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This post is part of Fight Back Fridays, hosted by Food Renegade and the Bare Cupboard blog carnival.
iTunes is playing “Gonna Fly Now” on my computer as I write this post. You know that song. It’s the one from “Rocky” where Rocky Balboa is beating up sides of beef and jogging up the Philadelphia Art Museum’s steps and holding his hands up in victory at the top. It’s the theme song of determined underdogs everywhere.
photo by radiospike photography on Flickr
My victory once again focuses on a great meal review from my hard-to-please son, John. Earlier this month, I wrote a Fight Back Fridays post about two wonderful in-season foods: strawberries and kale. Michelle commented, “Haha I thought this was going to be a recipe made with strawberries and kale! That would have been a new one.” I took this as a personal challenge and served Strawberry Green Smoothies for breakfast this morning:
Strawberry Green Smoothies
Toss a handful of washed, stemmed, organic strawberries in the blender. Add a raw (pastured only, from chickens you know and farmers you trust, please) egg yollk, a splash of milk, a few drops of flax oil, a drizzle of whey and a few pieces of frozen banana. Turn the blender on. Add a washed, destemmed organic kale leaf and let it blend for a while until all the pieces are invisible and the smoothie is nice and green.
I never expected John to like it. I wasn’t even going to pour him a cup, but he insisted. And he liked it. He said if he was drinking it in the dark he would have never known it was green. And the kale I used was thick, meaty, red Russian kale, too.
It’s amazing and wonderful how quickly our tastebuds adapt to healthy foods if we give them the chance. My mother-in-law is visiting again this week and I learned last time to not allow that to be an excuse to eat poorly. This time, tempted with eating out, grabbing a Starbucks and ordering in, I was able to easily say no. I just have no interest in eating that stuff anymore. I’m spoiled. I’m also educated. The thought of what is in those non-foods kills my appetite as surely as the idea of drinking gasoline.
It’s Friday, I’m fighting back, and I’m gonna fly now!
No, I’m not crabby, dinner is!
Teenaged boy missed the bus this morning and needed a ride in to school. I was back in plenty of time to make UFOs for breakfast. You know UFOs, but maybe not by that name. It’s a hole cut in a slice of bread, then the bread is fried with a raw egg in the hole. You might know them as Johnny Jacks, Egg in a Hole, or any number of other names. We call them Unidentified Frying Objects, or UFOs.
When I got back, I noticed the milk I had set out several days ago had turned to curds and whey! YAY! I’ve started to filter it through muslin. So, I’m adding some individual cheesecakes to the menu for later this week, and putting some veggies on the shopping list to begin lacto-fermenting.
I’ve really been looking forward to lacto-fermenting vegetables. I remember when I was very, very young there was always a jar of homemade pickles on the table at dinnertime. It was just put on the table as part of dinner, like salt and pepper, bread and butter and a glass of milk. I don’t know exactly why we got away from it, maybe Mom stopped making them when she had rheumatic fever, or when I had scarlet fever, or when she became disenchanted with homemaking in general. Each batch tasted slightly different depending on the season and the herbs on the windowsill. Perhaps that’s one thing that attracted me to NT to begin with: some distant food memory of fermented foods at the dinner table.
It was a wild afternoon. Many jobs that needed to get done didn’t get done, and many others demanded immediate attention when I thought they could wait. I didn’t get home until 6PM and we were all quite hungry. I had already stirred together and baked a pan of gingerbread for dessert, and I had a couple roasted red bell peppers hiding out in the fridge. I put some carrots on to cook in butter while I made crab cakes out of claw meat, cilantro, onion, egg, bread crumbs, dijon mustard, and just a pinch of cayenne. It was all pretty good, but the highlight was the Red Pepper Sauce. When I tasted it to adjust the seasonings, I thought to myself, “You can have all the other stuff, just give me this red pepper sauce and a spoon!”
Red Pepper Sauce
2 large red bell peppers
1 small clove garlic, peeled and chopped
2 teaspoons coconut oil, melted, but not hot
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
2 sun-dried tomatoes packed in olive oil
Set the bell peppers right on the oven rack and broil until the skin turns dark. Turn and continue to cook until all sides are seared. Put the peppers in a paper bag and roll down the top. Allow to cool 10-15 minutes. Cut open the peppers and remove the stem, seeds and accumulated juice. The skin should slip off easily. Put peeled peppers in blender with garlic, coconut oil and balsamic vinegar. Blend on low speed until incorporated. Add two sun-dried tomatoes and the oil that clings to them and blend again until smooth. Adjust seasonings. Best served at room temperature. Makes a little more than one pint.
I started off this morning with a nice, big pot of porridge simmering on the stove. Last night I soaked a cup of rolled oats overnight in a cup of water to which I’d added 4 tablespoons of kefir. This morning I boiled a cup of water and added in the oats, water and all. It cooked up in about five minutes. I had a steaming bowl with pasture butter and honey. It was a bit tart, something unusual for oatmeal, but not unpleasant.
While watching TV last night, I shelled a pound of raw peanuts and put them to soak in some salt water. This morning I poured off the salt water and they are drying on the lowest setting of my oven. Today I started another batch of chicken broth and make some clarified butter for my super-allergic daughter. The tuna salad sandwiches were very, very good at lunch.
I was really looking forward to the Coconut Chicken Soup I’d picked out for dinner. I’m a big fan of coconut milk and enjoy it frequently in my coffee. Sadly, I was called in to work at the last minute and couldn’t get dinner on the table. One of the teens made some whole wheat spaghetti with Newman’s Sockerooni sauce and a big, green salad. I’m sure it beat the socks off what I had. One of the downfalls of a new cooking methodology, I suppose, is that the youngsters aren’t trained in the revised food prep yet and therefore unable to assist in an emergency. But, nothing is lost, I’ll just serve the planned soup later in the week.
