Posted By Julie on January 11, 2012

I’ve been pretty happy with protein smoothies in the morning lately. I currently use a vanilla whey powder that was recommended by our naturopath, and if I add some soaked oats and chia seeds to our raw milk, it makes a particularly quick, filling breakfast. But every so often, say when we are having a therapy-free morning with snow falling outside, a warm, leisurely breakfast sounds really good. Since seeing Leanne’s apple cobbler pancakes at Healthful Pursuit a few days ago, they have been at the top of my to-do list, but we didn’t have any apples, so in homage to the lazy day that inspired the original recipe, I just scrounged around in the refrigerator and came out with a half-eaten jar of home-canned applesauce and some strawberry jam.

I only had two ramekins and about half a cup of applesauce to work with, so I divided it up between them and stirred in cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger (the applesauce itself is unsweetened, but tinged a pretty pink color from the skins). I topped the applesauce with batter until the ramekins were about two-thirds full, and they went in the oven at 425F for 20 minutes, followed by about 5-10 more minutes at 375F. At that point, they appeared set and were starting to brown on top, so I pulled them to cool for a few minutes. These little cakes retain heat remarkably well! They were worth the wait, however, and my dad and I really enjoyed the combination of spicy applesauce and souffle-like cake.

The jammy version was baked in silicone muffin liners. A tablespoon of jam on the bottom, topped with about a quarter-cup of batter, made four little muffin-sized cakes that cooked in about 16 minutes at 425F. As you can see, some of the jam seems to have absorbed into the cakes, but my mom said they were delicious and Nolan scarfed his down as an after-preschool snack.

Blurry shot of a fox running through our backyard during today’s snowstorm

These were not only easy to make and clearly versatile, but also healthy—full of protein-rich coconut flour, pastured eggs and fruit, and sweetened only with a little stevia or honey. I’ve made coconut flour pancakes before but was underwhelmed with them, possibly because they look like ordinary pancakes but have their own texture. The nice thing about this recipe is that it has its own unique identity, and since we didn’t miss the grains or sugar, I envision these little pancake-cobbler-souffle-muffin-cakes will be going into the regular rotation. Maybe one day we will even get to try them with actual slices of fruit!

Category: Baking, Breakfast, Fruits | No Comments »
Tags: applesauce, bake, coconut flour, egg, jam

Posted By Julie on January 1, 2012

January: This month got 2011 off to an extremely rough start. Nolan was diagnosed on the autism spectrum on the 18th, and our lives began a significant change. Still, I managed a few interesting recipes over the month by way of distraction, notably cinnamon roll muffins, oatmeal souffle, and a labor-intensive pasta dish called a rotolo.

February: This was the month I shared Nolan’s diagnosis with the blog, to the tune of coconut flour crepes. I also made a Moroccan b’stilla and worked with phyllo dough for the first time.

March: Looking back, I seemed to favor ethnic foods this month: Mediterranean meatball pitas, paneer pulao, and home-corned Irish brisket, among others. Nolan celebrated his milestone third birthday with s’mores cupcakes, and he and I packed up for our big move to Colorado at the end of the month.

April: The Colorado move meant lots of adjusting and lots of phone calls and appointments, all culminating in Nolan’s start in an intensive needs preschool classroom, much to my great relief. I became involved with a brand-new community garden in our neighborhood, officially launched my own (very) small card business, and even found time to celebrate the promise of spring with sprouting seeds and a fiddlehead fern quiche for Easter.

May: This month I honored my mother and Nolan’s hardworking teachers with baked goods, canned our first jam of the year, cooked fish cheeks for the first time, and helped get our garden plots more fully planted. Outside of the kitchen, I got to be a vendor at my very first craft fair, and took a tour of Windsor Dairy to sign up for raw milk shares!

June: Continuing on the path toward nourishing foods this month, I conquered my personal fear of cod liver oil, dug in the dirt, and honored an elderly friend with a tea party of fresh crumpets, lemon curd, real clotted cream, and lilac syrup.

July: This month we celebrated Nolan’s very first plane ride with cheese crackers and sugar cookies, and came back home to a garden that had finally started growing exponentially. I also experimented with my stovetop smoker for the first time, found a way to enjoy parsnips, and made the most stunningly decorative cake ever.

August: In August, all that hard work in the garden started paying dividends, mostly in the form of cucumbers and lots of zucchini at first, but eventually beans, heirloom tomatoes, and even some weeds ended up our dinner plate! I finally mastered the art of hand-whisked aioli, updated a personal childhood favorite, and threw myself into dietary interventions for my son, even making a bunch of secretly healthy candies.

September: This was a marathon canning month, thanks to the grape harvest—we made juice, jam, syrup, pie filling, jelly and even vinegar, due in large part due to a jury-rigged jelly bag. Somewhere along the way, I found time to maintain the garden, grill cedar-plank salmon, smoke barbecue pork ribs, and bake some stunning croissants.

October: Another big month for preservation: pink applesauce, honeyed plums, and wild plum jam among the highlights. I used up a surfeit of raw milk making cultured butter and other goodies, made chocolate syrup with honey, and baked the first two loaves in what is destined to be a long family tradition of swirly povitica.

November: This month saw the conclusion of the gardening season, and, thankfully, the end of the canning season as well! I finally put out a post about home-fermented vinegars, and took some time to reflect on everything I have to be grateful for.

December: I was so busy this past month that I barely had time to write on the blog. Holiday gift-making and Christmas card orders filled the first few weeks, and then Nolan and I braved the rush to fly back to Oregon for Christmas at home with my husband. We did sneak in a little play time with peanut butter playdough and s’mores oatmeal first, though!

What a roller coaster of a year! My life changed this past year in almost every possible way, and I found myself challenged physically, mentally, and emotionally, but I think I have emerged all the stronger for it, and I can honestly say I am looking forward to all the challenges and triumphs to come in 2012. We are starting to plan the garden already and clearing table space for flats of seedlings. Nolan is about to begin hippotherapy, which should be really fun to watch, and of course we are continually looking into therapeutic options for him. I have signed up for some continuing ed classes on subjects surrounding aromatherapy and natural skin care, and am exploring educational possibilities in nutrition therapy as well. I am also stepping up my commitment to a running schedule, which I began successfully in November; I’m already down six pounds, purchased my first pair of real running shoes, and am seriously considering signing up to run the Colfax Marathon in May!

Category: Persnickety Bits | No Comments »
Tags: holiday

Posted By Julie on December 25, 2011

Niman Ranch applewood smoked ham with an apricot-brown sugar glaze; orange-glazed carrots, sauteed broccoli rabe with onions, and creamed potatoes based on my mom’s childhood memory.

Category: Dinner, Meat, Sides | No Comments »
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Posted By Julie on December 19, 2011

I told you a few days back about the fuss all of Nolan’s teachers made over my homemade marshmallows, sweetened with organic sugar and agave and dusted with cinnamon for dunking in mugs of hot chocolate. I plan to use honey in any marshmallows I make in the future, but for purposes of full disclosure, you can find the recipe I used this time here. We had half the recipe leftover, which amounts to about 3 dozen marshmallows—that’s a lot of hot cocoa to drink, and my mom doesn’t care for plain marshmallows, even uber-impressive homemade ones. To be honest, marshmallows are not a personal favorite of mine either, but they do give me a good excuse to play with s’mores!

Before you can make s’mores, you need some good graham crackers, and this is my new favorite recipe. Using just a few more ingredients than Nolan’s bland toddler cookies, you are rewarded with crispy crackers that have a subtle banana undertone—yes, banana! These snack crackers are a great use for that one leftover banana that didn’t quite get eaten before it turned black and mushy. They mix up quickly in the food processor, and can be baked in any shape you like.

Case in point: This time I rolled out the last little bit of dough tissue-thin on top of a silicone mat and baked it until it was dry and crisp, about 5-8 minutes at 325F. The result? Homemade Golden Grahams cereal!

Bananagrahams

1 1/4 C all-purpose flour
1 1/2 C whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 C brown sugar, packed
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp clove
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/2 C butter (1 stick), cut into pieces
1 ripe banana
2 T honey
2 T molasses
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
about 1/4 C milk

Combine dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor; pulse to blend. Add the butter and process until evenly distributed, then dump in the banana, honey, and molasses; pulse to mix. Add vanilla extract and enough milk until it just comes together in a ball of dough.

Dust worktable, hands and rolling pin with flour; roll out chunks of dough to about 1/8″ thickness and cut into desired shapes. You can do this with cookie cutters or just a knife. Prick cookies with a toothpick or fork if desired.

Bake in a 325F oven for 15-17 minutes or until firm and golden brown; this will partly depend on the thickness of your cookies. Roll out extra thin for cereal flakes, or omit milk and pour dry dough crumbs onto baking sheet for crumb topping or “grape-nuts.”

Source: Food.com.

In honor of the banana flavor in the graham crackers, I made a series of dishes that feature bananas in addition to s’mores flavors. First up, this s’mores oatmeal, which is so decadent that you could serve it for dessert instead of breakfast! I made whipped banana oats using soaked and dehydrated oatmeal, stirred in some homemade hot chocolate mix, and topped it with crushed bananagrahams, bittersweet chocolate chips, and homemade marshmallow bits. No graham crackers? Use hot chocolate mix, marshmallows and chocolate chips and call it hot chocolate oatmeal! I love the whipped banana oats because they sneak in a little fruit under the radar and the chia seeds help fill me up better than oats alone.

Whipped Banana Oatmeal

1/3 C old fashioned oats, soaked and dehydrated if possible
1/3 C whole milk
1/3 to 1/2 C water
1/2 a banana, sliced
1 T chia seeds
Pinch of kosher salt
Vanilla, stirred in at end

For two servings, combine oats, water, and milk in a saucepan over medium heat. Slice a banana into VERY thin pieces, leaving just a few bigger chunks. Walk away for a few minutes while the oatmeal heats. Once it begins to steam or bubble, stir vigorously at times to “whip” the banana into the oats. The oats will take about 5 minutes on medium heat from start to finish to fully absorb the liquid. They’re done when they reach your desired consistency! Then stir in vanilla with any other mix-ins and portion into bowls; add desired toppings and dig in. (For s’mores oatmeal, use 2 tablespoons of hot chocolate mix stirred into the oats, and top with crushed graham crackers, chocolate chips and mini-marshmallows.)

Source: Kath Eats.

Finally, I branched out from the usual chocolate bread pudding this week in favor of a banana bread pudding studded with chocolate chips, crusted with graham cracker crumbs, and crowned with gooey marshmallow. This dessert came out rather less photogenic than I had hoped, mostly because my homemade marshmallows opted to melt into nothingness instead of browning under the broiler. I adapted the recipe from a recent episode of Top Chef: Texas, and even if it didn’t come out looking picture perfect, the homey flavors more than made up for that lack, and I feel more willing to expand my bread pudding horizons in the future (starting with this Alice Medrich recipe—yum!)

Banana S’mores Bread Pudding

2 ripe bananas, smashed
2 eggs
1 1/4 C heavy cream
1 C whole milk
1/3 C brown sugar
1/2 C sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 loaf stale bread, cut into 1/2″ cubes
double handful of bittersweet chocolate chips
3/4 C graham cracker crumbs
2 C marshmallows

Beat together the bananas, eggs, cream, milk, sugars and vanilla in a heavy saucepan and heat over medium until sugar has dissolved and mixture has thickened slightly. Pour over bread cubes and chocolate chips until well coated. Bake at 325F for 40 minutes, then top with graham cracker crumbs and return to the oven for 10 minutes, until set. Top with marshmallows and broil or torch until puffed and brown (or melted, depending on your marshmallows!).

Category: Baking, Breakfast, Dessert, Nuts, Grains & Legumes, Snacks | No Comments »
Tags: bake, banana, bread, cereal, chocolate, cookie, graham cracker, honey, marshmallow, oatmeal, whole wheat

Posted By Julie on December 18, 2011

We thought peanut butter playdough would be a great sensory activity to try at home with Nolan, particularly since peanut butter is one of his basic food groups. It could hardly be easier to make with just a few ingredients to stir together, but every recipe out there either called for nonfat milk powder or powdered sugar or both for bulk, making it more like peanut butter fondant than anything. I opted to employ the absorptive powers of coconut flour instead, to add body, protein and fiber to the playdough instead of extra sugar, corn starch, or oxidized cholesterol. It worked out very nicely, I think, although the Maranatha peanut butter I used was pretty oily. Nolan had fun squishing the playdough between his fingers, destroying every object I tried to make with it, and sampling a few choice bites also.

Once we had our fill of playing with the dough, I used the rest to make homemade peanut butter cups. Silicone muffin cups create the traditional shape; I just melted bittersweet chocolate chips in the microwave with splashes of coconut oil and honey, dolloped some in the bottom of the molds, squished a peanut butter playdough patty on top until chocolate squeeze up around the edges, and topped it with a little more chocolate.

After a night in the cold garage, our peanut butter cups came out of the molds looking just like the real deal and tasting even better! We’ve been purchasing Justin’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups lately, but the filling in them is too dry and crumbly for my taste. These have the perfect amount of chewy softness inside, and aren’t overly sweet like Reeses. If Nolan were more interested in this sort of activity, I would have had him help me form the peanut butter patties and spoon chocolate into the molds in addition to being my #1 taste-tester.

My mom made up baggies of easy chocolate candies for certain family members and friends, including one of our precious peanut butter cups in each. What you see here is mostly dark chocolate peanut clusters, just melted bittersweet chips mixed with roasted (unsalted) peanuts and dished out with my cookie scoop onto a silicone mat. Both of these are quick to make and so delicious that I am hoping my parents won’t buy cheap grocery store candy anymore! I am thinking of experimenting with other nut and seed butters, so that Nolan can bring them to school for snacks, and maybe hide his digestive enzyme in a few as well.

Peanut Better Playdough

1 C creamy peanut butter
1/2 C raw honey
About 6 T coconut flour

Stir together the peanut butter and honey, adding coconut flour by the tablespoon until the texture is stiff enough for your purposes… ta da!

Category: Dessert, Nuts, Grains & Legumes | 1 Comment »
Tags: candy, chocolate, kids, peanut

Posted By Julie on December 17, 2011

Wow, has this ever been a busy holiday season! I have been cranking out my handmade Christmas cards for orders since before Thanksgiving, and have probably produced close to 150 in that time—not bad for my first holiday season at it!

Some of the cards were donated to Nolan’s preschool for a holiday craft fair and bake sale at the beginning of December, put on to provide tuition assistance to families who can’t afford it for their kids. We are so fortunate that Nolan’s preschool tuition is covered by the state of Colorado due to his special needs status, but preschool is such an important developmental step for beginning academics that I hate the thought of any child not being able to attend. In addition to sets of Christmas cards, I also baked 6 loaves of povitica—cranberry, walnut, chocolate, and apple cinnamon flavors—to enter in the bake sale (plus two more that were gobbled up at home!).

Then it was time to think about gifts for Nolan’s teachers and therapists—between preschool, OT and speech, this child has a whole team of professionals interacting with him every single week, and we wanted to do something nice to show our appreciation for their efforts. I knit scarves for his private therapists, but there wasn’t quite enough time to knit something for the entire preschool team…

First there were candy cane cookies, flavored with peppermint and colored with natural additions like raspberry juice and mint green tea ground to a powder. This platter went to the holiday party on the last day of school, another bag went to an elderly neighbor, and Nolan kindly took care of all the cookies that got broken in storage.

As for teacher gifts, I ended up ordering custom “Scribbles by Sparks” mugs and filling them with homemade hot cocoa mix and cinnamon-dusted marshmallows, with a reusable Scribbles Christmas card. The lovely packaging was courtesy of my mother.

I can’t even tell you how many people oohed and aahed over the whole concept of homemade marshmallows. They came out nice and fluffy, subtly spiced, and the perfect garnish to melt in a mug of steaming cocoa. I wanted a recipe that didn’t require corn syrup. The one I chose calls for agave instead; even though I personally avoid agave also, my mom had some in the pantry from before Nolan and I moved, so I went ahead and used it up. Next time I will use honey. And the recipe turned out to make twice what we needed for gifting, so I strongly suspect some riffs on s’mores in my near future… more on that, with recipes, to come!

In the meantime, I strongly suggest you whiz up a batch or three of this hot cocoa mix! Although mostly overlooked due to the marshmallow frenzy, this mix makes delicious rich hot chocolate and doesn’t contain any of that nasty milk powder.

Hot Cocoa Mix

1 (4 oz) bar bittersweet chocolate, 55-70% cocoa
6 T high-fat Dutch process cocoa
2 T brown sugar or rapadura
1/4 C vanilla sugar (make your own by sticking a vanilla bean in a canister of sugar for a few days!)
2 T cornstarch or arrowroot

Roughly cut chocolate in small pieces and pour into a food processor with the rest of the ingredients. Pulse until chocolate is reduced to powder (this will take a few minutes, but if you whiz it up in one go the heat will melt the chocolate, so be patient and pulse). Pour the hot chocolate mix in an airtight jar or other airtight container and keep in a dark, cool place.

To make hot chocolate: Pour 3 tablespoons of hot chocolate mix in a small pan. Measure a mugful of milk, then pour 3 tablespoons of it into the pan and whisk with the chocolate mixture until it forms a smooth paste. Slowly add the rest of the milk, stirring, until well combined. Put over medium heat and bring to boil, stirring. When the chocolate reaches boiling point, let simmer for 2-3 minutes, or until it thickens slightly.

Source: Positively Beauty.

Category: Baking, Dessert, Persnickety Bits | 1 Comment »
Tags: bake, beverage, chocolate, cinnamon, cookie, gift, holiday, hot cocoa, marshmallow, mint, Scribbles by Sparks

Posted By Julie on November 26, 2011

This was the first Thanksgiving I have spent with my parents since I got married, and the first time I have used their split oven to cook a feast. It definitely saved me some planning and compromise in that last crucial hour, but I still split up the work over Wednesday and Thursday, getting the majority of the baking out of the way early.

One of the big projects for Wednesday was bread-baking. I always have some sort of fresh bread on hand at Thanksgiving, and this year I did challah because my mom loves it. I made a double recipe based on the one here, and baked up a panful of knotted rolls together with a braided loaf shaped in a 9×5 loaf pan for slicing. My only adjustment besides doubling the recipe was the inclusion of about 33% whole wheat flour (some sprouted). It rose volcanically in my dehydrator for the first rise, less than an hour to overflowing the bowl, so I gave it a second rise before shaping. The texture of the finished bread was perfect: light and fluffy with just a touch of crispness in the crust. If this recipe didn’t leave so many orphaned egg whites, I would consider adapting it for our everyday loaf! Several cups worth of bread cubes spent the night on a drying rack so they would be sufficiently stale to incorporate into the stuffing.

In the photo above, you can also see the cookies I baked on Wednesday. They are Alton Brown’s vanilla wafer cookies, prepared in advance of a crumb crust for pie, and although they didn’t look like the store-bought sort, the flavor and texture was right on, and the amount would have been just right for two pies if we hadn’t done some snacking (whoops!).

I always have a soup course as part of Thanksgiving dinner, but because I don’t rush things to achieve an early meal time, the soup generally works out best as lunch. This year I moved it up even further, to dinner on Wednesday night. As long as I was roasting a pumpkin for pie, I went ahead and threw in a small butternut squash from basement storage, and the latter became this creamy soup, fragrant with ginger and fennel and swirled with hazelnut cider cream. The finished product is something of a hybrid between two recipes, and I was very pleased with its complex but mildly sweet flavor, despite an abiding dislike of both squash and fennel.

We attended a Thanksgiving service and pie social at our church on Wednesday evening, so I made sure to build in time for baking pie. Hoping to be unique, this is the apple cider cream pie from Food & Wine, topped with a rather limp chestnut meringue and slices of our own dried apples. I opted for a meringue top even though it isn’t my favorite, because I had a bunch of egg whites to spare after the challah dough, and I think the ground sweetened chestnuts weighed down the meringue with their oil content. Oh well, the single bite I was able to sneak tasted alright, and I think it was very pretty. The last few cups of meringue had so little lift that I gave up trying to put it on the pie and folded in sifted flour to make some little chestnut genoise cakes, baked in 6″ tart pans. They baked up just fine, and tasted delicious and moist between layers of leftover eggnog buttercream from a banana cake my mom made last week.

Then on to the main event! This year we had a 12-pound organic turkey to work with; as much as I would have loved to get a heritage-breed pastured turkey, we just could not justify the price. I selected a Jonathan Waxman recipe for the turkey this year, a sage-brined affair with a side of wild rice and oyster stuffing. The turkey spent the night before its big debut in a cooler in our garage, soaking up the sage-infused brine (it took almost two recipes of brine to cover the turkey because of the size of our cooler, unfortunately; that is a lot of water dripping through our little Brita filter). It went in the oven on Thursday, stuffed with onions and celery and turned breast-side down for the first hour and a half. I have never used the upside-down roasting technique before because I worried about the logistics of flipping a searing hot bird, but I decided to trust the Jedi chef on this one and successfully used paper towels to use the wings as handles, tearing the skin only minimally in the process. We ended up with a perfectly browned and crisp exterior and beautifully juicy meat, as delicious a turkey as I have ever tasted, no fussing about under the skin with compound butter required!

Here is the finished plate: perfect slices of turkey with my signature gravy, oyster stuffing and brown butter mashed potatoes, roasted Brussels sprouts with walnut cream and pomegranate, green beans with chestnuts and date vinaigrette, challah knot roll, and apple-cranberry sauce. None of the recipes I selected were out there in terms of non-traditional flavors, but they were all new to us, and I thought they complimented each other nicely. The oyster stuffing was very good, with the chopped oysters themselves disappearing into the savory background for a boost in zinc without activating my squeamish tendencies. The green beans were my least favorite side of the bunch, although they were still tasty, and the Brussels sprouts evolved from a plan calling for a dressing of capers, walnuts and anchovies to my own invention: walnut and garlic-infused cream reduction simply tossed with roasted sprouts, toasted walnuts, and pomegranate arils.

Aside from the turkey itself, the homemade cranberry jelly was my dark horse winner this year. I don’t really like cranberries or cranberry sauce—they are too sour for me in general, and cranberry sauce is either too gelatinous or too chunky. I always make some version of it for the rest of my family, however, and this year was no exception. I tried a very simple jellied recipe that combines cranberries with diced Fuji apple; my only addition was a little vanilla extract. I also used about a cup less than the full 12-ounce bag of cranberries thanks to a cranberry-oat-ricotta muffin recipe. The dish set up in and released perfectly from its plastic wrap-lined bowl, and I actually thought it was delicious, flavorful and just sweet enough. Even the texture did not deter me from eating it right along with bites of turkey, which is a holiday miracle for my tastes!

Finally, no Thanksgiving dinner is truly complete without pie. My mom made a pumpkin chiffon pie once before I was born, and my dad has been longing for a repeat of that blessed event ever since, so I decided to make one this year in his honor. The vanilla wafers shown at the start of the post were the base of the crust for this pie, and the filling was a mixture of home-roasted pumpkin puree, heavy cream, a few choice spices, separated eggs with whipped whites, and my nemesis gelatin. Fortunately, the gelatin cooperated with me this time around and we ended up with a deep-dish pie and half a dozen muffin-cup mini-pies. Topped with a little lightly sweetened whipped cream (I actually found Organic Valley whipping cream labeled “pasture-raised” this year!), this pie was light as air and absolutely perfect. My dad took one bite and declared it the equal of his 40-year old standard, and I thought the vanilla wafer crust was a nice change from the expected graham cracker or gingersnap variants.

Nolan watching delightedly, with a handful of turkey, as Grammie Rita blows the shofar

So what was the overall verdict for this year’s Thanksgiving dinner? The turkey was a sight to behold and even better to taste; Nolan ate a ton of turkey which is an incredible victory for my meat-deprived picky eater. He rejected the stuffing after a bite or two (probably too soft), but all the adults thought it was delicious; it did, however, make the biggest pile of stuffing I have ever seen, and we ended up sticking half of it in the freezer after dinner since I am not sure how well it will transform as leftovers. The vegetable sides were all solid, but the easy cranberry sauce stole the show for me. And that pumpkin chiffon pie will be going in our regular rotation. On with the leftover parade!

Gingered Butternut Soup with Hazelnut-Cider Cream

1 large butternut squash (2-3 lb), halved lengthwise and seeded
1 T extra-virgin olive oil
2 T unsalted butter
1 large onion, cut into 1/2″ dice
1 small fennel bulb—halved, cored and cut into 1/2-inch dice
One 1 1/2-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
4 C chicken stock
1 1/2 C apple cider, divided
1 1/2 T sherry vinegar
1 T fresh thyme, stemmed
Pinch ground nutmeg
Kosher salt and pepper to taste
1/2 C heavy cream, optional
2/3 C sour cream
1/2 C hazelnuts, toasted and chopped
1/2 tsp roasted hazelnut oil

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Rub the cut sides of the squash with the olive oil and set them, cut side down, on a large rimmed baking sheet. Bake the squash for about 1 hour, or until very tender. Remove from the oven and let stand until cool enough to handle. Spoon the squash flesh into a large bowl; discard the skins.

In a large soup pot, melt the butter. Add the onion, fennel and ginger and cook over moderate heat until softened, about 8 minutes. Add the squash, 1 C apple cider and sherry vinegar; simmer until the cider has been absorbed. Pour in the chicken stock, add the thyme, nutmeg, and a good pinch of salt; cover and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Uncover the pot and continue cooking until the squash has completely fallen apart, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the heavy cream. Use a blender or stick blender to puree until very smooth; taste and adjust seasonings.

Boil remaining 1/2 C apple cider in heavy small saucepan until reduced to 1/4 cup, about 5 minutes. Cool. Place sour cream in small bowl. Whisk in reduced cider, hazelnut oil and chopped hazelnuts. (Soup and cider cream can be made 1 day ahead. Cover separately and refrigerate.) Serve the pureed soup with a dollop of cider cream in the center.

Source: Adapted from Food and Wine and Epicurious.

Jellied Fuji-Cranberry Sauce

One 12-ounce bag fresh cranberries
1 large Fuji apple, cored, peeled, and cut into 1/2″ dice
1 C sugar
3/4 C water

Line an 8×4″ loaf pan with plastic wrap and spray the plastic wrap with nonstick cooking spray.

In a medium saucepan, combine the cranberries with the apple, sugar and water. Bring to a boil and cook over moderately high heat, stirring frequently until the cranberries are completely broken down and the sauce is very thick, about 15 minutes. Scrape the cranberry sauce into the prepared pan and refrigerate until chilled, about 3 hours. Invert the jelly onto a serving plate and remove the plastic wrap. Garnish with fresh cranberries and rosemary sprigs. Slice with a serrated knife before serving.

Source: Food and Wine.

Legendary Pumpkin Chiffon Pie

This recipe makes a heck of a lot more dirty dishes than the classic pumpkin pie, so be prepared. It is definitely worth the extra clean-up time though!

For the crust:
4 C crushed vanilla wafer cookies
10 T unsalted butter, melted
1/2 C sugar
1/4 tsp salt

For the pie filling:
3 tsp unflavored gelatin
1/4 C Cointreau or other complementary liqueur, or water
1 1/2 C pumpkin puree
1/2 C heavy cream
1/2 C sugar plus 1/3 C sugar, divided
3 egg yolks, lightly beaten
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp each ground nutmeg, allspice, and kosher salt
4 egg whites
Fresh whipped cream, to serve

Prepare the crust: Preheat oven to 400°F. In a large bowl, combine the cookie crumbs, butter, sugar and salt. Press mixture firmly into 2 9-inch pie pans (if you have any extra mixture left over, you can press this into muffin tins with great results). Bake for 10 minutes, and cool on a wire rack.

Make the filling: In a small bowl, sprinkle the unflavored gelatin over 1/4 cup Cointreau or water to soften for 5 minutes. Set the mixture over a bowl of hot water and stir until the gelatin is dissolved. (I used a ramekin set over a small pot of water brought up to a simmer, and then removed from the heat.)

Meanwhile, in a heavy saucepan, whisk together the pumpkin puree, heavy cream, and 1/2 C sugar, 3 egg yolks, the spices and salt, then turn on the heat to moderately low, cooking and stirring constantly with a wooden spatula for 10 minutes until just steaming. Transfer the mixture to a bowl, stir in the gelatin mixture, and let the mixture begin to cool.

In a large bowl, beat 4 egg whites until they hold soft peaks. Beat in the remaining 1/3 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons at a time, until the meringue holds stiff peaks, and then fold it gently into the partially cooled pumpkin mixture.

Assemble: Pour the filling into the baked shells and chill the pie, lightly covered, for at least 6 hours. Garnish with plenty of fresh whipped cream.

Source: Trail of Crumbs.

Category: Baking, Dessert, Dinner, Meat, Nuts, Grains & Legumes, Sides, Soups, Veggies and Salads | No Comments »
Tags: apple cider, bake, brine, Brussels sprout, butternut squash, challah, chestnut, cookie, cranberry, cream, crumb crust, date, fresh bread, gravy, green beans, hazelnut, oyster, pie, pie crust, pomegranate, potato, rice, roast, rolls, sage, soup, stuffing, turkey, walnut

Posted By Julie on November 24, 2011

Last November I started a post about all the reasons I was thankful for my foodblog in 2010—rediscovering the inspiration of the farmer’s market with my son; committing myself to cooking real, whole, and traditional foods; exploring online communities through Facebook, Foodbuzz, and a host of others; learning about gardening and my own neighborhood through the SESNA community garden; and making some important discoveries about sensory needs and eating, for both myself and my son.

I never had a chance to finish writing that post. The month of November marked the beginning of my son’s journey with speech and occupational therapy; we were still holding our breath and waiting in line for a diagnosis from the Childhood Development and Research Center at OHSU. Once that happened in January, we were faced with an extremely hard decision: whether to stay in Oregon up to our eyeballs in hospital bills while our son failed to receive the early intervention he so clearly needed, or separate the family on a temporary basis so that Nolan could have better therapy options, Medicaid to help pay for it, and my parents’ assistance for respite. Clearly, I selected the second option and moved with my son to Colorado, at least for the next few years.

2011 has been a rough year in many ways, full of changes and growing pains. This year, our November days have been packed with preschool, OT and speech, learning how to play appropriately with toys at home and running through the greenbelt to gather leaves and kick at snowdrifts, with plans to get even more training for me and therapy for Nolan in the future. While Nolan is otherwise occupied, I frantically knit gifts for our therapists, make sets of Christmas cards for sale, cook meals, fight off colds, and alternate my workouts between circuit training and jogging, the better to keep up with my kinetic child. In other words, we hardly have time to stop and breathe, much less reflect upon our many blessings. But I don’t want to let another year pass without acknowledging how fortunate we are in so many ways, especially since my natural tendency is to look around enviously at all the families with normally developing children.

I am so incredibly grateful for Nolan’s extended support system. Raising a child with special needs truly does require a village, and I probably would have torn out all of my hair by now if it weren’t for the continual assistance of my parents. Not only have they been willing to open their home up to the chaos of a three-year old’s world—with toys thrown down the stairs, under the sofa cushions, in every drawer and on every shelf, Sesame Street monopolizing the television—they have helped to financially support our physical and therapeutic needs, chauffeured us all around town to therapy, and offered to watch Nolan when I have to get some work done or just need a break before I explode.

We are so lucky to have almost more therapy options in the Denver metro area than we can squeeze into Nolan’s schedule. Last year at this time, we had almost no choices due to limited transportation, worthless insurance, and minimal public and private options for intervention. Now we are blessed to qualify for Medicaid, which allows us to attend therapy at least four times a week. We are currently considering adding hippotherapy with a PT, listening therapy with a certified OT, Hanen training for me, and/or neuro-developmental delay remediation. The therapists we already work with are uniformly excellent, and have given me so many ideas to extend the intervention to our home program. And Nolan’s preschool teachers, therapists and aides have made school a safe, fun place that Nolan can’t wait to get to! With all this hard work, Nolan is definitely beginning to make real progress, although he admittedly has quite a trek ahead of him in terms of catching up to his peers.

All of this hard work with my son leads me to my next big reason for gratitude: it has been a great learning experience for me. Not only am I getting well-versed in therapy jargon, techniques and exercises, hand signs, and appropriate language patterns to use with Nolan, I have learned so much about myself. Beyond being a picky eater, I have had a whole host of sensory-motor issues from birth, and many of the techniques I use with Nolan could potentially apply to myself as well—everything from the Wilbarger protocol for therapeutic brushing, to sensory feeding techniques, to exercises designed to inhibit the primitive Moro reflex. And there is so much more to learn! I will never lack for reading matter.

I have also learned many more reasons to pursue a traditional foods diet for my family, even though it has gotten harder to do due to lack of time and parents who are way more willing to run to the store than wait an extra few hours for bread. Soaking and sprouting nuts, grains and beans can give me a way to boost the nutritional content of the few foods my son will actually eat. We are blessed to have year-round access to raw, grass-fed dairy and beef, pastured eggs, and space to grow our own organic vegetables and fruits. I may not have the refrigerator space or cold storage to ferment everything, but we did loads of canning and drying this year also, and are so fortunate to have found an excellent price on a stand-alone freezer to further expand our preservation options. I am even branching out into more natural care for our skin, hair and teeth these days; but that is a post yet to come! I am so grateful to be learning about all of these things because they are ways that I can nourish my family today and invest in their future health.

Finally, I am so very grateful to be busy. It is not an easy thing to be raising a special needs child with my spouse in another state, and as appreciative as I am of my parents’ help, the ability to fill my little free time with projects and goals helps this time apart go that much faster for me. When I’m not cooking for my family, taking photos and writing for the blog, or researching interventions for Nolan, I fill the quiet of the evening with knitting (Christmas gifts at present!), making my whimsical monoprint cards, and exercising. I’ve been a knitter for 10 years, but haven’t had any time for it until recently; it is such a blessing for my tactile needs and fidgety hands! The card business, Scribbles by Sparks, is an awesome non-toxic outlet for my creativity that provides me with the occasional income while raising awareness of autism and other childhood neurological disorders. And my running and circuit training goals, while small, feel so much more achievable whenever I consider that Nolan will only get bigger and stronger and faster. I owe it to him to keep myself strong and healthy as long as possible, to keep up with my perpetual motion machine of a son and help him for however long he needs me. So I am very thankful to have a deeper motivation for fitness than just fitting into a smaller pant size (although that certainly didn’t hurt)—I need that extra push to keep myself from slacking off!

I could probably go on and on in this vein, but there is an organic turkey waiting to slip into the oven and oyster stuffing to prepare. Thank you so much for stopping by, and I hope you all (Americans, anyway!) have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! More on our menu tomorrow, providing I am not still in a turkey coma…

Category: Persnickety Bits | No Comments »
Tags: gratitude, holiday, Nolan, Scribbles by Sparks, traditional foods

Posted By Julie on November 8, 2011

It’s one of those things I can’t unthink—now that I know I can make chicken stock from picked carcasses, I simply cannot resist doing so, even when I can barely squeeze another quart into the freezer. And now it is going to be the same way with homemade vinegar. How could I ever throw away fruit peelings and cores when I can instead let them percolate for a few weeks in a jar of sugar-water and end up with a quart or three of freshly fermented cider vinegar?

Freshly mixed pear scrap vinegar, next to strained quart jars of grape vinegar

I have made gallons of the stuff in the past year, using apples, pears, Asian pears, grape mash, even pineapple; before long, we will be as inundated in vinegar as we are in chicken stock. Good thing raw vinegar has a plethora of uses from cooking and baking, to cleaning and disinfecting, not to mention a host of medicinal uses!

A quart of strained apple cider vinegar, ready to use

I make my fruit scrap vinegar in a gallon or half-gallon glass jar or pitcher. I just fill it up about halfway with scraps and cores; browned or bruised spots are fine, but discard anything that looks moldy. A little raw sugar, the less processed the better, gives our friendly bacteria some fuel; I like to use organic unprocessed rapadura, but it does give the mixture a muddy appearance at first. A little whey or raw vinegar like Bragg’s will kick-start the fermentation process, but is technically unnecessary. Topped off with filtered water, you leave the whole mess on your counter to ferment for a few weeks until it sours—then use it for everything from vinaigrettes to beauty aids!

Fruit Scrap Vinegar

Trimmings from apples, pears and other pomes work well with this method; I have also successfully made vinegar from grape mash (seeds and skins from juice-making) and the skin and core of a pineapple, but I think it could also be made from things like peach skins, dates, and apparently even honey. Clearly more experimentation is needed!

About 4 C fruit peels, cores and other scraps
1-2 quarts filtered water
1/4 C raw sugar per quart of water
2 T fresh whey or raw vinegar, optional

Fill a half-gallon Mason jar up about halfway with your fruit scraps of choice. Dump in the sugar and whey, and top off the jar with room temperature filtered water. Stir up this mixture, cover loosely, and allow to ferment in a warm place for about a week, stirring periodically; strain out the scraps at this point and allow your vinegar to continue fermenting for another two to three weeks.

Source: The Nourishing Cook.

Category: Fruits | No Comments »
Tags: fermentation, leftovers, vinegar, whey

Posted By Julie on November 7, 2011

Whew, this is the last fruit canning post of the season—just a little delayed! These are small Bartlett pears from Palisade, and you can tell from the scabs and imperfections on their skins that they are considered “seconds,” which means we were able to buy a box for a reduced price. Since we didn’t intend to eat them out of hand, a paring knife or vegetable peeler made short work of the coarse spots, and the flesh inside was as sweet and juicy as we could have hoped for.

The first project was canning whole quarters in honey syrup (4 C water, 1 C honey, 1/2 C sugar = about 5 C light syrup, for future reference). This was quite easy, albeit a bit more work than the peaches: We peeled, cored and sliced up our pears, submerging them in acidulated water to prevent browning, then simmered them in the honey syrup in batches for about 6 minutes before hot-packing them in quart jars. We ended up with 10 quarts and 2 pint jars of pears; we ate up the last few slices that wouldn’t fit in the jars, and they were delightful, not too sweet or too soft.

There were 6 pounds leftover in the box after canning, so I cored them and chopped them up with the skins still on, threw in a little rapadura, allspice berries and fresh ginger, poured in a ladleful of leftover honey syrup, and and let the whole mess cook in the crock pot overnight to become pear butter, based on this recipe.

The next day, I put the result through my food mill and then gave it quite a few more hours to cook, looking for a deeper, more caramelized color. It took a lot longer than the peach butter I did last year, but in the end, I got the result I was looking for.

I canned 5 pints of pear butter, and had a little leftover to blend into my morning smoothies, although it still had a consistency closer to applesauce than the spreadable fruit butters you buy at the store. Oh well… it will taste great no matter how we end up using it!

We had a ton of pear skins, cores and various trimmings leftover from canning the slices, and I hated the thought of letting them all go to waste. I used a few heaping handfuls to make a gallon or so of vinegar (more on that tomorrow), but still had several pounds of scraps, so I threw them all in my biggest pot with the last of the honey syrup and let them simmer with a few cinnamon sticks until very tender. My initial thought was to make pear honey, and to that end I selected a recipe that happened to call for adding “ground lemons” to the pears, but that gave the pears a bitter undertone that I had to counteract with extra sugar.

In the end, I ran the whole mixture through the food mill, boiled it down with a little pectin, and called it “spiced pear jam,” although depending on the level of set, “pear sauce” might be a more appropriate moniker. I was mostly excited to find a new way to turn some scraps that would otherwise go straight in the compost into 5 more pints of goodness.

Finally, once the jars were all safely on the basement shelf, we went back to the farmer’s market for a few more Bartletts to dehydrate. I peeled and cored them, sliced them into eighths and dunked them in acidulated water to prevent oxidation, and then threw them in the dehydrator overnight. No fancy flavor tricks this time around—we wanted to head out for a nice long walk to enjoy a warm autumn afternoon at the park, since wintery weather seems to be popping in for visits about once a week!

Category: Fruits | No Comments »
Tags: canning, crockpot, dehydrate, fruit butter, jam, leftovers, pear, preservation, total use