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I loved the dish we had for dinner last night. It was fast because I used my grass farmer’s tenderized turkey breast cutlets. It was chop-and-drop easy and included some of my favorite nutrient dense foods. It’s a seasonal autumn dish, perfect for right now. Round out the meal with a coconut pumpkin muffin and a glass of cold, raw milk.
Turkey Cutlets on Kale with Mushroom Sauce
6 tenderized turkey breast cutlets
1/4 cup sprouted wheat flour
1 bunch of kale, stemmed and chopped
2 cups homemade chicken stock, divided
1 pound mixed mushrooms, chopped
1/4 cup dried porcini mushrooms
3 tablespoons pasture butter, divided
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
sea salt and pepper to taste
In a large pot, bring 1 cup chicken stock to boil. Pour half a cup of hot stock into a bowl and add dried mushrooms. Add chopped kale into remaining stock in the pot, set on medium low and cover. Give the kale a stir when you flip the turkey cutlets later.
Heat 1 tablespoon pasture butter in skillet. Add chopped onion and mixed mushrooms. Squeeze porcini mushrooms dry (reserve soaking water) and chop, adding to skillet. Stir around over medium high heat until mushrooms give off their liquid and onion begins to brown. Remove onion mixture from skillet.
Melt 1 tablespoon pasture butter in skillet. Dredge turkey cutlets in sprouted wheat flour and add to skillet. Brown on one side over medium heat, then flip over and cover the pan to brown the second side. The cutlets will be done in about 5 to 7 minutes total cooking time. Remove cutlets to a plate and keep warm.
Deglaze the skillet with remaining cup of chicken broth and mushroom soaking liquid. Scrape up all the good bits off the bottom of the skillet and allow liquid to reduce by half. Add mushroom mixture back into sauce, melt remaining 1 tablespoon pasture butter into sauce. Serve cutlets over a bed of kale, and topped with mushroom sauce. Serves 6
If you don’t have access to pastured turkey breast cutlets, you could use a couple chicken breasts that you’ve pounded thin. I used curly kale, but any variety would work well. The mushroom sauce mixes with the kale so deliciously! I had this dish on the table in less than 30 minutes.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.
Shopping List by LexnGer, on Flickr
I don’t plan to do this every week, but I wanted to post my menu plans for this week. Sometimes in the middle of winter it can be hard to come up with ideas. I hope there’s inspiration here for someone!
Breakfasts
- Smoked Salmon Omelette with Shallots and Hollandaise sauce
- Porridge (soaked the night before, with a pantry full of choices for toppings: nuts, seeds, dried fruit, a couple chocolate chips, etc.)
- UFOs (also called egg in a hole, depending on your part of the country)
- Scrambled eggs with bacon and toast
- Fried eggs on torn up bread
Lunches
- Bologna sandwiches (my meat farmer makes the yummiest bologna!)
- Chicken breast chunks (marinated overnight in a combination of citrus juices), brushed with butter and baked, with homemade ranch dip
- Crab dip (from Nourishing Traditions) poured over toast
- Pasta with jarred tomatoes, kale and olives
- Quesadillas
- Salmon spread (from Nourishing Traditions) on sourdough crackers
Dinners
- Stir fried bison steak and cabbage on udon noodles, green salad
- Squash and Sun dried tomato soup (from Nourishing Traditions), hamburgers and broccoli
- Carrot salad (from Nourishing Traditions), Roasted chicken, sauteed parsnips
- Dr. Connelly’s soup (from Nourishing Traditions), Seared Pork Tenderloin medallions with apple cider pan sauce, brussels sprouts with cream and bacon
- Baked Salmon with Egg Mustard sauce (from Nourishing Traditions), frozen peas, a salad of sliced oranges and fennel bulb
- Clean-out-the-fridge meal with Sweet potato dollars served with leftover sauces from the week for dipping
It’s pretty easy to turn all this low-carb by just skipping the bread and crackers when they are offered. The two roasted chickens midweek will find their way into the slow cooker for stock, and the leftover meat will be put aside for a meal next week.
I find it easy in the wintertime to have soups frequently. Summer is a much more salad-friendly time of year. But that general plan leaves me with a longing for tomato soup! I haven’t really found a recipe for tomato soup that uses jarred tomatoes and still tastes really rich and good.
In addition to these meals, I also made some pineapple chutney (yeah, I know pineapple isn’t local, it’s one of my cheat foods), queso blanco, crispy pecans and walnuts for snacking on, and I soaked and roasted the seeds from last week’s acorn squash. The rind from the pineapple is soaking away in whey, turning itself into pineapple vinegar to be used in cortido next week. My apple cider vinegar using the Thanksgiving apple pie’s peels and cores is still working, not quite the acid level I’d like, but getting there.
And John has asked for some homemade marshmallow fluff before he goes back to college. How can I say no?
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.
I made another great in-season find at the local market this week! It’s called Red Kuri Squash. It’s a hard-rind squash, slightly larger than an acorn squash, and about the color of a pumpkin. I read up on it on various sites, and the consensus was that it tastes like chestnuts!
I cut it into eighths after removing the seeds and pulp and sprinkled it with some ground fennel seed. Each slice received a half piece of raw bacon. It has a nice, dark orange flesh, which tells me it’s full of vitamin A and antioxidants, which the fat from the bacon will help our bodies utilize. It roasted in a 350° oven for about a half hour. My squash lovers loved it, my squash haters said it was too “squashy”.
The mature seeds are thicker than pumpkin seeds and have a very nutty flavor when roasted. From one small squash, I filled a 10-ounce repurposed jelly jar of roasted seeds. Not a bad haul at all! I like nibbling on a few roasted squash seeds when I feel like a salty snack. They are low in calories and have compounds that reduce inflammation, something this old body has in abundance!
I probably won’t be buying Red Kuri on a regular basis because too many members of my family don’t like winter squash. But the seeds are delightful!
Savory Roasted Red Kuri Squash
1 Red Kuri Squash
4 pieces bacon
1 tablespoon fennel seeds
Cut squash in half, remove seeds and pulp, reserving the seeds. Cut each squash half into fourths, making eight pieces. Crush fennel seeds in a mortar and pestle or grinder and sprinkle over squash. Cut bacon in half crosswise and place over the cavity of each squash piece. Roast at 350° for 30 minutes, until bacon is cooked and squash is fork-tender. Before serving, pour of any excess bacon fat. Serves 8 reticent squash-eaters, or 4 squash lovers.
Seeds can be soaked overnight in salted water then drained and roasted at 300° for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
This post is part of Fight Back Friday, hosted by Food Renegade.
What IS that thing?
I love eating soup for lunch, but rarely have much time at midday to cook. I used last night’s dinner meal prep time to roast a bunch of veggies which then today I tossed into some chicken stock, warmed and blended with a hand blender for a very quick and easy soup. Roasting brought out the sweet, nutty flavor of the squash, and provided a very different flavor profile from squash that is only simmered in stock.
Roasted Vegetable Autumn Soup
1 small Blue Hubbard Squash (5 pounds)
4 Granny Smith apples, halved, cored and peeled
2 yellow onions, peeled and halved
3 generous tablespoons bacon fat (rendered from cooking)
2 quarts homemade chicken stock
1 inch knob of ginger, peeled
2 cups raw (or at least non-ultrapasteurized) cream
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Sea salt and pepper to taste
Halve the squash and remove the seeds and strings. Save the seeds for roasting later! Rub the squash, onion and apples inside and out with bacon fat. Roast the squash and onion for 1 hour at 400°, add the apples to the pan in the last 20 minutes. Vegetables may be cooled and refrigerated at this point if you wish to make the soup later.
Heat chicken stock gently on stove. Scrape squash from its shell and add to the stock. Chop the roasted onion before adding with the apple to the soup for easier blending later. Grate in ginger and allow soup to heat slowly. Blend with hand blender or in batches in countertop blender. Add cream and rewarm slighly. Season to taste. Serve topped with parmesan shreds.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop and Whole Foods for the Holidays, hosted this week by Gnowfglins.
Riffin' on Bruschetta
Kate is getting to be quite a good cook! She had this great idea for a meal: some bell peppers and onions on toast. We kicked it around for a few minutes and the idea blossomed into this delicious meal.
Riffin’ on Bruschetta
3 ripe tomatoes, chopped
2 bell peppers, diced
1 onion, diced
1 pound grassfed ground beef
Several stalks fresh basil, leaves stripped
Sourdough baguette
butter
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil
Fry ground beef with onion in large skillet, breaking up into small pieces as it cooks. Melt butter in a second skillet and slice baguette into one-inch thick rounds. Cook bread rounds in butter for two to three minutes on a side, just long enough to toast. When beef is nearly browned, add bell pepper, season with salt and pepper to taste and continue to cook for about three minutes. Turn stove off and add tomato and basil. Toss around and pile onto toasted bread rounds. Give the sandwiches a quick squirt of olive oil before serving.
We used heirloom tomatoes, green bell peppers, Vidalia onion and lemon basil. The lemon basil really brightened up the flavors. Delicious!
This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.
Slurp!
I found a variety of cucumber that grows well in containers. It’s called Little Leaf and it’s been great. We don’t eat a lot of pickles, but I do like them occasionally. I started eight seeds and selected them down to just one plant. It has been very hardy and produced one pickle-sized cucumber every day for weeks. The smaller leaves make it easy to see the fruit and it has been growing on a six foot stick I’ve stuck next to it (poor man’s trellis) quite happily.
I used the basic lacto-fermenting recipe to make these different varieties (left to right in the photo above):
Dill Garlic slices – Fermented with fresh dill and quartered garlic cloves
Lemon slices – Fermented with lemon basil, lemon thyme and some preserved lemon peel
Tzatziki slices – Fermented with mint, garlic and dill
Sweet Dill spears – Fermented with dill, then a tiny pinch of sucanat before refrigerating
The sweet dill spears were a request from my hubby. He’s not a big pickle eater and I figured a pinch of sweet would encourage him to eat these healthy, probiotic pickles!
I don’t like to can my pickles and kill all the good bacteria in them with the heat of canning, so this is definitely a shorter-term storage solution for the summer’s cucumber bounty.
Lacto-Fermented Pickles
The procedure is almost too simple to post. Slice the cucumbers into the desired shape and put them in a small canning jar, a few slices at a time. After each layer, sprinkle on a pinch of sea salt and any desired herbs. The entire 2-cup jar takes a little more than two teaspoons of salt. Keep layering until the jar is full.
Cover the jar with a piece of cloth or paper towel and leave at room temperature for an hour or two. The cucumbers will begin to weep out their natural juices. Push down gently but firmly on the pickles with a pounder (I use a wooden spoon) until the juices almost cover the pickles. Add a tablespoon of homemade whey if you have it, water if you don’t. You want the liquid to come up over the top of the cucumbers. Cover again with cloth or paper towel held on with a rubber band.
Now the hard part: wait. Somehow, some way, find the strength to ignore your pickles for three days. At the end of three days, cover them securely and refrigerate.
Tzatziki Salad Condiment
1 cups homemade yogurt
1/4 cup tzatziki pickles, chopped
pepper
Hang yogurt for several hours to let the whey drain out and make yogurt cheese. Scrape the cheese into a bowl and add pickles and just a little pepper. Stir well. Delicious with lamb.
This post is part of Tuesday Twister, hosted by Gnowfglins.
No, it’s not the casserole that’s gigantic, it’s the zucchini! I don’t grow zucchini or summer squash because my family just isn’t that wild about it. Plus, one plant would provide more squash than we could eat in a month! But we’re still not safe from the zucchini avalanche that happens this time of year. A retired couple with a garden up the street found a gigantic squash in their garden yesterday and brought it to us. The wife said she loves zucchini but her husband doesn’t, and she couldn’t bear to slice off a piece and throw the rest out. This thing was monstrous: imagine a zucchini the size of a mega roll of paper towels!
I managed to use half of it in a recipe in place of the called-for noodles. It was so simple that Kate made the casserole. Everyone raved about it, even the kids who wouldn’t touch zucchini with a pair of gardening gloves! I made some homemade cottage cheese, homemade yo-cheese and creme fraiche to go in it, so this was a very, very local, seasonal dish! (Please forgive the horrible photography. When I went back for a second shot, the dish was EMPTY!)
Gigantic Zucchini Casserole
Half of one three-pound zucchini (or three to four normal-sized ones), julienne cut
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 organic yellow onion
1 pound grassfed ground beef
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
8 ounces tomato sauce
1 cup homemade cottage cheese
1 cup homemade yo-cheese
3 tablespoons creme fraiche*
1/2 cup chopped bell pepper (any color)
2 green onions, green part chopped
Preheat the oven to 350°. Heat coconut oil in skillet and brown chopped onion and ground beef, stirring occasionally until the beef has browned. Add salt, pepper and tomato sauce, allow to simmer while preparing cheese.
Mix together cottage cheese, cream cheese, creme fraiche, bell pepper and green onion in a bowl. Lightly rub a 9×13 pan with coconut oil. Layer half the julienned zucchini in the dish, the cover with all the cheese mixture. Add the rest of the zucchini, then the meat mixture. Bake, uncovered for 30 minutes.
Note on ingredients: Creme fraiche is another easy-to-make ingredient. Add two tablespoons of cultured buttermilk to a pint of fresh (NOT ultrapasteurized) cream and mix it up. Leave it on the counter overnight, refrigerate in the morning. Use it instead of sour cream, especially when your food will not be heated to preserve the good bacteria it contains!
This post is part of Tuesday Twister, hosted by GNOWFLGINS.
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.
We picked up some local burdock root last week. I’m familiar with it from my herbal medicine study, which recommends burdock for clearing congestion in the circulatory, lymphatic, respiratory and urinary systems. But I was fascinated to read that it could be eaten raw or cooked as well!
Burdock gets its name from its burrs, which inspired the invention of Velcro, and “dock,” a name common to plants with a certain leaf shape. Because it is a taproot, it digs deeply into soil and brings up nutrients from deeper than shallow-rooted plants. Medicinally, burdock is used as a blood purifying agent, an excellent tonic for spring.
The first adventure came peeling the roots. I heard that scrubbing them was sufficient, but because they were narrow, I only managed to scrub my fingers. I tried a vegetable peeler, but the soft roots had too much “give.” The method I finally used was the “whittle” method. If you’ve ever had to sharpen a pencil without a mechanical sharpener, you are familiar with the whittle method.
I cut them into 2-inch lengths, just long enough to get a taste without committing to a lengthy string, and put them into cold water as they were peeled. I was thinking this might crisp them up, like a carrot, but as the water turned muddy (along with the creamy white roots) I did a little more research. A touch of vinegar or lemon juice keeps the root from browning, just like one would do with apple.
The taste of the root before soaking was very tannic, but once it came out of the water it was much less so. It was also very reminiscent of jicama. If you haven’t tried jicama, and can find it reasonably locally, you should, it’s yummy. We think it tastes like the love child of an apple and a potato! Burdock tasted much the same, but needed just a little more chewing than jicama. We had the first batch raw.
My next experiment was to cook the julienned roots. I cooked them very slowly in butter with some parsnips, here cut into rounds. They were very chewy, and the sweetness was much less pronounced.
My conclusion? If burdock grew wild here, it would be a great addition to a foraging menu. I don’t have garden space to commit to it, though, and we weren’t so taken with it that we will be purchasing it on a regular basis. It is a bit labor-intensive in preparation as well, making burdock root a rare treat instead of daily fare.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday, hosted this week by Cheeseslave.
I’ve been making the Winter Root Soup recipe from Nourishing Traditions a couple times a month since the winter root vegetables became available at the Farmer’s Market. Hubby wasn’t thrilled, so I’ve been tweaking the recipe. I haven’t been able to get the flavor right, though. So today I tossed out the recipe and started from scratch.
First, I used roasted veggies that I had cooked last time I made a roast chicken. (I try to combine oven uses, and fill the oven to make use of the heat, rather than heating it up twice or three times.) Roasting the veggies instead of boiling them intensified and sweetened them. I used a different set of veggies, different seasonings, different just about everything! Hubby gave it a thumbs up, even though he does not like some of the ingredients on their own. Tip: if someone in your family is anti-beet, try using a golden beet. The tell-tale deep red won’t be there to clue anyone in to the sweet, mellow flavor they can’t quite put their finger on!
Roasted Winter Root Soup
5 large roasted organic carrots
2 roasted organic potatoes (I used small russets)
4 roasted golden beets
1 quart homemade chicken stock
1 orange
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon black walnut oil (optional)
fish sauce
Parmesan cheese
Puree the roasted vegetables and stock in a blender or with an immersion blender, warm gently in pot and thin with water if desired. Grate a tablespoon of orange peel into soup. Add vinegar and oil and continue heating until hot. Remove from heat and let cool a few minutes, then add the juice of the orange. Add a dash of fish sauce to each serving (it takes the place of salt and doesn’t taste fishy at all) and top with a grating of Parmesan cheese. Makes about two quarts of soup.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays, hosted this week by Cheeseslave.
The Dark Side of Fat Loss
