Keep it Real

Just made french toast for the family - 24 hour soaked WW sourdough bread, pastured eggs, raw goat milk, maple syrup, coconut oil and butter.

Currently happening...

I wanted to share with you what's happening in my kitchen, so I made a video - 

Happy to share this with Gnowfglins at Tuesday Twister!

Sour Cream

Who doesn't love sour cream?  It adds a tart creamy smoothness to so many dishes.  There is a way to make sour cream out of just raw milk and some cultures or just letting it sit out or something (can you tell I've never done it?).  I've found a way to have delicious, fresh, raw, probiotic sour cream.  A couple of weeks ago I made chevre.  It comes out like a cream cheese.  I've also been keeping up my kefir - always have a supply of it in the fridge.  So all I do is blend some chevre and kefir till I get the consistency of sour cream.  VIOLA!! Beautiful sour cream!  Now, you're probably thinking - that's a lot of work for sour cream - making raw milk chevre and kefir.  You're right, it would be.  But I already have those things on hand - so if these are the types of dairy products you keep around then give some sour cream a try!

 

This morning it was soooo good on one pastured egg mixed with a tablespoon of kefir, fried into an omelet in coconut oil and topped with my tomato pesto chevre and a side of purple lacto kraut.  mmm!

 

The Nourished Kitchen Real Food Challenge - week one

For the past 6-9 months I've been really learning and practicing moving towards more real, traditional foods.  Leaving the industrialized food behind and eating whole, local, homegrown, homemade foods as much as I can.  I signed up for this challenge to further my knowledge and practice of preparing and eating real foods.  While I fully appreciate and understand the completeness of this challenge, I also know that I have to take it at my own pace.  So here I will recap how I put week one's challenges to play for me.

Day 1 - clean out your pantry / fridge of offending foods.  I'll admit I only tackled my pantry. I emptied it out and took this opportunity to reorganize.  I've been on the 'real food' mission since the summer time, but obviously am not 100% - as you can see here with my instant potatoes, powdered sugar and truvia! Yikes!  You can see my pile of stuff that I threw away a post down.  Other things were put back, but I either don't use them often, are for someone else, or I'm not ready to give up yet.  This clean out helped me realize the positive changes I've made since the summer and also my areas of weakness and what needs improvement.

Day 2 - choose wholesome foods.  This is an area that I feel I've done well with.  While I haven't eliminated all offending foods (or food like substances), I have added some outstanding foods to my diet. This is just one example of a nutrient dense meal I would make for myself.  From the bottom up - whole wheat / spelt sourdough bread I made with a 24 hour soak / fermentation. Sun dried tomato and basil pesto chevre - tomatoes dried and frozen this summer, basil pesto from my garden also frozen, made the chevre from raw cow milk.  One dark yolk pastured egg cooked in plenty of coconut oil.  It was delicious, nourishing, and kept me full for hours!

Day 3 - Improve your grains. I've been working on this one off and on for a while.  I often soak my oats overnight.  I've played around with some soaked flours, which didn't turn out so well.  Now I am venturing into bread making with a long soak time, so hopefully I am well on my way to reducing phytic acids.

Day 4 - Start your sourdough.  Ahh, another one I've started and stopped a couple of times!  Over the years I've played around with sourdough starters - mostly making my own.  But never kept them up for any length of time and definitely not understanding the benefits of sourdough.  During the summer at our town's farmers market the sourdough bread lady was selling her sourdough starter.  So I brought it home and started it up.  Fed it and played with it a bit, then stuck it in my outside fridge and neglected it for several months.  Last week I took it out and started to feed it whole wheat flour and bring back to life (so to speak).  I think I'm 'getting' the sourdough thing!  I've made some wonderful crackers, bread, crepes, and even a chocolate sourdough cake!  So it hasn't gone back in the fridge yet because I'm using it so much now.

Day 5 - Sprout your grains.  Now this is something I've never done - that I can remember anyway.  I've sprouted seeds and beans, but never grains like wheat.  I had a little baggie of local organic wheat berries in my cupboard that I bought over the summer.  Just over a cup.  They are now soaking overnight. Yeah, I'm a few days behind.  I had a minor skin cancer diagnosis this week that threw me off kilter a bit.  But I'll catch up!  

Day 6 - Sprouted flour.  Since I've never sprouted grains, then it's safe to assume I've never milled my own sprouted flour.  I don't have a dehydrator (though I would LOVE an Excalibur dehydrator someday!) and I don't have a grain mill.  I've recently discovered that there is a kitchenaid attachment for the mixer that I could get, but that is not on the top of the list right now.  I'd get a dehydrator first.  I'm not sure what I'll do with my sprouted wheat berries once they are ready.  Cook them like rice?  I don't know.  I am considering purchasing some sprout flour online soon.

Day 7 - Evaluate and share.  All in all I think this challenge is doing exactly what I wanted for me - challenging me to learn more and move forward with traditional eating.  I look forward to the next few weeks of challenging me to move out my comfort zones and to get me excited about some things that seem intimidating to me now.  I've looked over the last minute shopping ideas for next week and have most of the items on the list.  So I think I'm well on my way!!

 

Last week in my kitchen...

I've had some buffalo liver in my freezer for awhile now.  I cut it into manageable chunks for the freezer.  Determined to eat (and somehow like or tolerate) more liver I took out these ingredients - a whole white onion, three garlic cloves, about 3 oz of liver, and a couple of tablespoons of lard.  I fried up the onions really well with the lard in a cast iron skillet.  Then I chopped the liver into very small cubes (helps to do this while it's still frozen, but slightly thawed) and kept the heat on high.  Throw that in with some sea salt and pepper and cook quickly till browned.  I put the chopped garlic in at the end so as not to burn it and make it bitter tasting.

This is what I ended up with.  The liver and onions made two servings for me.  Here's one serving with some lacto fermented kraut and raw sour cream.  It was do able, but I still don't like the aftertaste of liver.  I masked it with a bunch of kraut and ate it all, but it will take some getting used to.  It WAS very flavorful the way I prepared it, I just can't seem to get over that liver taste after chewing it.

A couple of days later I ended up taking the other serving and running it through my food processor with some chevre to make a sort of pate.  I then made sourdough crepes (which were delicious!) and rolled the pate up in that.  Was pretty good and I'm thinking that if I don't have to chew the liver and it's mixed with other things it might be better.  One thing to note - after eating the liver and onions, sour cream and kraut - I felt amazing!  Almost like some kind of buzz. Energy, calmness, and just an overall feeling of wellbeing.  Coincidence? I don't think so - happened again after eating the pate.  So that in itself is reason enough to keep at this liver thing.

I've been wanting to revive the sourdough starter in my fridge, so after a feeding or two I gave the  minimal knead sourdough bread recipe a shot.  I made half the recipe and out of that formed it into eight buns.  Basically they came out as rolls that I cut in half for burgers.  They were very good!  Nice and sourdough like.  I used a combo of whole wheat and rye flours.  The burgers are made out of grass fed ground beef with buffalo liver ground up with onion mixed in.  Sneaky, aren't I? ;)  These burgers also had guacamole that I made out of the lovely avocados Mom sent us with raw chevre cheese mixed in. Who says cheeseburgers aren't healthy?

Last week was my birthday and instead of letting my family pick up a grocery store cake I decided to make my own!  After looking around for a healthier alternative I settled on a chocolate sourdough cake from Wardeh's site.  The dough came out really thick and tasted wonderful.  I was afraid it wouldn't rise well, but just look how beautiful it came out!

Once cool I topped it with a whipped cream topping since I didn't have the ingredients for the frosting listed.  I just used regular store bought heavy cream whipped till stiff with a drizzle of raw honey.  Spread that over the cake and let the kids decorate.  Here's my compromise - animal cookies and store candies for decor.  Oh well.  I thought the cake was amazing - as did my husband and oldest son.  The younger two didn't exactly think the same.  I'm sure it was because it was so dense.  It was almost more like a bread.  If I made it again I think I would try and find a way to make it a little lighter.  Other than that I feel like it was a wonderful cake option!

I've joined the Real Food Challenge over at The Nourished Kitchen blog.  The first days assignment was to clean out your pantry of foods you shouldn't be eating on a whole foods diet.  I've been wanting to reorganize my pantry for quite some time.  So this was a good excuse to do it.  Here's the before and after:

    

And here are my purged items.  Nasty buggers.  That bag of splenda was from my last purge during the summer that I posted here.  Except I didn't fully 'purge' it all.  It went into a big box into the office waiting for a suitable place to donate it or dispose of it.  I should have just thrown it away.  During a weak moment I went back to that box and pulled the splenda out.  

So, those are a few of this weeks kitchen happenings.  This week I am embarking on some mayo making, sprouting, and maybe some more sourdough adventures.

This post is proud to be a part of Tuesday Twister Blog Carnival and Real Food Wednesday !