are lots of free resources for information out there to help you learn about traditional diets and their benefits. Check out books like Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions, Jessica Prentice’s Full Moon Feast, Sandor Katz’s Wild Fermentation and Nina Planck’s Real Food: What to Eat and Why from your local library. If they don’t have them ask about interlibrary loan.

Read articles on websites like the Weston A Price Foundation site, the Price Pottenger Nutrition Foundation website, and Nourishing Our Children. You can also join online communities focused on traditional diets. The yahoogroup Discussing Nourishing Traditions and the forums at Cooking Traditional Foods are some great ones but there are LOTS more out there.

When you are ready to start making a real change in your kitchen, then make two lists. One of things you already do “traditional food style” in your kitchen and one of things you really want to do better. The first list may include things like “We like butter”, or “I make a point of shopping at farmers markets” or “We choose low sugar foods whenever possible.” Little things make the biggest difference.

Make the second list no more than one page, or maybe 30 items long to start with. Once you have brainstormed the list then prioritize it. This will become your roadmap for converting your kitchen. You can’t do everything at once so you need to focus on some aspects of a traditional diet before you can focus on everything else. For example, some families have prioritized access to and consumption of raw milk. They make a point of joining a herdshare or a raw milk car pool. They learn to make yogurt and kefir and drink lots of raw milk. Other families, due to finances, health, or just preference, prioritize soaking all grains or learning to make their own fermented vegetables or beverages. Your first priority may simply be learning a couple simple, from scratch meals and scheduling family dinners. You can’t do it all so choose your battles. You’ll enjoy your new foods more if you aren’t feeling overwhelmed by everything else you haven’t done yet.

In the next post I'll lay out my in the kitchen tips for making real food work in your budget.

My Story

2009-01-13T12:53:00.000-08:00

I grew up eating more or less real food. My dad had gone to culinary school and enjoyed cooking with real ingredients and interesting flavors. Apparently my first "solid" food was chioppino. I remember eating lots of broccoli and Indonesian fried rice and lots of real meat in real gravy. I certainly ate my fair share of top ramen and Campbell's soup and also suffer from an emotional addiction to Velveeta macaroni and cheese, but all in all it was mostly real food.

When I graduated from high school I became a vegetarian as part of my exploration of eastern religious thought. The friends I made in the college dorms were all vegetarians and we had lots of good years learning to cook, exploring vegetarian cuisine and hosting lots of dinner parties. I learned to make Thai yellow curry, to enjoy whole grains like kasha and bulgar and how to cook spaghetti sauce for a party of 18.

I was never a very "good" vegetarian, though. I would get drunk and eat summer sausage, or get sick and "give in" to a can of chicken soup. I missed the flavors of meat, and felt that eating all that brown rice and tofu couldn't be the be all and end all of nutrition. Sometime during my junior year in college I found the book Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon at the health food store. I went back to the store three or four times to sit in their cafe and read the book because I didn't have the money to buy it.

The principles laid out in that book seemed to make so much sense to me. Sally Fallon and her co-author Mary Enig use the work of researchers like Weston A. Price and Francis Pottenger to lay out a healthy, traditional-type diet for modern Americans. Price studied the diets of groups who had never eaten "modern" food in the 1930s and discovered key components of all traditional diets. Pottenger conducted research on the effects of nutrient deficiency on health and disease. Both concluded that high quality meat, saturated fats, vitamin rich dairy and/or seafood along with nutritious vegetable matter comprised the most beneficial diet for humans. It simply made sense to me, despite my years of vegetarianism. Meat, fat, and dairy are high octane fuels, vegetables and grains, despite their many benefits, are mostly fiber and carbs.

During the next year I moved more and more away from vegetarianism. I continued to eat my brown rice but chose not to eat tofu anymore. Eventually I quit the ruse all together. I claimed that I was "giving up vegetarianism to become a hedonist". It was another year before I had my own kitchen to cook in how I wanted, but I certainly started down the path of hedonism that first summer. Hamburgers and fried chicken never tasted so good!

In the years since then I have learned more and practiced more cooking a traditional diet. I am still a long way off from an "ideal" diet, if there even is such a thing, but I like how I feel, I like what I eat, and I think it is as good as I can do right now. This blog will be an occasional foray into what's going on in my kitchen. I hope to post recipes, musings and goings on. I'll also show off some of my other favorite real food bloggers, 'cause there are a lot of them out there.

Happy eating, and go drink some cream!