Feathers, Hooves, and Fins, Oh My Yum!

We will be dining well this week with gifts from the land and the sea, thanks to a certain local fish monger I know and love (recent interview with Tim Lauer aka my dad, here). What we brought home from Coastal Seafoods today:

Frenched rack of lamb, duck confit, and fresh Laughing Bird shrimp. Such delicious meat and seafood deserves gentle, simple cooking techniques and little else.

Don't assume your children won't like "grownup" fare such as lamb, duck, and shellfish. One of our sons recently told us that lamb chops and duck are his new favorite foods! As a child my father made seafood at least twice a week and one of my favorite meals was curried mussels, second perhaps to lobster, steamed artichoke hearts, and butter. Our daughter Eliza, at 16 months old, loves gnawing on a lamb bone, sucking out all the juices. Duck confit is also perfect eating for toddler as it's very delicate, and practically melts on the tongue.

Here are some meals we'll be enjoying in the coming weeks;

Rack of lamb, broiled with chutney, sides of fried zucchini and basmati rice.

Hot and sour prawn soup with ginger, onion, fish stock and shrimp. The recipe can be found in the beautiful (and sadly out of print) Thai cookbook, It Rains Fishes, by Kasma Loha-Unchit.

Curried beef and coconut milk stew with carrot, onions, potatoes, cilantro and tomatoes.

Duck confit with mashed cauliflower and potatoes, sauteed garlic lacinto kale on the side.

Brats baked with sauerkraut and kale.

Whole roast lemon pepper chicken with au gratin potatoes and butternut squash.

Pork shoulder steak carnitas with sprouted corn tortillas, green pepper and avocado.

Savory vegetable quiche with bacon and cheese, recipe inspired by one in Elana Amsterdam's Gluten Free Almond Flour Cookbook.

Grass-fed beef chili with real sour cream, recipe from a traditional Mexican-American cookbook called Dishes from the Wild horse Desert, by Melissa Guerra.



I'm sharing this post with the good-food-lovin' folks at Kelly the Kicthen Kop's Real Food Wednesdays!

Sprouted Lentil Soup with Chorizo and Kale

I have fond memories of my mother's vegetarian split pea
soup. The soup here is my attempt to replicate the comfort of that soup from my childhood (nothing can suffice for soup made by one's mother), while adding in healthy animal fats, greens, and spicy chorizo sausages. This is a hearty, warming dish for us Minnesotans still living in the land of snow and ice.

Sprouted Lentil Soup with Chorizo and Kale

Ingredients:

1 cup truRoots sprouted green lentils
1 lb chorizo sausage (for your kids you might want to get mild brats)
1 large onion diced
1 medium sized carrot, diced
1 rib celery, diced
1 bunch green kale, de-stemmed and chopped
4 cloves garlic, pressed
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 quart chicken stock, plus 1 cup water
3 T duck fat (available locally at Coastal Seafoods) or ,ghee
real sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Instructions for making sprouted lentil soup:

1. Melt 2 T duck fat in a large soup pot. Saute onions, carrots, celery until onions are almost translucent. Add in garlic and other spices, stirring and cooking on medium heat for a few minutes until very fragrant. Throw in the chopped kale and cook for a few minutes, stirring occasionally.

2. Next pour in the chicken stock, water, and lentils. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low. Allow to cook about 20 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, in a separate pan, melt 2 T duck fat and brown 4 fresh chorizo sausages on all sides (the ones I buy are the size of brats). Once browned and cooked through, chop the sausage into bite-sized pieces and set aside.

4. Serve soup with chopped chorizo on top, adding a dollop of creme fraiche or mascarpone as well.

Recipe note: If you're not using sprouted lentils the cook time will be longer.

I'm sharing this recipe with Kelly the Kitchn Kop's Real Food Wednesday and Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday!

Not-Quite Spring Meals

Menu planning helps me prepare delicious meals for my family without the nightly stress of "what are we going to eat" or "how 'bout takeout?", saving both money and time, and it keeps our meals interesting when I plan ahead.

Here is my dinner menu for the week, including ingredients used for each dish.

Beef chili (no beans), cheese quesadillas and avocado- ground beef, green pepper, onion, canned tomatoes, cheddar cheese, spices, sour cream, Ezekiel corn tortillas, avocados.

Beef bulgogi roll-ups served over rice with spicy peanut sauce- rib eye steak, lettuce, lime, garlic, wheat-free tamari, toasted sesame oil, peanut butter, honey, ginger, green onions, frozen green beans, Sunja's kimchi.

Sprouted lentil and kale soup, chorizo sausages fried in Rougie duck fat- sausages, lentils, carrots, chicken broth, celery, onion, fresh green kale, duck fat. Recipe for lentil soup can be found in Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair.

Sloppy Joe's on mashed potatoes and cauliflower- ground beef, garlic, green pepper, onion, frozen cauliflower, potatoes, Cedar Summit cream, organic tomato paste, apple cider vinegar, butter.

Fried shrimp, mung bean noodle and green papaya salad: mung bean noodles, fresh shrimp from Coastal Seafoods, cucumber, green papaya, lime juice, garlic, ginger, green onion.

Shopping List (all ingredients can be found at my local Asain grocery store, United Noodles).

cucumber
green papaya
green onion
onions
limes
garlic


What are you cooking up this week?

I'm sharing this with Wardeh's Tuesday Twister real food blog carnival and with the Nourishing Gourmet's Pennywise Platter!

A Day of Gathering

I went "gathering" at my local Wedge Co-op (which is the largest consumer owned co-op in the USA, yeah Minneapolis!) Whole Foods, coming home with lovely, real foods. I may not be hunting wild game, or gathering berries from trees, but finding good food at good prices satisfies these primal urges in me.

Some highlights of my "gathering"/grocery trip:

I found local Organic Valley Pasture Butter for 3$/8oz at WFs. As the company puts it "...butter is one of the pleasures of eating...". I couldn't agree more!

Fage Total Greek Yogurt (made from 1/2 and 1/2 rather then just milk!) was only 3.99/17oz at WFs. The plain variety is low-carb, having just 7 grams carbs per 1 cup serving. Bonus, it's delicious!

The Wedge Co-op has a good meat department, where I got local, grass-fed bison liverwurst, Thousand Hills grass-fed beef snack sticks, chorizo sausages, and a nicely aged rib eye steak.

Cheap French chocolate! Check the baking section for Lindt 85% chocolate bars, which is lower-sugar and high quality, and costs less then regular "eating" chocolate.

Better grain choices:

I bought a few grain products, as I learn that grains and beans can be hard for some of us to digest and may contribute to modern health problems. For in-depth information and research of problems associated with eating grains please check out these sources:

Where are all the healthy whole grains?- by Kurt Harris, MD
Fitness and health guru Mark Sisson, sums up the problems with grains quite nicely here.
Dr. Mercola, MD, suggests reducing grains and sugar to lose weight and for total health.
Dr. Davis, practicing cardiologist in Madison, Wis., recommends a grain-free diet for heart health.

The grain foods I did get included rice cakes, which are good for sandwiches. I bought Ezekial Sprouted Corn Tortillas which are gluten-free, and made with sprouted corn, which is one way corn was processed by traditional agrarian cultures. truRoots sells sprouted grains and legumes such as sprouted lentils.

I am looking forward to the coming of Summer in Minnesota when there will be much more local food available. If you're hardcore, like my fellow foodie, Brett, you might find some fresh greens in a nearby river, even as the snow continues to cover much of the ground.

Nourish Your Kids With a Real School Lunch

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Packing a healthy lunch for your child is fun, easy, and frugal. You'll feel good knowing you are providing the best for your kids while they're away and your kids will feel thier brightest if they eat nourishing food while at school. The following lunch ideas have been tried by my kids with "thumbs up".

Easy Meal Ideas for a Real School Lunch

Yogurt Parfait:
Whole-milk plain yogurt such as Fage or Seven Stars Farms mixed with 1/2 tsp maple syrup per 6 oz serving and a tablespoon or two of grain-free granola packed in glass yogurt jars.

Homemade and Healthy "lunchables":
In a stainless-steel container like this, pack a handful of rice crackers (my kids love Nut thins), or homemade almond-flour crackers, thick slices of grass-fed cheese, and sliced salami or pepporoni (I like Applegate Farms brand).

Nutrient-dense Sandwiches:
Useing plain rice cakes, truely whole-grain sourdough bread, grain-free bread, or lettuce leaves, fill your "bread" of choice with homemade egg salad or tuna salad, made with canola-oil free mayonnaise.

Snacks:
Homemade trail mix of roasted almonds, dried cranberries, cashews, shredded coconut and salted pumpkin seeds. We also really like Organic Valley, whole-milk colby jack cheese, or any good string cheese. Fresh fruit and vegetables such as strawberries, zucchini strips, or carrot sticks make a nice snack, just make sure you pre-cut them, or, from my experience, you'll have some sad looking veggies coming home in the lunch box, untouched.

The best drink to pack is pure water, or whole milk, in a cool looking container, of course (like this one perhaps).

I used to pack juice boxes and milk boxes, but check out the nutritional info on these. One serving has 27 grams of carbs, which is more then a bowl of ice cream, not to mention they are made with UHT milk which is pretty gross-tasting unless you douse it in sugar.

Here's my dirty secret to getting my kids to eat thier lunch... dont. pack. dessert. I know, it sounds like kind of a bummer, but my kids are young, and get only 15 minutes to eat lunch. When I do pack dessert they only find the time to eat that, and nothing else. I don't pack empty calories snacks like chips, crackers, snack bars and the like.

Check out one kid's description of a traditional, healthy Japanese lunch:

"...One day we had make-your-own-sushi... We made it by covering dried green seaweed sheets with rice. Then I added some small fish, egg, and soybean spread called Nato to the rice. We also had a delicious squid stew with quail eggs. To drink, we had milk. Our dessert was an orange. After lunch we brushed our teeth using the sinks in the hall..."
How inspiring!

I'm sharing this post with Cheeseslave's Real Food Wednesday and with the Nourishing Gourmet's Pennywise Platter!

Our Kids Deserve Real Food

photo source

It sounds obvious, but when a box of food on the grocery store shelf says "low-fat" or "helps lower cholesterol", these claims do not mean it's a healthy product, and of course the claims made may not even be true.

"...Consumers tend to believe claims on the front of packages, according to recent research, and perceive health statements to be endorsed by the government. But few health claims on food products have any basis in science at all. And unlike medications, food product labels don’t have to disclose their potential ill effects, such as obesity from high added sugar content..." writes Dr. David Ludvig and Marion Nestle, PhD, in an article for JAMA on front-of-label-packaging.

I'm glad to read a credible physician, respected by the First Lady, Michelle Obama, say that high sugar content can cause obesity and other health problems (usually only saturated fat seems to be blamed, even though many recent studies, including this meta analysis, find no link between saturated fat intake and heart disease). The cause of proper childhood nutrition is a noble one, so I do hope it doesn't get watered down into meaningless garbage by the USDA's industrial food system's supporters.

The New York Times reports that one major public school food company has the following initiatives in the works to help create what are supposedly healthier lunches:

"...Lorna Donatone, the Sodexo official who worked with the White House on the obesity initiative, said her company was already trying to substitute healthier school lunch choices — low-fat cheese on pizza, baked chicken tenders instead of fried — but faces resistance from school districts who view such moves as too costly." (emphasis mine)

Sounds like a pathetically misguided attempt to make something that is already unhealthy, perhaps even less healthy. Low-fat dairy has been found in a recent Swedish study to be associated with more weight gain, while full fat, or whole milk, is linked to maintaining normal weight. Not to mention the chicken tenders, which are most likely made from leftover, low-grade chicken grown by Tyson, a huge factory-farm corporation (anyone see Food, Inc.? You won't want to eat commercially made chicken again, trust me). Speaking of Tyson, here is the longest list of ingredients for one food I've ever seen, and it's something that is fed to children in American public schools, paid for by our tax dollars.

Of course it's not all doom and gloom, I believe that the numbers of people who care about real food and our children's health and well-being are growing by the second, and this amazing era of technology that we're living in can help bring about positive change. I could sit here and write all day (or all night!) about the politics of food but we moms and dads do have to get up, pack lunches, make breakfast, and live our lives. Read my post here for tried and true ideas for packing a healthy lunch for your child, made with love and care, and real food, of course!

This post is apart of Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday!

and the winners are...

The winners of my cookbook giveaway are:

Michelle- aka anonymous, you get Cooking with Coconut Flour!

Chanelle you win How to Be a Domestic Goddess!

please leave your email in a comment here, I won't publish or share it, and then I'll email you and get your address!

Advice on Feeding Our Children and Ourselves

photo source

Children love to eat real food if given the chance, though if they're used to eating junk-in-a-box it could take many times of trying something real for them to say "yum, more please!".

The Pai Paraguayan child pictured above is eating meat and yucca, and relishing it! His meal may look different to us but I am sure we would seem curious and very odd to a person that has thrived on a whole foods diet, who has never seen a box of not-so-lucky-not-so-charming cereal.

I could not have said this better myself, so I won't try to! Please read the following wonderful, illuminating article from Richard Morris:

"...Advertisers know well how much power a child has to influence which foods are consumed in the home. This is why so much advertising is targeted to children. They don't have money or cars with which to buy and transport food, but they do have something far more potent -- power over you, the parent. The result is that today, it is the children who are the Lords of the Manor.

The final reason is that children can't be expected to make good nutrition decisions when their parents lack the skills and the motivation to make good decisions themselves. One of the more common phrases we here when discussing the necessity for parents to educate themselves about nutrition is, "I don't have time." I often wonder what is there in the lives of so many people that is more important than their health and the health of their children? I don't doubt that most people love their children dearly and would stand against an army of darkness in their defense, but then there's that troubling reluctance to read and understand what's in a box of cereal. Parent's, what's going on?"...

Quoted from the website Bread and Money

Another gem from the author, who wrote the book "A Life Unburdened: Getting Over Weight and Getting ON With My Life":

"If the anti-dietary fat, high carbohydrate, highly processed food diet that the experts have championed for the past 30 years has not worked for us, isn't it time we started asking questions? Better yet, isn't it time we began looking for another solution."



Pictured above is my daughter Eliza, trying plain whole milk yogurt and apparently, liking it!

I'm sharing this post with Kelly the Kitchen Kop's Real Food Wednesday!

how to buy real food at the co-op without going broke!

I really believe it's worth it to buy real food that isn't processed and has come from actual farms in your local community. Often though, I hear people saying that organic food is too expensive. It definitely may be true that organic food is much more expensive then conventionally farmed food you find at big box grocery stores like Walmart or Cub Foods. However, if you check out a local food co-op, armed with some knowledge on how to shop effectively there, I think you might be pleasantly surprised to find that local, and even organic food does not have to be overly pricey.

I spent about 45$ on the food in my picture. I came home with over 1 lb of bacon, 1 lb of local and pastured pork breakfast sausage, 1/2 pint raw apple cider vinegar, 1lb of freshly ground, organic and fair-trade java from local roaster Peace Coffee, 1/2 lb of garlic stuffed olives, local green cabbage, bulk dried spices (coriander powder and sage), a pint of local and grass-fed Cedar Summit Farm cream, cashews and dried cherries in bulk, salad greens, and of course 90g of 77% dark chocolate!

Here are my tips and tricks for shopping at local co-ops in the Twin Cities. I don't do all our grocery shopping at just one co-op, I generally go to a few different co-ops, Coastal Seafoods for the freshest fish, Clancy's butcher shop for grass-fed meats, and sometimes Whole Foods or Trader Joe's throughout the month. In the summer the best deal for produce is always at a farmer's market, and it's the freshest.

Tips for Co-op Shopping on a Budget:

1. Look for local, bulk produce rather then pre-packaged veggies and fruits shipped from far away. If it's winter and you live in the Far North like I do, check out the selection of organic, frozen veggies. Sno Pac is an inexpensive local brand here in Minnesota that has great quality.

2. Don't buy anything in a box! This really is the best way to eat healthy food and save money. Things in a box include crackers, pasta, breakfast cereal, cookies, toaster waffles, etc. Don't buy them and you won't need to eat them! That being said, we do of course, sometimes have rice crackers and the like, it's just no longer essential to me to have a cupboard stocked with "snacks" that come in packages.

3. Buy everything you can in bulk. I save a lot buying in bulk vs. buying the exact same foods pre-packaged. Things you might find in bulk include; fresh veggies and fruit, dried grains and flours, sea salt, local honey and maple syrup, cooking oils, coffee and tea, eggs, meat and cheese that are packaged by the co-op itself, nuts, legumes, seeds, dried fruit, herbs and spices, chocolate chips, baking supplies and household cleaning products, to name a few!

I'll be sharing more budget-conscious tips for buying real food at ethical, community based grocers in the future. In the meantime, please tell me about your awesome local co-ops and what the best buys are there.

I'm sharing this with the Nourishing Gourmet's Pennywise Platter and Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday.

Double Book Giveaway- gluten-free AND gluten-filled!

Browsing through my sort-of vast cookbook collection, I came to the realization that I have a few cookbooks that have served me well, and yet might now serve some other home cook even better. Today I am offering two of my lovely readers one of two books that have been previously owned and loved by me!

Bruce Fife's classic book of coconut flour cookery, Cooking with Coconut Flour.

Nigella Lawson's beautiful, hardcover, (and very much standard-baking-ingredient-filled) tour de force, How to be a Domestic Goddess.

Two very different books, the first is filled with gluten and grain-free recipes and some recipes are reduced or no sweetener, the second book is loaded with delicious looking photos of sugar and flour laden confections. I hope two of you will find these books to be inspiring in your kitchen.

To win a book please leave a comment telling me which cookbook interests you most. For additional entries leave separate comments linking to your favorite baked good recipe (does not have to be a dessert, think muffins, cookies, crackers, bread, etc.), and/or subscribe to my blog.

May the luckiest baker win! I will announce the winners on Feburary 18th, 2010.

I am sharing this with Cheeseslave's Real Food Wednesday.