Posts from — November 2009

I am so looking forward to this Thanksgiving! It will be the first time in at least five years that we will celebrate the holiday in our own home. Not that I haven’t enjoyed the out-of-town trips to feast with our extended family, but I have a strong desire to establish some of our own traditions while our Littles are still little. And although it has been nice in years past to divvy up the cooking and cleaning duties among all of the folks in attendance, I’m ready this year to take on the task of creating a complete menu and cooking everything on it from top to bottom! One reason I’m delighting in and not dreading this challenge is that it provides the perfect opportunity to convert some standard dishes to real-food fare. The centerpiece, of course, will be the pastured turkey we ordered from A Bar H Farm, where we also get pastured chickens and eggs, as well as grass-fed beef and lamb, throughout the year. I will pick up the turkey on Friday, and I won’t know what size it is until then—although I requested one in the 12- to 15-pound range. And thanks to my friend Wardeh Harmon’s incredibly detailed instructions for cooking a pastured turkey and keeping it moist—click here to find those instructions on her blog, www.gnowfglins.com—I feel prepared to turn out a top-notch bird on my first try. (To clarify, it won’t be my first turkey—just my first pastured one. And from what I gather, the rules for roasting regular turkeys don’t apply.)

While some of my focus will be on the turkey, I intend to concentrate just as intently on the all-important side dishes, which will include roasted garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, two kinds of stuffing—one gluten-free and the other made with sprouted-grain bread—a twist on a traditional family fruit salad, and, of course, a dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free pumpkin pie topped (by those of us who can have it) with raw dairy whipped cream. Two of these side dishes—the sprouted-grain stuffing and the fruit salad—will be a departure from the norm for me and will require some extra prep work. For the stuffing, I’ve already baked, cubed and frozen a loaf of sprouted-wheat bread, which I will thaw and dry out a bit a day or two before Thanksgiving. And I’ve sprouted more wheat to combine with cornmeal to make cornbread that also will be an ingredient in the stuffing—along with sage, butter, chicken stock and toasted pine nuts.

Stuff for stuffing: sprouted bread.

Fruit salad fixings.

In my head, I’ve already made over the fruit salad my mom has served every Thanksgiving I’ve ever known. Her recipe combines apples, bananas, raisins, celery, walnuts, mayonnaise and maraschino cherries. I’ve decided to forgo the bananas (because they’re not representative of the season and because some of my family members exhibit a slight allergy to them) and replace them with pears. I’ll substitute soaked pecans for the walnuts (mostly because I have a lot of pecans in my freezer that have made the circuitous route from my aunt’s pecan trees in southern Arizona, to my parents’ home in northern Arizona—where my dad shelled them all—to me in central Arizona). The maraschino cherries are definitely out, and instead I’ll include coarsely chopped cranberries simmered in a bit of raw honey or agave nectar to tame their tartness. Finally, I plan to make my first attempt at homemade mayonnaise using the yolks from the pastured eggs I’ll pick up Friday along with my turkey.

As I have pondered all the possibilities in coming up with our Thanksgiving menu, it has occurred to me that I have a lot of work ahead of me to put together this one meal. But rather than feeling overwhelmed by the prospect, I am eager to discover what can actually be accomplished. And I am hopeful that some inspiration will spill over into our daily food life—that ideas and techniques will take root here and help us continue to grow in the ongoing transformation of the way we eat all the time, not just on special occasions. For that, I will be most thankful.

I have shared this post and its images in the Gallery of Thanksgiving Sides at www.gnowfglins.com. To link to the complete lineup, click here.

My kitchen life last week was pretty much consumed by the making of two birthday cakes—each made not only with a particular birthday boy or girl in mind, but also with some food-allergy considerations and real-food parameters in place. While I met with some success, I also had to make a few concessions along the way to accomplishing my goals. As always, I learned a lot through each process.

For the first cake—a Cars-themed chocolate race track for 2-year-old Keillor—I was looking to try a new recipe for a basic chocolate cake that would be gluten-, dairy- and egg-free. (Keillor doesn’t exhibit signs of an allergy to any of those ingredients, but his oldest brother, Kellen, can’t eat them, and I wanted the whole family to be able to partake.) I turned to a recipe titled Classic Chocolate Layer Cake in Cybele Pascal’s The Whole Food Allergy Cookbook. I appreciate Pascal’s omission of refined sugars (she calls for honey instead in both the cake recipe and the accompanying Chocolate Fudge Frosting and Vanilla Frosting recipes), as well as her suggestion in most instances for healthy oils (I chose to use coconut oil). The only change I made to the recipe as it was written was to use a gluten-free flour blend in place of the recipe-recommended spelt flour. (Although I have experimented with sprouted spelt flour, it does contain gluten, and Kellen still experiences stomach discomfort after eating it.) This flour substitution was undoubtedly a crucial factor in the final result, which was a cake that didn’t rise well (not surprising for a gluten-free cake without eggs), and that was dense and fudge-like instead of fluffy and, well, cake-like. It wasn’t a big enough disappointment to deter any of us from eating it, however; it disappeared almost as quickly as Keillor was able to make a wish and blow out the candles poked into its center.

For the second cake—in honor of 4-year-old Kennah—I decided to go the real-food route as much as possible and not worry so much about the food-allergy issues. (And Kellen was a good sport about sitting this one out.) This decision led me to a recipe in Janie Quinn’s Sprouted Baking for Yellow Cupcakes (which easily converted to a cake recipe). Some advance preparation was required for this cake, including sprouting enough soft white wheat to grind into flour, and draining the whey from yogurt to make a cream-cheese-like base for the frosting. I had borrowed a special baking pan from a friend to shape the cake into the skirt of a ball gown to fit a Cinderella doll. The only hitch here was ensuring that I had enough batter to fill the pan—and as it turned out, I had to double the recipe to do so. And now to confess the concessions I had to make in order to turn out my daughter’s dream cake:
• I used sugar (albeit organic and slightly less refined) in both the cake and the frosting.
• I used regular blue food coloring to tint the frosting (although I did try some alternatives first—including blueberry juice and the steeping liquid that resulted from boiling water poured over chopped red cabbage, both of which yielded a pretty pink instead of Cinderella’s trademark blue).
Of course, any misgivings I had about not quite reaching my real-food goals were pretty much assuaged by the look of total surprise and delight on Kennah’s face when we unveiled the cake and she caught her first glimpse—and by the delicious flavor and terrific texture of the cake. As I recently read—just in the nick of time, actually—on the blog of a friend who’s further along on this journey than I am, “Sometimes Real Life trumps Real Food.”

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.

Our pretty, pretty princess, Kennah Maire, turned 4 today! As you might have guessed, the theme for the day was princesses—specifically Cinderella, who is (and always has been) her favorite. She received a personalized CD featuring songs sung by many of the Disney princesses (“How do they know my name?” she asked, and then added, “The princesses are so nice!”), and she even got a surprise post-dinner birthday phone call from Cinderella (“I wonder who told her it was my birthday!” she said). Her cake was a complete surprise, too—for me as much as for her! Even with a handy-dandy special baking pan I borrowed from my friend, this confection was a serious challenge requiring surgical skills (I had to temporarily amputate the doll’s legs to fit her into the top) and engineering feats (you’d never know it, but the doll’s torso is propped up and positioned by toothpicks from beneath and along the sides). I’m so grateful for the frosting, which covered the multitude of pins! As I was frosting the cake at 5 a.m. (on about five hours’ worth of sleep), I had the idea to possibly add royal icing pearl-like beading to the dress, but Shawn fortunately talked me down off the ledge with his own pearls of wisdom: “Don’t get too elaborate, or you’ll mess it up and be really upset.” So I’m grateful for husbands with common sense, too.

Tonight the doll (legs reattached, and gown and glass slippers back in place) is tucked into bed beside Kennah, a gift for whom I am also most grateful. As a princess in the midst of the many princes in our family, she’s certainly something—make that someone—to celebrate.

Our littlest Little, Keillor Steven, turned 2 today! We marked the occasion with a spaghetti-and-meatball dinner, and a chocolate cake. The theme for the day was taken from the Disney movie Cars, which all of the kids watched while I decorated the cake (complete with a toy Lightning McQueen) and made dinner. Although he was somewhat of a surprise addition to our family (we had thought his sister, Kennah, would be our last Little), Keillor continues to delight us every day! He’s obsessed with ball sports, including “hoop” (basketball), “hike” (football) and “sock ball” (soccer). And he loves to swing “supe high sky” (super high, to the sky) whenever he encounters a playground. We can’t wait to see what other surprises are in store for us with this little guy!

My Kitchen Life lately hasn’t featured too much that’s new—except I did bake two batches of Sweet Cornbread (using sprouted soft white wheat flour) from Janie Quinn’s Sprouted Baking for a Harvest/Halloween gathering last weekend. (I was so busy preparing that I forgot to photograph the results!) Only a few pieces came back home with me, so I’m guessing it was a good compliment to the four kinds of chili that were also part of the festivities.

Up next on my agenda are birthday cakes for my two littlest Littles: Keillor, who turns 2 on Nov. 9, and Kennah, who will be 4 on Nov. 12. I’m determined to employ real-food ideas (and incorporate the food-allergy considerations we need to make, as well) so that we can not only have our cake, but feel good about eating it, too. For ideas on how to accomplish all of that, I’ll be turning once again to Sprouted Baking, and also to The Whole Foods Allergy Cookbook, by Cybele Pascal, which has terrific ideas for using natural sweeteners and contains recipes that are not only allergen-free but nutrition-packed (a concept that is not as common as you might think). The biggest challenge for me might actually lie in decorating the cakes: Keillor’s will be a round racetrack (think chocolate frosting for the track) topped with a toy Lightning McQueen from Cars; and Kennah’s will include an actual Cinderella doll with the cake and frosting serving as her dress. Wish me luck!

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.

Please note: It is my goal to provide a top-quality, content-driven, ad-free blog. That said, I do occasionally include affiliate links in some of my posts. For example, if you click on the book covers above, you will link to Amazon.com, where you will have an opportunity to purchase the books—and if you do buy them after clicking through from my site, I will receive a small commission to support my work here, as well as my own book-buying habit. Seriously, though, I’d be just as happy if my recommendation inspired you to check out the titles from your local library or borrow them from a friend.

A few friends have asked me recently how I got my blog up and running—which got me thinking there might be more of you out there who’d like to venture into the blogosphere but who need a little (or a lot of) help with the technical stuff. That was certainly the case for me. I knew what I wanted to write about and who my target audience would be; I had a blog name or two in mind; and I even had a vague idea what I wanted it to look like. But I didn’t know much of the important stuff: What blog platform should I choose? What did it mean to have my site hosted? Where would I find a theme? And then there was all the lingo: I didn’t know a keyword from a category, or a widget from a plug-in. And forget about html code! Did I really need to know all that? Well, yes and no, as it turns out. In the months since I started my blog, I certainly have gained an education in all of the above. But I was able to get started pretty quickly despite the enormous learning curve because of the Beginner to Blogger e-course I signed up for upon the recommendation of a friend who already had a fairly established blog. Instructor Traci Knope laid everything out in 20 lessons (five lessons a week for four weeks) that offered step-by-step navigation through what would otherwise have been an intimidating and overwhelming process. The amount of research she saved me—although I’ve done a fair amount of that on my own, as well—was worth the $39.95 I paid for the course. So if you have something you want to share but you’re not sure exactly how to get it out there, you might want to consider taking this e-course, too. If you do, please let me know so that I can look for your work someday soon!

Please note: It is my goal to provide a top-quality, content-driven, ad-free blog. That said, I do occasionally promote something that I love and that I think would be of interest to my readers. For example, if you click on the Beginner to Blogger logo above, you will link to the site where you will have an opportunity to purchase the e-course—and if you do buy it after clicking through from my site, I will receive a small commission to support my work here, for which I thank you.