A field in Gettysburg

Yesterday morning, I got up a little late.  I considered not going to the farmer’s market since I still had some vegetables left over from the previous weekend.  But as I thought about it, I realized I could not go a week without quark, the creamy fresh cheese made from cultured buttermilk.  And so, I made the journey to the farmer’s market after all.  I ended up getting some sheep milk cheese, heavy cream, and berries in addition to the quark, so it was productive.   I’m preparing a post on quark.  It is something you can make at home, if you are so inclined.  In the meantime, here are a few links that I found interesting:  some local farms I love,  a coconut milk cooking contest, misconclusions drawn from studies, nutrient deficiencies,  supplies for preserving food, and why local food is awesome.  See below for all the links.

Valley Shepherd Creamery – This is where I got the sheep’s milk cheese from.    It was very tasty.  I don’t eat a lot of sheep’s milk cheese for some reason, sticking more with cow and goat.  But I should make regular stops at this farm’s stall to try the different sheep’s milk cheeses.  The sheep are grass fed, and they even offer some raw milk cheeses.  I see that they give farm tours, so I might try to go.  Their cheese can be purchased in the NYC/NJ area, but if you don’t live here, they do have an online store.

Hawthorn Valley Farm – I love this farm.  Someday I will figure out how I can go work there.  Grass fed cows, fermented foods, vegetables, they have it all.  If you are in the NY area, check them out.

Clean Your Plate – A cooking contest hosted by The Nourished Kitchen.  This month’s theme is coconut milk.  Submit your recipe by July 15th, or vote once she posts the entries!  Coconut milk is a wonderful ingredient, so this will be a great one to bookmark and make all of the recipes!

Warning: Bologna May Cause Cancer Headlines – There are a lot of studies out there that tell you eating meat is bad for you, fat is bad for you, etc.  Is that really true?  Here is a critical look at one such study.  Read it, and you will learn never to trust the headlines when someone tells you some new study shows X.  Instead, read into the study for more information.  How was the data collected?  What data did they look at, etc.  Here is another one debunking the Finnish Mental Hospital Trial.

ABC’s Big Meal Propaganda – A similar article, this one debunking a news report on ABC.  Here is a quick synopsis – A reporter eats 4 foods that are really bad for you – a deep fried appatizer, a hamburger, french fries, and one of those mega cookie ice cream desserts at popular restaurants.  Then a doctor gives her an exam and tells her how the food affected her, and she says how awful she feels after eating all that saturated fat.  What the report doesn’t tell you is all of the sugar and white flour in these foods.  That is what makes them so unhealthy!  Not the saturated fat.  Read the whole article the complete details.  Very interesting.  In general, that is what makes fast food unhealthy – the sugar (in the soda, in the bun) and the vegetable oils everything is fried in.  It isn’t the saturated fat that poses the biggest problem.

Supplies for Preserving Food – If you want to preserve your own food, here is some equipment you might want.  Look for them at garage sales. 

Are you Nutrient Starved? – I believe most of us aren’t getting enough proper nutrition.  Our lifestyle and diet just does not make it easy.  For example, vitamin D.  I work an office job and can’t go sunbathe for 30 minutes every day to get my requirement of sunlight for optimal vitamin D conversion.  And most people don’t eat enough dairy or eggs to make up for it.  The RDA only lists the bare minimum requirements of nutrients to prevent your body from getting deficiency related diseases, but less profound deficiencies can still affect you.  While I disagree with her assertion that answering “yes” to any of her list of symptoms means you have a deficiency, she still makes a good point that any of those things can mean you aren’t getting enough nutrients.  Here is another article on the RDA of vitamin D.

Why local food – A great post on why local food is so good for you and the community at large.

Healthy and unhealthy ingredients – What ingredients to avoid, and what you can substitute with.  A very helpful post for those of you just starting out on a more traditional, less processed foods way of life.

I think that is it for now.  That should keep you busy until I can regale you with tales of quark and lambs quarter.

zucchini bread

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays.

Today I picked up a CSA share for someone on vacation.  I was not prepared for the bounty of berries I was to receive!  2 pints of raspberries and 2 quarts of strawberries, plus other assorted vegetables and herbs.  I had been prepared to make a currant quick bread, and had prepped some wheat the night before (soaked it in yogurt and left it out 24 hours), but when I realized I could now make a raspberry currant pie, I had to switch gears and figure out something else to do with my soaked wheat.  I froze the raspberries and currants  so I could make a pie with them later this week.  The raspberries would not have lasted more than a day in the fridge, which is always the pity with raspberries.  So delicate that they must be used or frozen right away.

Since I’m getting a delivery of meat in 2 days, I figured I should use something from my freezer to help free up space.  Well, I did happen to have a little less than a cup of grated zucchini so I thought I’d make zucchini bread.  Besides, here in the northeast, the zucchini have arrived at the farmer’s markets, and soon we will be up to our ears in it!

Now, this isn’t a recipe that uses heaps of zucchinis.  It only uses about a cup of grated raw zucchini, or about 1/2 – 2/3 cups grated, blanched zucchini.   So this is a good recipe for when you have an odd zucchini.  Not enough for a meal, but you don’t want it to go to waste.  Of course, you could make multiple loaves and freeze them for later…

Soaking the flour overnight in yogurt is an essential step.  This neutralized the phytic acid present in the wheat.  Phytic acid is an anti nutrient found in nuts, seeds, legumes, and grains that can cheleate minerals from your body.  It can be neutralized by properly preparing these foods, such as soaking flour in yogurt.  The other reason the yogurt step is important for this zucchini bread is that it really helped to leaven the bread.  I would have used all soaked wheat in the recipe, but it would have thrown off the liquid to dry ingredient ratio.  Since I couldn’t soak all of the flour without making the batter too runny, I used sprouted wheat.  Sprouting will also destroy phytic acid.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, fresh out of the oven.  Recipe below.

• 1/2 cup Whole Wheat Flour
• 1/2 cup Yogurt
• ~ 2/3 cup Shredded zucchini
• 2/3 cup Sucanat/Rapadura/Evaporated Cane Crystals
• 1/3 cup Melted coconut oil
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
• 2 Eggs
• 1 1/2 Sprouted flour
• 1 teaspoon Baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon Salt
• 1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon Cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon Baking powder
• 1/4 cup chopped pecans
• 1/4 cup raisins

Combine 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour with the yogurt.  Mix well, cover with a towel, and set aside in a warm part of the room, away from drafts for 24 hours.

After the 24 hours have passed, in a separate bowl combine the zucchini, sugar, coconut oil, vanilla, and eggs.  Mix well.  Pour into the flour and yogurt mixture and add the sprouted flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves, baking powder, pecans and raisins.  Mix and then let it sit for 3 minutes or so while you butter a bread pan.

Bake in a 400 degree preheated oven for about 35 minutes or until a knife inserted in the middle comes up dry.  Cool on a wire rack before slicing.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

I love making crisps; if I were to have a “signature dessert” it would be crisps.  I make them so much because they taste great with the fruit and brown sugar combination, crispy topping, and fruity bottom and they are so easy.  I’ve never really exactly followed a crisp recipe, but if I did, it would be the one in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison.  By the way, I highly recommend that cookbook.  It is filled with lots of great information, tons of inspiration, and everything uses real foods.  I’m not a vegetarian, but her cookbook can be used for side dishes, meatless main dishes (for those of you, who like me frequently have “Meatless Meals” or days), and everything tastes great.

Crisps are great all year round.  Any kind of fruit can be put inside to make them suitable for spring (rhubarb and strawberries, tada!) to fall and winter (apple crisp, anyone?).  This recipe will work for all seasons and all fruits with a little bit of know how – really juicy fruits will benefit from the addition of some sort of a starch such as flour or tapioca in the filling to help hold it together a little bit, and the sweeter the fruit, the less sugar you need.

Strawberry season is in full force here in the northeast.  Almost every stand at the farmer’s market has pints lined up, and more to replace the ones that are purchased.  Rhubarbs are still hanging on, as they will until the weather gets too hot for them in another month or so.  I never grew up eating strawberry and rhubarb in combination, but it seems it is a classic, so I made it into a crisp.

This post is submitted to Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, Tasty Tuesday and Real Food Wednesday.

Here is how I make a Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp.  Here are the ingredients for a 7×11 in baking dish:

• Rhubarb (about 4-5 stalks)
• Strawberries (about half a pint)
• ~1/2 cup Unrefined sugar such as sucanat, rapadura, or evaporated cane juice
• 6 tablespoons Unsalted butter (grass fed)
• 3/4 cup Unrefined sugar (see above)
• 1 tablespoon Molasses
• 2/3 cup Sprouted flour
• 1/2 cup Rolled oats
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Strawberries and rhubarb in the pan

Now this is what I do.  I chop up enough strawberries and rhubarb to fill my baking pan (about half strawberries, half rhubarb.  If you use more strawberries, you will need to add a little starch to the strawberry rhubarb mix to prevent it from getting too soupy and less sugar since strawberries will provide more sweetness).  Right now I’m using a pyrex baking sheet about 7 in x 11 in.  That was about 1/2 a pint of (whole) strawberries and about 5 stalks of rhubarb.  I put them in the baking dish and sprinkled half a cup of sugar over the top and mixed it in well.  Then set it aside.  Remember, feel free to use less sugar if the fruit is sweet enough on its own, or if you like the tartness of the rhubarb.  I wouldn’t want to add more sugar unless you were using a bigger pan.  Trust me, a crisp is not as good when it is overly sweet.  Plus, sugar is something you should only eat in moderation.

Now for the crisp topping.  I like a LOT of topping.  You might like less.  Play with the amount you put on your crisp until you find something you like.  This makes enough to cover my 7×11 baking dish.

In a separate small bowl, combine the 3/4 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of molasses.  You can use a fork to cut them together really well.  Now, put that in a big bowl along with the oats, sprouted flour, butter (cut into smaller chunks), salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon.   Now – don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty!  Stir it up, mush it up using your hands.  Mix it until it is a crumbly texture.

Put that over the top of the strawberries and rhubarb, then bake in a preheated oven at 375 for about 45-60 minutes.

The crisp right before baking

A quick thanks to Nourished Kitchen for featuring me a few days ago.  What a lovely surprise!  She also reviewed 6 other great real food blogs, so take a look at her post and add the rest of those great blogs to your reading list.

I have a couple of recipes queued up to share with you, but I wanted to write a review of the movie Food, Inc. I saw it this weekend and was impressed.  The movie is about the industrialization of our food supply.  It is a topic I’m quite passionate about, and the topic that lead me to create this blog.  I thought the movie did a great job of summing up many of the reasons I have chosen to remove myself from the industrial food chain. I even learned some new things! Though it won’t affect my own eating habits (because I’m already off the industrial food chain), it has made me more steadfast in my beliefs, and it is an excellent tool to open the minds of people who may not be aware of all of these issues.

The movie presented the following theses:

• Factory farming is bad for the animals, bad for the environment, and ultimately bad for us as well.
• Foodborne illnesses have not gotten any easier to prevent in this industrialized system, and in fact, the industrialization and centralization of our food supply has made it even easier to contaminate.
• Some food processing plants treat workers poorly and often exploit the poorest people or immigrants (legal or not) with unsafe working conditions, low wages, etc.  The food they produce costs less at the grocery store as a result.
• We spend less on food than we used to, but at the same time  health care costs have ballooned.  Instead of spending so little on food (and eating the worst quality food – junk food laden with high fructose corn syrup and/or trans fats for example) and spending so much on heart medications, diabetes medications, etc, we should eat properly in the first place to make those medications unnecessary.
• A lot of corn and soy are GMO – Genetically Engineered Organisms.  They are built to withstand spraying of pesticides and herbicides.  Farmers cannot save seeds and are forever beholden to the seed corporation.  GMOs are generally bad.
• Farm subsidies currently benefit large monoculture farms (farms that produce one product, such as soy or corn).  This is why soy and corn are ingredients in almost everything, and why the unhealthiest food is frequently the cheapest.

I’m sure there are a few points I’m forgetting.  But there was hope at the end of this seemingly bleak tunnel.  One of them was in the form of Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm – one of my personal heroes.  He described his farming methods that honor the animal;s biology.  Food produced this way is easier on the land, safer to eat, and healthier to boot.  He has a beautiful reason for respecting the animals biology that goes beyond the impact to the environment or nutritional value of the meat :

A society that views its plants and animals from that manipulative, egocentric, mechanistic mindset will soon come to view its citizens in the same way.  How we respect and honor the least of these is how we respect and honor the greatest of these.

The other was a case study of Stonyfield Farm, the yogurt company.  The (former) owner explained how consumers buying his yogurt propelled him to success.  The company was bought out by another multi-national yogurt company as a result.  Even the dairy buyer for Wal-Mart explained that if people demand a higher quality or different quality product, Wal-Mart will deliver.

All of the topics had excellent supporting material.  And in some cases, the audience was left to drawn their own conclusion.  For example, while large industrial slaughterhouses were shown, so was the slaughter of chickens on Polyface Farm.  Sure, there were gasps from the audience.  Killing an animal can’t be described as pleasant.  But it was done quickly and cleanly.  It was presented for anyone to make their own opinion.  Same with the piece on Stonyfield Farm.  Many people would say that it is just a part of the industrial food chain as Cheetos.  But it presented the organic industrial food chain in a way that let the audience decide of this was completely acceptable, just as bad as any non-organic major food corporation, or somewhere in the middle.

The movie left me feeling more empowered, more knowledgeable, and more passionate than ever before.  The movie is in limited release right now, but it will be made more broad as the month goes on.  Keep a watch out and see it when it comes out.  In the meantime, this passage from the companion book sums it up best.  This portion written by the aforementioned Joel Salatin:

Perhaps the most empowering concept in any paradigm-challenging movement is simply opting out.  The opt-out strategy can humble the mightiest forces because it declares to one and all, “You do not control me.”

Go plant a garden.  Join a CSA or visit your farmer’s market on a regular basis.  Read my blog (and many many more) for great recipes using real food.  Many even feature great real food on a budget.  Write to your local or federal government representatives to have them change the way we subsidize farms so that real food is more affordable.

If you want to read more about the film, I’ve linked to various interviews, reviews, and articles below.

• Official movie website
• Washington Post interview with the director
• NPR on Food, Inc
• The New York Times on Food, Inc.
• Serious Eats on Food, Inc.
• One of my favorite blogs, Food Renegade, discusses the film
• The blog Cheap Healthy Good reviews the movie – and their own eating habits
• Edible Aria with a link to an NPR radio interview with the director

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays, hosted by the fabulous Cheeseslave.  Check out her post for links to many more posts about real food, including great recipes.

I'm a food renegade

This post is submitted to Food Renegade’s Fight Back Fridays.  Check it out for more great posts on the subject of real food.

Allow me to step away from my usual posts with recipes, techniques, or ingredients.  I’ve had a busy few evenings and haven’t had time to post about the lovely rhubarb buckle I made, or how I cooked my morels and fiddleheads.  I’ll try and touch on those things in upcoming posts.  But for now, this article from the New York Times caught my eye and I wanted to share it with you and share some thoughts on the topic of food safety and packaged/processed foods.

Food Companies Are Placing the Onus for Safety on Consumers

The article proposes a few solutions for making our food safer, such as “ingredient passports.”  It all seems so silly.  There has to be a better way.  Good thing there already is.

People who read this blog regularly know I know where my food comes from, and I don’t mean what processing plant.  I know the address of the farms, and in some cases, I’ve met the farmers.  I’m also planning to visit some farms soon.  This goes for the majority of my meat, eggs, dairy, fruits and vegetables.  Yes, I’ve been known to buy bananas and oranges, neither of which come from the Northeast.  And I do buy the occasional imported cheese or bag of frozen (organic) vegetables.  Of course, the vast majority of my spices, oils, grains and so forth do not come from nearby farms.  But by and large, I can cook a dinner and tell you exactly where the main ingredients came from.  And those that I did not purchase from local farms are still single ingredients with a minimum of processing.

So this article really isn’t relevant to me now, except to solidify my stance on not consuming industrially packaged foods, though it wasn’t too long ago and this article would have been a big eye opener for me.  About a year or two I was still consuming a lot of packaged foods.  Store bought cookies;  just add water, oil, and an egg cake mixes; freezer meals for those busy evenings when I didn’t want to cook.  When I joined my local CSA, a lot of that was put to an end by the economics of the situation.  I had produce that I had to eat or it would go bad and I would waste money.  A few packaged foods would still find their way into my diet, particularly those of the dessert variety.  But 5 months ago or so, I became determined to eliminate them completely.  I was catching colds and flus every few weeks, I was always tired and run down and I was spending a lot of money on food.  I haven’t looked back since.

A friend recently asked me if I miss eating junk food or indulging myself.  My answer: No way.  I don’t want to eat that way.  The food I eat now tastes so much better than anything I ever got out of a box, plus I get the satisfaction of having made it myself.  Combined with the health element, it seems preposterous that I’d ever go back to eating packaged foods again.

It isn’t just food safety, either.  Processed and packaged foods like cake mixes frequently contain dried milk products which contribute to heart disease.  Processed and packaged foods include more sugar or salt than is necessary, including highly processed forms of potentially genetically modified sugars such as High Fructose Corn Syrup.  Processed and packaged foods frequently include preservatives, unnatural colors and all manor of highly processed ingredients, not fit for human consumption.  Even organic processed foods can contain high amounts of sugar, and even organic cereals are made by extrusion, a process which damages the nutrients in the grains.  You can read more about the dangers of food processing at the Weston A. Price Foundation website.

I haven’t even touched on the sustainability factors, inhumane living conditions and other problems of industrially processed/packaged foods.

I simply have no reason to ever eat that way again.  It isn’t worth it to my health or the health of the earth and animals.  My own food that I cook tastes so much better, keeps me busy with a worthwhile activity, and makes me feel accomplished.  As far as convenience, I’m amazed at how many people ask me where I find the time.  It doesn’t take me much longer now than it did before.  I still have days I don’t want to cook, but now on those days, I just eat leftovers, make a quick salad or sandwich or eat cheese and crackers with a side of fruit or something.  I also usually keep some sort of fermented food such as kimchi, sourkraut, pickles or beets in the fridge, so I can use those to round out a meal.

How about you?  How have you eliminated processed foods?  Any tips to share, or trouble spots you are finding?

Cooking Purple Potatoes

It seemed that all at once, I had a number of ingredients that had to be cooked.

At the farmer’s market last week, I picked up a bunch of stinging nettles. The food blogs have been a-flurry about stinging nettles, so I wanted to see what that was all about. (It turns out, I love them.) I also picked up some purple potatoes because they were just so beautiful. And somehow, I found myself with about 3 dozen eggs, and a fridge with little room for them all! Finally, I still had about a quart of soured milk to use. I had to come up with something.

I trolled the food blogs until I found this on Cook Local. It seemed just about perfect, though I would need to make a few modifications. My final recipe left out the onions (because I don’t really like onions), and it added spinach, soured milk, cream, and cottage cheese. It came out wonderfully! The nettles give it a wonderful wild, herby flavor, and the spinach brings familiarity, almost a Florentine type flavor, especially when combined with the farm fresh cottage cheese.

It is a flexible dish, hearty enough for a dinner, but also suitable for a breakfast or brunch. There is a lot of room to play with this one – for a more breakfast style casserole, add bacon or sausage. Use a different kind of cheese instead of cottage. Don’t have nettles? This would also work with kale, chard or all spinach.

This post is submitted to Real Food Wednesday – wild crafted greens, heirloom potatoes, dairy the way our grandparents drank it – these are real foods.

Layering Nettles and Spinach on Purple Potatoes

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch of nettles
• Half a bunch of spinach
• 6 small purple potatoes
• 3 tablespoons of butter
• 6 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon of cream
• 1/3 cup soured milk (if you do not have raw, naturally soured milk, you can use yogurt, kefir, buttermilk, or turn fresh milk soured with a bit of vinegar or lemon juice)
• 3/4 cup cottage cheese
• Salt and Pepper

Boil the spinach and nettles until they are soft and turn a bright green. Try not to boil too long, just 3 minutes is about right. Chop them up finely and set aside. Slice the potatoes into thin slices. Melt the butter over medium heat and add the potatoes. Cook until they are nearly done. About 5-10 minutes. Preheat the over to 350 degrees. In a mixing boil, beat the eggs, then add the cream, milk, and cottage cheese. Arrange the cooked potatoes on the bottom of a baking dish. Top them with the chopped spinach and nettles. Then pour the egg mixture over the top. If you like, you can top with little dollops of cottage cheese. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over the top, and then bake in the over at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, or until done.

Finished Gratin Right Out of the Oven

I'm a food renegade

It is a wonderfully satisfying trip to get food when you arrive and are greeted by the farmer who not only owns the farm that produces the butter and cheese and vegetables and meat and so forth, but he also works in the field and with his animals daily. You can ask him, “how are the animals doing?” and he will tell you. You can ask him how the grass is coming in. He helps you put your newly purchased food in the bags and thanks you for the purchase.

This is why these days about 90% of my meat, dairy, eggs, vegetables, and fruit comes from CSAs, co-ops, and farmer’s markets. I want to know how the animals are treated before the eggs or milk is collected, before the animals are slaughtered. I want to know what vegetables are fresh and in season. I want to know how they were grown. Meeting the farmer gives me that chance to find out. It also makes me feel safer – I can avoid the massive industrial foodchain that can easily become contaminated (peanuts, anyone? Or the latest warning, sprouts? Before that was tomatoes, peppers, and spinach, not to mention the regular e. coli and salmonella scares…). He is running a smaller farm, so it is easier for him to keep a good handle on quality control. Also, since he is producing less food, if there is an issue, it is likely to be small and since his number of customers is small, it is easily contained. On the rare chance I could get sick from something I ate, it will be easy for me to track down the source of it. I have absolutely no fear for the safety of the food I purchase from farmers. I cannot say the same about the industrial food I purchase.

It is about as real as it gets – having that direct personal connection to the farmer. The only way you could be closer to your food source is if you grew it yourself. Unfortunately, that isn’t an option for me at the moment, living in an apartment in NYC. So I’ll take shaking hands with the farmer instead.

Yes, I am a food renegade, and this post is part of Fight Back Fridays.  This post is also part of Food Roots because I like to know exactly where my food comes from.

Soured Milk Chocolate Cake

Most of the milk I consume is raw milk. This means that it has not been pasteurized. I buy it from small farms who keep their cows on grass. I like raw milk for a number of reasons – I like that the vitamins have not been destroyed from the heat of pasteurization (vitamins are added back into pasteurized milk, but why not get the real vitamins inherent in the milk?). Raw milk also contains beneficial enzymes and probiotic bacteria. Plus, I just like the taste better. So there are lots of reasons to drink raw milk.

Fresh raw milk is wonderfully sweet and delicious. At some point, it starts to sour. It differs from batch to batch (since it is a real food, not a food that has been packed full of stabilizers and preservatives, or cooked before refrigeration). But when raw milk starts to sour, it isn’t bad. Sour cream is, well, soured cream. I’ve made cream cheese from soured milk before. When pasteurized milk goes sour, don’t drink it!

Since I don’t want to drink a glass of soured milk or pour it over cereal, the question becomes, what do I do with it? I recently had a full half gallon sour on me since I didn’t drink any for about a week. I couldn’t bear to throw it down the drain, so I had to figure something to do with it. A half gallon is a lot, so I needed several ideas. This was one use for it – a chocolate cake made with soured milk! If you don’t have sour milk, or if you don’t have any raw milk, you can sour regular milk by adding a tablespoon of plain white vinegar or lemon juice to one cup of milk. I imagine that kefir, yogurt, or buttermilk would also work in place of sour milk.

The resulting cake is incredibly moist, light, and fluffy. It is chocolatey and sweet, but not overly so. Make, and enjoy!

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup sucanat, rapadura, or evaporated cane juice crystals
• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 3 cups flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 2 tablespoons baking soda
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups sour milk

Cream the sugars and coconut oil. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, cocoa, and baking soda. In a 3rd bowl, mix the wet ingredients together. Then alternating between the wet and the dry ingredients, add them to the oil/sugar mixture and mix until combined. Grease and flour a 9×13 inch pan and bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

This post is a part of Real Food Wednesdays.

Raspberries and Cream

Here in the Northeast, we had an absolutely gorgeous day. It was unseasonably warm, and while some people weren’t ready for weather in the mid 80s, I welcomed it with open arms! I woke up early and took off for the Union Square Greenmarket.

NYC has greenmarkets and farmer’s markets all over the city, but the largest one is probably the one at Union Square. They have everything. Maple syrup, honey, jam, baked goods, vegetables, dairy, meat, even yarn. Visiting is wonderful for food lovers like myself. Except for the crowds. It is so crowded! But still worth going.

This week all anyone could talk about were the ramps. Ramps are wild leeks. I’ve never had one, so I can’t really say. I already have leeks in my fridge, so I wasn’t in the market for ramps. I found plenty of other things to get me excited today.

I got quite a haul:

• Raspberries – this farmer grew them in a greenhouse.
• Stinging nettles
• Tomato
• Burdock root
• Sunchoke (also known as a Jerusalem artichoke)
• Arugula
• 2 mixes of salad greens
• 2 containers of goat cheese
• 3 Fuji apples
• Cream
• Blue potatoes
• Spinach
• Mushrooms

Phew! When I got home, I made myself a delicious salad with some of the greens, half of the tomato, thin slices of sunchoke, pine nuts, and a basic salad dressing made with olive oil, flax oil, vinegar, and mustard.

Dessert was the highlight, though. I took all of the raspberries, every last one, and put them in a bowl and then poured cream over the top. It was the most wonderful thing I’ve eaten in recent memory. Who needs a fancy, sugar laden dessert when you can have fresh raspberries and cream?

I’ve never cooked stinging nettles, burdock root, or a sunchoke, so I’ll have some fun experimenting with those this week. I’ll be sure to post what I learn! Please chime in to the comments if you have an idea of a dish I can make with anything I purchased today.

This post is part of the Farmer’s Market Report at To Every Meal.

A Nourished Start Sharing Carnival

This post is part of the Nourished Start Carnival at the Nourished Gourmet.  Breakfast can be a rough meal.  For me, my biggest hurdles are not wanting to eat something too heavy too early and being able to prepare something quickly that can be consumed in front of the computer while I check email or in front of the TV while I check the weather.  My time is limited, so I want to multitask in the morning instead of spending time at the stove or in the kitchen.

I used to be big on skim milk and breakfast cereal.  Every single morning.  But despite always going for the “natural” and organic cereals, most are still highly processed.  Many are extruded, which means heated at an extremely high temperature and then forced through something to make it into a fun shape (such as a flake, or twig).  This is not a natural process, nor is it something that was ever done traditionally.  Well, then there are the granolas.  I love a good granola.  But most are made with canola oil or other vegetable oils I prefer not to eat.  Vegetable oils have only been in our diet for 100 years (or less!), and I do not believe they are good for us.  I eat mainly animal fats, coconut oil, and olive oil.  And then there is the milk – I don’t drink skim milk anymore.  Only whole, pure, unadulterated milk, fresh from a cow.

So, what is for breakfast?  Here are a few standbys I enjoy these days:

Oatmeal – I soak my oatmeal overnight (room temp) in a bit of water and yogurt.  You can use another acidic liquid if you don’t have yogurt, such as kefir, or a mild vinegar.  Just a small amount diluted in some water, enough to get the oats moist.  This neutralizes the phytates in the oats.  Then I cook it in an equal amount of hot water.  It only takes a few minutes!  You can vary this endlessly with different toppings – my favorite is pinenuts, butter and ginger.  You can also do maple syrup, fresh fruits, berries, cream, nuts, or whatever you can come up with in any combination!

Eggs – I scramble mine.  The whole process probably takes less than 5 minutes.  I’ll frequently do 1 whole egg plus one yolk to give it even more nutrition than just an egg alone.  I’ll mix in some fresh cream or milk, and whatever herbs or spices I have on hand (fresh or dried).  Dill and Turmeric are favorites.  Sometimes I’ll add veggies.  Sometimes I’ll grate some cheese.  I use plenty of butter in the pan, and I’ve learned not to overcook them;  I’ll turn off the heat right before they are done and they finish cooking in the still-hot pan while I grab my plate, fork and glass.  This way they are always light and fluffy.

Toast – always sourdough.  Sourdough is the most delicious bread, in my opinion.  Plus, it has the benefit of being fermented, which has a lot of health benefits including reducing the amount of phytates in the wheat.  I like to slather my toast with butter.  YUM!

Smoothies – Make them with coconut milk for an extra treat!  Sometimes I toss an egg yolk in there as well.  When eating raw eggs, always take care to get eggs from a source you trust.  I get mine from small farms where the chickens are pastured instead of confined.  It not only keeps the eggs safe to eat raw (salmonella is a byproduct of dirty living conditions), but the eggs have more nutrition in them.  Just look at the gorgeous orange yolk from a chicken allowed to eat fresh plants and bugs in addition to grain!  I’ll also put in frozen berries, bananas, fruit, milk, kefir, whatever I have on hand.  Smoothies don’t always need to be sweetened, but when they do, honey or maple syrup is my favorite.

Milk and cereal – Yes, I still have milk and cereal.  A few differences though: when eating boxed cereals, I eat only non-extruded kinds.  I’ve heard Grape Nuts is not extruded, but I’ve yet to confirm it.  Many mueslis are good as well.  I also check the ingredient list.  I avoid anything with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), any kind of vegetable oil, soy, or any kind of ingredient that I can’t pronounce or don’t know what it is.  These are typically highly processed, isolated parts of food.  Highly processed, isolated parts of food do not equal actual food to me.   This mostly leaves granola and mueslis – cereals made from whole ingredients.  Through my local farm delivery club, I can also get granola made from oats that have been soaked to remove the phytates.  It is absolutely delicious!  I also make granola from scratch using unsoaked oats, olive oil, honey, and whatever else I have on hand that seems good.  I’ll probably post a recipe at some point.

I usually don’t have anything to drink.  I’ll usually have a glass of water first thing in the morning, but not necessarily with my meal.  If I do have a beverage with breakfast, it is typically a glass of fresh milk, fresh orange juice, raw apple cider or water.  I’m trying to stay away from too many bottled juices since they often contain things I’m not sure I want to eat.  I also prefer to eat more whole fruits than just the juice.  Sometimes I’ll find a brand with a good ingredients and I’ll go with that.

Other things I’m looking forward to trying:

• Just about everything in the Nourished Start Carnival at the Nourishing Gourmet!
• More yogurt based breakfasts (some yogurt starter just arrived, more on that soon…) like yogurt and fruit, yogurt and muesli, yogurt and granola, etc
• Homemade, soaked breakfast cereal
• Homemade, soaked granola
• Homemade, soaked muesli
• Breakfast breads and cakes, made from sprouted or soaked flour

I hope this helps give you some ideas!