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

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

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!

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?