by Jennifer Higgins on 11/23/10
Gravy
used to disgust me. I liked my turkey and potatoes dry as a kid. I'm
not sure if this was a personal issue with stunted development or a
commentary on the gravies I was served. Gravy is now the best part of
any roasted meat meal, including the Thanksgiving behemoth, the turkey.
It
is possible to get very sophisticated about terminology regarding
gravy. "Gravy" is a thick, flour-based sauce. Potentially disgusting.
A reduction sauce, or deglazed stock is thinner, more flavorful and all
around more delicious, not to mention easily Paleo. Although we will
serve this at our Thanksgiving table, and we will serve it out of a
gravy boat, and we will call it gravy, it is not truly "gravy", it is a
deglazed, reduction sauce. And it is better.
The first thing
about making gravy is that if you are one of those super-stress freak
type cooks who focuses more on the end result than on the process you
need to get a hold of yourself. The gravy will be made after the turkey
comes out of the oven when all the relatives and guests are peppering
you with offers of "help" and/or asking when the food will be served.
You will be tempted to rush and give in to this outside pressure. Don't
do it. The final moments before a large meal with a roast of meat are
sacred. Everyone but your true assistants steps aside. It is nice if
the meat carver is a different person than the gravy maker. Do as my
grandfather always wanted, and warm your gravy boat or dish on the back
of the stove. Nothing takes a gravy downhill faster than pouring it
into an ice cold dish.
If you begin the roasting
process with that Holy Trinity of herbs (sage, rosemary and thyme) mixed
in to softened butter, you will not have any worry regarding the flavor
of your sauce. I slather this herb butter under the skin of my turkey
as well as all over the top before it goes in the oven. Turkey skin is
hardly attached to the meat, so this is easy. I use this melted butter
as part of the pan drippings that I baste the turkey with during
cooking. Once I remove the turkey form the roaster to the carving board
I have a large pan full of delicous drippings. If the turkey was
particularly succulent and there is a large amount of fat, I pour some
of it off. I keep about 1 cup of fat in the roaster and all the other
liquid and drippings. If you let your turkey get too dry during cooking
you might need some additional stock or water. You can have additional
stock on hand by simmering the "giblets", (the neck etc... that is in a
little bag inside your turkey usually) in some water while the turkey
is roasting. I like about 1 1/2c of liquid to 1c of fat, but to be
honest, I usually just leave EVERYTHING in the roaster and get started.
I take 1/2c of drippings out of the pan and put them in a pyrex
measuring cup. I add 1/4c of arrowroot powder and I mix like mad until
there are no lumps. Arrowroot is not as forgiving as flour about
yielding up its lumps later on in the process. My grandmother's edition
of The Joy of Cooking asserts that arrowroot will make the most
delicate textured sauce! This gem of a book also reminds us that
arrowroot has a neutral flavor and, unlike flour, does not need to be
cooked to remove its "rawness". Arrowroot also has a calcium-base which
makes it nice for the Paleo crew. Now, add your arrowroot mixture back
into the roasting pan which you should have on a burner with the heat
on medium. Whisk vigorously! At this point, your sauce is finished
except for the addition of salt if you want it. I sometimes throw some
onions, garlic, carrots, white wine etc... in around my roasting meat.
You can use this as part of your sauce by removing all chunks of
vegetables and blending them with stock before returning them to your
roasting pan.
by Jennifer Higgins on 11/20/10
Combining
new and unusual flavors is one of the most rewarding expressions of
culinary artistry. Our global food world has opened up a whole new
array of tastes and ingredients to us in the kitchen. This is exciting
and makes for some delicious recipes, but it also allows us to engage in
some eating habits that are extremely suspect in terms of
sustainability. The presence of international flavorings certainly
takes us a long ways away from the flavor experiences of our hunter
gatherer forebearers. We are approaching the Thanksgiving holiday.
There is no shortage of writings on the meaning of Thanksgiving, food
and the politics of settling the United States. Personally, I am
grateful for a day of family, food, rest and feasting and I believe it
is a wonderful day for many of us. However, I also spent many years
learning about the history and politics of European settlers and the
Native peoples they displaced. This blog is also not the place for an
evaluation of that shocking chain of events. This blog is about food
and hunter gatherer food traditions. We have robbed the native people's
of the United States of many of their food traditions, either by
hunting their food supply to extinction, forcing them off the land that
sustained them, or by wreaking ecological havoc with water usage
practices and invasive species. On this Thanksgiving Day, when we are
supposed to be honoring the eastern native peoples, the Abenaki and
their neighbors, for saving the helpless, starving pilgrims let's take a
moment to be true to the food traditions of those people. Today, we
begin with that deep red staple, the cranberry. Cranberry sauce is on
many tables only once per year. For some of us it comes jellied in a
can and for others we get more adventurous combining cranberries with
cinnamon, cloves, oranges and sugar. I'd like you to think about how
cranberries would have been used by the Abenaki (or maybe the pitiful
pilgrims). Cranberries grow in a swamp where there are nice cold
winters. They are primarily a crop of New England. Gathering
cranberries is a spectacularly fun activity. There are no thorns like
raspberries, you don't have to bend over like strawberries and there
aren't zillions of flies and mosquitos like blueberries. In my
experience you paddle down a lovely blue river on one of the final
brilliantly sunny warm days of the season in your canoe. You paddle up
to the bushes alongside the river and you reach out and pick the
cranberries and toss them into your basket. If you are brave and
adventurous you might climb out of the canoe and cautiously pick your
way into the bushes hoping not to misplace a foot and end up waist deep
in really cold water!
If we put our minds to the ingredients
available to the Abenaki or other early New England settlers (who had
used up all their ship stores) we quickly realize that cane sugar would
not be available. Citrus fruit was certainly not around, nor were the
spices of Asia and Africa. However, gelatin was available in great
quantities as well as three wild sweeteners: birch syrup, maple syrup
and honey. I made mine with birch syrup.
The Roots of Cranberry Sauce1 bag organic cranberries, washed
3T powdered gelatin (this obviously is not the form the original Thanksgiving kitchen would have possessed)
1/4-1/2c birch syrup
Clean water
Cook cranberries in 1/4c water on low heat until they soften and burst (about 15min).
You
can either press the cooked cranberries through a sieve (wait til they
cool) or you can dump them in a blender. I used the blender because I
want to eat all the skins and seeds. In my blender I added the birch
syrup. Blend until smooth. In the pot you cooked the cranberries in
add 1/4c water and heat so that you can dissolve your gelatin in it.
Stir up your gelatin until it dissolves and then pour the blended
cranberries and sweetener in with the dissolved gelatin. Stir well.
Use any type of glass mold or dish that is smooth. If you are worried
about removing the sauce from the mold you could line the mold with
saran wrap, but let the sauce cool a little before you pour it in. Pour
the sauce into the mold and refrigerate for several hours. The flavor
of my sauce is deep, rich, and tart, but it is actually less sour than
many of the overly sweet canned sauces I've tasted.
Honor the hunter gatherers that gave us this holiday.
by Jennifer Higgins on 11/10/10
Mayonnaise
is creamy, delicious, rich and…Paleo. For those of you missing your
creamy dairy, make some mayonnaise and it should make you feel like you
ate something creamy and cow-like. Mayonnaise is not supposed to be
sweet and cloying. It should be complex and delicious.
Homemade mayo
will include raw eggs, olive oil, mustard, sea salt and an acid like
raw apple cider vinegar or lemon juice. The use of raw eggs calls for a
conscious search for clean food. There is nothing dangerous about raw
eggs if your own immune system is decently functioning, and if your eggs
are from a farm that cares for its animals and grounds. Remember that
salmonella bacteria is all around us. Kids and old folks or those with
autoimmune diseases are the ones who suffer seriously from food
poisoning. It doesn’t make sense for us to try to sterilize our food.
It makes sense for us to repair our immune systems and to restore the
microorganism populations that kill the pathogens in our guts.
Homemade
mayo with raw eggs is an extremely enzymatically-rich sauce. Another
way to improve your homemade mayo, to turn it into a super food, is to
use liquid whey. Liquid whey is a blip in the Paleo approach since it
is derived from dairy. Whey is the clear liquid you see on top of
yogurt. Using whey enables you to create a lacto-fermentation process
such as is used to make traditional saurkraut or Korean kimchi. Anybody
who says hunter-gatherers did not eat fermented foods does not
understand lacto-fermentation. This is different process from
yeast-sugar fermentation which results in alcohol. In
lacto-fermentation the process derives from lactic acid producing
bacteria. These are many of the bacterial strains people pay money to
get in a probiotic nutritional supplement. Lactic acid producing
bacteria are the microorganisms that create an inhospitable habitat for
pathogenic bacteria like salmonella. You can make your own
lacto-fermented foods without whey, but it is an extremely hit-or-miss
process which terrifies many people because we have lost the intuitive
sense, as well as the food-crafting techniques, to recognize when our
fermentation has gone correctly versus when we have cultivated the wrong
types of microorganisms. Therefore, please keep in mind that you
ABSOLUTELY CAN LACTO-FERMENT WITHOUT DAIRY. Using liquid whey makes the
process easier.
Today I added 1 teaspoon of chipotle puree to my
homemade mayo so that it made a creamy, spicy dressing for some mahi
mahi chunks I had grilled the day before. Here is the recipe:
2 egg yolks + 1 egg at room temperature (or warm the blender jar)
¾
c olive oil (don’t use the extra virgin, green oil, use the cheaper
variety or your may will have a decidedly olive oil flavor)
1/2t sea salt
2T raw apple cider vinegar
1/2t Dijon mustard
1T whey
Place
all ingredients except olive oil in your blender and blend on low until
well mixed, drizzle in the olive oil extremely slowly while the blender
is running and then do the same with the whey. Leave at room
temperature for 6-8 hrs, then refrigerate. It will last a few weeks.
If you don’t use whey, refrigerate your mayo right away and it will only
keep a week or so.
To make your own whey you have two choices.
1.
If you have access to raw milk, pour raw milk into a quart jar and
leave it for 2-3 days at room temperature until it separates. The clear
liquid is whey.
2. Purchase a large container of unflavored, plain,
whole milk, organic yogurt. Dump the whole thing into a thin, linen
dish cloth, tie the dish cloth up and hang it from a hook at room
temperature over a large bowl. Over about 24hrs all the whey will drain
into the bowl. In the dish towel will be a cultured , cream cheese
that if you have anyone in your life who eats dairy , will be a lucky
beneficiary.
by Jennifer Higgins on 10/28/10
Within the Paleo community and the traditional food ways community there is an on-going "conversation" regarding dairy. Strict Paleo followers obviously do not include dairy. In general, I suggest to my clients that they avoid dairy with the exception of butter/clarified butter which is an incredibly valuable, rare source of the short chain saturates. I also am intimately familiar with the work of Dr. Weston A Price and his nutrition research as well as the experience of thousands of present day families and individuals who have introduced raw dairy into their diets with profound health benefits. Where does that leave us with regard to what to do with dairy? It leaves us in the usual position when it comes to our food. How do you respond to it? How do you feel, behave, perform, look? How is your health? How is your body composition? What happens to you when you leave dairy out of your diet completely for six weeks? Be ruthless in your assessment. Don't make excuses for yourself. For example, dairy is impactful enough on my 12 year old son's acne that even he has begun to turn down ice cream on occasion. He doesn't say to himself "Well I'm a pre pubescent adolescent boy, I'd have zits anyway."
One thing is absolutely certain about dairy. If you are going to eat it you must consume it in it's original, nutritious form. Raw, alive and complete. No pasteurization, no homogenization, no skimming, no heating or cooking. You can culture it (raw cheese, raw sour cream and raw kefir). If you can't get your dairy in this form, DO NOT EAT IT.
Dr. Tom Cowan, M.D. is the author of The Fourfold Path to Healing, a brilliant look at many common illnesses with the adherence to Ancient Food Ways (although not Paleo ways) as one of the four healing paths. He likes to tell the following story: One day his son asked him, "Do you know the definition of an adult?" "What is it?" asked Dr. Cowan. "A person who likes vegetables" replied his son. Dr. Cowan uses this story to illustrate a vital point about nourishing a growing body-namely that human beings likely possess an intuitive sense about nutrition to which most of us have lost our connection. In the case of vegetables as fodder for children the issue of the necessity for fat-soluble nutrients is raised. When we reach adult hood our metabolism becomes more proficient at turning plant nutrients into forms usable by humans. As children, or when we are older, or if we have a metabolic deficiency, we are not proficient at using plant nutrients for our requirements. Dr. Cowan encourages parents (or those of us who are older or who have illness) to derive excellent nutrition by running the vegetables through a cow first!! Raw cream, butter, organ meat, bone broths come out the other side. For all you muscle-adding athletes out there you should think of yourselves as growing children. A child's body is in the process of building proteins, collagens, connective tissue, hormones, bone and muscle just like yours. All the original strong men knew this too. They ate raw cream, raw whole milk and raw beef and eggs (WITH THE YOLK).
by Jennifer Higgins on 10/28/10
Red
palm oil has not had the rebirth that coconut oil has been fortunate
enough to experience. It may be that the taste is more unfamiliar to
westerners and a little stronger. Red palm oil is a nutrient dense fat.
It is loaded with beta-carotene (hence the color) as well as coenzyme
Q10 and other benefits. You can read the story of red palm oil
here.
There
is a legitimate concern amongst folks who take environmental stability
and sustainability into account when they chose their food supply that
the Paleo diet is not an earth-friendly diet. In its correct form, the
Paleo diet should be the MOST sustainable diet. Including a variety of
foods that are produced in marginal ecological zones where conventional
agriculture is not possible should be a desire we all have as Paleo
eaters. Red palm oil needs to be on our radar. You can read more about
it
here.
I think that African cooking is not on our radar at all! It doesn't
have the cache of Asian cooking or the popularity of other ethnic
cuisines. We miss out on some very Paleo food concepts if we don't look
at many of the food traditions of African nations. I purchase my red
palm oil at our international grocery store in Tucson and it is very
affordable. In the pictures is the brand I found, and the nutrition
label.
A study from right here in our own home state, looked at
the dietary intake of red palm oil and its effect on the nutrient intake
of breastfed babies: "Dr. Canefield of the University of Arizona in the
US discovered that mothers who nursed their babies provided their
babies with more vitamin A and carotenes by pre- paring their food with
red palm oil than the control group which took beta-carotene capsules."
For
a recipe that includes red palm oil and is derived from several African
traditions sign up for the mailing list at www.paleofoodlist.com!!
This month's recipes coming soon...
by Jennifer Higgins on 10/28/10
Green
peas aren't really Paleo. They are legumes. But in my personal
nourishing food universe, I try my best to eat freshly shelled peas once
a year. My uncle makes fun of me, "You have to pay extra to get the
peas that you have to do the work of shelling! Why not just buy the
frozen ones?" He is right about the price actually, but I still don't
care, because he didn't mention taste and effect on the soul. These
days, if I get to New England at the right time of year, I take some
money to Crossroads Farm and get a big bag of peas in the pod. Peas in
their pod are a powerful reminder of the fact that there are some foods
that just cannot be available all year around. There are only a couple
weeks where gardens produce peas in their pod. As a kid we ravished the
pea vines in my grandparents' garden gobbling them up right there in
the row. We had to take turns shelling the peas on the front porch with
my mother, grandmother and aunts so that they could be blanched and
frozen. It was one of those tasks that was sort of boring, yet
reassuring and peaceful. It was kind of a test to see how big a pea
could get before, upon popping it in your mouth, you realized it had
turned bitter instead of sweet. Eating peas from their shell once a
year is a reminder to me that growing food is special, seasonal food is
special, local food is special and family food traditions can be
special. This past summer I wanted my sons to experience what I felt.
The picture is my oldest son, shelling peas with my grandmother at her
kitchen table. Eating green peas once a year may not be strictly text
book Paleo, but it encompasses so many important aspects of eating well
that I'm not throwing that baby out with the bath water just yet!!
by Jennifer Higgins on 10/28/10
At
our recent "In the Paleo House Event" we served up several different
Paleo party foods. This one was a little skewer of marinated lamb,
heirloom cherry tomatoes and cracked green olives. Traditionally, a
Middle Eastern lamb with lemon and oregano would be served with a yogurt
sauce. Ours was served with a tahini sauce. When I make a tahini
sauce I don't like to use lemon juice. The flavor is too harsh. I put
some sesame tahini in my Vita-Mix. If I use 1c tahini, I add about 1/4c
water and 1/4c olive oil. Then I add the grated zest of about 2-3
lemons. That is a nice powerful lemon flavor without the sharp acid
sourness of lemon juice. Tahini and olive oil take quite a lot of salt
as well, so I would add about 1T of grey, sun-dried sea salt.
by Jennifer Higgins on 10/28/10
It
seems that lots of people find themselves stuck in a rut when they
start eating Paleo. I think there are a bunch of reasons for this. The
first one is that many people want any old excuse to go back to eating
the same cereal/bagels/toast they were eating for the previous twenty
years (although they never complained about having to eat the same thing
every day then?!?!). Another reason is that many people think that
breakfast is supposed to look a certain way. For example, when I tell
people I eat stew for breakfast they think that is CRAZY because stew is
for dinner not for breakfast. Why?? There is no good reason for that
at all. In fact we should eat our most nourishing food earlier in the
day. Another reason people feel stuck in a rut with their food is
because we are so ADHD and overstimulated that we no longer notice and
appreciate subtle differences in flavors and textures. Let's talk
asparagus. During asparagus season I like to have it a few times per
week, but it is different every time. Sometimes I grill it and then
drizzle it with olive oil. Other times I make a little Hollaindaise
sauce for it. Sometimes I steam it and serve it with garlic butter.
Once in awhile I steam it with matchsticked carrots and make a little
chili/miso sauce for it. The photo shows lightly steamed asparagus
sprinkled with truffle salt. The truffle salt was a beautiful gift. It
tastes nothing like regular salt, and asparagus with truffle salt
tastes nothing like asparagus with olive oil and lime juice. Allow
yourself the opportunity to see your food in all its wide range of
beauty. Develop an appreciation for the more refined and subtle nuances
of your food. My Dad had a stock answer for my sisters and me when we
whined about being bored, "Only boring people get bored." Hmmm, I won't
go so far as to accuse you of being boring if you are complaining about
being bored with your food, but my father would.
by Jennifer Higgins on 10/28/10
Hello
again. The long hot Sonoran summers drain me of all zest for life and
creativity. The end of this inferno is in sight and I'm ready to write
here again! As I've mentioned before, my definition of "Paleo eating"
always returns to the hunter-gatherers. During the Tucson summer my
spirit creeps north where it hides in a mossy, shady spruce forest near a
cold little splashy brook. In those parts of the world we have three
hunted/gathered sweeteners: raw honey, maple syrup and birch syrup.
Almost nobody has had a chance to taste birch syrup. You have to order
it from Alaska or Canada. This is not as unreasonable as it sounds
unless you have made a commitment to eating locally because I'm sure you
eat many foods every day that come from that far away. It would be
better to order birch syrup from Alaska than to eat unfinished honey
imported from China (see
this NPR story).
Birch
syrup is more precious than maple syrup. It takes about 40 gallons of
sap from a maple tree to make one gallon of syrup. It takes nearly 100
gallons of sap from birch trees to make 1 gallon of birch sap. It can
be done sustainably and without harming the trees. Check out the
management of the sugar bush that produces
Kahiltna Gold
birch syrup. They let the trees rest two years between tappings!
Birch syrup is less sweet than maple syrup and tastes faintly of
molasses. It has a similar nutrient profile to maple syrup including
manganese, magnesium, iron and some B vitamins, but birch syrup has more
than double the nutritional content. The one drawback, as far as I'm
concerned, about birch syrup is that it is primarily fructose as opposed
to maple syrup which is sucrose. Isn't it fascinating that trees have
different types of sugars!
Birch syrup is delicious and pretty
soon I'll give you a couple recipes. The basket in the picture is
perhaps my favorite possession. It was made by a Penobscot man in Maine
using the
traditional brown ash.
It is strong as an ox and beautiful. I grew up watching my
grandfather use his Penobscot-made pack basket for all his hunting and
fishing trips. No plastic, no fancy fishing bags. I feel honored to
have this beautiful, utilitarian basket. Brown ash trees, birch trees
and sugar maple trees are found in similar ecological zones.
by Jennifer Higgins on 10/28/10
It
might have been easy for me to go Paleo because I've never really liked
baking. I did the whole homemade wholegrain bread thing and mountains
of "healthy" muffins for play groups. I never liked it. Didn't like
all the stirring, the messy flour everywhere and the sticky dough in the
bowl that has to be washed out. Give me vegetables to chop and meat to
roast and I'll cook all day, but baking? Nahh. At this point though,
it is really important for my household to remain grain-free (and potato
starch-free and rice flour-free and free of all the other crap in
gluten-free mixes). I also like to keep my troops happy (when
appropriate) and I love to use food to celebrate important moments in
life, SO baking delicious things has a place in my world.
If you
read advice on cooking for others or hosting dinners I think it is
generally accepted that busting out an experimental concoction is not
recommended. I do get the good sense in that, having made some pretty
disgusting stuff in my time. But I feel like it is a test of your
friends and families' character to use them as guinea pigs. I feel as
though if you have someone in your life that seems like "good folks"
then they will tolerate and perhaps, on occasion, benefit from kitchen
experiments.
Last week it was Crandall's birthday. Crandall
absolutely qualifies as good folks, so I though it was safe to
experiment on a birthday cake. Plus I had extra insurance because I
knew he'd be worn out from lifting a whole bunch of heavy weights
beforehand, so there was a chance his judgement would be impaired.
Plus, Crandall then qualifies as a Power Athlete so full-fat dairy is in
his Paleo cupboard which makes desserts a reasonable undertaking.
Experimental, Chocolate-Coconut Birthday Cake
1/4c coconut oil
1/4c coconut butter (I use half oil and half butter to cut the noticeable after-taste of straight coconut oil)
1 1/2T vanilla
1 1/4c Rapadura (this is a specific sweetener. It is dehydrated crushed sugar cane. Sucanat is NOT THE SAME.)
3/8 cup RAW (I used Vivapura brand) cacao powder
1/4c coconut milk
9 eggs
3/4t salt
scant 3/4c SIFTED coconut flour
3/4t aluminum-free baking powder
Melt
coconut butter and oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add cacao
powder, Rapadura and coconut milk and mix together. Remove from heat and
set aside. In a bowl, mix together eggs and salt. Stir in cocoa
mixture. Combine coconut flour with baking powder and whisk into batter
until there are no lumps. Pour batter into greased 8x8x2 or 9x9x2-inch
pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes or until knife inserted into
center comes out clean.
This time when I made the cake I topped
it with hard-whipped heavy cream (I add 1T Dr. Bernard Jensen's gelatin
dissolved in 2T hot water to the cream) mixed with shredded coconut, and
6T maple syrup. However, it turns out this cake, because of all the
eggs and coconut flour, is like a firm sponge cake. It is a little bit
on the dry side (sorry Crandall). It has a firm, even texture and is
not at all crumbly like a cake. Next time I will make a hot cherry or
raspberry fruit compote. Then I will slice the cake thinly and pour the
hot fruit sauce over the cake and then put a little whipped cream on
top. This will make it more like a traditional trifle and this cake
recipe will hold up perfectly for it.
by Jennifer Higgins on 10/28/10
I
LOVE to try new fruits and vegetables and yesterday at the farmer's
market I tried and purchased some loquats. These are members of the
rosaceae family (see my post on
Jan 22
about the importance of these seeds). According to the citrus man at
the farmer's market, loquats don't last long once picked and the season
is short too. Ahhhh, the hallmark of a real paleo fruit! They also
require a little bit of effort and mess to eat. They are about 1 1/2"
in diameter with a slightly fuzzy skin like a peach. The skin is
flavorless, but a bit tough so some people slip it off although I ate
it. The flesh tastes like ripe apricots and their is a giant cluster of
seeds in the middle. I chewed up and swallowed a couple of the seeds
which had the characteristic almond-like flavor of the cyanide-bearing
rosaceae family. I overheard one lady at the farmer's market who
characterized the typical American approach to food. The citrus man was
incredibly kind and tolerant, but I had to restrain myself from giving
her an impromptu lecture! He gave her a loquat to taste after showing
her how to slip the skin off and expose the flesh and the seeds. She
said it tasted good, but was too much work to bother with and she didn't
purchase any. This lady looked like she spent more time getting
dressed to go to the farmer's market than me and my kids put together. I
can guarantee her car is very clean, she has a well maintained yard
(probably done by a staff) and probably sets the table each evening for
dinner with matching table ware, but she can't be bothered with a
45second process so that she can eat a sweet, juicy, local, fresh fruit.
Get your priorities straight people!! Do you want the farmer to wash,
peel, and separate your food for you? Do you want him to cut it up
into bite size pieces? Maybe you want him to hand feed you and then
clean up afterwards?
The kids got loquats, turkey kielbasa, half an egg, cherries and bananas with pumpkin seeds and coconut for breakfast.
by Jennifer Higgins on 10/28/10
My
table is blessed this week with gifts of fruits and vegetables. First,
from Mateo's client Daniel, came organic roma tomatoes, heirloom yellow
and purple tomatoes, cucumbers and jalapenos. Later from Mike T. came
fresh rosemary, mint and one of his last lemons. If you've never eaten
any of the giant, lumpy, bumpy, strangely colored tomatoes you're
missing out. They should just be sliced up (don't refrigerate them
because the flavor gets reduced), sprinkled with a little sea salt and
slurped. I had thawed some mahi mahi for the grill before Mike gifted
me with the herbs and lemon, so I made a marinade/sauce for the fish. I
put 1/4c balsamic vinegar, 1/2 oliveoil, leaves from the 10" stalk of
rosemary and all the zest from the lemon (not the juice) into my blender
and made a thick vinaigrette. I marinated the fish in it for about
20min before grilling it. While the fish was grilling I poured the
leftover vinaigrette/marinade into a saucepan and brought it to a boil.
I reduced it for about 7min while the fish was grilling. This takes
care of the raw fish factor and makes the balsamic a little sweeter.
You end up with a thick, lemony/sweet/herb sauce for your fish.
Gratitude Mike and Daniel.
by Jennifer Higgins on 10/28/10
Mmmmm.
A new Paleo delight. Crandall found it. A Pan de Higo Almendrado,
from Spain. Translated as Fig Almond Cake. My kids said it was in no
way a "cake", but that does not diminish it's deliciousness. It is
basically mashed up figs pressed with whole almonds. The ingredients
are: Pajarero Figs and Marcona Almonds. That is a good ingredient list.
12. Get to know your food supply. Know your hunters, your butchers, your gatherers, your storekeepers and your farmers. Know what foods are produced in your geographical environment.
