We started our garden about a month late – our moving date was not well timed with the Farmer’s Almanac this year. So now, we are harvesting veggies that everyone else in our area harvested 4-6 weeks ago. In some ways it makes us feel really behind in our gardening, but in another way it is actually good – having a second harvest! The first time around we bought these goodies from the farmer’s market – second time around from our garden!

Less than two weeks ago we got our biggest harvest yet – 5 beets, 10 carrots, fresh herbs and lots of beautiful edible flowers – nasturtium and borage.

FLOWER POWER!

Nasturtium flowers and leaves are edible and have a wonderful peppery flavor. Even the seeds can be pickled – they apparently taste like capers. The flowers are high in vitamin C, and have been used to treat colds. It can also be used topically for bacterial and fungal infections because of its mustard-oil content.

Borage flowers are perhaps one of the only truly found in nature blue foods, beyond blueberries. They have a very sweet taste. The flowers are also rich in minerals, most notably potassium. Medicinally the leaves are often used as support to the adrenal glands and for inflammation. Probably the most well-known use for borage is borage oil. Borage oil is very high in gamma-linolenic acid, GLA. GLA is an essential fatty acid, omega-6 oil. Borage oil supplements are most beneficial for arthritis and chronic dry skin, such as eczema.

We really planted both of these flowers in accordance with companion planting – plants that keep bugs and disease, as well as other garden pests away from the plants you are growing for food. So these plants have a dual purpose. Plus they are very pretty as an edible garnish. My stepdaughter Gwen had never had an edible flower until we served this salad for dinner recently. At first she didn’t want to try them, but after some coaxing, she did, and she really liked them!

I love roasting beets for salads, and pairing them with goat cheese. There is something so good , and not to mention aesthetically beautiful about the combination of goat cheese and beets. So I decided to roast the whole lot, and arrange them on top of fresh greens from the garden, also. As we have been harvesting plenty of those for months now.

This is a perfect dinner salad on a hot summer night, when your family is looking for something light. This would also be a wonderful first course to a summer harvest dinner. It is colorful, delicious and healthy on so many levels!

INGREDIENTS:

5 small beets, cut in half
10 baby carrots
2 TBS fresh rosemary
1 TBS fresh thyme
salt & pepper
olive oil
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp maple syrup
5 cups fresh greens – arugala, red leaf and green leaf lettuces, nasturtium leaves
olive oil to toss the greens in
salt & pepper to season greens
¼ cup goat cheese, crumbled
nasturtium flowers, as garnish
borage flowers, as garnish

METHOD:

Stir the veggies with olive oil, salt and pepper and herbs until well coated. Roast in a preheated 400 F oven for about 45 minutes, turning once halfway through.

In the same bowl, add mustard and maple, dump the roasted veggies in and stir to coat. Then toss the greens with olive oil, and season with salt and pepper. Crumble the goat cheese on top, arrange the roasted veggies and the edible flowers. Serves 4 as a main dish.

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!

Here is a quick little treat for you all, and trust me, when I say it is a treat – one that is not only delicious, but healthy and perfect for outdoor party weather! I wouldn’t leave you hanging with anything less than super yummy.

This will be my last post for a week or so – we are migrating to Vermont any day now, and although I will have internet access, it will be quick and sporadic. Then as soon as we get there, we have to get a garden started! I am sorry that I haven’t been around the bloggy world much these past weeks to see everyone’s delicious creations, but I have been up to my ears in boxes, with a quick day off to celebrate 2 years of wedded bliss, yesterday!

Anyway, this dish was inspired by two things – one, my ever-present leftover using principles and two, my desire to bring something to a party I knew I could eat. This is the cumulative efforts of pairing delicious raw goat cheese with soaked raw nuts, both of which were leftovers.

I love canapes, crostini, bruschetta and the like, but when I indulge in these generally bready things, I pay for it later. So I figured why not make canapes with potatoes that needed to be used up – which I could enjoy absolutely guilt free! I topped these delicious roasted potato rounds with a raw cashew, raw goat cheese basil pesto, with some sun dried tomatoes mixed in for POP.

These are so good, my extremely picky cat, Nimue, actually went up on the counter to eat the leftovers I had saved for my mom (sorry, mom!).

These were seriously easy to make and ended up looking great and party worthy! I will certainly be making them often this summer for backyard barbecues, parties and potlucks! Hope some of you can join us up at our place in Vermont! But be prepared to get your hands dirty!

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I love nuts, they are one of the best snacks – quick and satisfying as well as full of nutritional benefits since they are absolutely packed with protein, good fats, vitamins and minerals. They are the perfect snack food, one that will keep you going and quell that craving for something crunchy and salty. Now that is what I call a good snack!

I always like to have a variety of raw nuts in my pantry – my favorites are almonds and cashews. After they have been soaked, you can dehydrate them in the oven (or if you are lucky enough to have a dehydrator!) and mix them with your favorite salts and spices to make your own version of spiced nuts. You can also leave some of them as is (storing them in the refrigerator), to put into smoothies. I like to soak enough for both options. To learn more about the benefits of soaking nuts (as well as legumes and grains), check out this link

Spiced nuts are great for munching on straight out of your hand, serving as a snack for guests, sprinkling on your salads, etc.

Not only does soaking nuts increase their health benefits, but the texture and taste is even better. It could also be less allergenic, based on recent events in my own life. This is not confirmed, but only what I experienced.  I was the recent guinea pig. I have always had an aversion to walnuts, for some reason. But Roberto grew up eating walnuts (they are part of the traditional Sardinian diet) and so we decided to try some. I soaked them, as I know that soaking nuts increases their nutritional profile, by allowing you to be able to utilize more of the vitamins and minerals, since soaking breaks down the enzyme inhibitors. I mixed these soaked walnuts with some soaked almonds. Then I drained and towel dried them, and mixed both nuts with olive oil, sea salt, pepper, and dried rosemary (basically the spices that were left in the bag from my favorite Trader Joe’s spiced Macona Almonds – waste not, want not…). I spread them out on a tray and cooked them in a 200 F oven for about 15 minutes – shaking the tray every 5-10 minutes.

I really wanted to learn to love walnuts, so I was eating a handful of these mixed (walnut and almond) nuts everyday – either as a snack, or on salads. By the fourth day I wasn’t feeling right. I felt like I had no strength in my hands, and I was more tired than usual. On that day, I decided to pick the walnuts out, and just eat a handful of those, in another attempt to try to like them. Within minutes I started to sneeze, then, my mouth, tongue and lips were starting to itch, and soon my eyes started to get a bit puffy. I was having an allergic reaction! If it hadn’t been for the soaking, I am guessing that the reaction likely would have been much worse! So my taking the extra time to soak my nuts, grains and legumes really paid off and probably saved me a trip to the ER!

But really, taking a little extra time (and you really don’t have to do anything – they are doing all the work!) to soak your nuts before eating them makes them much more beneficial, easier to digest and the perfect texture to go in smoothies. If you bake them in the oven, with spices, then you have a whole other great use for them! This is a great way to treat your nuts, and your body!

Disclaimer:  I am not a dietitian or health care professional. My posts reflect my own personal experience. You should always consult a doctor before making any changes to your diet and exercise routine.

Scottish Oat Cakes with Smoked Salmon and Crème Fraîche

Weird Food Rule that Jenn lives by #1: Try to eat foods that humans have been eating for the past 200 years, at least, and try as best you can to eat “traditional” foods from your ancestral region of the world.

Weird Food Rules that Jenn lives by #2: Do this 80% of the time you eat.

Hey, it works for other animals, so why shouldn’t it work for us? We are animals after all. My small dogs do better eating dog food with animal products that they could easily catch in the wild – like fowl and poultry and their eggs (and as close to their natural state as possible). But, not so good on venison. I know we can’t all be wild foragers, but it is good to keep this principle in mind when we choose our mainstay foods. I know I think I feel better when I do this as much as I can,  but I trust my dogs, because they don’t have the placebo effect.

Well it is no surprise to those of you who read my blog regularly that I am a huge fan of Mediterranean cuisine. I grew up in a primarily Southern Italian American family, eating lots of olive oil, garlic and tomato sauce. I love wine, olives, pita bread, hummus and cheese. In fact, quick meals are often comprised of many of these things. Antipasti, tapas and small plate eating is my favorite way to make a meal. These are all super healthy foods, that are a mainstay of my diet and will continue to be, because they are so darn good and good for you and well, super tasty. However, all my life, I have also had a strange love for other foods, from more colder climates. Things like salmon, brunost, wild game (especially those with antlers), lingonberries, blackberries, blueberries, seaweed, wild mushrooms, beets, turnips and sauerkraut. I find myself really CRAVING these foods. As well as other foods that can be found in both parts of the world like cheese, yogurt and other cultured dairy products.

Preparing Dough for Scottish Oat Cakes

So it was interesting for me when I got the results of my DNA test to find out that I have 100% Northern European ancestry, with heavy British/Western Isles connections on all sides. So in my quest to fulfill more of my Weird Food Rule #1 combined with my quest to find a good cracker recipe, I decided to try making Scottish oat cakes. People of the Western Isles in Europe have been eating oats and porridge for quite a long time. Oatmeal is good for us, and so I thought this would be a good recipe to experiment with.

It really and truly is a great recipe. It covers all my requirements – significantly more oats than flour, no white flour, holds up well with a pre-soak of the oats and flour – and works really well with buttermilk as the pre-soaking agent.

Buttermilk is an amazing liquid, and extremely easy to make. It is what raw milk becomes when it sours, like yogurt sours (DISCLAIMER: DO NOT try this with pasteurized milk, it ROTS, as opposed to sours, due to the lack of beneficial bacteria and is not safe to drink). Buttermilk is a actually a probiotic food. Even those who are lactose intolerant can generally consume it, since the healthy bacteria makes it easier to digest. I have been making cultured buttermilk (by using store bought milk and a powdered culture) regularly for the past several months. Buttermilk uses are many: pancakes, biscuits, bread, cakes, muffins, and of course these oat cakes. It makes all of these baked goodies nice and tender and airy. I have even drunk buttermilk straight from the glass, on occasion in lieu of kefir and it works well in smoothies, too.

Scottish Oat Cakes with Cheddar Cheese and Brunost

These oatcakes are a great vehicle to serve with cheese – I like brunost, Roberto like cheddar. Also good with homemade crème fraîche and smoked salmon, even salami. Or you could try butter and jam or raw honey for a sweet treat!

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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.

Well I have been up to a little kitchen experimentation, lately. First I wanted to tackle another batch of Fromage Blanc made with goat milk. The last time I made it , after draining it for 12 hours, I gave the cheese cloth a bit of a heavy handed squeeze which resulted in a dry and crumbly sort of cheese. I liked it. It was good for stirring in eggs and other dishes. However this time I was hoping to yield a softer more spreadable cheese. Basically I followed the same procedure as last time , except that I used pasteurized goat milk, instead of raw, let the cheese drain for about 15 hours (instead of 12) and did not squeeze the bag. It came out perfectly! Wonderful and creamy and perfect to spread on crackers…except there were no crackers!

That was an easy fix. I have been wanting to play with some of the recipes from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients. Jeff and Zoe, along with Monica from their publishing company, St. Martin’s Press, are generously hosting 2 months of giveaways of this book on Foodieblogroll.com! I was lucky enough to receive a copy of the book from Monica and really wanted to get baking. I was particularly interested in the gluten-free breads. So I was delighted to find a gluten free version of the Olive Oil bread, I use so often from their first book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking. The gluten free recipe called for soy flour, and I have a soy sensitivity and I didn’t have rice flour on hand either. So I decided to make a modified version, using what I had available – since I really wanted to enjoy some cheese & crackers.

These crackers are not gluten free, but what I call transitional crackers. Although you could make them gluten free by using rice flour in place of the WW flour. I used kefir and raw apple cider vinegar to soak local whole wheat Vermont flour – from a farm we visited in Vermont this fall and then used garbanzo bean flour to cut down on some of the grains in this cracker. The garbanzo bean flour had a very strong smell and so I really wasn’t sure how it would turn out if I used exclusively garbanzo flour. I used over half of the dough to make crackers, and then used the other part to make a small loaf of bread. The bread was not great, but the crackers were wonderful! The bean flavor in the flour really complimented the nice crispy crackers. Here is my recipe inspired by both Gluten- Free Olive Oil Bread and Gluten-Free Cheddar and Sesame Crackers from Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.

Seedy Garbanzo Crackers (NOT Gluten-free)

INGREDIENTS:

1 ½ TBS yeast

1 TBS sea salt

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

2 tsp raw apple cider vinegar

2 large organic eggs

½ cup of homemade kefir

2 cups filtered water

3 cups whole wheat flour

3 cups garbanzo bean flour

½ cup corn starch

Cracker toppings: seeds: white or black sesame, fennel, flax, etc, salt, za’atar spice or any other spices or dried herbs you like.

METHOD:

1) Whisk together flours, cornstarch, yeast and salt, and put in a large lidded bowl.

2) Combine all the liquid ingredients and gradually mix with the dry ingredients using a spoon, or 14 cup food processor.

3) Cover (not airtight) and allow the dough to rest at room temperature for at least2 hours, but better for those with grain intolerance, to let it rest for 12 hours and up to 24 hours.

4) The dough can be used immediately after its initial rise or you can refrigerate in the lidded container and use it over the next 7 days. The flavor will be better if you wait for at least 24 hours of refrigeration.

On Baking Day:

1) Thirty minutes before baking time preheat the oven to 400 F.

2) Cut off an orange sized piece of dough, place dough on a piece of parchment paper or a silicone mat. Then cover with more parchment paper or plastic wrap. Use a rolling pin and roll until you have a 1/16^th inch rectangle. Peel off the top layer or wrap or paper, and place the dough on top of the paper or mat onto baking sheet.

3) Using a pizza cutter gently score the dough into the shape you want the crackers (be careful not to cut the silicone mat, if that is what you are using).

4) Just before baking, using a pastry brush, paint the dough with water and sprinkle the top with black and toasted sesame seeds, salt and za’atar spice.

5) Bake for 15 minutes, or until crackers are golden brown. Allow them to cool before eating.

6) Serve with fromage blanc!