As Free Range As It Gets - Real Food Wednesday

We eat a lot of chicken and occasionally eat some pork, due to the fact that dh seems very sensitive to commercial red meat and organic free range beef is hard to come by around here. We are saving up the money for a steer-share next year, and Jeff is hoping to get a couple deer this winter, but at the moment I was wondering how we could break up the monotony of chicken and pork in the next few weeks.

Enter a recent ladies' fellowship I attended. A woman whose husband has already gotten one deer, and is planning more hunting trips, came up to me saying, "Do you eat venison?" She told me that they had way more than they could handle and wanted me to take whatever we needed. Hoping that Jeff can get a deer in the next month, we picked up about 3 lbs of ground venison and 3 packages of steaks.

It does not get anymore free range than that. No hormones, no antibiotics, and of course not grain fed; this is exactly what we need. Anyone who has good recipes for ground venison or even favorite ways to cook up the steaks, feel free to comment with them. Personally, I am excited to see how our Beef and Barley Burgers turn out with venison instead!

I feel like the allergies and sensitivities are almost a blessing, sometimes. Because dh cannot drink pasteurized milk, we discovered raw milk. Since discovering raw milk, we've been able to keep dairy in our diet, and we have felt healthier and better nourished on the whole. Since he cannot have commercial red meat, either, we have discovered just how incredible free range, grass finished beef tastes! Because I am allergic to MSG, we are extra careful about what we consume and as a result, have more incentive to spend the extra time in the kitchen, and eat better foods, too! It is so much easier to make the healthier (though sometimes less convenient) choice when the options are so much clearer. Either we can be sick all the time, or we can eat the foods we do, and feel well. Not just "not sick," but actually nourished. And of course, once we started making some healthier choices, and started feeling so much better, the other areas of health and nutrition that we have not yet addressed start to feel much less intimidating!

Once again: Calling all commenters, tell me how you like your venison!! This is new territory for me (that I am pretty excited about).

This post is a part of Real Food Wednesday. See more great Real Food Posts at Cheeseslave!

Grace in the Middle of Loss

This will be brief because I really cannot say a lot right now.

Jeff and I lost our baby this morning. I woke up sick to my stomach and in a lot of pain with of course other symptoms that indicated what was happening. We went to the clinic, saw a nurse midwife there, had an uncomfortable ultrasound, and received devastating news from people who deal with this kind of thing every day. That was incredibly horrible. Difficult beyond words.

I called my mother and sobbed my eyes out with her on the phone. She recommended that I not spend the day alone, and so I called and spent the day with my friend Rachel and her children, including her 4 month old baby. Holding him was actually soooo soothing to me, I was grateful that she didn't turn me down for fear that seeing him would cause me pain. We went for a walk in the sunshine, and it felt good to have some "normal," moments in my day, interspersed with moments that I could cry. And Rachel made sure that I knew I could cry as much as I needed. Jeff had to work all day after that awful appointment, and I could not even imagine having to do so.

We are going to take time to grieve, rather than try again right away. We are surrounded by a loving church community. Every moment today I felt so grateful that Jeff and I did make the decision that we would share news of our pregnancy right away, because if it did end in miscarriage, it would allow our church to be the church in our lives, and be an instrument of grace that we cannot even comprehend (but we can feel.) I cannot imagine going through this right now if no one had known we were pregnant in the first place.

We are hurting, but we are aware of God's grace, mercy, and compassion in this very dark hour.

Menu Plan Monday - This Time Its For Real

Last week was not a good week for sticking to the menu plan. Between not having certain ingredients for the Salsa Chicken soup (pregnancy brain?), home group being canceled, and just being really really tired, we barely did anything according to the plan. This week should be a lot different. I have everything I need for the week, and help from dh, too :) Also, I've geared it to still be healthful and good, but lower key. I definitely overestimated how much I can do when decent amounts of good sleep are still not enough.

Lunches this week will mostly be chicken salad, although tomorrow it will be leftover stroganoff that I made tonight. Monday night I'll be making Apple Butter, as well as putting the finishing touches on a custom order for Bee Beautiful (a friend's bridal party gifts). Soooooo excited about the Apple Butter, and about the custom order. Dinner Monday night, then, is the most low key of all. Tuesday Jeff is using the slow cooker (the most time-saving way to use your slow cooker is to let your husband do it, haha :-D )

Monday - Black Bean & Vegetable Soup (This one's actually not "homemade," but it is from Amy's Organics. I read the ingredients and was soooo pleased to find nothing even the slightest bit fake or junky in it, so I kept in on hand for a busy evening). We are adding chicken, as well.

Tuesday - Pork Roast in the slow cooker (dh's specialty)

Wednesday - Pizza! (With Lindsay's Pizza Crust recipe, my homemade full-fat mozzarella, and homemade sauce). Additional toppings to be determined later.

Thursday - Spinach, Bacon, & Feta muffins* at Book Club (once a month). My friend Cindy is making her incredible Wild Rice & Chicken Soup, and I'm providing the muffins! Jeff is having leftover "Low Country Boil" that he froze post-men's retreat (he and his group had a great time putting it together, and he got the leftovers).

Friday - Leftover Roast

Saturday - Baked Chicken with Apples and Barley**
To Do: AM - Soak Barley

Sunday - Chicken & Wild Rice Soup / Whole Grain Rolls

* Recipe Variances: For the muffins, I use freshly milled soft white wheat, and I soak the batter. Also, I use sucanat instead of sugar, and I use fresh spinach instead of frozen.
** Recipe Variance: I use hulled barley instead of pearl, because it is less processed.

This has been part of Menu Plan Monday. Find more great posts at org junkie!

Menu Plan Indecision

I have been doing this on Sunday nights to post on Monday, but yesterday had some funny turns. Dh and I were going to take a short nap and then head out to run some errands. The nap ran long, and the errands ran long, so by the time we got home (much later in the night than anticipated), all I wanted was sleep. Anyway...I'm posting it tonight. But first...

My husband is a genius. We made that Salsa Chicken and Black Bean Soup last week, and then the next night he didn't end up going to the church dinner, so there were leftovers waiting when he got home from work, and he had an epiphany: Blender. Boiling off a little more of the broth and pouring the soup in the blender yielded the most incredible chip dip. Pure Genius! I ended up with quite the catch, didn't I?? Well, this Tuesday we're doing it again. We're having our once-a-month app/dessert fest at home group, and I couldn't think of anything to bring. Suddenly the idea hit me: I need to bring that dip!! So we're having the salsa chicken and black bean soup again on Tuesday, in order to bring the dip to home group on Wednesday. Dh loved it so much that I'm not worried about the close repeat.

Monday - Breakfast for dinner (Hurray!) (Jeff had Chinese leftovers, so I didn't have to worry about overdoing bfast for dinner, which I believe you never ever can do)

Tuesday - Salsa Chicken and Black Bean Soup

Wednesday - Appetizer fest at home group :)

Thursday - Pizza (out...charity Spelling Bee that my work place is participating in. I'm a word-nerd and I love spelling)

Friday - Chicken, Steamed Veggies, and Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Saturday - Chicken n Dumplings

Sunday - Spaghetti w/ Whole Grain noodles

This has been a part of Menu Plan Monday with Org Junkie. See more great menu plans here!

Giveaways Galore

I love this week! 2 Giveaways in two days! There will soon be another post about yet another giveaway.

Keeper of the Home, a fantastic blog by a great budget-minded earthy crunchy christian woman, is hosting a giveaway that blows my mind.

The Excalibur Dehydrator.

A dehydrator with slide out trays, so you can even use it to rise (raise?) your bread dough. 9 trays, to be exact, so drying grain that I've sprouted for milling into flour is noooooo problem. You can do so many other things worth it, and it is quite an expensive find.

You can join in on the giveaway fun here (but don't spoil my chances, haha).

G-G-Giveaway @ Kitchen Kop

Alright, it did not take much convincing for me to believe that saturated fat is better for you than unsaturated fat. All it took was some simple chemistry, and a little biology, too.

First the chemistry. Saturated fats have the strongest molecular bonds. Next on the list are monounsaturated fats, and then last (with the weakest bonds) are polyunsaturated fats.

When polyunsaturated fats like soy oil and corn oil are exposed to oxygen and heat, they are oxidized (amazing!), and many free radicals are created. Free radicals, rather than supporting health of the body, cause damage to cells. This is why vitamin and health care companies get excited about antioxidants (antioxidants repair and prevent damage caused by free radicals). Now, you may think, "OK, well I'll keep them in a dark cupboard and not heat them up beyond a certain temperature." Well, nice try.

Just to extract the oils, they have already been submitted to substantial amounts of heat and oxidative stress. When they become rancid (which is what this process inevitably results in), they are deodorized, and the American consumer is none the wiser.

Monounsaturated fats like olive oil are a better, but they cannot be used at extremely high temperatures and cannot be used for things like frying.

Saturated fats do not break down and become unstable with heat. Instead, their stronger molecular bonds keep them intact. That makes saturated fats like Beef Tallow, Lard, and Coconut Oil much healthier for cooking with than polyunsaturated oils.

OK, now onto the biology. There is a certain something at work here that I like to refer to as the "starvation principle." Women's health has a perfect example in the direct relationship between estrogen and body fat. Balanced hormones and balanced body fat go hand in hand, an imbalance of estrogen on the upside (too much), and your body starts collecting fat like bicentennial quarters. At the same time...too little estrogen and your body clings to fat. This is the instinct, in case of "starvation." The same thing happens with consuming fats. We, like other living creatures, have saturated fats in our bodies. Our bodies need saturated fats to survive. If we stop eating fat, our body works harder to hang on to fat, making fat harder to get rid of on the way to whole body health.

The best answer is to eat fats in moderation. Not to eat fats all day long, and not to cut them out. But where our foods have fat, they need to contain healthful fats.

Due to dh's coconut allergy, we pretty much use butter for cooking, and olive oil where we cannot use butter. I have been wanting to try beef tallow or pork lard, but ordering online is really expensive, and I do not have enough connections in local farming yet. There are not a lot of earthy crunchy Georgians on the world wide web, it seems. Some, for sure, but not a lot.

This is where one of my fav bloggers comes in. Kelly the Kitchen Kop is hosting a giveaway! A 5-gallon bucket of beef tallow is up for grabs, and I would love to win it. I love homemade doughnuts, sweet potatoe fries, fried bananas...and no one can convince me that the oils currently readily available for frying them in are better for me than tallow or lard.

So, rethink fats and oils this week. What are you putting into your body? What is good for you?

This post is a part of Fight Back Friday. Find more great posts at Food Renegade.

Further Reading:

Fats Cholesterols, Lipids

Weston A. Price Foundation

Stocking up for Winter

So, it seems everyone is posting their chicken stock recipes this time of year, and I thought I would add my own to the mix, since it happens to be Real Food Wednesday, and I am making a pot of stock right now.

Either dh or I make stock every 1-2 months to have on hand for cooking. Well, the truth is that we had it on hand in case either one of us got sick. Shortly after we got married I learned that he did not have the greatest immune system. Jeff got sick at least once a month with colds, stomach bugs, whatever. Of course I would usually only get sick in the winter, but having asthma meant that my head cold - which always evolved into a chest cold - always turned into bronchitis, which I got approximately 2x a winter.

But, with Jeff sick more often, I was sick more often, too. We did make stock to cook with, but we were having to make it more frequently then (once a month), because if we used it for cooking with and to make chicken soup at the frequency with which we needed it, we ran out quickly.

Now, ever since switching to real milk we almost never get sick, but we still have use for chicken stock in our cooking, so we make a batch every 2 months or so now. Here is how we do it:

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken (minus the guts - I know, eloquent, right?)
half a bulb of garlic (probably 6-7 cloves) minced
1 medium onion, chopped
3 large carrots
2 large stalks of celery
2 T apple cider vinegar (ACV)
Freshly chopped parsley
sea salt
ground black pepper

OK, first things first. Put the chicken in the pot. Make sure that it is a pot that can hold at least one gallon, though in my one gallon pot we could barely fit all the vegetables and the water, so we had to watch it closely and keep adding water to finally yield approximately one gallon of stock. So, a 2-3 gallon stock pot probably would work best. Add chopped vegetables, salt and pepper, and the ACV to the pot, and add plenty of water (cover the chicken to a depth of several inches).

Bring the pot to a boil, and turn the heat to low or med-low. allow to lightly boil for 12-18 hours (sometimes we've gone a whole 24, but more than that is overkill). In the last ten to twenty minutes, add a good amount of freshly chopped parsley.

Remove the chicken from the stock into a bowl, where you can remove the bones and the skin to the garbage (or whatever means of disposal you prefer). Some of the meat we use right away for soup, the rest I freeze to use later (as chicken salad, chicken and biscuits, and what not). Pour the stock (through a colander) into another pot, discard the (now well overcooked) vegetables.

I pour the broth into jars to freeze, except what I'm using to make that batch of soup. When a recipe calls for "broth," I use this stock in a 1:1 ratio. If it calls for concentrated broth or stock, I use it straight.

Why is Chicken Stock good for "what ails you?"

Alright, so at this point in our adult lives, many of us have chalked "Chicken soup will heal you" up with the other "old wives' tales." Well, some of those tales are true! (Actually, did you know the phrase "old wives' tale" came about when hospitals were trying to discredit midwives and convince women to labor in hospitals, instead? So, a lot of these natural remedies are held and taught by midwives, but that does not make them false. Alright, tangent over, back to the rest of the post!)

Chicken stock has many healing attributes, though some of them we add to it. Garlic, for instance, is an antimicrobial. This is why plenty of garlic goes into my stock. I have some friends who had a class project in biology. They took some buckets and grew "sludge" in them (basically a bacterial free-for-all. Using droppers, they put a certain amount of their sludge on two microscope slides. One one slide they also put a tiny drop of penicillin, and on the other they put a very tiny piece of garlic. The garlic killed the bacteria as quickly as the penicillin!

Another benefit of stock made with vinegar is that the vinegar draws the marrow, calcium, and minerals out from within the bones. This makes a richer stock that can be almost amber in color, and it tastes wonderful. More than that, though, it is incredibly nutritious; full of vitamins and minerals that help to boost the immune system and the body as a whole.

I thought that I got this broth originally from a book called Broth is Beautiful, but it turns out that is the name of a Weston A Price Foundation article. You can read much, MUCH more about the benefits of broth there. I'll have to find out the name of that book, though... (attribute it to pregnancy brain?)

This has been a part of Real Food Wednesday - See more great posts at Kelly the Kitchen Kop!