I love pickles and I love all kinds of pickles, from cucumbers and onions to turnips, and everything in between. Last year I made bread and butter refrigerator pickles, which we liked, but needed some improvement to the flavor. I meant to make more, and experiment with the methods, but didn’t get around to it, until a few weeks ago.

I had purchased a Master Vegetable Fermenter from Cultures for Health a few months ago, in hopes that I would have a lot of garden vegetables this year to culture into things like sauerkraut, pickles, curtido and gingered carrots. Since we are still a few weeks away from harvesting any of these goodies, because we got a late start, I thought I would buy some cucumbers at the Farmers Market and get practicing. During that same Farmers Market trip I also got some garlic scapes, and decided to throw some in the mix as well. Just for seasonal relativity, I made these pickles about a month ago, right as garlic scapes were beginning to show up at the markets.

The process to making lacto-fermented pickles is easy because there is no cooking and so canning process involved. This food preservation technique goes back to a time where there was no refrigeration. You use sea salt or whey brine to inhibit the growth of un-friendly bacteria, and mold, until enough lactic acid is produced to keep the vegetables preserved for many months. In the old days, people kept these stored in their cold root cellars along with other winter storage veggies. These days, most people store them in their refrigerator. There are added health benefits to preserving vegetables this way as well, since the lactobaccili which produce the lactic acid enhance digestibility through supporting the growth of healthy flora and enzymes in our gut.

As with any recipe, starting with the freshest ingredients possible is very important. I used a recipe for pickles from Nourishing Traditions, and enhanced it with the garlic scapes, fresh dill from the garden, pickling spices and added raw apple cider vinegar after fermentation, since we do like the vinegar flavor of store bought pickles. My next batch, I am going to try a bread and butter version. Remember it is important not to add these other components until after the fermentation process.

This original batch was a hit. We had friends over for dinner last week, and they brought with them raw milk and fermented pickles to contribute to the dinner (we love our friends!) and we had a pickle tasting. I am not sure if they were just being nice, but everyone agreed that my pickles were the best. Think I am going to make a batch for them the next time we visit them? You betcha!

INGREDIENTS:

6 cucumbers

6 garlic scapes, chopped

1 TBS of pickling spices

2 TBS of fresh dill

2 TBS sea salt (or 1 TBS of sea salt and 1 TBS of whey)

1 cup filtered water

water

¼ cup raw apple cider vinegar

METHOD:

Wash cucumbers and garlic scapes well and place in the vegetable fermenter (or a large, half gallon wide mouth mason jar). Combine remaining ingredients and pour over the cucumbers, adding more water if necessary to cover the vegetables. The top of the liquid should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jar. Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for 3-7 days and transfer to cold storage. Once the culturing is complete, add the apple cider vinegar and mix.

I have not made this recipe using the mason jar method, preferring the master vegetable fermenter method, which has a glass jar that includes an airlock set up which facilitates gas escaping your fermented vegetables while keeping air out. This allows you to make pickles, sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables while greatly reducing and usually eliminating the threat of mold.

NOTES (paraphrased from Cultures for Health): Do not remove the lid from the jar during the culturing process. Removing the lid could introduce bacteria which can cause mold or scum. Check your vegetables through the glass every day to check for signs of scum or mold. If any is present just scrape it off the top, and obviously do not eat any vegetables that have mold on them.

From Chicks to Chickpeas! Well I am finally back with a recipe. In fact I have many to share with you over the coming weeks. I have been cooking a lot since we moved. I mean it is hard not to when there is so much beautiful food available. However, as you can see from my most recent posts, I have been a little busy, and not really in front of my computer as much. Which is actually good in many respects. Also, I have so many other things to share with all of you, besides the food I am making, so sometimes it is hard to know what to post first! Ah, the life of a food blogger is so darn tough

We have obviously been very busy lately and due to that, it has been good to prepare some quick foods, that you can just grab a handful of when you make a mad dash back into the house from the garden for a forgotten item or two. This is one of those snacks – packed with protein, completely healthy, crunchy and delicious. Such a satisfying snack on so many levels. I have seen roasted chick peas out in the blogosphere many times before and have always sworn to myself make them soon. Recently I was inspired by Cook Local’s version which reminded me, I needed to make them!

I always tend to have soaked, partially cooked and then frozen chick peas in the freezer. They are one of my favorite beans, and basically as convenient as canned beans when prepared ahead like this. One of my tricks of making your own convenience foods, saving time and money, and the taste? About a million times better.

I really wanted to use Ras el Hanout – translated to mean “head of the shop” – as in the best spices, to spice half of the roasted chickpeas. I hadn’t used my mortar and pestle in a while, and really was looking forward to toasting all the aromatic spices beforehand in my cast iron skillet. This is my version of aromatherapy. So I dry fried my Ras el Hanout, and then added some coriander, cumin and blood orange salt from D’Italia to create my spice mix for batch one.

The second batch, I was looking for something a little more Southwestern. I absolutely adore the Mexican mole spice and lime coconut salt from The Spice and Tea Exchange. So decided to combine them and add in a little Calabrese hot pepper powder that I got from Sausage Debauchery.

Both versions turned out really well, and in the end I actually mixed the two up, and they complimented each other beautifully. So if you are looking for a quick, delicious and satisfying snack that packs a crunch AND that you can spice up any way you like, this is the treat for you!

INGREDIENTS:

4 cups al dente cooked chickpeas
3 TBS olive oil
Salt and seasonings of your choice

Ras el Hanout Spiced Chickpeas

2 heaping tsp of Ras el Hanout spice mix
1 TBS ground coriander
1 TBS ground cumin
blood orange sea salt to taste

Mexican Mole Spiced Chickpeas

2 TBS Mexican mole spice mix
¼ tsp Calabrese hot pepper powder
Lime coconut salt to taste

METHOD:

Preheat the oven to 400 F. In a large bowl, mix chickpeas with olive oil to coat then mix with spices.
Spread spiced chickpeas in a single layer on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and roast for 30-35 minutes, stirring once or twice, until the chickpeas are golden brown! Enjoy!

We are still without internet, here at the homestead, so my absence in the blogosphere continues…but I have been amassing so many great recipes since we got here, I just have to keep sharing, as I can. I am just so inspired to shop for food and cook here!

This is a local, or at least regional salad with products coming from Northern New England (or grown by me – in the case of the lemons). This salad features the beautiful and delicious bounty of spring and is packed full of nutrients and major brain food.

I am excited to be featuring some delicious products from several awesome local producers here in beautiful Northern Vermont. This just goes to show how easy and pleasurable it is to eat locally, when you are in a community that really supports local agriculture and food producers. Especially when these products are readily available and easy accessible to the community.

That really is the crux of the local food movement– even though our growing season is much shorter here, there is always an abundance of local products available. Having local products available year round is an important goal of this community, and because it is a community effort, you really can find local products year round. This includes produce, meats and dairy in addition to local coffee roasters, bread bakers, beer and wine makers, peanut butter producers, as well as salsas, sauces and condiments. Not to mention the maple syrup and raw honey! The produce variety may not be as extensive as if you were going to the regular grocery store, but that is part of the joy and challenge of seasonal eating. Plus, learning simple techniques like canning and preserving can really prolong the bounty of a shorter growing season, adding color, flavor and nutrients to the winter months. So if you plan ahead, you can actually eat quite well during harsher months. Thinking that weather is the key factor in the availability of local foods in a community, is a terrible misnomer. I found it much harder to find true local staple products in Florida, which is one of the reasons we left. I lived there for over 3 years. I have lived here less than 2 weeks.

This focus on local and sustainable food is just one of the many major reasons we have decided to make this part of the world our permanent home. We really are so lucky to have found a community that shares our strong core values, which is important on so many levels. Living in a place where your ideals are supported and just a “normal” part of life is a welcomed relief. People are adaptable and can make do anywhere, finding hidden treasures, but being able to live according to your values with ease is a true blessing. I am looking forward to sharing many other finds with you over the coming months and years.

Local Products

* Bar Harbor Mackerel, Bar Harbor, Maine -all natural, wild caught, naturally hardwood smoked Atlantic mackerel. Sustainably harvested from the clear cold waters of the Gulf of Maine. I consider Maine as well as the rest of Northern New England and the Quebec province of Canada (25 miles as the crow flies) to be local to us. This mackerel as well as wild herring fillets are available from a local market, Apple Tree.

* Pete’s Greens – Four Season Organic Vegetable Farm, Craftsbury, Vermont – Salad mix featuring: red rib dandelion, endive, fennel tops, wrinkled cress, red leaf amaranth, tatsoi, ruby red chard, bright lights chard, arugula, upland cress, spinach, orach and purslane. These were some of the most delicious and aesthetically beautiful greens I have had. We first had them at the Bee’s Knees an amazing local restaurant. I asked the server where they got their mixed greens, and then we were able to procure some from another local market, The Green Top Market.

* Elmore Mountain Bread Elmore, Vermont– Wood fired micro bakery. They use a long fermentation process in their bread making. Each loaf takes a total of 16 hours. Sometimes it is hard to resist bread like this, and so I was indulging on it when we first got here and I wasn’t having any ill effects from it. Now I know why…just another blessing, considering many of the restaurants in the area, as well as local groceries, and markets sell Elmore Mountain Bread. Being able to eat a sandwich or burger at a restaurant is a true luxury for me. Thank you, Elmore Mountain Bread!

* Farmer Sue’s  Peperoncini Peppers Bakersfield, VT – Do you know how hard it is to find peperoncini peppers without corn syrup? I love these little pickled peppers, and now I have an alternative to making my own . Farmer Sue makes all kinds of delicious pickled vegetables and sells at the year round Lamoille Valley Artisan Farmers Market .

RECIPE:

Smoked Mackerel Salad

INGREDIENTS:

6-8 oz. smoked mackerel fillets
juice of ½ lemon
salt&pepper to taste
hefty sprinkle of herbs de provence
1 TBS fresh chives, chopped
1 TBS mayonnaise
2 peperoncini peppers chopped
drizzle of olive oil
2 cups salad greens

METHOD:

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl, reserving a little lemon juice for the greens. Dress your greens with olive oil and lemon juice and toss. Place a mound of the mackerel salad on top. Serve with slices of sourdough baguette.

Be sure to share the mackerel juice with any feline or canine friends you might have at home. They will love you!

Serves 2

I had about a half a pound of ground grassfed beef in the freezer. It really wasn’t enough to make burgers, and Roberto has been craving meatballs lately. So I decided to make some pasta with red sauce and mini meatballs.

In my constant quest for pasta that is good for you, and doesn’t make me symptomatic, I came across another option from DeBoles– my favorite pasta company. Most of their pastas are made with a flour other than or in addition to wheat. I have had 100% corn (my favorite), and a Jerusalem artichoke/semolina mix, and now Ancient Grain. Ancient Grain is a mixture of organic spelt, quinoa and amaranth, along with organic whole grain semolina and organic whole grain durum. It packs 32 grams of whole grains per serving, and cooks up just like regular pasta.

Due to my issues with grains, I don’t cook pasta very often. But every once in a while it is nice to have a nice steaming bowl of pasta with red sauce, and for those occasions, I am thankful that I have these ready made pastas available. When I eat it, I try to eat more sauce than pasta, actually!

I wanted to make a nice sauce to go with it. Roberto, being Italian and a lover of pasta, does eat it more often than I do. For those occasions, he goes with a nice local organic jarred sauce. There was about a half a jar left of sauce in the fridge and a ¾ can of tomato paste. So this is a leftover queen recipe for sure! I added to those the mini meatballs, onions, garlic, wine and dried porcini mushrooms from Marx Foods. There is a giveaway of these porcini mushrooms (and morels) going on over at The Foodie Blogroll this month. So if you haven’t commented over there to win, please do! The mushrooms are excellent and added an amazing depth of flavor to my sauce with a mere pinch or two of the small broken bits and powder at the bottom of the bag. The sauce turned out dark and thick, perfect for coating the penne. With a nice crumble of soft goat cheese and a quick grate of Parmiggiano cheese on top, it was a great and extremely flavorful winter meal.

The other wonderful thing about this dish besides the wonderful flavor, is that it is also extremely inexpensive and would serve a family nicely with a side salad. This is a great way to stretch your grassfed beef, if you are worried about cost. This dish serves 4, and was about $1.75 per serving.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, I got a nice package in the mail from Tropical Traditions. They are doing a giveaway this month on The Foodie Blogroll, and as the creator of that community, I often receive some nice perks for putting these giveaways on for the community. One of the delicious coconut items in the package was a bag of coconut flour (to see all the items, and for a chance to win them, click here). I was really excited to see coconut flour included in the package, as I have been working with a variety of Gluten Free and Grain Free flours lately.

I had some chicken tenderloins in the fridge, and thought it would be fun to make Coconut Chicken Tenders. I always have a bag of dessicated coconut in the pantry, and so with an egg I was ready to go.

I served it with a potato puree that I made in my Vitamix. I had intended to make mashed potatoes, but those blades are certainly powerful! So mashed becomes pureed! The puree turned out delicious and udderly (pun intended) creamy – a perfect accompaniment to the chicken.

I used a special butter in the puree. Delitia Parmigiano Reggiano Butter is made from the cream left over from Parmigiano Reggiano cheese production. It is a delicious, delicate and flavorful butter – with a Parmigiano Reggiano quality to it. If you happen upon some, it is worth trying. It is certainly not local to me, but the quality of Italian dairy products is known the world over.

Coconut Chicken Tenders

INGREDIENTS:

6 chicken tenderloins

1 egg, scrambled

1/8 cup coconut flour

¼ cup dessicated coconut

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 400 F. Rinse and pat dry the chicken tenderloins. Dip them in the egg, and then the mixture of the flour and coconut. Place them on a cookie sheet and cook for 25 minutes – turning halfway through. Serve with potato puree.

Potato Puree

INGREDIENTS:

4 Idaho potatoes, boiled until soft

1- inch slice of Delitia Parmigiano Reggiano Butter

dash of heavy cream

salt and pepper to taste

METHOD:

Place all the ingredients in the Vitamix, and blend until smooth.

Brunello di Montalcino is a very special wine variety made in the Tuscany region of Italy. It is known the world over as being a very good wine. Our friends Erin and Chris, who lived for a year in Florence, had a bottle that they wanted to share with us. They had fond memories of a night in Florence that they spent with friends savoring a bottle of this wine, and wanted to spend another evening like that with us! So of course we were game and very excited to taste wine from a very different bracket than what we are used to.

Since they were bringing such a nice bottle, I offered to find some tasty morsels to go along with the wine, so we could have a proper Aperitivo – or the Italian version of Happy Hour! If you would like to learn more about Aperitivo, please check out Ms. Adventures in Italy. Sarah has a great passion for Aperitivo and has great tips on how you can have your own – or where to go for the best ones in her hometown of Milano!

I knew this was a special wine, so I enlisted the help of a professional to come up with food ideas to compliment it. With the help of my buddy, Vince DiPiazza (no known relation – though I am sure there is one somehow, not many of us DiPiazza’s in the world) from D’Italia – an online specialty store of food products from Italy, we came up with a menu of aperitivi, or small plates:

Variety of cheeses of different flavor profiles served with Rosemary Grissini and Garbanzo Crackers

Parmigiano-Reggiano is Italy’s most famous cheese, known as Parmesan in the English language. We know it well as a cheese for grating on top of pasta. However, if you eat it in cubes, it is a whole other experience. The cheese is made from raw cow’s milk, it is then put into a brine bath for 20-25 days to absorb salt, and then aged for 12 months. My favorite part (and Erin’s too) are the little crunchies you get in a good Parmigiano – the crunchies are bits of crystallized salt.

Morbier is a raw cow’s milk cheese from France. It is a Gruyère-like cheese with a vein of ash running through its middle. The two layers of the cheese originally came from two milkings, one in the morning and one in the evening, over it with a protective thin layer of tasteless ash, both to prevent it from both drying out and to keep away the flies. The next day, they would add the leftover curd from the morning milking and production. The result was a two-layered cheese.

Goat Fromage Blanc is from a batch of the pasteurized goat milk cheese that I made recently. I added some basil and a little dried dill – as well as a few sun-dried tomatoes (Vince said they pair well with Brunello) stirred in.

Cabot Seriously Sharp Cheddar is one of our favorite cheeses, and we decided to add it at the last minute. It never tastes the same from one batch to the next. It is the cheese variety that Cabot used to sell to hunters and truckers…on their way out of town. Chris said it tasted like ham to him, which as a vegetarian, was a weird experience. This cheese is amazing paired with a sweet bread and butter style pickle.

Miscellaneous Treats

Sautéed Mushrooms
Hummus
Assorted Nuts
Assorted Olives
Pickles

Dessert

French Truffles
Chocolate covered mint cremes

*********************************

The Tasting :

When Erin and Chris arrived we opened the bottle to give it about 20 minutes to breathe. We decided to do the tasting in two stages, the first without food, and then one with food. We each had a piece of paper and a pen. We spent about 5-10 minutes sniffing and tasting the wine, and individually writing our impressions of both the nose and the taste without sharing.

NOSE:

Erin: cheese – brie, sweet chocolate, metal
Chris: robust, dank – wet wood or earth, finishes smoky
Roberto: cherries
Jenn: woody, tannins, blackberry/cherry

TASTE:

Erin: milk chocolate, cheddar, old smoke – like what your clothes smell like after a BBQ or fire
Chris: pungent, truffles, finishes with citrus (mild burn, fruity end) and something like ginger, but not quite ginger
Roberto: old fermenting cherries, blueberry and ends with citrus
Jenn: black pepper, herbal/smoky, cherry

After we shared our observations, we found it interesting that both the guys had noticed a citrus end, while the ladies had both noticed a smoky taste. Is it coincidence, or do males and females taste wine differently?

Once we headed over to the food, and had a second glass with food, we all agreed that the wine tasted much sweeter, and it was at that point that Erin and I noticed a bit of a citrus taste.

It was a really fun night. I can’t say that I have ever really enjoyed wine in this way, and I think it is a really great way to spend the evening with friends. We decided we had so much fun, that we definitely need to do it again, with different wines and food pairings.

Thanks everyone for all your great comments recently – especially as it pertains to my two posts on year 2010 goals. I think we all have goals, but for me, putting it out there and in some sense therefore being more accountable makes it more fun – and more of a challenge for me! So thanks for all your lovely comments and feedback!

In my last post, as it pertains to one of my food goals for this year, I told you I was going to post a recipe for creamy tomato soup that I prepared in my Vitamix for lunch last week. I was lucky enough to receive one of these AWESOME machines from my lovely husband for my birthday. I have been wanting one for over 3 years, and this year, I guess I was a good girl! These machines are not cheap, but they do take the place of a blender, food processor and grinder (you can actually grind coffee beans in it) all in one. In fact you can make fresh fruit and veggie juice in it too – not pulpy but rich and creamy from all the natural fibers – the blades are that powerful. You can even make a kind of ice milk or fruity dessert in it as well.

We have really been enjoying all the above mentioned treats have we make with it, especially our nightly smoothies, but one of the things I love the most about the Vitamix is that is actually MAKES soup – I mean you don’t even have to cook it – the heat created from the friction of the ultra fast blades heats it up! So you literally have soup in 5 minutes.

Here is what I did:

INGREDIENTS:

1 box of Pomi strained tomatoes
1 ½ organic roasted red peppers (jarred)
dash of organic heavy cream
salt
freshly ground pepper
dried oregano
dried basil

I put all of this in the Vitamix and let her rip. In about 3-4 minutes you could see the steam coming out of the lid, telling me that it was done. That’s IT. The soup was so rich and creamy. The taste of the black pepper was very prominent – I guess it go so pulverized that it really infused the entire soup. I put a dollop of homemade yogurt on top and it was a wonderful, filling and super healthy lunch full of one of my favorite things – Lycopene, because it is oh so good. So go ahead and enjoy some tomato soup today!

On another note my friend Betherann from Kitchen Courage gifted me with a Beautiful Blogger Award and asked me to share 7 things about myself. So here they are:

1) I just took a DNA test for ancestry and health. I am adopted and know nothing at all about my birth family, my ethnic heritage or the types of health problems that run in the family. I have been waiting 33 years for this – and decided to finally do it. If we are facebook friends, keep checking my status update for how you can be involved in this life changing event! Trust me, it’ll be fun!

2) My favorite flower is the Thistle.

3) If I never had asparagus again in my life, I wouldn’t miss it.

4) I believe in life you have to be willing to take risks in order to realize your full potential.

5) My favorite color is Rust – which is why I probably love eating pumpkin, squash and sweet potatoes so much!

6) I spent a year in Norway and speak some Norwegian  – I used to be fluent – but it has been 15 years!

7) I am a very accurate and passionate archer – makes sense since I am a Sagittarius!

(My first attempts—deformed æbleskiver…)

Have you had Æbleskiver (pronounced EB-el-sku-wyr)? They are yummy and delicious, cute and round Danish Pancakes that can be eaten with syrup, like pancakes, or filled with anything from fruit to cream, or even Nutella! I imagine some savory combinations too – like apples and cheddar, perhaps?

I heard about them several years ago, but saw them being cooked for the first time in San Francisco, this past November, at the Foodbuzz Food Bloggers Festival. That is where I met Chad Gillard, co-owner of Aunt Else’s Æbleskiver. He was there in the afternoon’s tasting pavilion as part of the Foodzie crew, demonstrating how to make æbleskiver using Aunt Else’s Æbleskiver Mix which is made with organic, Minnesota grown wheat & organic buttermilk from Wisconsin and using Aunt Else’s high quality, locally made 9-hole cast iron æbleskiver pan. I was really intrigued and got in touch with Chad after the festival to see if he wanted to do a giveaway on Foodieblogroll.com, so we could start an Æbleskiver Revolution in the Food Blogging world! So that is how I came to be a lucky recipient of an æbleskiver pan and Aunt Else’s mix at no charge for hosting the giveaway.

I decided that my maiden attempt to make æbleskiver would be over Thanksgiving, while my family was visiting. I wanted everyone to have a chance to taste these little darlings, and I was excited to offer something unique for breakfast. I had prepared the cast iron pan the night before so it was all set. When it was time, I used coconut oil to prepare the pan for cooking. Making the mix was easy – just add eggs and water and you are ready to go! Just like pancakes, the first few batches didn’t really look as round and cute as Chad’s did at the festival – but then again, I comforted myself in that knowledge that he is a professional! I was about to get discouraged, but then the batches started coming out great! It is fun to make æbleskiver, after you pour the batter in, you turn them several quarter turns using a metal implement that comes with the kit. Back in the day, the Danes would use a knitting needle – but I suppose you could also use a chopstick!

I decided to make a simple version – just plain and sprinkled with powdered sugar! Powdered sugar makes everything look pretty – even my deformed æbleskiver! I served them with maple syrup for dipping.

(Practice makes perfect….)

I really love Aunt Else’s stuff, especially the fact that they are a small company making their product locally, and using local and organic ingredients in their mix. That is something I feel really good about supporting. For your chance to win your own Æbleskiver Kit, check out Aunt Else’s Contest Page on The Foodie Blogroll. Mange tak, Chad and Aunt Else’s!