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I love berry season. It is way too short, in my book. Someday I definitely want several berry bushes in my yard both for us and for the lovely birds they attract! Right now, where I live, blueberries are in season. I try to buy enough blueberries to dry and keep on hand all year, but the big baskets we get at the farmer’s market rarely get as far as the dehydrator before they get eaten!
At only 81 calories a cup, blueberries are relatively low in calories for the flavor punch they pack. They also have anthocyanins, which provide their color. Anthocyanins work together with vitamin C to neutralize free radical damage to your tissues and work with your body to repair collagen for healthy skin and connective tissues. Unfortunately, anthocyanins don’t survive the canning process, so be sure to freeze or dry (at low heat) extra berries. Blueberries have even more antioxidant action than red wine, so the teetotalers among us needn’t feel shortchanged!
Of course, berries are delicious in pancakes and muffins, but can turn your food strange colors when they are cooked. In acids (lemon juice, vinegar) they can turn reddish. In base combinations (baking soda), they can turn an even darker blue. If your muffin batter has too much baking soda, the blueberries will turn the batter greenish blue! But, to preserve the vitamin C in the berries and keep the B vitamins from leaching out, it’s best to eat these gems raw. Wash berries immediately before eating to protect them from spoilage.
We use dried blueberries to combat diarrhea and urinary tract infections. A tea of a few teaspoons of dried blueberries steeped in boiling water can be enjoyed a couple times a day. The tannins in the blueberries stop diarrhea very effectively, and the acids in the berries will keep bacteria from adhering to the urinary tract and colon (much like cranberry juice, but tastier!) There has been some research indicating one of the bacteria blueberries repel particularly well is our old nemesis, E. Coli.
Blueberries are a classic pairing with peaches, which are just coming into season here. I made this salad for lunch the other day. It combines fresh peaches with chicken leftover from making stock, some standard salad ingredients and is topped with blueberries. The dressing complements the fresh flavors with cinnamon and lemon.
Peachy Chicken Salad
serves 6 as a main course salad
1 head organic green leaf lettuce
1 thinly organic red onion
2 small organic cucumbers
3 ripe organic peaches
4 cups cooked pastured chicken
1 1/2 cups organic blueberries
For dressing:
juice of 3 organic lemons
rind of 1 organic lemon, grated
1/2 cup extra virgin organic olive oil
1 teaspoon flax oil
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
2 teaspoons organic cinnamon
1/4 cup creme fraiche
Combine the dressing ingredients in a pint jar, screw the lid on tightly and shake to combine. Set aside.
Wash all fruits and vegetables and chop small, leaving blueberries whole. Chop chicken into small pieces. Toss all fruits and veggies together in a bowl with chicken except blueberries. Serve salad, stream dressing over and top with blueberries.
A word on organic ingredients: Blueberries and peaches are on the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen list, onions are on the clean fifteen. I would not use the rind of a non-organic lemon for eating.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop. Hey, lookie there…blueberries!
When the budget is maxed out, I have three choices when it comes to serving meat: buy grocery store meat, go meatless or stretch my grassfed meat. I believe too strongly in the importance of the good fats, CLA and protein of grassfed meat to do without. We do have many meatless meals, but once a day, I think a small portion of meat is important. I can’t bring myself to buy meat from the grocery store anymore. The Food, Inc. quote has become fact for me: If people knew where their food came from, they wouldn’t eat it.
So, stretching our lovely, delicious, grassfed meat we buy is a high priority for me. Most cooks and cookbooks recommend a quarter pound of uncooked beef per person. In our house, we aim for half that amount several times a week. One of the ways I’ve found to stretch a piece of meat is the stir fry. Here’s a very basic guideline, a recipe and some options:
Stir Fry for Four
1/2 pound meat, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 tablespoon each naturally fermented soy sauce and cooking sherry
1 large onion, cut in half from root to stem and sliced
1 pound raw vegetables, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 tablespoon each minced garlic and ginger
2 teaspoons arrowroot powder
3 tablespoons homemade stock
3 tablespoons coconut oil
Soaked or germinated brown rice, cooked
The basic procedure is very simple. Cut up all your veggies and meats and have them ready before beginning. Heat a large skillet on high heat. Toss the meat in a bowl with soy sauce and sherry. Mix the arrowroot with the stock in a small bowl. By now the pan is really hot, so add 2 tablespoons of coconut oil and half the meat. You want to keep it moving in the pan for about 2 to 3 minutes, until it is just barely cooked through. Remove that batch of meat and add the other half. When that batch is done, remove it and add the last tablespoon of coconut oil to the pan with the onions. Stir around a minute, then toss in the ginger and the vegetable. Stir around for about two minutes and add the garlic. Return the meat to the pan. Stir the arrowroot mixture and add to the pan, stirring around until thickened and glossy. Serve immediately over hot cooked rice.
We like to use these meats:
- scallops
- shrimp
- pork tenderloin
- beef
- chicken
The vegetable choices are nearly endless, but some good ones are:
- asparagus – pencil thin to cook quickly and not be tough
- cabbage
- carrots – shredded or sliced very thinly
- celery
- green beans – those tiny skinny ones cook just right in a stir fry
- mushrooms – any kind. White ones go well with chicken, portobello with beef, etc. I add these with the arrowroot so they don’t lose too much consistency.
- bell peppers – these add color to the finished dish
- fresh pineapple – adds a lot of sweetness, so I’ll add a pinch of red pepper to the dish for balance
- sugar snap peas
- summer squash
- broccoli
I like to match the stock for the sauce with the meat I’m using. This is one great reason to store at least some of your frozen homemade stock in ice cube form!
I also like to make flavoring sauces to add to the stir fry. I add these with the cornstarch and stock near the end to add a little more flavor to the dish. For example:
Sweet and Sour Sauce
1/4 cup homemade stock
2 tablespoons naturally fermented soy sauce
2 tablespoons vinegar (cider, balsamic or wine vinegar is nice, my new favorite is coconut vinegar)
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Citrus Sauce
1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest (or preserved lemon rind)
1/4 cup homemade stock
1 tablespoon naturally fermented soy sauce
1 tablespoon honey
Putting together different combinations of meat, vegetable and sauce make for an incredible amount of variety.
This post is part of the Real Food Wednesday blog carnival hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.
Earlier this week I finally mastered hollandaise sauce. I was so excited that I tried Bearnaise sauce. Oh, it broke horribly, turning into solid yellow gunk in floating fat, but even then I was able to save it, thanks to a tip I read in Ratio. I added just a few drops of cold water and boom, it re-emulsified beautifully. I got a kick out of all the whisking involved. It really felt like I was “cooking” not just “reheating” and I giggled about all the calories I was burning off that would allow me a double portion of the sauce on my fish!
Hubby, a fan of neither lentils nor salmon, really liked this dish and I thought it was yummy! I like to sprout legumes so they are very easily digested and the phytic acid in them is broken down. Once sprouted, legumes take even less time to cook. This meal was on the table in less than 30 minutes. I know it looks like a big, hairy deal, but it went very quickly and the sauce was exciting to make!
Salmon on Sprouted Lentils
2 cups lentils
salmon filet
1 medium shallot, minced
1 ounce dry white wine
1 ounce white-wine vinegar
pinch freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon dried tarragon
Salt to taste
5 oz. unsalted pasture butter
2 small egg yolks
1 1/2 tablespoons water
Three days before serving, set two cups of lentils to soak overnight in body-temperature water. The next morning, pour off the water and lay the lentils out in a single layer on a paper towel. I put mine inside a colander for easy rinsing, but you could also lay them in a glass bowl. Twice a day, rinse the lentils and return them to their towel or bowl and cover them. On the third day they should have sprouts about a half inch long and that is the perfect length for eating.
Preheat oven to 350°. Bring two cups of stock and two cups of water to boil and skim. Add sprouted lentils, turn down the heat to simmer and cover. Let lentils cook until tender, about 20 minutes, drain and keep warm.
While the lentils cook, place your salmon filet skin side down on a baking pan. Dot with butter and squeeze lemon juice over. Bake 15 minutes, or until the fish is just opaque and flakes easily with a fork.
Bring water to simmering in the bottom of a double-boiler.
Combine the shallots, wine, vinegar, pepper, and tarragon in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and simmer over medium high until reduced by half (you’ll have about one tablespoon of liquid left.) Strain the solids out of the reduction and reserve the liquid.
In the same saucepan, melt the butter. Simmer it rapidly for at least 10 minutes. The water in the butter will evaporate and the milk solids will clump together. Let the melted butter sit for a few minutes so the solids will fall to the bottom. Pour the melted butter through a cheesecloth-lined strainer to save just the ghee and toss the solids.
Put the egg yolks and water in the top of the double boiler. Off the heat, whisk the eggs and water for 30 seconds, whipping in lots of air. Put the top on the bottom of the double boiler and cook over very low heat, whisking constantly and scraping the bowl until thick and fluffy. When the whisk leaves tracks that hold for a few seconds, take it off the heat and whisk rapidly for 30 seconds to cool it slightly. Add the clarified butter a very little at a time, whisking constantly. Be sure the butter isn’t too hot or it will break the emulsion into yellow goo and floating butter. (If you do, remember the cold water trick – a couple drops will do the trick.)
Whisk in a little of the reduction and taste. Add as much of the reduction as suits your taste. Season with salt and pepper.
Scoop lentils onto serving plates, top with salmon and drizzle sauce over the top. Serves four generously or six sparingly.
Featured on the Two for Tuesdays Recipe Blog Hop.
One of the things I love best about this foodstyle is that the meals are cooked so quickly. I’ve never been one to stare at the fridge at 4PM and throw together a culinary delight. No, that would be Blair. She’s creative and instinctively knows what food flavors work together. Me? Not so much.
But, I’ve got my menu plan, my rice is soaked, I know I have all the ingredients and Nourishing Traditions is open to the recipe page and in the cookbook holder (nifty birthday present, that.) So, after a morning trip to the eye doctor with Christy and an afternoon trip to the dentist with John, it’s a short hour until dinner.
First order: start the brown rice. Because it was soaked overnight, it will only take 45 minutes to cook up fluffy and soft. My store didn’t have fresh wild-caught salmon this week, so I bought some frozen Coho fillets. Coho is denser than Silver or King Salmon, and doesn’t have the same delicate, layered flavor. I made a marinade/salad dressing with some sesame oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, chopped green onions, grated ginger and minced garlic and marinated the fish in a 9×13 pyrex baking dish in about half the marinade for about 20 minutes, then put a piece of foil over the top and baked it at 400° for 20 minutes because it was still partially frozen. Fully thawed it would have only taken about 10. By the way, the marinade is terrific to sauce up the cooked rice, too. While the fish marinated, I scrubbed and shredded six carrots, and tossed them in a bowl with a half a bunch of chopped green onions, a new little green bell pepper from my garden and used the other half of the marinade as salad dressing.
While I was out running errands, Kate found this recipe for homemade chocolate candy I’d printed out and whipped up a batch. We usually have dessert on fish day to entice reluctant eaters, but I had totally forgotten to get anything together for that. What a wonderful surprise to find these little fudgy buttons in the fridge! They were very good, too. They were softer than I was expecting, more on the order of fudge than candy, and so very good. The kids said they weren’t quite “right,” (that’s what they say when something is really good and they want it again right away) and we needed to test with some mint extract once, and could we find a way to test with raspberry and cherry, too? In my house of food critics, that’s a rave review! Thanks, Kelly The Kitchen Kop, for the great recipe!
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.
Early in the day, I started making Chicken Stock. I broke the wings and legs off a whole chicken, broke the wing bones and put the whole chicken in a stockpot. I covered the chicken plus an inch with cold water and let it set for about twenty minutes before turning the heat on. I brought it to a fast boil, skimmed off the flotsam, then turned it down to a very slow simmer and covered it. It will sit on the stove, simmering, for the next 24 hours. Before I left the kitchen, I cut up some local, tart organic Granny Smith apples and put them in the slow cooker for applesauce. I started the Bavarian Cream before I started the lunch dishes. After dinner I added a couple large-cut carrots and quartered onions to the stockpot.
My middle daughter and I are great fans of Wild Pacific Salmon. It reminds us of Oregon, which we both would like to call home. Our first Fish Tuesday featured some Wild Pacific Salmon I found at my grocery store at a wonderful price. While not a local ingredient, it was delicious and healthy. I made Buerre Blanc to serve over the fish, not only as a delicious sauce, but to educate dearest Hubby. He is preparing to be the next Ken Jennings on Jeopardy and food is a category he needs a little experience with. What better way to learn about food than enjoying it? I made some homemade cinnamon applesauce to serve with the fish, and some organic frozen peas, since peas and applesauce seem to “go with” fish in our house. Dessert was a very light Bavarian Cream.
The fish was surprisingly well-received, even one of my no-fish-please kids said it wasn’t awful! Hubby said I could make him homemade applesauce any time I wanted to, which is nice to hear. There were some complaints about the Bavarian Cream, as I used very little sweetening in it. But I thought it was just sweet enough to cleanse the palate without knocking you over. I used the following recipes directly from “Nourishing Traditions” and will not reprint them here:
Baked Salmon NT page 260
Buerre Blanc NT page 153
Applesauce NT page 541
I adapted the Bavarian Cream to our tastes, and the final recipe turned out thus:
Bavarian Cream
1 packet gelatin
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup maple syrup
4 eggs, separated
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup cocoa powder
pinch of sea salt
2 cups heavy cream
Place water in small saucepan over very low heat. Sprinkle gelatin on top, stir once and allow to melt slowly. Meanwhile, place egg yolks, cocoa, syrup and vanilla in bowl and mix with hand mixer for about a minute. Slowly stream in gelatin mixture while the blender is running, incorporate then place bowl in refrigerator. In spotlessly clean bowl with spotlessly clean beaters, beat egg whites with salt until stiff. Put that bowl in fridge, and remix first bowl for a second or two and return to fridge. In a third spotlessly clean bowl with spotlessly clean beaters, whip cream. Gently fold cream into the egg yolk mixture, then gently fold egg whites in as well. Cover and refrigerate at least one hour.
The Dark Side of Fat Loss
