Happy New Year! A new year really is a great time to make plans for a new life. Whether you routinely make resolutions every January 1 or you swore them off years ago as impossible, I hope you'll at least "hear me out" and read the rest of this post. It is a well-accepted fact that the majority of our health problems today are diet related -- heart disease, cancer, diabetes, … [Read more...]
Egg nog cake
It can be so tempting this time of year to pick up a cake at the grocery store or a bakery. If you catch yourself staring at something like that for more than a couple seconds, imagine my youngest daughter in her mid-teens saying, "Mom, we could make that at home from scratch." It's been a few years, but I don't think I'll ever stop hearing her voice when I catch myself looking … [Read more...]
Goat Milk Pudding
You've heard of the 100-mile diet where people eat only things that were grown within 100 miles. Well, I make a 100-yard ice cream that contains only ingredients that were made from within 100 yards of our kitchen -- goat milk, eggs, and maple syrup. That's it! Then I decided to try something similar with goat milk pudding. And I got close! In addition to … [Read more...]
Green Festival: French bread
If you were at the Chicago Green Festival Sunday afternoon, welcome to my blog! {waving wildly} And if you weren't there, well, you still get to check out the French bread recipe that I demonstrated. This is a super easy bread and one of my favorites! For each baguette, you need the following ingredients: 1 cup warm water (bath temperature) 1/2 tablespoon yeast 1 teaspoon … [Read more...]
Green smoothies
by Debra Garner Guest blogger The holiday season is upon us. For many the calendars are already filling up with dinner parties, office parties, family gatherings, lunch dates after shopping trips. How do you stay healthy during this busy season? My answer . . . Green Smoothies. I believe that green smoothies should be an addition to everyone's diet. I start my day with one … [Read more...]
What to do with dark turkey meat?
If you are like most Americans, you are not crazy about dark turkey meat. In fact, you don't like it at all, which is why Big Ag figured out how to grow turkeys with breasts so big that they can't fly or mate naturally. (Yes, that means supermarket turkeys are the result of artificial insemination.) And I was right there with the majority, only eating white turkey meat for so … [Read more...]
What to do with all that pumpkin?
The following recipe is adapted from the Farmstead Chef cookbook by Lisa Kivirist and John Ivanko, just in time for Thanksgiving and an abundant pumpkin harvest. Farmstead Chef offers stories and recipes to nourish and inspire. Kivirist and Ivanko's 150 recipes are based on their quest to eat what they call “farmsteadtarian”: eating as much as possible from our own … [Read more...]
Pumpkin spice cookies
This is one of my favorite holiday cookie recipes for so many reasons -- convenience, taste, and nutrition, to name only three. They're easy to make and actually have some pretty nutritious ingredients in them. It might seem like you're making a lot of cookies when you first look at the recipe, but that's what I love about it. You can freeze them in a single layer on a … [Read more...]
Spiced pear butter
Last year was the first year we ever made pear butter, and it was the first time I ever ate pear butter, which I discovered is delicious. I especially like a couple tablespoons added to a bowl of oatmeal. In fact, I'm not a big fan of jams and butters on toast or biscuits, so the vast majority of our canned fruits find themselves in oatmeal or yogurt. 6 to 7 pounds pears 4 … [Read more...]
Homegrown Tamale Pie
For about 20 years, we've been making a tamale pie out of the cookbook, Tofu Cookery, but recently it occurred to me that this time of year we could make our own version of this recipe using produce straight from our garden and substituting our own queso blanco for the tofu. First, make a batch of queso blanco with a gallon of milk and cut it into cubes. One-inch cubes will … [Read more...]