Category — Kitchen Life

Lately, our Friday-night fall-back dinner seems to be homemade pizza, and last week was no exception. What was exceptional was the way we topped the pizza this time. Usually we opt for the standard pepperoni (a special brand from Whole Foods that Kellen can have because it contains no dairy) and mozzarella cheese (or a vegan mozzarella-style “cheese” in Kellen’s case)—although Shawn and I have been known to spice our slices up a bit with onions, bell peppers, garlic and other stuff that we know the Littles will end up eyeing suspiciously and then picking off if we put it on their pieces. But Friday morning we picked up our order from A Bar H Farm, which delivers grass-finished beef and lamb, and pasture-raised chickens and eggs to a drop-off point near our neighborhood every six weeks. (The farm is a little more than 150 miles from where we live and is so far the most “local” and convenient option I’ve discovered for putting most of these desirable dietary staples on our table.) Our standard order includes four whole chickens, one beef chuck roast, 6 pounds of ground beef and a dozen eggs. (We’re working on acquiring a dedicated freezer so that we can order more at a time. As it is, we tend to go through it all a few weeks before the next order is due to arrive.) This time around, I had added 1 pound of ground lamb sausage to our usual list, and after we picked up the order I decided to brown it up and use it to top our pizza. Kellen’s pizza also was topped with Follow Your Heart mozzarella-style vegan “cheese,” while the rest of us enjoyed ours with melted slices of the raw milk mozzarella I made last week. We all had the same simple Pizza Sauce, as well as a gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free Pizza Crust. Needless to say, it met with rave reviews: Out of three whole pizzas, not one slice was leftover.

On Sunday morning, I served up the A Bar H eggs—with their amazing, almost-orange yolks—to everyone but Kellen, along with our traditional Sunday Pancakes. (I promised a couple of weeks ago to post the recipe, and I’ve finally gotten around to it.) The ground lamb sausage would have been a real treat with this meal, too—especially for Kellen, as it’s challenging to provide a good source of breakfast protein for him when eggs are on his list of things to avoid.

Today I pick up 2 gallons of raw cow’s milk, plus our monthly order from Azure Standard, an Oregon farm that delivers bulk grains and myriad other specialty items to drop points in cities throughout the western United States—including one not far from my house. I’m expecting organic strawberries and peaches, so I’ll be looking for creative ways to put those on our plates—as well as culturing some of the raw dairy I pick up. Suggestions welcome!

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.

After reading Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon, and upon the advice of our family friend and chiropractor, Dr. Chad Hood, I have begun to incorporate raw dairy (unpasteurized milk straight from the cow or goat) into our diet. This is quite a change for us, as we gave up drinking regular pasteurized cow’s milk a few years ago, when our son Kellen’s severe dairy allergy first appeared. At that point, we all gradually made the shift to using rice milk in our breakfast cereal, and carefully consumed other dairy products (cheese, butter, yogurt, sour cream) so as not to cross-contaminate what Kellen ate or came into contact with. Because I knew what could happen to Kellen if he ingested or even touched a small amount of milk (immediate hives, wheezing, eyes swelling shut, runny nose), I chose to err on the side of caution and avoid buying the ubiquitous gallon from the grocery store each week.

Now there IS cow’s milk in our refrigerator, but it doesn’t come from the grocery store. Instead, I pick it up (two gallons every other week) at a neighborhood drop-off point served by a local dairy that provides raw, organic milk to its customers. Raw milk advocates tout the benefits of unpasteurized milk (obtained, of course, from a scrupulously clean and careful dairy), including the presence of healthy bacteria that play an important role in digestion and nutrient absorption. (We tried raw goat’s milk, too, which tasted surprisingly the same as cow’s milk, but it was a more complicated process to purchase it and a farther distance to travel to pick it up.) We’ve been buying the raw milk for a couple months now and are getting used to having it in our diet, but I’ve been trying to develop a system for efficiently and economically—at $10 a gallon, we handle it like liquid gold!—incorporating it in different ways for the members of our family who can have it. (I had some hope, as I was researching the idea, that Kellen might be able to tolerate raw dairy, but he still exhibited some symptoms after trying both the goat and cow varieties. Our next test will be to culture some of the milk into yogurt or cultured butter to see whether that process makes the milk’s proteins any less volatile for him.)

So I picked up two gallons of milk last week, and here’s what I’ve done with this latest batch so far:

• Using a tip I found on an online forum, I poured one gallon of milk into a jar with a wide opening at the top and a spigot at the bottom—such as you might use here in Arizona to steep and then serve a batch of sun tea. I allowed the milk to rest in the refrigerator in the jar for about 24 hours so that the cream would rise to the top. Then, using the spigot at the bottom of the jar, I released some of the milk into another container, which gradually moved the inch or so of cream down to a point where I could scoop most of it out from the top with a ladle. I saved the cream in the refrigerator and repeated the process with the second gallon (I only bought one jar to try it out, but it worked so well, I think I’ll buy another one so that I don’t have to wait as long to get all the cream separated). I got about 2 cups of cream total (1 cup from each gallon), leaving a little behind so that the leftover milk would still have some in it. From the cream, I made butter (1/2 cup) and buttermilk (1 1/2 cups) using my Vita-Mix blender. It was a really easy process, and the results tasted great. Of course, I do wish the butter yield had been higher! We have used some of the butter on bread and to cook eggs, and I plan to use the buttermilk this week to add to the soaking liquid of our breakfast oatmeal and maybe to bake something with the sprouted spelt flour I’ve got on hand. Any suggestions?

• I used a gallon of the remaining milk to make mozzarella cheese following the recipes and methods outlined in Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (click here) and the online directions provided by the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company (click here). Because I had removed much of the cream from the milk, the resulting cheese was a bit drier than when I made it previously with whole milk. And I should have added more salt toward the end of the process. But I think it will work just fine shredded or sliced (it should yield about 2 cups) on top of homemade pizza, which will be our dinner later this week.

I’m hoping to make yogurt with some of the remaining milk using piima or viili cultures I purchased from Cultures for Health a few weeks ago. The rest I guess we will drink or use in smoothies or something.

So I’m a little closer to establishing a regular routine of processing the raw dairy we purchase. I think it will take me a little while to get a system operating smoothly. And at some point, if we can fit it into the food budget, I will probably need to increase the quantity that we buy, as we still find ourselves occasionally needing to purchase regular butter, cheddar cheese and sour cream from the grocery store.

Other projects in the kitchen this week included making juice pops from last week’s leftover Cherry Juice, and ice cream treats from Wardeh Harmon’s recipe for Dark Chocolate Ice Cream—Non-Dairy, Naturally Sweetened—both enjoyed by my naturally sweet daughter, Kennah.

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.

Now that I’m blogging about our kitchen life, my husband, Shawn, asks, “Are you going to take a picture of every meal before we can eat it?”

When the weekend rolled around and found me with several large containers full of organic Bing cherries that needed to be consumed before they became compost, I devoted part of my Saturday to destemming and pitting all that were in good shape. (I actually only had to part with about a dozen or so cherries that were mushy or starting to mold.) The firmest and prettiest I served at dinner that night (they didn’t last long!) And the remaining ones became the basis for a batch of Cherry Juice, inspired by a recipe in Missy Chase Lapine’s book, The Sneaky Chef. I knew we’d be having Sunday Pancakes the next morning (our traditional, pre-church breakfast), so my idea was to use the Cherry Juice to make Cherry Syrup to top them off. It worked wonderfully and became an instant family favorite. We even had enough Cherry Juice left over to add a fun flavor (not to mention extra fiber and antioxidants) to our applesauce the next day.

My other food foray this week was an attempt to make my friend Wardeh Harmon’s Easy Sprouted Spelt Artisan Bread. She developed her recipe and method from the techniques laid out in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François. Wardeh uses sprouted spelt flour for much of her baking these days, motivated by her research (much of it gleaned from Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon) into its nutritional benefits and ease of digestibility—even for the gluten-intolerant members of her family. After seeing what she was up to on her blog, www.gnowfglins.com, (and following up with my own reading of both Nourishing Traditions and Artisan Bread), I was eager to try her recipe for our family—and especially for our oldest son, Kellen, whose food allergies have meant that he has eaten gluten-free for much of his 9 years.

Unfortunately, my results weren’t what I’d hoped they’d be on my first attempt. The dough was supposed to be pretty wet—as indicated by both Wardeh’s recipe and the Artisan Bread methodology. But mine was initially way too dry and stiff, so I tried to compensate for it by adding more water to get it to the right consistency. The resulting loaves had a nice crisp exterior crust, but they didn’t rise well and the interior was too moist—almost a bit gummy. Kellen and I couldn’t resist tasting the bread with a little Earth Balance spread, though, and it actually wasn’t bad. (And although Kellen had some mild stomach discomfort about an hour afterward, it didn’t seem to bother him too much at all. We’re still not sure whether sprouted spelt is going to be something he can tolerate on a regular basis, but I’m so proud of him for overcoming his anxiety and giving it a try!)

Meanwhile, I had these two loaves of bread that I wasn’t sure what to do with, so I drew inspiration from yet another friend with whom I have done a lot of collaborative gluten-free baking. Her solution for loaves that don’t turn out quite right? Make French toast! And that’s exactly what I did this morning. Kellen opted out (which is probably a good thing, as I haven’t figured out how to make egg-free French toast to accommodate his allergy), but the rest of us tried it—topped, of course, with more Cherry Syrup. I liked it a lot, but I think it will take some time for the others to get used to the bread’s taste and texture. They did eat it and say they liked it, but the fact that I have a few pieces left over means they aren’t big fans—yet.

French toast fix: Not-quite-right sprouted spelt bread—topped with Cherry Syrup— gets a makeover.

My blog is new and I don’t have a recipe index set up yet, so I’ve posted the Cherry Juice and Cherry Syrup ones here and will move them to the right place later—along with our recipe for Sunday Pancakes.

Cherry Juice (adapted from The Sneaky Chef, by Missy Chase Lapine)

2 1/2 cups pitted organic cherries (I used fresh, but frozen is OK, too)
2 cups water
1 tablespoon Rapadura (unrefined and unbleached whole cane sugar)

Bring cherries, water, and Rapadura to a boil in a medium pot. Turn heat to low and allow to simmer for 10 minutes. Occasionally mash the cherries with the back of a spoon (or a potato masher) to release their juices. The original recipe suggests pouring this mixture into a fine mesh strainer over a container or bowl, pressing the cherry “pulp” with the back of a spoon until all the liquid is released. And if you want a clear juice, that’s the way to go. I didn’t mind a little more texture, though, so I simply poured the mixture into my Vita-Mix (any other blender should work, too) and blended it until it was fairly smooth. The recipe yields 2 to 2 1/2 cups of juice, which can be refrigerated for up to three days or frozen for later use. For cherry applesauce, simply stir the desired amount of Cherry Juice into applesauce until the desired color and flavor are attained.

Cherry Syrup (adapted from “Homemade Berry Syrup” in The Sneaky Chef, by Missy Chase Lapine)

Combine Cherry Juice and pure maple syrup in equal proportions (I used 1/2 cup of each). Serve warm over pancakes or French toast.

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.