Berry Breakfast

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday.  This breakfast just has 3 ingredients, all natural!

At the farmer’s market on July 4th, I purchased black raspberries and heavy cream.  Put them together and you have a wonderful breakfast!  It is also quite suitable for dessert.

It really couldn’t be more simple.  Take the organic, in season black raspberries, or any berry variety (raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries), pick through them and discard any ones that have gone bad, and put them in a bowl.  Pour heavy cream over the top and serve.  No sugar needed.  I rounded out the breakfast with 2 pieces of humanely raised, pastured pig bacon.  No nitrates.  (I also do variations with 2 pastured eggs instead of bacon, but that is a topic for another day!)

What makes this breakfast so good?  Let’s break it down.

No Sugar. Refined or even minimally refined sugar is one of the worst things you can eat.  I won’t tell you to never eat it because I’d be a hypocrite.  But sugar is not good for you, no matter what form you take it.  It leads to obesity and various metabolic disorders including diabetes as well as tooth decay.  I do try to limit how much sugar I eat, and I try to make sure it is a more natural kind of sugar, like honey, maple syrup, molasses, evaporated cane juice, etc so at least I can get a little bit of minerals or something with it.  Eating the berries and bacon for breakfast gets you started without the sugar.  A much better choice than a cereal with sugar.  Yes, even so-called “healthy” cereals frequently list a kind of sugar as the 2nd or 3rd ingredient.

Antioxidants – I don’t eat berries because they are good for me.  I eat them because they are delicious; that they are so healthy is a bonus!  One of the things they have is antioxidants and lots of them.  Blueberries and black raspberries are particularly good in this area.  Antioxidants help prevent the signs of aging and can help prevent against cancer and heart disease.

Vitamins – Vitamin K, vitamin E and vitamin C are all found in black raspberries in good amounts.  More vitamins and minerals are in them as well, but these three are particularly plentiful.   Cream has a lot of vitamin A and Calcium, and since cream is fat and those particular vitamins and minerals require fat to in order be metabolized by the body, you know that your body is processing that full amount of vitamins and minerals.

Protein – It is good to start out your day with some protein.  The protein in the cream and bacon combined is almost the same as a cup of skim milk.  Protein is needed for your body to help rebuild itself and it also helps fill you up better than carbs alone do.

Fat – We’ve all been trained fat is bad for you.  That isn’t really true.  Fat from traditional sources is very good for you and is necessary.  Natural sources include dairy and animals (such as cream and bacon) as well as coconut and olive oil.  Vegetable oils made from corn, canola, cottonseed, and soy, to name a few, are not traditional and should not be consumed.  Why is dairy fat so good for you?  Cream from grass fed cows contains CLA and Butyric Acid which help prevent cancer.  Grass fed cow milk also has a better ratio of omego 3s.  Our bodies run on fat as it is a preferred fuel source.  Did you know that our brain is about two-thirds fat?  The nervous system depends on fat.  Besides, it just tastes good!  This is why people love bacon and cream.  Fat is also great because it really fills you up.  It sends a message to your brain to stop being hungry.  Have you ever eaten breakfast of skim milk and cereal only to find yourself starving an hour later?  It has happened to me.  But not when you eat bacon or cream!  You don’t need a lot.  Just 2 slices of bacon and less than 1/2 of a cup of cream was enough to keep me well satiated for hours.

Now, here is where you forget all of that stuff – when I make breakfast, I don’t think about all of these things.  I don’t think about the RDA for vitamin D or how much calcium I’m getting.  I don’t think about antioxidants or other cancer fighting micronutrients.  I just think about a few simple things – Is the food from a traditional source and prepared in a traditional way?  Berries have been foraged for hundreds of thousands of years, I’d bet.  Cream has been around for about 10,000 years.  A short period of time in the grand scheme of thing, but enough time for my ancestors to develop the mutation to be able to drink milk into adulthood (lactose tolerance).  Pigs were also domesticated around 10,000 years ago, but I bet wild boars and related animals were hunted for tens of thousands of years before that.  Since those are the only 3 ingredients in this breakfast, I think that is pretty good.  I also think about taste.  Do these things taste good?  You betcha!  And finally, I think about will this fill me up and keep me full until my next meal or snack?  Fat and protein help keep me full, where carbs, especially refined carbs do the opposite.  I also think about my meals for the past 24 hours or so.  I try and make sure I eat plenty of vegetables and fruit, protein including animal protein found in meat and dairy, and fat from traditional sources.   I don’t count calories, carbs or RDA amounts, and yet, by following this basic outline, I’ve lost weight and maintained myself at my ideal weight.  I’ve been sick less and had improved energy.   I’ve also eaten the most delicious food.

Beet Root and Feta Salad

Salads are such great summer foods.  I don’t want to be chained to a stove on hot days, and all of that fresh produce really fits the bill when you just need something light on the hot days.  Granted, it hasn’t been that hot so far this summer.  Not at least at my house!  But the heat will come.  Eventually.  And I’ll be glad for this salad then!

Nothing beats beets in a salad.  Yes, I said it.  They add a different kind of texture and a lot of color.  I love putting cheese in a salad too.  It helps fill it up a bit and gives it more body.  It also turns a salad from a first course into a meal.  A strong, flavorful cheese goes best with beets, I’ve found, so when I saw some goat cheese feta at the farmer’s market recently, I knew what I had to get.  I also really like sprinkling nuts or seeds on my salad, so in went sunflower seeds.  To top it all off, a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  A simple salad dressing to let the flavors of the beets, cheese, oil and vinegar play off each other.

While I didn’t put it in this salad, tomatoes, dried cranberries, cucumbers and carrots would all work well.  And if you don’t have feta, switch up the cheese for maybe a bleu, or go the other way with a hard cheese like Parmesan.  Use my recipe as inspiration – use what you have in your fridge and pantry.  Use what is available at your farmer’s markets and CSAs.  Use what you like!  What are your favorite variations?

See below for my ingredients and instructions.

• 1 Medium sized beet
• 1 Small head of heirloom leaf lettuce
• Crumbles of feta cheese – to taste
• Olive oil and Balsamic vinegar – to taste
• 1-2 tablespoons Sunflower seeds

But the beet into 6 wedges and boil about a half hour or until you can stick a fork into it easily without it being mushy.  Personally, I will boil several at once and keep the rest in the fridge so I can make more salads quickly.

When the beets are finished boiling, dump them in ice water.  This will also cause the skin to become loose and you can peel it off with your fingers.

Wash and dry the lettuce and chop it into bite size pieces.  Put it on the plate.  Add the cooled beets and cheese.  Add anything else you have around.  Drizzle with olive oil and vinegar (use about twice as much oil as vinegar) then top with sunflower seeds.

Voila!  Beet root salad.

]]> http://www.completelyedible.com/2009/07/beet-root-and-feta-salad/feed/ 1 http://www.completelyedible.com/2009/07/farmers-market-day/ http://www.completelyedible.com/2009/07/farmers-market-day/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:23:58 +0000 Stacy http://www.completelyedible.com/?p=473

Farmer's Market Haul, July 4th

The July 4th holiday is a big one. And like most holidays, it has its own food associations and traditions.  Strawberries, certainly, and cherries are two.  Both are patriotic colors and come into season around early July.  Pies, cakes and other pastries made with these red fruits or in combination with blue ones like blueberries are on the dessert menu.  Grills are fired up as summer is perfect grill season.  The problem is when these fruits come from conventional farms that use a lot of pesticides, when the meat on the grills comes from factory farms where the animals are fed an improper diet and kept in inhumane conditions.  The problem also manifests itself in the white bread hamburger and hot dog buns, the potato chips fried in vegetable oils, and all the rest of the processed foods that help fill out the picnic.

I celebrated my independence from the industrial food system by going to the farmer’s market bright and early and purchasing the bounty that you see in the photo above.  Going shopping is a pleasure rather than a chore if you have a farmer’s market or a farm that you can buy directly from.  I love talking with the people running the stalls – often times it is the very farmer him/herself!  And just seeing all of the wonderful food and thinking of all the possibilities with the ingredients fills me with optimism.  Cooking food isn’t so bad either.  In the summer you can rely heavily on salads which don’t require a hot stove or hours in the kitchen.  And even in the winter, roasts and soups provide delicious meals and many leftovers with very little effort involved.  And when I do rely on packaged foods or convenience foods, they can be purchased from ethical companies that source good ingredients and create the food in a way as to keep the nutrition in.

Want some examples?  Look no further than the rest of the posts on this blog, or read many of the food blogs linked on the right.  Or stay tuned as I blog over the next few weeks about some of these foods in more detail.  Below the jump you’ll see what I purchased on July 4th and a description based on what I know so far of these foods.

Heavy Cream – I got this from Ronnybrook Farm.  They are an organic dairy upstate.  They feed their cows grass and they pasteurize the milk at the lowest possible temperature allowed, as to retain more of the nutrition.  Heavy cream can be used to whip into whipped cream for desserts (especially fruit desserts!), it can be added to scrambled eggs instead of milk for a little extra richness, added to soups, or used about a hundred other ways.  I specially purchased it to pour it over berries for a simple sugar free dessert.  The cream is sweet enough that I don’t need to add any sugar.  It even overcomes the tartness of the berries.

Red Leaf Lettuce - This lettuce is especially beautiful in salads or on sandwiches, with its ends tinged of red.  Leaf lettuce may not last a long while in the fridge, but it can also be cooked and added to stocks, soups, or stir fries, giving you more uses for it.  Red leaf lettuce is particularly high in beta carotene and vitamin K.  I bought this for salads, but I’ll probably throw some into a stir fry as well.

Quark - yeah, I had never heard of this either!  Quark is a traditional cultured dairy food from Germany.  The easiest way to explain it would be yogurt or sour cream made out of buttermilk.  It is thick enough to spread on toast or crackers, but still creamy.  It can be used in baking, as a dip or a spread.  The taste is similar to sour cream.  A little sour, a little tangy.  But there was something about it, I loved it more than I love either of those two things!  It can go savory with the additions of herbs or sweet with fruit.  Quark will make a regular appearance in my diet.  Absolutely delicious.  And since it is made with probiotics and the milk from happy grass fed cows from Hawthorne Valley Farm, I know that it is at least as nutritious as it is delicious.

Apple and Black Currant Juice - from Red Jacket Orchards.  Their interesting fruit combination and from what I can tell, good farming and juice making practices make them a good place to buy juice from, if you are inclined to buy juice.  I don’t buy a lot since I’d rather eat the whole fruit instead, but they are a good way to help keep a smoothie drinkable, so I do buy every now and then.  This fruit combination is very good!

Broccoli - We all should know by now that broccoli is good for us.  There are so many great nutrients in abundance that I couldn’t list them all here or my post would get too long.  I got this for a stir fry, but I plan on using the entire broccoli, not just the tender heads we all love to eat.  The stems are very good for you too, and eating them helps stretch your food budget and prevent waste.  Chop them into smaller pieces to use in soups, fritattas, pastas, stir fries, or anything else you can think of.

Purslane – I love purslane!  It is one of the best vegetarian sources of omega 3s, and plus, it just tastes good!  A little tart and lemony, it goes well on salads or cooked in stir fry or soup.

Purple Cabbage - I got this for a stir fry (sense a theme?) and chose it over the green because of its pretty color.  Purple cabbage has more fiber and beta carotene than green cabbage.  All cabbage is a decent source of vitamin C which can be further increased by turning the cabbage into sauerkraut.

Zuccini – I made a yummy zucchini bread that made me hungry for more zucchini.  Aside from being put into baked goods, zucchinis are great stir fried, or battered with some egg and fried, which is how I ate a lot of them as a kid.

Green Beans – These just said “summer” to me!  I’ll probably just cook them with some butter.  Delicious and simple.  Green beans are high in vitamin K, vitamin C, and beta carotene.

Sweet Cherries – The pits annoy me (I need a good pitter, recommendations?) so I got the sweet kind that I can just eat out of hand.

Gooseberries – Gooseberries look like miniature watermelons.  They are the same size and shape as grapes and have the same feel in your mouth.  They taste wonderfully sour and can go sweet or savory.  I’ve put some in salads, but I want to try a dessert with them too.

Blueberries - They are packed with antioxidants, but is that why I eat them?  No.  I eat them because they are just so good.  I remember going blueberry picking in Michigan as a child, or hiking in Alaska, eating blueberries along the trail.  That these are so healthy for me is just a bonus.

Plumcots – A plumcot is a cross between a plum and an apricot.  It can occur naturally in areas where these trees are both grown from seed.  Plumcots have been known for some time.  They look similar to a regular plum, dark smooth skin.  The taste is sweet in the flesh, tart in the skin, a delightful combination.  And, like many fruits, high in vitamin C, fiber, potassium, and much more.

Black Raspberries – it struck me that the “blue raspberry” artificial flavor that you can sometimes find in slurpee style drinks and popcicles might actually have its inspiration from nature.  These are small, firm, dark raspberries.  They look black, but stained my fingers purple.  They didn’t spoil as quickly as regular raspberries.  The flavor is somewhere between a blackberry and a red raspberry, and I suppose their nutrition is similar as well.

Lamb’s Quarters – This is a green similar to spinach in taste and usage.  Cook it or eat it raw.  In many places it grows wild like a weed, so you might already have it in your garden!  Don’t weed it out!  It is at least as healthy as spinach, with high amounts of vitamin C, K, beta carotene, and calcium.

Middle Eastern Summer Squash - I can’t remember the exact variety of this summer squash, possibly Magda.  It is a middle eastern variety that holds up well to cooking.  I love trying out new varieties of vegetables, so I thought I’d give this one a try and compare it to zucchini.

And there you have it.  Celebrating my independence from the industrial food system with these great foods.  This will easily last me a week of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with very few pantry items added in.  I won’t even want to make any desserts since the fruit and berries are plenty sweet to satisfy any dessert craving I might have.

Ground Beef and Mushroom Stroganoff

I love ground beef and mushroom stroganoff.  It is such a simple meal, but it is so very satisfying.  It is such a great comfort food to me.  I used to cook my ground beef, throw in a can of mushroom soup and a cup of sour cream and call it a day.  But as I was looking through my vintage cookbooks, I knew there had to be a better way.  The old cookbooks gave a lot of inspiration, but they didn’t deal with ground beef, but rather strips of steak or chunks of beef.  I didn’t have any of those cuts, besides I grew up eating ground beef stroganoff, so that is what I wanted.

A few things about this recipe – I wanted to boost the nutrition up without altering the flavor too much.  Liver and heart are such powerhouses of nutrition, so I added small amounts of those.  Not enough to change the flavor, but hopefully enough to make a difference, however small, nutritionally.  If you want to, you can eave those out, but you might want to increase how much ground beef you use.

There are a few reasons I included those organs.  The first is that the more aware I become of the industrialized food chain and our society’s disconnect from where our food comes from, the more involved I get in food activism, I feel like if I am going to eat an animal’s meat (which I do because it works for me and I feel healthier in doing so), I should respect the animal and use every part of it’s body.  Not just the choice muscles.  I put the bones in stock, and people used to eat organ meat a lot more frequently, so why can’t I?

As for nutrition, organ meats are fantastic sources of vitamins A and D.  It is a great source of CoQ10 which is getting a lot of press these days in the supplement world.  Personally, I always prefer to get something from a whole food source.  Additionally, iron, vitamin B12 are found in organ meats, and so much more.  Check out what the Weston A. Price Foundation has to say about liver.

And always, always get your beef grass fed (and most importantly, grass FINISHED).  Personally, that is more important to me than the organic label, as grass fed/finished cows are frequently organic without the certification, but an organic cow could have been fed massive amounts of corn and soy, which are not part of its natural diet.  Grass fed cows have more omega 3 in their meat and a special fatty acid called CLA which helps protect against cancer (among other things).  Get to know your farmer.  That way you can make the best decision about your food.

Please keep in mind that you should play around with the flavors in this recipe to suit your own tastes.  Like a more onion-y or garlic-y flavor?  Add more ramps and/or garlic.  And so on.  Also, I did not have worcestershire sauce, so I approximated the flavor with my own ingredients.  Feel free to just use worcestershire sauce, or play around with my proportions to make it sweeter, saltier, tangier, etc.   Just be sure to use traditionally fermented soy sauce, as soy has anti-nutrients such as phytic acid that are only removed during fermentation.

A final note, sometimes flavors take time to mingle.  I found that this was the perfect leftover food as it tasted even better the second day!

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients

• 3 Large portobello mushroom caps
• 3 tablespoons Ghee
• 1 lb Ground beef (grass fed!)
• 1/4 lb Ground beef heart (grass fed!)
• 1/8 lb Liver, chopped finely or ground (grass fed!)
• 2 Ramps, minced (if no ramps are available, use 2 cloves of garlic)
• 1 1/2 cup Sour cream
• 3 tablespoons Flour
• 1/4 teaspoon Fish sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon Soy sauce (must be traditionally fermented)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon Sherry vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon Molasses
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Parsley (to garnish)
• cooked egg noddles or boiled potatoes or something to serve the stroganoff on

(Note – the fish sauce, soy sauce, vinegar and molasses can be replaced by about 1 and a half tablespoons of worcestershire sauce)

Instructions:

This recipe has a lot of ingredients, but see the note above, if you have worcestershire sauce, you can simplify a bit.  It is still pretty easy to do.  Put the ghee in a skillet or frying pan on medium or med-high and melt it.  Chop up the portobellos into strips and cook them until they have shrunk in size and are completely soft.  Take them out of the pan and set aside.  Leave whatever left over ghee is still in the pan.  A little extra is good for the ground beef.

Now add your ground beef and organs if you are using them.  Turn the temp on medium, or even medium low and stir frequently.  When it has cooked through, add the mushrooms back in and add the ramps.  Stir it up a bit, mix it up, then in comes the sour cream.  It is going to get a little liquidy.  That is ok.  Keep it on low, you don’t want to get dairy products too hot.  Add the flour to thicken it a bit, and then add the fish sauce, soy sauce, vinegar, and molasses (or worcestershire sauce if you are using it instead).  Salt and pepper to taste, and that is it!  Serve over cooked egg noodles or boiled potatoes witha  little chopped parsley on the top.

Strawberry Shortcake

Today at the farmer’s market, I saw strawberries for the first time.  Not really having  plan, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them if I were to get them.  I just knew I had to have them.  When I got home, I browsed my cookbooks for inspiration.  When I saw strawberry shortcake, I knew that is what I had to have.  But none of the recipes seemed to be what I wanted.  They had too much sugar, used refined white flour, or even used vegetable shortening!  No thank you!  So I went about creating my own recipe.

I also whipped the cream by hand – no kitchen aid here, sadly.  Though I must say, I felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment when I beat that whipped cream to stiff peaks.

This is a great dessert – one you can serve to your kids or guests and they will feel as though they are getting a decadent dessert, but you can feel good that you are giving them something that has some good nutrients for them with its coconut oil and sprouted whole wheat flour.

Coconut oil is preferable to vegetable shortening by the simple fact that coconut oil is a food, while vegetable shortening is a highly processed industrial product that was originally designed for candles.  Coconut oil has lots of amazing properties that make it a healthy choice, such as boosting metabolism and providing anti viral and antibacterial properties.  Sprouted wheat flour is preferable to white flour because sprouting changes the wheat in important ways – it gets rid of the phytates, allowing our bodies to absorb the minerals, and makes the flour easier to digest.  It also has a higher percentage of the B-complex vitamins.

Recipe, instructions and resources to purchase sprouted flour, coconut oil, and sucanat, rapadura, and evaporated cane juice below.

Strawberries

• About a handful of strawberries per serving – more or less, depending on your tastes
• About 1/2 to 1 tablespoon sucanant, rapadura, or evaporated cane juice, more or less depending on the sweetness of the berries, and your individual tastes  (some people may find that extra sugar is completely unnecessary.  Start with the smallest amount of sugar and work your way up if it isn’t sweet enough).

Shortcake (makes 6 shortcakes)

• 2 cups sprouted whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 tablespoons of evaporated cane juice, sucanant, or rapadura
• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 3/4 cup milk

Whipped Cream

2 cups of whipped cream is probably enough for 6 servings, but since I don’t serve all 6 at once, I make the whipped cream in batches.  For each cup of whipped cream:

• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon evaporated cane juice or fine rapadura or sucanat

Instructions:

Make the strawberries first.  Wash and dry the strawberries, then slice.  Mix with the sugar and let stand out in room temperature for about an hour.

When the strawberries are nearly ready, preheat the oven to 450 degrees, and stick an empty high sided bowl in the freezer (you will see why soon).  Combine the sprouted flour, salt, baking powder and evaporated cane juice.  Then add the coconut oil and cut with a pastry cutter or slice with 2 butter knives until the mixture is crumbly.  Then add the milk and stir.  This forms a dough which you should then knead on a lightly floured surface.  Knead for about 5 minutes or so.  Then roll it out to half an inch thick and cut into 3 inch circles.  I used the ring of a quart size mason jar lid.  Place them on an ungreased baking sheet and bake about 10 minutes or until they are done.

When the shortcakes are cooling, take that bowl out of the freezer so it is nice and cold.  Pour the heavy cream and tablespoon of evaporated cane juice into the bowl and whisk your heart out.  I thought my arm would fall off, but I managed to keep at it until it formed stiff peaks.  I figure if they did it a hundred years ago without a kitchen aid, so can I.  Of course, if you happen to have some sort of electric appliance that can do this for you, by all means!  If I had one, I’d probably use it too.

While the shortcakes are still warm, slice them horizontally (like an english muffin).  Very lightly butter the two inside facing surfaces (with unsalted organic butter from grass fed cows), then add a layer of strawberries sandwiched between them.  Top with more strawberries and finish off with the whipped cream.  Make sure to drizzle some of the strawberry juice on the shortcake too.  Then you can enjoy. 

Resources

I purchased my sprouted flour from Building Health and coconut oil from Wilderness Family Naturals.  They both offered great service and fast shipping.  Sucanat and/or rapadura can frequently be found in health food stores including national chains like Whole Foods.  I can usually find packages in my locally owned and operated health food stores as well, and sometimes in the organic section of my conventional supermarket.  Evaporated cane juice is a little easier to find and may be in any health food store, Whole Foods, Trader Joes, or even the sugar section of your conventional grocery store.  These sugars can also probably be found online, though I have not purchased from anywhere online yet.  Organic grass fed butter can be found at most grocery stores.  The Organic pastures brand is pretty good.  There is also Kerrygold that I’m quite fond of.  I also purchase butter directly from farmers sometimes.