Care and Feeding of Your Kefir Grains

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

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!

Soup Weather

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?

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.

Nothing Says Lovin' Like Something From the Crockpot

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!

Egg Tacos, Ole!

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!

Roly Poly, Daddy's Little Fatty

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

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.

I Tempted Her With Pheasant

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

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!