I have one more guest post to share with you, for now, dear readers. This one comes to you by my friend Diana, from A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa. Diana and I have been foraging a friendship over this last year based in a love for the land, animals, and real, wholesome food. I love Diana for her honesty, and the way she really opens the door to her life on her urban homestead in Iowa through her blog. I know, doesn’t that sound like an oxymoron, that someone living in Iowa would consider their home to be urban? But again, that is the beauty of sharing lives with each other through blogging – you learn how wrong you are about so much and how much there is still to learn! I love that.

Diana and I both raise heritage breed chickens, and love to garden. Even though we are mostly at the end of our garden season here, many of you are still awash in tomatoes and eggplants, and this recipe is perfect for you. For the rest of us, let’s stock it away for next year! Now for a recipe straight from the garden, the lovely Diana takes it from here.

Thank you, Jenn, for inviting me to guest post on your blog.  You always inspire me in your dedication to live a life in sustainability and stewardship.

I’ve had the privilege of befriending Jenn over the past year.  Kindred spirits you might say.

We share a passion in real food and homesteading including calloused hands and dirt grimed fingernails from working our own pieces of land.

I an urban homesteader and she a homesteader.  Besides a shared appreciation of worm castings and poop, what I enjoy about Jenn is her love of fine cooking.

As much as I adore to work in my organic gardens and raise backyard urban chickens for eggs and meat, I find joy when I’m able to share the fruits of my labor with family and friends at the dinner table.

When Jenn asked me to share a simple seasonal recipe, I decided to share with you something special using end of the season eggplant and cherry tomatoes.

Eggplant has a sort of villain/superhero kind of reputation.  Some love it while others despise the notion of even looking at such an odd fruit that comes in so many shapes and sizes.

I enjoy eggplant and find that as long as it’s cooked along side other vegetables and herbs, it brings out the best in it’s texture and flavor.

A sure way to make any vegetable pleasing, including eggplant, is to roast them sprinkled with celtic sea salt and drizzled with extra virgin olive oil.

It deepens their flavor and when it comes to eggplant, gives them a bit more sustenance without the creaminess.

An End of the Season Roasted Eggplant, Tomato and White Bean Salad

This is a simple salad to make using white navy beans, tuna, roasted eggplant and tomatoes.  It’s mixed in a balsamic vinaigrette and topped with feta cheese and fresh cut rosemary.  Deep and vibrant it makes a perfect side dish for a busy weekday meal.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup white navy beans
• 1 can tuna
• 1 eggplant, diced
• 20 cherry tomatoes (use some green unripened tomatoes if you have them), cut in half
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1tbls fresh cut rosemary, minced
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Feta cheese to garnish

Method:

1. In a baking dish, add the diced eggplant and half cherry tomatoes.  Sprinkle with sea salt and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.  Roast in a 375F oven for 25 to 30 minutes.  Once roasted, remove from the baking dish and set aside.

2. In a large bowl, mix the beans, tuna, roasted eggplants and tomatoes.  Add the balsamic vinaigrette, olive oil and fresh cut rosemary.  Add salt and pepper to taste and toss well.

3. Garnish with Feta Cheese.

Buen Provecho!

Why can’t I write a simple post anymore? Seems like everything I eat, and therefore blog about, it not just food, there is always something else going on there. I guess the more conscious I have become about where my food comes from, the more stories are behind it. And in light of being transparent with you, my readers, I have been talking more lately about personal struggles along the way. I mentioned a few posts ago that we are trying to start a family and towards that goal, we have been trying to eat more seafood lately. Living in a landlocked state, although it boasts many rivers and lakes, there unfortunately doesn’t seem to be a lot of access to good fresh or local seafood. I would love if someone in my area that knows of a good place to get some local trout could let me know, though!

So since local seafood has been impossible to find up until this point, we have always tried to navigate the murky waters of cost vs. freshness vs. sustainability vs. etc. and murky waters they are. I eat a fair amount of canned tuna and salmon (wild caught), but Robert o is allergic to both of those. We both enjoy canned sardines and anchovies, yet, they are far from local. We also found some delicious canned mackerel from the coast of Maine, which we were so excited about, until we couldn’t seem to find it anywhere anymore. But recently I found an unlikely source for frozen wild caught salmon, cod and flounder.

DUN, DUN, DUN… Costco. Now I am NOT a fan of big box stores, and shop locally the majority of the time, but there are just a few things at our Costco that are not only good products, but budget friendly and fall into the category of “doing the best we can for now” or “why would I buy the exact same product for double the price just because I can buy it from a non-box-store?”. For example, imported cheeses – we can get a large container full of buffalo mozzarella from Italy for about $9, the same price that we can get at the local shops for ONE ball of the same stuff. Same goes for REAL Parmigiano-Reggiano and prosciutto from Parma. I am the first one to shop locally, but I am also a thrifty consumer and I won’t overpay by double for something I can get for much less somewhere else for the exact same thing. That just doesn’t make good sense.

The second problem with seafood in this house is, aside from pan searing and making fish cakes (which we LOVE), I never know what to do with seafood. I also never know what to serve with it. We have not bought it much in the past years (except when we lived in Florida) because of the whole sustainability issue. But since we are trying to eat as well as we can, in hopes of boosting our fertility, we are making some hard choices.

But scallops are easy! Frozen seafood, like the sea scallops are also something we get from Costco, and nothing can be easier than pan searing them in butter and lemon juice. I like to serve them up simply on a bed of soft creamy polenta, or as an appetizer with some fresh homemade aioli and capers. We eat them as a snack this way, or sometimes a meal, served with a side of veggies. They are sweet and delicious, and so easy to prepare that we make this dish about twice a month. We try to eat some form of seafood at least 3-4 times per week. Right now, at this point in our lives, doing the pros and cons of everything, here we are.

Do you have any food situations in your life like this that you wish were different? Any local folks know of any gems I am missing?

Have many of you bought a fish like this? With the eyes still there? This was a new experience for me. Even though I am no stranger to the cycles of life and how food gets to my plate, I never bought or ate a whole fish before. I have not really cooked much seafood in my kitchen career, but I do enjoy it. I love smoked fishes, and there is a store sort of near to us called Healthy Living, that actually sells several varieties of whole smoked fishes. The last time we were there, they had this guy, for about $9, which is a steal if you are used to buying smoked fillets. So with an adventurous spirit, I bought it, bones, fins, eyes and all.

Funny story interlude…so Healthy Living also has a great variety of local meats and sustainable seafood– things like pork, beef, venison, lamb, duck, chicken – pretty much you name it, it has probably graced their shelves at some point. So I like to go every so often, and buy a small variety. So on the day we bought Mr. Mackerel, we also bought some Highland grassfed beef, duck rillettes, some venison shanks, several packages of chicken wings, pork belly, cans of tuna, fresh marinated anchovies etc. That was all we bought – no veggies, no fruit, and no dairy. So we get to the check-out line, and our cashier was kind of scowling at us. Her lips were pursed and her nose wrinkled like she smelled something really foul. As she was scanning our box of meat, she was only touching the corners of the packages and moving them across the scanner as quickly as possible. Then it dawned on me, and I said “I hope you aren’t a vegetarian”, and she responded, “No, I am a vegan, actually”. SCREEEECH. Talk about a clash of cultures.

But it really got me thinking about my days as a vegan (all 6 months of them), and I felt like, even though we take very different approaches, this girl and I both care about the welfare of animals and are taking action to opt out against the inhumane slaughter of them for human consumption. She was young, so you never know where her path might lead. When I was a vegan, and a vegetarian (for 10 years) I never in a million years would have thought I would raise animals for meat. But once I saw first-hand how animals can be raised humanely and with love and respect, for consumption, and how feeding your family from the sweat of your brow and your own hands is more honorable than buying non-meat items that are subsidized by the government, (like soy, a major vegetarian protein and something I ate a lot of) to the detriment of us all, animals included…and when I learned enough about the natural world that I had been so disconnected from, and learned that even if I was a vegetarian, in order to eat, animals had to die, I decided there had to be a better way, a way where I could take full responsibility for the food on my plate while at the same time take my place in the natural world, as a part of it- and this is one of the reasons I do what I do on the homestead – because I love animals and because I am an animal. To the cashier that probably sounds so backwards, but I have been forward, back and back again!

So anyway, back to Mr. Mackerel…like I said, I love smoked fishes, and I wanted to showcase this beautiful fish in a nice spring dish. I decided on a mackerel salad. Mackerel is packed with protein and essential fatty acids. It has a nice meaty texture and smoked it is just delicious! One of our favorites. To make the salad, I mixed together half of the fish (after I opened it up, took the bones out, etc) with 2 hard -boiled eggs, capers, roasted red peppers a splash of red wine vinegar and a touch of homemade mayo. I then served it on a bed of greens. We dined al fresco on the porch looking at the mountain and admiring the buds on the trees, the greening of the grass and the beautiful tulips in bloom.

Also, don’t forget – you have a few more days to enter for your chance to win the book Root Cellaring, and to get your very own Leftover Queen Award  ! I want to hear your tips -what are some small things do you do in your kitchens that make you a “Leftover Queen”?

I am going to start off by stating clearly, that I  make no claims to the authenticity of this recipe.  I got it from one of my very first cookbooks, ever, when I was still in high school. “Greek Green Beans” is just what we have been calling it for years. The book is called A Little Greek Cookbook (See all Cooking, Food & Wine References) and it was given to me by my mom as a gift when I discovered my love for Mediterranean cuisine. There are some great tasting recipes in there and I have been using it ever since.

I have been making this dish for about 20 years now! I have only eaten something similar in one Greek restaurant that was near my house growing up –Athens Grill, so maybe it is a regional dish? The restaurant was a family restaurant, owned by Greek immigrants from Athens. I loved their food so much and begged my mom to take me there often! We used to get gyro platters, or souvlaki served with Greek salad, pita bread and the best French fries ever. Sometimes we would eat at the restaurant, al fresco, on little wrought iron tables right off the parking lot. Other times, we would take it home to eat while watching a movie. I thought it was the best food ever. What I wouldn’t give to pop over there for lunch today!

In the cookbook, the name they give this recipe is Fasolakia Freska or Green Bean Casserole, in English. It is a simple recipe with a lot of flavor. I am making it tonight to accompany some pan seared fish. But it also goes well with chicken or beef dishes, and of course lamb. Sometimes I like to sprinkle feta cheese on it, and eat a large bowl full for lunch. This is a great recipe to double – and it is also one of those recipes that tastes all the better a day or two later. It has a large amount of olive oil in it – but don’t skimp on it – that is what makes this dish so rich and flavorful.

Normally I follow the recipe as is, but sometimes I might add Kalamata olives for bite, or pearl onions instead of the sliced onions, for pretty. You can also omit the potatoes, but that would be silly.

INGREDIENTS:
1 lb of fresh green beans, topped and tailed (I have also used frozen with great success)
1 large onion, finely sliced – or half a bag of pearl onions
2 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 cloves garlic, finely sliced
1 cup olive oil
14 oz. can of chopped tomatoes
Salt and freshly ground pepper
This is not part of the recipe, but I usually add some oregano as well.

METHOD:
Slice beans in half, rinse and drain. Sauté onion and garlic in hot oil until pale golden. Add beans and potatoes and sauté together until well coated in the oil. Add the tomatoes and seasoning. Cover and cook for 30-40 minutes or until beans and potatoes are tender, stirring occasionally. If needed, add a little hot water to keep from burning. This can be served hot, or at room temperature.

Isn’t it fun trying something from one of your favorite restaurants? I thought so too.

I have been making my own yogurt for about two years now and so far filmjölk, a Swedish countertop cultured yogurt is my favorite. There are several reasons why, the first is the absolute breeze it is to make. You don’t need any special equipment. To make your first batch all you need is the bacteria culture, some milk and cream and a clean mason jar. That’s it. It takes just 24 hours to culture and less than 5 minutes to mix up. It really can’t be easier to make artisan, organic yogurt at home for literally a fraction of the price of store-bought yogurt. This is a great example of a product you can make at home for so little cash and effort that you literally can’t afford not to make it yourself.

Another and equally important reason I love it is for the taste. Many people describe filmjölk as yogurt with more of a “cheese-like” flavor. In Norway it is known as kulturmelk – translation, cultured milk. But it is not like American buttermilk; it is thicker and has more of a yogurt taste, although I find it to be sweeter and less sour than yogurt in general. Filmjölk is similar to cultured buttermilk, kefir, or yogurt in consistency, but fermented by different bacterium, Lactococcus lactis and Leuconostoc mesenteroides, giving it a different taste than other cultured dairy products and giving filmjölk its characteristic consistency – thinner than yogurt, but a bit thicker than buttermilk or kefir.

Forms of filmjölk have probably been around since Viking times, but the first written records of it are from the 18^th century.  Still a long history, which makes sense since Northern Europeans, especially Scandinavians have a long history with dairy animals and before refrigeration the need to culture and preserve dairy was a necessity of life.

Due to its non-committal flavor it can be used in a variety of ways from sweet to savory. We usually eat it for dessert with homemade granola. But I also use it as a substitute for sour cream, or even regular cream as a component to a creamy pasta sauce, or on top of beans and rice. If I don’t have any quark about, filmjölk can be used in its place.

In order to make my filmjölk thicker, I add about ½ cup of heavy cream to the full fat milk. Once your first batch it made, you just save some of the filmjölk to make subsequent batches. I usually save about ½ cup from my batches, and mix the subsequent batches in a 24 oz. mason jar using Vermont made Stafford Organic Creamery un-homogenized Creamline milk and heavy cream. I get my filmjölk cultures from Cultures for Health.

Make some today! This post is part of Simple Lives Thursday! Link up and share your tips and recipes for living a simple life.

It is a rare occasion, at least in most people’s households, to have leftover haggis. Well I found myself in this position recently after a very successful Burns Supper. Lucky for me, I have some awesome Caledonian friends and fellow bloggers that were able to help me out with this culinary quandary. My good friend Cat, who blogs at Kitty Cat’s Litertray explained to me that there are two popular ways to deal with the problem of leftover haggis – Haggis Pizza and Chicken Balmoral.

Now that I am 100% gluten-free and cannot enjoy my perfected sourdough spelt pizza right now, there has been very little pizza eaten in this house. As I mentioned in that post I have yet to find a delicious GF pizza crust…yet. So haggis pizza was clearly out.

Chicken Balmoral is a delicious dish, and really elevates haggis to a more modern culinary preparation. I actually feel very comfortable in saying that if you didn’t know it contained haggis, you would likely think you were eating a sausage stuffed chicken breast. The oats in the haggis are very creamy, and in this dish ads a bit of a “cheese vibe” to the stuffing. It is really a wonderful modern take on haggis, and I am pretty sure I enjoyed this dish when I was in Scotland many years ago as I was eating as much haggis as I could possibly stuff down my gullet.

Should have been a clue back then, of my Scottish lineage…

Chicken Balmoral is essentially chicken breast stuffed with haggis, wrapped in bacon – to keep it all together and drizzled with a whiskey cream sauce. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Yes indeed.

I found several recipes online, but this one, including a very helpful and instructional video is the one I followed.

I was in a bit of a rush when I made this, so I kind of winged the whiskey cream sauce. The only whiskey we have in this house are single malt scotches (I would say I am a bit of a budding connoisseur), so I used one of those, some butter, cream, salt and pepper. It was great, and I particularly enjoyed it the next day with the leftovers of this dinner, because I poured it over the leftover stuffed chicken and the neeps and tatties (aka “clapshot” ) the night before and it had the chance to sink in and saturate everything.

I am really enjoying my exploration into Scottish culture and history through the foods of that beautiful place in the world. I have found a lot of lovely dishes that are unique and tasty. I imagine this theme will continue on for quite a while!

Ith gu leòir! (Eat Plenty!)

This was the runner-up from last week’s informal poll on my facebook page about what recipes you wanted to see first from my list of back-logged posts. We enjoyed this dish for New Year’s Day – and many days after! This is a perfect dish for entertaining, because there is very little hands-on work. Just let the crock pot do all the work.  Plus it feeds so many mouths and you can make amazing soups and stews with the leftovers of leftovers!

We served it with homemade Sauerkraut with Juniper Berries and an updated version of Nana’s Beans. The post for the beans shows you how my recipes have evolved as I have gotten into more healthy ways of preparing foods.

I was inspired to make an apple barbecue sauce because I wanted a sweeter sauce and have been experimenting a lot lately with fruit-sweetening. I had quite a few apples in the fridge and some apple cider left over from the holidays, and so a plan was born.

This was delicious! The pork fell off the bone and melted in your mouth. The sauce was a nice accompaniment, but absolutely not necessary – the pork honestly stands alone in this dish. Granted it was a nice roast, made from local pork. So you use your discretion on that one. But the sauce is worth making as it is great with chicken, on burgers and sweet potato fries too. A really nice all around homemade condiment that you will enjoy having in the fridge.

INGREDIENTS:

6 lb, bone in, pasture-raised Pork Roast
1 TBS maple sugar
½ tsp cinnamon
1 tsp each: smoked paprika, green chili powder, Mexican mole seasoning, dried thyme and basil
Salt & pepper
¼ cup raw apple cider

For the Sauce:

½ an organic apple, cut in chunks
1/3 cup raw apple cider
1 cup tomato sauce
1 small can of tomato paste
2 TBS maple sugar
¼ cup raw apple cider vinegar
1 tsp each: coriander, cumin, paprika, thyme, basil

METHOD:

Rub pork with maple sugar and spices, wrap up tightly and store in fridge overnight. Next day put roast in crockpot with apple cider. Put crockpot on high for 8 hours, flip the roast and continue to cook on low for about another 2 hours.
Meanwhile make the sauce. Place the apple chunks and apple cider in a small saucepan, and bring to a boil over medium heat. Turn down heat to a simmer and cook down for about 15 minutes. Place apple mixture and the rest of the ingredients in the blender and whirl until blended. Set aside.
Using a fork, pull the meat away from the bone, continue to shred the meat this way until finished. Then serve with the sauce. YUM!

So I asked my facebook followers last night which recipe they wanted to see posted first, out of my list of back-logged posts. This chocolate pudding was the overwhelming winner! So by now, you know what the secret ingredient is – Avocado. Yep, I am serious. Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.

Pudding, custards, crèmes are all among my favorite desserts. What makes them so great? For me it is the creamy and delicious texture. Since avocado is mostly fat (the good kind), it makes a great base for a thick and creamy pudding. The dark chocolate overpowers the taste of the avocado, so it really works, and no weird flavors that shouldn’t be there! Plus, the time it takes to make this pudding is less than 5 minutes! Can’t say that about many other made-from-scratch puddings!

We made this dessert when my stepdaughter, Gwen was visiting (isn’t she gorgeous?!). She has a very adventurous palette and we have the best time cooking up interesting and delicious creations in the kitchen when she is here!  I wish she was here more often (hope you are reading this Gwen!)! She was a bit skeptical about this dessert, but she will always try something before she decides if she likes it or not (gotta love that in a young adult)! Well, it got the “Gwen Stamp of Approval”! On her excellent suggestion, we served our pudding with a nice healthy dollop of fresh whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon on top! Perfect!

This is rich, satisfying and extremely healthy dessert. Absolutely 100% guilt free.

INGREDIENTS:
3 ripe organic avocados
½ cup raw milk (coconut milk would work too)
1/3 cup pure maple syrup
1/3 cup fair trade, dark cocoa powder/ or raw cocoa nibs
Pinch of cinnamon

METHOD:
Throw all the ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until creamy and well mixed.