Unstuffed Cabbage

I wanted to call this Deconstructed Stuffed Cabbage but that is a mouthful.  Anyway, this has all the parts of stuffed cabbage without the actual stuffing part or icky tomato sauce.  It is one of the tastiest meals I've had in a long time.  Okay, really since the kickass chicken soup I made on Wednesday.  I'll post that recipe later.

Anyway, I was making my very first batch of sauerkraut this morning and decided to set aside a wedge of cabbage for my dinner since I haven't eaten any in donkey's years.  I also had too many hamburger patties in the freezer (hubby suddenly decided to boycott hamburgers: groan).  So an idea was born.  How about making some rice, some savory ground beef with a side of cabbage.  OMG it was awesome!!  And it is consistent with the WAP diet except I didn't soak the rice first.  My bad.

Ingredients
serves 2-3

1/4 - 1/2 small head of cabbage
1-2 carrots
2-3c cooked brown rice (I used the Lundberg Jubilee Rice mix)
~1lb grass fed ground beef (in my case it was two preformed patties)
1/4c diced onion
1 clove garlic crushed (or 1t minced from a jar)
several sprigs fresh dill
several sprigs fresh parley
1-2 sprigs fresh thyme
1t cumin
1/2t coriander
1/4t cardamom ground
1/4t allspice
1/4c beef broth
1T arrowroot powder
celtic sea salt
pepper
olive oil
butter

1. Start cooking rice first.  Allow enough time for it to almost or completely cook prior to starting the rest of the meal.  I love my rice cooker!
2. Use a mandolin to slice cabbage into 1/4" strips.  Discard core/stem.
3. After peeling carrots use peeler to make thin strips of carrot and combine with cabbage.
4. Set up a vegetable steamer and steam cabbage and carrots.  Alternatively use only about 1" of cooking liquid in pan and keep a lid on and use low heat set to simmer.  This will allow the vegetables to steam instead of boil which keeps most of the nutrients in the veg instead of leaching out into the cooking water.  Keep checking so that water doesn't boil off.  This will be cooked by the time the rest of the dish is done. 
5. Finely chop onion and crush garlic clove.  
6. Mince fresh herbs together and set aside.
7. Heat 1-2T olive oil and a pat of butter in frying pan.  When hot saute onion and garlic until onion is soft.
8. Add ground beef.  Break up into small bits as it is frying.  Add the dried spices, salt and pepper. Continue to stir.  
9. When beef is almost done but still showing some pink, add beef broth and fresh herbs.  You could drain off the extra fat prior to adding the broth and herbs but I'm trying to increase animal fats in my diet so I left it in.
10. Sprinkle the arrowroot over the beef mixture and stir it in.  The broth will thicken up into a thin sauce for the beef. The thickness can be adjusted by either adding more broth or more arrowroot until the desired constancy is reached. Cook until beef is no longer pink.
11. Taste test cabbage.  It should be done.  I like mine with some crunch.
12. Serve beef over rice with the cabbage/carrots on the side.  If you are so inclined melt lots of butter over the hot cabbage mixture.  Extra yum points!

Basic Beef Broth

This recipe is as old as the hills.  There are many many versions of it on the internet.  I'm going to include two here so that you can make whichever you like depending upon time, ingredients and of course energy level.

Basic broth has been considered a healing food for generations.  It is now strongly recommended both by WAP  (Weston A Price, see resources page) and GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome: again see resources page) to heal the digestive tract and to keep us healthy.  On GAPS it is supposed to be taken daily as either a meal or a drink.  WAP recommends adding gelatin from cartilage or knuckles or even powdered unflavored gelatin packets.  And, by the way, the fat is supposed to be consumed not drained off.  According to both WAP and GAPS, animal fat from pastured animals is good for you and essential to normal digestive functioning.

Any basic stock consists of:

• Onion, celery and carrot
• Meat and/or bones and/or cartilage/knuckles
• Filtered water
• Celtic sea salt, peppercorns, herbs such as parsley and thyme

I made my first beef stock in my slow cooker and it is kick ass!  I did the super easy version; toss everything in and walk away.  There are several versions that recommend roasting the meat in the oven first to add a layer of flavor but heck the stuff I made is chock full of flavor.  Be sure to use organic ingredients and Celtic sea salt.  This reduces toxic load and adds helpful trace minerals to the stock.

Ingredients

Makes roughly 5 pints

2lbs 100% grass fed beef oxtails (make sure it hasn't been grained off*) with bones

3 large carrots

3 stalks celery

1/2 large onion

1t peppercorns

1 bunch fresh parsley

several sprigs fresh thyme

1t Celtic sea salt

1. Peel onion and cut into large chunks.
2. Cut nasty looking bits off celery and carrot and cut down to fit in slow cooker.  For mine this meant cutting in half.  The larger the bits the better.  Don't bother peeling.  Just rinse and cook.
3. Place meat in cooker.  Add everything else.
4. Cover ingredients with filtered water leaving at least and inch from the top edge of cooker.
5. Set on low, cover and walk away.
6. Several hours later come back and skim off any scum that has risen to the surface and discard.
7. Check again several hour later and skim again if necessary.
8. Cook a minimum of 8 hours preferably 12-24.  I think I cooked mine closer to 30.
9. Remove large pieces and discard.  Reserve meat and marrow if so inclined.
10. Run broth through a fine mesh sieve or through cheesecloth to remove pieces.
11. Fill clean storage containers with broth.  Let come to room temp and then freeze (this is the easiest storage method by far).  
12. Meat and marrow can be added back into broth as desired and can even be pureed first.
13. To reheat use stove top.  It is rumored that the microwave destroys the nutrients in the food but I haven't seen any science behind that claim.

To add a layer of flavor to the soup (I haven't done this yet so I can't make any claims that it makes it way better than it already is), roast the meat and vegetables in a 350F oven for about an hour until the meat is nicely browned.  You can deglaze the roasting pan with stock, water or red wine and add this to the slow cooker if desired.  Honestly the soup is fantastic as is so I'm not sure this step is worth the extra trouble.  Maybe if I were feeling better myself I would give it a go but honestly the broth is wonderful without this step.

*In the US, meat processors are allowed to call cattle that has spent up to one month eating a grain diet pastured if it was grass fed prior to the grains.  However, the body chemistry of the cows change in this short time and many of the benefits of pasturing are lost in the graining off of the cattle.  Make sure the beef you purchase is 100% grass fed and has NOT been grained off.

See U.S. Wellness Meats on the resource page for more information about the benefits of eating 100% grass fed beef.

New Food Adventure

When I first started this blog I had no intention of waxing philosophical about food.  I just wanted to share easy to make recipes with other chronic chicks.  However, I'm embarking on a new food adventure so today is a story and some resources rather than a recipe.

I've heard directly and indirectly from a couple of people that fully recovered from CFS after doing a major dietary overhaul and a third with severe CFS who is in partial recovery.  Now realize that the diet may have had nothing to do with the recovery.   It might be just coincidental.  However, since no one has done any studies we just don't know if they are related or not.  I figure what the heck.  Lets give it a go and bump my diet up from organic to the next level.

Our food has been basterdized so badly by BigAg that I personally have had bad reactions to various food stuffs:  Post Cereal gives me severe intestinal cramps (GMO corn or soy?), wheat causes severe brain fog and plumbing issues (again GMO), regular milk makes my PMS intolerable (growth hormones?).  Our food just isn't what it used to be.  We've messed with its DNA.  We've shot up our cows with growth hormones and antibiotics and genetically engineered chickens to have such large breasts that their legs are too weak to hold them up (see Food Inc).  As a result, I wouldn't be at all surprised that regular commercially produced food at least aggravates CFS or at worst hinders our body's ability to heal from its assult.  Our cows are injected with god knows what when they are alive.  They are fed grains which they aren't designed to eat and makes them so sick they have to be shot up with antibiotics.  After they are killed, the meat is injected with industrial salt and water to "enhance the flavor" and the left overs from butchering are ground up, bleached to kill off the bacteria and added to hamburger as filler to bump up the profit margin.  No wonder we are all getting sick.

I have been organic for almost 20 years.  It used to be easy to get organic meats and lightly processed organic foods in the regular markets.  However, over the last two years I've noticed a change in the availability of these foods.  BigAg decided to get in on the act.  Now I can only purchase "naturally raised" meat and there is large amounts of sugar in everything even organic chocolate milk and organic yogurt.  I can only get organic salad that is in a bag and boxed.  There are now white flecks in the "all natural" ground turkey.  Dean Dairy, one of the most egregious commercial dairies, has bought out every organic dairy in my area so it is now next to impossible to purchase milk that is not produced by them, even when it has an organic label on it.  Dean controls 80% of the milk supply in MA.

So I'm done with traditional food markets.  This summer I've been shopping at the local farmer's market and been delighted with fresh picked lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers.  I've been eating salads every day and they are so good I've stopped putting dressing on them.  I don't want to hide the taste of the delightful vegetables and raw milk cheeses.

I've also been buying free range farm fresh eggs there.  Did you know that fresh eggs sink when put in water?  If they float they are old.  I've also noticed that the shells tend to be thicker and the yokes more golden in color than the eggs from conventional laying hens.  Granted there is little difference in taste but there are studies showing that the free range eggs have more of the good stuff in them and less of the bad stuff.  Win win.

I just recieved shipment of my second order of grass fed, organic, free range beef; organic free range chicken and certified humanely raised pork.  It is spectacular!!  It is shipped frozen solid overnight.  The meat is cheaper than the fake "all natural" (there is no regulation on "all natural" label so it can mean anything) stuff from the supermarket.  I just had the BEST hamburgers ever!

I've been thinking about a diet change ever since the elimination diet this past spring, also known as The Diet From Hell.  Since it had such a bad effect on the CFS maybe I could make changes that would improve my CFS so I've been reading about three different diets, Paleo, GAPS and WAP (Weston A Price).

The Paleo diet is based on an older form of diet.  The basic philosophy is that we've eaten a certain way for thousands of years.  Thanks to genetic selection we are designed to eat certain foods and these foods will make us healthy.  Lots of meat, organ meats, animal fat, lots of vegetables, nuts and seeds.  No dairy and no grain as these are both "modern" inventions.

I've also been reading up on the GAPS diet which claims to heal the body through healing the gut and you heal the gut through diet.  There have been about a half dozen scientific articles just this last week on gut bacteria.  Good vs bad and how diet changes the type of bacteria present in your poop.  They've actually healed people that have had guts problems by doing a poop transplant.  I know.  Ick.  This is still in the experimental stages but hey it is now becoming clear that the gut is very important and shouldn't be ignored.  There is a whole protocol to this diet and I haven't read up on it yet but you can go here for more info by clicking the link below.

I've also joined Weston A. Price Foundation.  Dr. Price was a dentist who traveled the world back in the 1930s.  He studied the teeth and bone structure of indiginous peoples.  He found that people that had good health and long lives also had good teeth and good facial bone structure.  He also found that they tended to eat the same things: animals including the fats, bones and organs;  some food is cooked but a portion is consumed raw; they consume fermented foods including fruits, veg, meats, and dairy; seeds, nuts and grains are soaked, sprouted or fermented to neutrulize the bad stuff in them; they have a diet high in saturated fats; they eat salt; they consume raw grass fed dairy (goat, sheep or cow); they eat bone broth.  They don't eat sugar or refined grains.

I had read about him a few years before I got sick and found the idea interesting but I was too busy to get involved with the labor intensive food.  I was too busy figure skating.  Now it seems like a good idea.  I just received their lit packet in the mail and their magazine is on the way.  I've already purchased "Nourishing Traditions" and "The Fourfold Path to Healing" which are books written by the current WAP president.  The first is a cookbook based on WAP diet and the second is an odd combination of ailments with descriptions and then a healing method using food, supplements, exercise and meditation for each ailment and yes CFS is one of the listed ailments with the "cure".

Bascially I'll be borrowing from all these traditions.  I'm only going to change one thing at a time.  I've already started with my meat supply.  I had my first hamburger with no adverse effects.  That was my first cow in 30ish years.  I just purchased two small 6oz steaks for my next cow experiement.  I've cut way down on my grain consumption.  I'm still drinking full fat dairy and eating full fat yogurt.  I've just ordered yogurt culture and cheese culture so I can make my own sugar free yogurt with full fat milk.  I'm looking for a source of raw milk.  As soon as I find one I'll be incorporating raw milk and raw milk yogurt into my diet.  I've managed to purchase excellent raw milk cheeses at my farmer's market and love them on my salads.  I bought mason jars so when I get some grass fed beef bones I can make beef stock.

I swear I can feel a difference after only one week of wholesome meat and few grains and very little sugar.  My daily diet runs something like: poached or boiled free range egg on wilted organic spinach topped with raw milk cheese for breakfast, grilled free range meat and two organic vegetables for dinner, huge salad with tuna or egg or chicken or raw cheese and nuts on it for supper, fruit for dessert.  I've been drinking black tea with milk, one glass of full fat milk for dessert, water with lemon all day and this week I tried Kombucha which is fermented black tea which I like a lot.

This week has been great.  I've had more energy than I've had in months.  I actually drove one day!  I was out of the house three days in a row.  I walked around my back yard yesterday and had two visitors this week.  I'm pooped today and resting but I would never have been able to do this a month ago.  Is this due to diet?  Is it one of those CFS flukes?  Who knows?  I'm going to keep plugging along with the new diet.  You'll start to see some of the results here as I develop new recipes.  My first one might be for yogurt or yogurt cream cheese.  Both are really easy to make.

BTW, as you might be able to tell I'm not a purist.  I experiment.  I keep what works for me and chuck the stuff that doesn't.  And hell, I do have to eat chocolate fairly regularly.  Although, I have gone off milk chocolate.  It is too sweet so dark chocolate it is!!

Links:

• Weston A Price Foundation
• GAPS
• Paleo Diet
• Find a farmer's market near you
• Find grass fed meat
• U.S. Wellness Meats (this is who I use since they deliver)
• MA Raw Milk Network
• Raw milk locator
• Cultures for yogurt, cheese, Kombucha and fermented veg
• If you want to get in on the politics of raw milk: Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund

Articles:

• Benefits of free range eggs
• 5 stories about gut bacteria
• A more technical article on gut bacteria
• LA Times article on gut bacteria
• Food Inc a movie that is available on DVD and also on Netflix streaming

Sauteed Pea Tendrils

I've actually managed to make it to the local farmer's market each Saturday for the last month.  Husband has been not so grudgingly pushing me around in my wheelchair and I've managed to find local sources for free range eggs, grass fed beef, stone fruits, raw cheeses and exquisitely delicious salad vegetables.  I'm still not used to being able to eat a piece of fruit without hunting for the sticky label first.  I catch myself looking for it and smile when I realize that this luscious piece of fruit was just picked from a farm a few miles from my house rather than being purchased at the local big box supermarket.

One of the booths at my farmer's market specializes in Asian vegetables and one of the items that caught my attention was pea tendrils.  My friend had recommended them and I wanted something new for my evening salad so I decided to give them a whirl.  Four weeks and many many salads later I still have half of the bag left (it was a huge quantity for $4).  What to do with an excess of pea tendrils?  Try a saute!  This is now my new favorite side dish.  I loved it first try.  This is one of those loose and fast recipes so feel free to wing it on the quantities.

Ingredients
serves 1-2  they do shrink as they cook not as much as spinach but quite a bit

1-2 handfuls of pea tendrils
small wedge of lemon
1-2T good olive oil
1 small clove garlic or generous pinch of minced garlic from a jar
pinch sea salt
pinch fresh ground pepper

1. Tear the tendrils into bite size pieces.  The lovely curly ends, leaves and stems are all edible.
2. Heat oil in pan and add minced garlic and saute lightly.
3. Add pea tendrils and saute until just wilted.
4. Add a squeeze of  lemon and the salt and pepper.  Stir to incorporate ingredients.
5. Serve hot.  YUM!!

A few useful links:

Wakefield Farmer's Market : my local market

Local Harvest: easy way to find farmer's markets, farm stands and crop shares in your area

Flats Mentor Farm: the Asian specialty farm; look for the free downloadable recipe book

Pen and Pantry

One of my Facebook pals posted what appeared to be a simple request:  "OK, does anyone have any suggestions for how to make Doing The Grocery List and Meal Planning go a little bit more easily?"  Turns out the answers is a tad more complicated than I thought.

Like me she is challenged with chronic illness so memory, cognition and ease of use all come in to play here.

I have been cooking for roughly 40 years and grocery shopping for 35 years so I've been through several iterations of organization. I've used card files and binders and preprinted lists.  So after 35 years and lots   of trial and error the system I use now while not perfect, works for me.   Everyone is different so use this as a starting point and rearrange as you see fit.  

The first step is getting organized.  This takes a bit of work but it pays off in the long run since it makes taking weekly inventory much much easier.

1. Put like items next to each other in the pantry and the fridge.  Cans of soup on one shelf and bags of rice and pasta on another.
2. Pick out your favorite cookbooks and put sticky markers on the recipes that you like or want to try or print out the recipes from the internet for the week.  I've started keeping my internet printouts in a three ring binder.
3. I often borrow cookbooks from the library.  If I like lots of recipes from it then I buy my own copy from Amazon.  The first thing I do when I receive them is put sticky markers in it.  I've also traded cookbooks I no longer use with my foodie friends and I get a free "new" cookbook in exchange.
4. Once a year remove items from your pantry that haven't been used and donate them to the food pantry.  This keeps stuff from expiring and slows down food hording.  I kid you not, when I cleaned out my MIL kitchen, I found jello packets from the 1970s and cans of vegetables that were ready to explode (the ends of the tins were pushed out). 
5. Once a month remove the bio experiments from the fridge.  When I was well I used to do this weekly but now it occurs every other month or so and yes sometimes a hazmat suit is required.

http://thefridgemedia.com/food-for-thought/cleaning-out-the-fridge-top-albums-through-june-volume-4

Okay.  Now you are somewhat organized.  You have cookbooks and recipes you like.  Your food is organized now you are all set to start a routine of some sort.  In my case (when I'm well enough) I sit down once a week and come up with three meals to cook from "scratch" and a couple of emergency backups.

What do I mean?  The from scratch meals are the ones from the recipes and cookbooks.  The emergency meals are wicked easy meals that I don't need a recipe for and that can sit on a fridge shelf for several weeks without going bad, such as hermetically sealed ham for a ham and bean dinner or hermetically sealed pulled pork for pulled pork sandwiches.  Cans of soup and chili are other good emergency foods.

Here are the steps for the once a week sit down:

1. Decide on the meals and make an ingredient list from the recipes.
2. Write down on a separate list the meal name, cookbook name and page number if applicable.  (this is because my memory is now so bad and I have so many cookbooks I often can't remember where the damn recipe is that I want to cook)
3. Here is where the pantry organization comes in
1. Take inventory of what you have.
2. Compare it to the ingredient list.
3. Make a grocery list of what is missing.
4. Then go through the other meals:  What is missing for breakfast, lunch, snacks, cats, household items?
5. One of the weirdo things I do with my shopping list is divide it up into six boxes representing the different departments: produce, meats, dairy, canned goods, frozen, other.  This stops me from finding something at the bottom of my list that sits next to the market entrance where I came in an hour ago.  At least when I skip an item I don't make it out of the isle before figuring out I have to turn around and go back.

Once you do this for a while you'll figure out which recipes you make frequently and what you go through often.  I keep certain items stocked on the shelves that I know I'll use sometime in the next few weeks.  This allows me to adjust for company; give my kid free range to cook for himself and be spontaneous if I feel like it.  Keeping stocked up on staples also allows you to pick these up in bulk or on sale.

Here is a partial list of my pantry staples:

• Rice: brown, white, basmati, wild rice mix, risotto mixes and Lundberg rice mixes.
• Pastas: GF and regular elbows, ziti and spaghetti
• Cooking oils: olive, grape, coconut and special fancy dipping oil for bread
• Cooking wines and vinegars: white, sherry, Marsala, Bragg's apple cider
• Canned veg: pasta sauce, toms, tomato paste, beets, black beans, northern white beans, lentils, jalapenos
• Canned fruit: pears, peaches, cranberry sauce
• Other cans: soups, evaporated milk (for a specific recipe that I make often)
• Aseptic packages: chicken stock, soups and gravies
• Freezer: diced onion, sliced carrots, green beans, corn, peas, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, garlic cubes
• Baking shelf: sugars, flours, corn starch, etc

Remember any new habit takes about a month to take hold so keep at it for 30 days and then rearrange to suit yourself.

And now for some shortcuts.  

Hang a white board near the fridge or pantry and write down stuff as you use it up. I've found this to be a fantastic memory aid.

http://pollyvousfrancais.blogspot.com/2010/05/french-grocery-list.html

If you shop through an online delivery service such as Peapod they will keep your grocery lists for you.  You can use this as a memory aid to check your invenotry and see if you need to restock.

Make extra and either freeze it or eat it for lunch the next day.  If you make a roast buy a large one and then use the extra for a different meal the next day such as tacos or stew.

Also, while doing research for this blog post I found The Ultimate Grocery List here courtesy of grocerylists.org  Love the sense of humor.  Check out the 'carcinogens" list.  If you Google grocery lists under images there are tons to choose from or you can go high tech and use your crackberry.


Remember if something isn't working for you, sit back and think about how it isn't working and then change it to suit you.  Play with things.  I came up with the emergency meals for those unexpected days when I don't have the energy to make even a simple meal.  I use the meal list with references because of my crappy memory."

Tuna Salad

I just invented this one today.  The flavors complement each other so nicely I wanted to share.   This salad goes great with a glass of nice cold carrot juice.

Ingredients
serves 1

1 egg
several handfuls of spring mix salad greens
feta cheese crumbles
1/2 small tin tuna; oil or water packed; dolphin safe of course
dried dill weed
fresh ground pepper
Newman's Own Family Italian Dressing

1. Bring water to full boil then gently place egg in water so it won't crack.  I use a spoon to carefully lower it into the pot.
2. Boil egg for ten minutes exactly.  Use a timer.
3. Rinse egg under cold water for a bit then place it in a bowl of cool water while you make the rest of the salad.  You can make the egg ahead of time but I love having a slightly warm egg with my salad.
4. Cover plate with a generous portion of spring mix
5. sprinkle with feta cheese crumbles
6. Flake tuna and place in a pile on the middle of the greens.
7. Sprinkle generously with dill and fresh cracked pepper.
8. Sprinkle with dressing.
9. Remove egg from water bath and peel. 
10. Cut into four piece and arrange around the edge of the salad.

Summer Salad

I love salad.  I didn't used to but then I discovered Spring Mix which used to be called Mesclun Mix.  I love this stuff.  I've never been a fan of iceberg lettuce and now that I make my salads with other greens I adore them.  Here is a nice easy summer salad that required no chopping.  NONE!  How easy is that!?!

Ingredients
serves 1

2 handfuls of Spring Mix Organic salad out of a box/bag
Sprinkling of chopped walnuts
Sprinkling of Crasins
Sprinkling of organic goat cheese crumbles
Newman's Own Raspberry and Walnut Dressing
Fresh cracked pepper