Signs of Fall in the Kitchen

Some signs of fall, in my kitchen, are:

• Squash, squash soup!
• Root veggies of all shapes, colors, and flavors... yummy beets!
• Brussels Sprouts (Create a soup with b. sprouts using the Kale soup recipe, roast the b. sprouts before pureeing into soup.)
• Cabbage!

• Sauerkraut... the crock has come out of its summer hiding spot:

          To make the first batch of fall sauerkraut, cabbage from the Martin's Farm Stand.

The close up, below, displays the green bits of parsley from my front yard herb garden, the green bits of stinging nettles harvested from my yard (I am assuming the sting will leave during the fermentation process much like it leaves during the cooking process), and the chunks of local apples from the Martin's.

I make sauerkraut because:

1. Sauerkraut is good for gut microbes,
2. I can use local cabbage and preserve it for weeks,
3. It is quick and easy to make a batch that will be about 3-4 quarts (takes me about 30 to 40 minutes including clean up),
4. and, after sitting for 10 to 14 days I have 3-4 quarts of food that will enhance meals and fall root veggie salads for 2-3 weeks.
5. I have just enough time to ferment another crock with different goodies added to the cabbage: beets, carrots, celeriac, grated (raw) squash, parsnips, turnips, rutabaga.... before the current batch is gobbled up!

For a kraut recipe, click here. No crock to ferment in? No worries, use wide mouth ball canning jars.

Enjoy!

PS  I confess, I no longer use the hand grater (see my grating picture in my kraut recipe blog post that I linked above) to grate my veggies. I use my food processor. It cuts the prep time in less than 1/2!

Please Remove Shoes & Negative Attitudes

I painted this door sign years ago. I have glued and removed it from a couple of front doors. I was inspired to create it because of a bumper sticker: "Mean People Suck." I also related that sentiment to negative people and their energy.

This past Saturday I watched the documentary film Symphony of the Soil. I was reminded of the beautiful method of how soil rebuilds itself when we care for it in natural ways, recreating nature's gardening methods.

Another message that was clear to me: how farming with chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides is much like fraternizing with negative people - soil / soul sucking!

These chemical means of farming literally suck the life out of the soil. Chemicals slowly and insidiously kill off the soil microbes, fungi, earth worms, and various other life forms that are essential to healthy soil and life on this planet. Chemically farmed soil becomes dry, pale, lifeless, and infertile. Food grown in this soil is nutrient deficient like the very soil it was grown in. 

Negative people and negative energy (i.e. watching, listening, or reading the news) do the same to us. These things slowly and insidiously suck the life from our body, mind, and soul. Negative energy in our life is a real force that leeches the nutrients from our every body cell just as chemical farming leeches nutrients from the soil.

Chemical farming is a stress to the soil, to all biological life, and to this planet.  (All are one and the same.)

Negative people and negative energy stress our physical body, our emotional/mental being, and our soul. Negative energy activates the stress response. This response eats up nutrients from our body cells. This is one reason why stressed people get sickly looking (pale like the stressed soil), age faster, and contract more acute illnesses (colds, the flu, etc.) and go on to develop more chronic lifestyle diseases than relaxed, peaceful people.

Touch each other's lives, and your own, gently!  Northern Sun T-Shirt!

POSITIVE Action to take:

Surround yourself with warm, loving, positive energetic people

AND

Be a warm, loving, positive energy person!

See and inspire the good in everyone, including you!

Whole food RECIPE:  Tourlou Greek Mix-Mix (made with local ingredients!)

This is positively delicious!

• 5-6 medium ripe tomatoes (Richard Paolillo's & Vanessa Bittner's Old Market Farm)
• 1 medium eggplant (Kent Family Growers)
• 2 medium red potatoes (Keim Amish Farmer)
• 1 large red pepper (Keim)
• 1 large red onion (Birdsfoot Farm)
• 4-5 good size cloves of garlic (Birdsfoot Farm)
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 cup olive oil (I used 1/4 cup olive oil and 1/4 cup of Kriemhild Dairy's pasture raised butter)
• dash of nutmeg and thyme, I am a heavy handed dasher! I would say a good full tsp. of thyme and slightly less than a tsp. of nutmeg
• unrefined sea salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste after cooking

The finished Tourlou, Mix-Mix, with chickpeas. 

1. Cut veggies into bite size chunks and mix together well (except garlic)
2. Spread out in the bottom of two 8 x 13 baking pans
3. add oil, butter, bay leaves, nutmeg, and thyme and mix together
4. Bake at 350 F for 1 hour, set timer for every 20 minutes and mix-mix away adding water to not "fry" the veggies! This makes for a juicy creamy mix-mix!
5. If veggies not tender enough after 1 hour, give them a few minutes more
6. When finished cooking add the garlic via garlic pressing into the mix of veggies
7. Serve and add salt / pepper to taste
8. Serve with chick peas added to the mix or chunks of chicken
9. A side of whole grain pita bread, warm of course, is nice
10. Perhaps a 'lil Greek goat's milk feta too!

Hints:

• This dish can be eaten hot or cooled. Traditional Greek serving is when cooled allowing the flavors to meld. 
• I have used zucchini, yellow squash, buttercup & butternut squash, sweet potatoes... The eggplant, tomatoes, and onion are required... after that, add veggies to your delight. The more you make, meaning the fuller the baking dishes are, use more tomatoes to add to the creamy goodness.
• Another serving suggestion: To get a raw veggie salad in with this yummy dish serve with a Fall cabbage-root veggie slaw OR  sauerkraut.

Enjoy!

Breakfast of Champions

No - No you people of the 70's and 80's (myself included), it is not Wheaties!

So what is this concoction on the plate and in the bowl?

• Local, pasture raised eggs fried to the perfect, "still liquid" yolk state,
• Wild leeks chopped and placed on top, and
• Local, pasture-raised, goat milk cheese, slightly melted, on top...  and in the bowl?
• Kraut made from Kent Family Farm's root veggies, cabbage, and burdock with added: fresh wild leeks from around the corner and up the hill; then I added dandelion greens, nettle tops*, and chives from the front yard.

Yummy, cell nourishing way to start the day!

*The nettle tops were raw, chopped very finely.  Yes, nettles will leave the characteristic "sting" on the tongue and back of the throat... but it is very mild, barely noticeable!

Stinging nettles have been used for urtication. Urtication means flailing the affected joints with nettles for the relief of arthritis and like conditions.  So eating raw is a 'lil self tongue and throat therapy!  Who would want arthritis of throat and tongue?

I Popped the Cranberry of Fermentation...

I Popped the Cranberry of Fermentation

and

Threw in an Apple or Two

That's correct, my first fermentation of veggies!  Sure I have made yogurt, cheeses, and other fermented foods but this was my first attempt making "kraut."  Isn't the deep pink color pretty?!

I have eaten plenty of fermented veggies over the years and I figured it was time to stop being lazy in the kitchen and start making my own.

Now I confess, I did not follow a recipe.  I prefer to do things my way, figure it out as I go sort of method.  Those who know me are not shocked by this confession of being a "do it my way" kind of girl.

I put myself into a shredding frenzy with my loyal kitchen friend, the metal cheese grater! I grated:  beets, carrots, celeriac, turnip, rutabaga, cabbage, and apples.  Then I chopped up frozen cranberries.  All the goodies, except the apples, were from the Kent Family Growers.  Thanks Dan & Megan for contributing to my kitchen frenzy!

When I finished grating I had a huge stainless steel bowl of grated veggies.  I added 3 tablespoons of unrefined, Celtic sea salt and got to kneading the colorful mess.  I mixed and kneaded with my hands for 10 to 15 minutes and then let it sit for 1 1/2 hours.

At this point I decided to read a recipe to see how I was doing winging it in the kitchen.  Well, I read to salt the cabbage and let it sit before adding the other veggies.  Whoops, too late for that.  No sense crying over spilled milk.  I got in gear, cleaned the table of renegade shredded veggie pieces and did up the dinner dishes.

Then I:

1.  stuffed the salted, grated veggies into my new German fermentation crock,

2.  made certain the liquid covered the veggies,

3.  placed my whole cabbage leaves on top,

4.  set the clay weights in place,

5.  put the lid on,

6.  and added water to the trough around the lid.  This water must be kept in the trough the whole fermentation period.  I was on this water "watch" like a Mom watching her babe!

DONE, finished!  Now I just had to wait patiently for 8 days to see if my method of doing things created anything tasty and edible!

28 Days Later 

OK, another confession:  I actually waited the full 28 days, no peaking!  That's more than I can say for Christmas presents as a kid. Yeah, sorry Mom, nothing you can do about it now.  'Ya should have hid them better.  I only peaked at one per year; honest.

So, back to the root veggie kraut.... It turned out fabulously.  Pretty pink, crisp, and tasty. The longer ferment time allows for growth of full spectrum gut microbes. You want this to happen!

My Favorite Way to Eat It?

Well, right out of the jar... but, when I am feeling like putting a bit more effort into the meal or snack I add grated, raw slaw and goat or sheep milk feta to the pile of veggies.  Then I top with lots of yummy, raw, organic walnuts and feast away!

This has to be the nectar of the Gods and Goddesses!  If not, I will ferment my hat and eat it!

Interested in learning to ferment?

Add your name to the Local Living Venture's mailing list.  They just held a fermentation class on Thursday, January 30th.  Why am I taunting and teasing with a class that is now over?   Because it was full and had a waiting list!  This is a good sign that it WILL be offered again.  Go ahead, sign up for their email notifications,  and get notified when all sorts of fun, food classes are being taught!

From their website, http://www.sustainablelivingproject.net/

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feel free to share your interests, ideas, questions, and comments!

Be well, eat good food, have fun, & love ... Paula

Gut Bugs for Lunch

Gut Bugs are Essential for Whole Body Health

We hear it all the time, gut microbes are essential for the health and healing of the whole body, not to mention prevention of everything from colon issues to depression and cancer.  Natural medicine has encouraged fermented foods forever, mainstream medicine is finally catching on!

Although the mainstream medical recommendation is for a fecal transplant?? Are they serious?  Transplanting someone else's poop into my colon.  Sounds like fun...  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_bacteriotherapy

How about eating 100% whole foods to heal current problems and to prevent further health issues AND try eating raw, fermented foods to replenish the gut bacteria?

Science is "proving" that having healthy microbes in your gut is what keeps the immune, nervous, gastro-intestinal, and skin healthy.  Gut health is an indication of complete body health, right down to each individual body cell. (It is that body cell health thing again.  If you have sat through one of my whole food healing workshops, you hear about healing your body cells!)

Whole foods are full of fiber and nutrients that feed the gut bugs you want to proliferate in your gut.  Feeding the gut bugs healthy, whole foods keeps you healthy.  A fine example of a  mutualistic relationship between humans and bacteria.

Above is a picture of a recent lunch I made for myself:

1.  My beloved beets, grated raw, from the Kent Family Growers,

2.  Topped with Hawthorne Valley Raw Sauerkraut, Nature's Storehouse in Canton carries this,

(Wild Brine Dill and Garlic Sauerkraut Salad from the Potsdam Food Coop is a tasty choice as well!)

3.  I then topped it with raw sunflower seeds, walnuts, and pumpkin seeds (yeah, I forgot them in the picture!),

4.  Raw, Fermented, Wild Brine pickles and pickled garlic from the Potsdam Coop,

5.  Local, full fat yogurt from Prosper's Farmstead Creamery, North Lawrence, NY.

End results:

Yummy lunch full of fiber to feed the gut microbes AND the sauerkraut, pickles, and yogurt are loaded with good, gut building bacteria to replenish mine.  (Remember, fermented pickles and sauerkraut must be raw.  If you heat can it after fermenting to store on the shelves, you are killing the gut microbes.)

Do your gut and whole body health (Your body cells; it is the body cell thing again!) a favor:  Eat good gut bugs for lunch!