Raisin pumpkin bread in a 8 x 8 cake pan (grain free, sugar free)

Pumpkin bread with raisins

I mentioned to a friend that I had made pumpkin bread. She asked for a recipe, so I figured I’d do a post and share it with her. Thank  you Heather! You’ve coaxed me to return to my poor neglected food blog.

So this is a paleo acceptable dessert of sorts. It’s also acceptable on the GAPS diet for the most part. You might want to skip the baking soda. Otherwise it’s all legal.

It’s a favorite snack for me since I am no longer eating grains. It’s not like a grain based cake or bread. It’s better to think of it as something altogether different in my opinion.

I modified the pumpkin bread from the cookbook Cooking with Coconut Flour: A Delicious Low-Carb, Gluten-Free Alternative to Wheat.

It’s really quite a lot different. I put more squash and spices. Different spices as well and I added raisins. Nuts would be nice too if you wanted to add 3/4 cup of some kind of nut. Walnut would be good. I’ve actually done that before.

• 1 cup pureed pumpkin or butternut squash
• 8 eggs
• 1/2 cup coconut oil (melted)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 heaping tbls cinnamon (you can do less, I just love spice)
• 1 tbls ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp cloves
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup coconut flour
• 1 tsp baking soda (baking powder would be better if you can eat it, I can’t)
• 1 cup raisins (I put less, but it would be better with more)

mix the dried ingredients well

mix the wet ingredients well — I roast and puree the squash in a blender or food processor.

combine the two — I used an electric mixer.

put in a 8 x 8 square pan that is well oiled (I use coconut oil)

bake at 350 for about 40 or 50 minutes

Thanksgiving dinner for two

Thanksgiving dinner for two

I’ve not posted in a very long time. I’ve got nothing to say for myself.

This was our Thanksgiving day meal:

• Turkey, slow roasted, all night long, with sage, butter and rosemary.
• Cranberry sauce with apple, orange, raisins and ginger. (no sugar added and very YUM)
• Pseudo stuffing made with quinoa, amaranth, celery, garlic, butter, apple and walnuts.
• Roasted potatoes (for Paul…I don’t eat the tubers though I do have fond memories of them cooked like this: rosemary, garlic, olive oil)
• Mixed green salad with lots of arugula
• And a pumpkin pie (100% from scratch)

Yeah…it’s over…had to do it early as I don’t last long…as it was I pulled off an amazing feat…and actually had fun doing it…a holiday miracle…

I’m an Italian mother even when there is no one to mother!

It was just me and my husband…we’ll have leftovers for days.

Make Kombucha (info and links to get you started)

A probiotic beverage…

I wrote this for a friend and thought I’d share it here.

Some links to help make your own SCOBY Mother and then your own Kombucha… yum and delicious AND inexpensive!!

the above short video so that you know it’s okay if it looks AWFUL while it’s growing…

mine took about 5 weeks to get nice and gorgeous like this and it got much uglier before it got pretty:

the recipe to make your own is here (use this brand of store bought kombucha the orginal unflavored flavor:

and another to compare with:

Make Kombucha

if you’re curious about all the sugar it gets eaten up and you end up with a healthful drink that has no sugar at all…though you can stop the brewing when it’s still sweet for a milder flavor…or go longer for a stronger and (very lightly alcohol) flavor

here are some frequently asked questions about kombucha.

you can sign up for her DIY to learn more about brewing and bottling your kombucha and she sends emails for five days.

when you make your own scoby (mother) it will take several weeks though and the resulting liquid is a bit vinegary…

your next batch should be properly delicious and you end up with a glass of kombucha costing about 12 cents rather than 5 dollars at the store.

Rendering beef tallow

This is what I’m doing today:

How to Render Beef Tallow

To render beef tallow, you need to get your hands on some raw beef fat.

It’s called suet, and the best stuff for rendering is going to be solid and firm. Most suet comes from the tissue surrounding the kidneys and the loins, but any hard beef fat will do….

I’m letting the above blogger do my job here as I followed his directions in any case. I am going with the oven method. Go read his post.

I got a big three or four lb hunk of suet from our local grass fed beef farm. So far I’ve gotten to the point of shredding it. Now I’m going to go buy a dutch oven because I really don’t have an appropriate dish to put it into the oven. I did some ghee in the oven in casserole pans and it was simply too precarious…lots of hot oil in heavy pans is a wee bit scary. I need something deep with handles!

I’ve not spent any time telling readers how saturated fat has been the subject of a societal wide smear campaign when in fact it’s quite healthy for us. Especially if it’s grass fed because then the Omega 3 to 6 ratio drastically changes. Conventionally raised animals remain problematic since the fat also stores many toxins.

Okay, if anyone expresses interest I’ll tell you how it all pans out in the comments.

More GAPS diet…

Scrambled eggs in duck fat, half an avocado, homemade sauerkraut and bone broth with turnips…my delicious breakfast this morning on this amazing healing diet which has allowed me to function more like a normal person in the first time in three years!

The diet is getting easier now that I can eat more foods. It starts out as an elimination diet so the going was rough for a while. Felt like I was starving or alternatively like I couldn’t have another bite of the same darn food.

I’m not being a good documentarian on this blog. I guess I’m tired of online life and the fact is I can now be up and out of bed and therefore OFF my laptop thanks to this diet.

Life is good.

As the spirit moves me I will try to add more to this picture. For now little teases is all I seem to be up to!

Making sauerkraut AND Day 6 – GAPS diet, things are remaining improved

I’ve been able to leave the house daily, run multiple errands and cook a whole lot for 7 days straight. Improvement started about 2 weeks ago after having eliminated allergens first for a few days. This is phenomenal. Before this stint of 7 days I hadn’t been able to leave the house more than a couple of times a month for a long time and before that I was housebound and even bed bound. I’m getting better and now it’s happening with more sustainability it seems.

I’m still very sick by most people’s standards. I’m so tired in the afternoons after doing so much more in the mornings that I’m pretty much inert and flu-ish once 1 pm hits. I also go to bed between 7 pm and 8 pm. I hope that will change soon too. The fact remains the improvement is astonishing so I’m happy!

Thought I’d share a picture and a bit of info about making sauerkraut today.

Sauerkraut

To the right in that photo is mature sauerkraut I actually made many months ago. I’m adding the probiotic liquid to my diet rignt now, but not the cabbage. Everything is added very slowly and one starts with the juices. As I’ve mentioned I’ve been into learning to eat this way for a while and I didn’t know I was actually preparing to do this diet!

So the cabbage in the middle is shredded and salted and will be packed into the jars to the left to ferment.

Clearly the sauerkraut on the right was made with a red cabbage and the one in the middle is green cabbage. It’s all good for sauerkraut. Also the one on the right was sliced on the “dice” feature of the food processor and the green one is actually shredded. I prefer the red diced one and forgot that is what I did the first time. Either is fine for sauerkraut, it’s just personal preference. Once can slice it all up with a knife as well.

Once it’s very liberally salted with sea salt it sits a bit and then is packed very hard into the jars until its own juices are covering the cabbage. If there is not quite enough juice to cover the cabbage you can make a brine with a cup of water and a tablespoon of salt and cover the cabbage with that.

Cabbage naturally has all the good healthy bacteria that is needed to make sauerkraut. The cabbage needs to NOT be exposed to air and needs to be weighted down with a small jar filled with water or some other sort of weight. People do all sorts of different things.

It then simply needs to sit at room temperature for at least a week but maybe more depending on the temperature of the room. A cool room will take longer than a warmer room. One can’t really over ferment so there isn’t much to worry about. Once it’s fermented it will keep in the refrigerator for months! And it’s REALLY good.

If you have more questions about how it’s done there is lots of info online and on youtube you can watch it being done in many various ways.

Starting the GAPS diet – day 1

I was going to wait longer and prepare more but after getting a seeming reaction to ghee last night (I still think that is what happened) I just decided to start the diet…I want to understand what is going on in my body and the only way I can see doing that now is by eliminating everything and starting over.

So I started today. I still have a lot to learn and I’m still reading the main text, but I have most of the early things I need prepared. I’ve not shared all that info yet, but I will try to soon. (for example I have sauerkraut that I made months ago all ready for introducing early probiotics)

I made an absolutely amazing and delicious meat broth. So good…I like it better than bone stock. It felt like the most nutritious thing in the world…I ate a bowl of soup with meat, marrow, all the connecting tissues on the bones and cauliflower and carrots.

It made me cry. It felt like reconnecting with being human. You know, my family ate stuff like that when I was a kid…I’ve always felt like a weirdo because I like marrow and fat and gristle…

Unfortunately we grow up into a world where we just don’t eat it even if we like it!

In any case I felt like I was coming home.

Healing has begun.

Allergic to ghee? Seems so

Okay…first bump in the road.

I went to a lot of trouble to purchase grass-fed butter so that I might have ghee to cook with. I no longer cook with olive oil because the low smoke point means that the oil degrades and oxidizes when heated and is no longer healthy. I only use olive oil on cold foods now or warm foods after they’re off the flame.

Ghee was going to be the answer to that as I’m not fond of using coconut oil for many things although it’s great in a good number of dishes.

I bought many pounds of grass-fed butter since I found a source that was very inexpensive and made about 6 lbs worth of ghee yesterday. It was a HUGE job and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I’m sure after one gets used to it it’s much easier. In any case I made lots of it and then had some with brussel sprouts for dinner.

It seems I had a reaction to it. I am intolerant to milk products I’ve learned relatively recently and that’s clear now that I’ve eliminated them, but most people who are intolerant of dairy can have ghee. I seem to be one of the unlucky few who reacts to the trace amount of solids left in the oil. I got very sick just an hour or two after I had the ghee and was sick most of the night. The symptoms seems to be wearing off now which further indicate it was an allergen that made me “relapse.” I’m very bummed, and yet excited too. This diet is going to make a difference.

If it works as it’s supposed to I should be able to eat ghee and butter and dairy products in general again in a couple of years. If not, I’ll still feel much better for having eliminated dairy one of the foods that makes me sick. Either way it’s a win..

**this might be a premature conclusion but there will be more opportunities to figure it out. For now not eating ghee simply makes sense.

Approaching the start date: GAPS diet

I’m learning a lot and doing many new things. I plan to take the plunge in a few days and start the Intro diet. It will be interesting. I’m already feeling hugely better off of the identified allergic foods (by blood work) but the Intro diet will eliminate much much more so that the gut can heal. Food will slowly be re-introduced as I tolerate them over the next 2 years. The goal is to have no allergies by the end of it and be able to eat whatever I want — though healthful, whole food will always be what I eat. Right now I can’t eat a lot of whole foods that would be healthful if I was healthy!

So today:

One of the cooking fats we use on the diet is clarified butter. Milk solids are out for me as is all other dairy for now. Homemade yogurt is introduced fairly early on but milk products will be completely out for me for a good long while otherwise.

Ghee is the Indian name for clarified butter. On the GAPS diet it must be made with cultured grass-fed butter. I thought I was going to have to do without ghee as grass-fed butter costs a fortune.

I got lucky however and found a wonderful brand of grass-fed butter available for a third of the usual cost at my favorite over-stock gourmet market! I’ve bought about 25 lbs of it!

I’ve got several pounds clarifying in the oven right now. Clarified butter keeps on the kitchen shelf for many months. It doesn’t have to be refrigerated. The rest of the butter I’ve put in the freezer for future clarifying.

Our garden is taking shape. So far we’ve got chard, peas, dandelion, parsley, cilantro, green beans, and cucumbers planted. We will add tomatoes, zucchini and a few other things that are yet to be determined.

Preparations towards GAPS living in the last 24 hours

In the last 24 hours:

• I’ve soaked 4 cups raw organic almonds in water to start the sprouting process and greatly increase the nutritional value of the nut while diminishing it’s natural toxins — and then laid them out in a dehydrator to dry. First time doing this. If all goes well will do more for munching and also to make almond flour as well as almond butter.

• I cut down all the wild raspberry plant coming up in our grass outside of the raspberry patch and cut off all the leaves and put them in the dehydrator too. Raspberry leaf tea is medicinal and helps bring equilibrium to women’s hormones. (this is my own thing — not part of GAPS diet, but is in keeping with traditional living and eating)

• I got a Kombucha scoby from a woman on freecycle and made my first brew with decaf black tea and organic sugar about 2 gallons…will take 2 or 3 weeks to be ready. I’ve made Kombucha before but it’s been a while. (the ferment will go long enough that there will be no sugar left in the brew when it comes time to drink it)

**Kombucha is a fermented tea that has lots of natural pro-biotics. The GAPS diet is high in homemade fermented beverages, vegetable and meats and fish.

**I am making notes here but not explaining why I’m doing it for now. I’ve got limited energy, but at some point I will share more details. Right now I’m learning so much there is just lots of absorbing of info that must take place before I share more details. I’ve not started the diet proper but am slowly learning the skills to start living this way and also stock my kitchen and freezer with all the necessary items.

I’ll start taking photos soon!

A (very) little introduction to GAPS diet

Note and update: I do not recommend the below class on reversing allergies. I had very different expectations of the class then what it’s panned out to be. Perhaps that was my misreading of the presentation. I don’t know. I do know there are other people who are unhappy as well and they too had very different expectations. 

It is a COOKING CLASS. That is all. It does not teach how to heal the gut in any explicit fashion. All the footwork about how to use the diet must be done on your own with the book and no assistance from the teacher of this course. If you are not comfortable in the kitchen, then as a cooking class it’s probably worth it. Certainly one must learn some new skills and start using new ingredients. I’m a very creative cook and so it wasn’t something I needed, certainly not for $150…and now it’s running at $200. 

Okay,
wow!
I’m freakishly well today…
Today is generally and (always now for over a year) the WORST day of my menstrual cycle. I can rely, pretty much 100% that this day of my cycle I will be in bed and unable to do anything and miserably ill.

Today I’ve been up AND out of the house. I ran three errands in fact! This is amazing and while it’s premature to assume that this will continue (I’m way too used to the roller coaster to expect or hope for something like that) it’s still amazing. I rarely can go out and do ONE errand even on a good day. This should be my worst day and I feel like I can do normal stuff.

I don’t feel normal in that I still feel sick, but that’s my normal these days…just being able to DO normal things makes me very happy.

anyway…I have no idea if this is just a freak day or if the 2 weeks without a multitude of allergens is paying off…and heck, it’s hard not to get hopeful.

I started the Reversing Allergies Class. It’s very exciting.

This is the teacher of the class who talks about curing herself from rheumatoid arthritis and other auto-immune illness.

The video is an advertisement for the class so it’s got that ring to it yet it’s very credible to me because I’ve known people who have changed their lives this way. And in fact I’ve been on a similar path and healed a great deal of symptoms, yet there is still much more to go and in reading this book I’m learning that there is much much more I can do to get to good health. I had only scratched the surface with my earlier dietary changes.

It should be understood that the doctor who wrote this book started off by helping children with autism. That led to her working with kids with other issues that manifest with seemingly mental symptoms. Later she discovered that healing the gut in this manner helps with all manner of auto-immune illness and many chronic illnesses that are common in the Western world…and it’s all because good gut health is often the root of good whole body/mind and spirit health.

(oh just to put things in perspective, I’m laying down in bed now…and will have to do that off and on today, BUT I imagine I’ll be able to be up even more today) It’s premature to assume this will last but I like to enjoy good times when they are here.

An early experiment in non-dairy and non-grain land…

I just made my first large batch of homemade almond milk with raw soaked almonds…OMG soooo good and seriously better than dairy. I’ve tried all sorts of alternatives to dairy in boxes…IMHO they’re all not very good at all…this homemade stuff is entirely different…not comparable to store bought stuff…totally different thing.

I’ve been making small batches and having a glass a day because I miss the creamy factor of dairy products. Not so much milk as I never drank it, but cheese or dairy in cooking. It’s a delightful fix.

I don’t add anything to it at all. It’s naturally lightly sweet and rich flavored.

Now I have the almond grit drying in oven to make almond flour…no waste (I have a dehydrator but don’t have the sheets yet). Prior to this large batch I put small amounts of “grit” in soup which was fine too, but the option to bake is enticing…I will make pancakes with this first batch of flour!

I’m doing this as a journal entry right now. I’m not up to sharing the recipe…but I promise I will and if you let me know you’re interested I’m more likely to follow through sooner!

A whole new way to eat…in order to heal

I’ve not posted anything new in a very long time. I’m still cooking all the time — it’s the one thing I’m able to do and love with some consistency these days.

I’ve not said so very directly on this blog but I’ve been chronically ill for a long time. I will not go into details but diet and real whole food has been part of my strategy for getting better.

I am slowly getting better. I’ve gone from being bedridden for over a year to slowly getting up and being able to do more and more. While I was mostly bedridden I still managed to cook a bit. I did simple things and had my husband prep everything. I would get up and toss things together with the right spices etc and go lay down and my husband would wrap it up.

As I got better I started doing all the cooking and getting into more and more complicated things…only some of my experiments are on the blog.

Now I’m going to change gears on this blog. I’m going to start doing the GAPS diet. This is a HEALING diet…NOT a weight loss diet.

I have radical and many food sensitivities. Again, I’m not going to share all the details now but as I learn how to cook new foods and see if I start to get better or not I will perhaps share more of my history.

I will be learning to ferment foods (veggies and dairy) and making lots of bone broths.

I will be learning a whole new way of cooking and eating and being.

I’ve made some of these changes already. Over the last year I started making my own yogurt, I’ve made kombucha for a while and I make bone broths for the base of all my soups.

I also stopped eating most processed foods and (most) grains a couple of years ago (the lack of grain in my diet is not reflected on this blog as I continued to cook for my husband and made foods I didn’t always eat).

This is a grain free, sugar free diet among other things.

Oh, to help me along the way I’m taking this class, Reversing Food Allergies. I thought the support of a class would be very helpful.

Okay that’s all I’m saying now. I’ll write posts as I’m able.

Creamy and rich roasted garlic soup with greens

I got the below recipe, just as is, from a great friend in an email. She knows me well…that email made my day!

I pretty much stuck to the recipe which is a very rare thing for me so I’m just cutting and pasting it as it was. Under her recipe I’ll tell you the slight modifications I did make.

Ingredients:

• 24 cloves of garlic–roast tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper for 45 minutes or until soft all the way through.
• 18 peeled raw garlic cloves
• 2 1/2 cups sliced onions
• 3 1/2 cups broth (vegetable or chicken…water will also do fine if you don’t have broth on hand)
• 2 Tbls. butter
• 1/2 cup whipping cream, or 1 cup of milk if you don’t want to use whipping cream–either is great
• 1 lemon

After the garlic is done roasting, cool a little and then pop the cloves out of their skins saute the onions, raw garlic and roasted in melted butter until translucent add the broth, bring to a boil and then simmer on low until the raw garlic is tender (about 15 or 20 minutes)

In small batches blend mixture in blender until smooth transfer back to the stove and add the milk or cream

Serves four–grate 1/4 cup of parmesean into the bottom of four bowls and ladle soup on top. Squeeze a lemon wedge into the soup. Serve with crusty bread.

**Note: You can do a lot with this soup–I’ve added collards, turnips or whatever greens I have on hand to the simmering mixture and blend it in….makes a really great tasting nutritious way to get a lot of greens in.

So that was the email, above. I’ll make notes below about how I changed the recipe.

I actually went with 30 cloves roasted and 20 raw. Made for the magical number 50. Fifty garlic cloves!! It sounds so decadent and it WAS! Rich and delicious.

Then I added about 5 cups of homemade bone stock, you can of course simply use any stock and vegetable stock makes it vegetarian. I make my own stock with collected bones from our kitchen plus a few soup bones bought at our local farm where we get all our meat. It’s delicious, rich and full of protein.

And then I used 1 cup of heavy cream (grass fed cows, yum!)

I also used 2 whole onions and they were red onions, I imagine the soup would come out a lighter color with white or yellow onions. I didn’t measure but I assume it was a bit more than 2 1/2 cups that were called for.

I also added a nice amount of fresh ground black pepper and salt.

Lastly I chopped up mustard greens, steamed them ahead of time and then mixed them into the soup at the end. It was a delightful soup I intend to make again and again with variations on the theme!

Merry Christmas…dinner for two…

Christmas meal

Roasted a duck for the first time ever. This is not going to be a recipe post, but I’ll tell you what I did. I stuffed the duck with an orange cut in four pieces mixed up with several whole garlic cloves (smashed) and chunks of ginger.

I fairly heavily salted the whole bird and let it sit over night in fridge. This is called a “dry brine” I know nothing about precisely how it works or if it’s preferable to others ways of cooking a duck as I’m never done this. I poked the duck all over with a knife so that the fat could be released while roasting

I cooked it at 425 degrees flipping the bird (ha! a pun) every 45 minutes, emptying the carcass of liquids each time. It cooked about 2 hours (it’s a 5 lb bird). Came out heavenly!

Then we had roasted sweet potatoes which I tossed in coconut oil and sage. The regular potatoes I tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary and sage.

And finally the brussel sprouts (which got a bit burnt) I braised them in butter, garlic and red pepper flakes.

A simple, but delicious meal for two. I was pleased.

I’ve got some homemade vegan egg nog in the fridge. It’s REALLY good. Here is the recipe.

Later I’ll make my apples from yesterday. (that was a repost from last year)

Holiday red wine poached apples

Red wine poached apples

Last night I was in one of my relatively rare moods for dessert. We never have much in the house for dessert so when one of these cravings strikes I need to be rather creative. What I made was a brandied poached apple. I didn’t photograph it, but it was so good I wanted to do something like it again tonight for the blog.

I figured I’d use red wine the second time around. As you can imagine the aesthetics are much nicer. I do think I liked the flavor with the brandy poached apples better, but heck, you can’t beat this beautiful red color. It makes for a very nice thing to serve guests, I think. And though the brandy perhaps does win in flavor it’s not by all that much. These were darn good too.

So, this is so easy.

• 2 apples cored and cut in half (I left peels on as I like them and they are good for us, but do as you prefer)
• 3/4 cup red wine
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 2 tsp honey
• 1/4 cup of chopped walnuts

Put the apples face down in the wine and spices in as small a pot as will take all the apples. The deeper the wine the better. If you don’t have a snug pot increase the amount of wine just a bit. You can adjust all the flavors to your liking, as well. Most people would probably want to add more honey.

So bring it all to a boil and then put it on low until the apples are soft. Let cool for a bit and then serve with chopped walnuts sprinkled on top.

Ginger cookies – light and delicious, naturally

Ginger cookies

I got this idea from Joyous Health today. Joy has got a great blog on all things good health with an emphasis on nutrition being that she is a nutritionist by profession.

The orignal recipe for these cookies is here. I was very thrilled to get the idea and the very important fundamentals from Joy’s blog. I am constitutionally incapable of following a recipe so as per usual I made changes and this post makes note of them.

These are gluten free and they have very little added sweetener. My recipe only has molasses. If you want more sweetness roll the balls in some granulated sugar as Joy did. Most people would probably prefer additional sweetness. Being that I rarely do sugar they were delightful just with the molasses. I also added quite a lot more spice and actually think next time I’ll go even higher on the ginger and cinnamon, but not the ground cloves…that wasn’t in the original recipe at all.

The rice flour gives them a grainier texture than usual which might not work in lots of cookies but I think it’s nice with the ginger cookies.

I am going to try using fresh grated ginger next time…that sounds even more delightful.

This is what I did:

• 2 1/4 cup brown rice flour
• 1 tbls powdered dry ginger
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 cup coconut oil
• 1 egg
• 1/4 molasses

Mix the dry ingredients and then add the coconut oil, the egg and molasses. If you’ve not cooked with coconut oil before you generally need to heat it up a bit at this time of year as it goes solid.

Once you’ve got the dough made make 1 inch or so balls and put on cookie sheet. Cook at 350 degrees for about 11 to 13 minutes until they look like the picture.

Roasted brussels sprouts

Easy, quick and delicious!

People seem to love or hate brussels sprouts, though this recipe can change the minds of even those who never liked them before.

The below are approximate amounts…I pretty much just threw it all together without measuring.

• 1 lb brussel sprouts cleaned, with the bottoms trimmed off. Remove only outer leaves that are discolored or marred.
• 4 cloves of garlic minced
• 3 tbls olive oil
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
• salt to taste

Toss the above and coat the sprouts well with the mixture. Put them into a roasting pan where they fit rather snugly.

Roast for approximately 1 hour at 400 degrees.

Yum.

Baba Ganoush

This is a quick and easy recipe that I created for today. It’s using short-cuts as I wanted it ready within an hour.

Instead of leaving the eggplant whole and firing it on a burner or under the broiler and then baking, I cut it in threes (it’s a large eggplant) and placed it in a pan with olive oil to roast at 400 degrees. One step is faster and easier. Cutting it in three large pieces meant it wouldn’t have to roast quite as long.

I threw into the pan 6 cloves of garlic to roast along with the eggplant. Generally one uses raw garlic when one is doing the puree but I thought the roasted flavor would be a nice alternative as today I thought something a bit mellower than the raw garlic would be nice. (don’t get me wrong, I LOVE raw garlic…but variation is nice too)

Baba Ganoush

• One large eggplant
• juice of one lemon juice
• 4 tbls olive oil
• 1/4 cup tahini (I added a tbls at the end)
• salt
• cayenne
• six cloves garlic (if it wasn’t roasted I could have used much less garlic as it stands I ended up adding one clove raw garlic as I ended up missing the raw flavor)
• 1 bunch parsley or cilantro (or a combination of both)

Puree everything up to your taste and liking after the eggplant gets very soft in the oven. Dig the meat out of the eggplant shell first and toss the skin. This is one of the only dishes I actually get rid of skin…I generally eat the skin of most foods but in this instance the puree is much nicer without the skin and also the skin of eggplant has some toxins in it that while in small amounts it’s not a big deal it allows for me to get rid of it more easily. With other foods (like potatoes) it seems sacrilegious as the skin is often such a rich source of nutrients and fiber.

You can play with the amount of all the ingredients in the puree until it’s perfect. This also keeps developing flavor if you keep it 24 hours and more. It seems like all eggplant dishes have that quality. I don’ know why.

It was yummy…and even with the short cuts it took more than an hour to put together after all (including roasting time). I believe I roasted it for about 45 minutes.

Coconut lemon chicken

This recipe was inspired by a recipe a friend emailed to me. It’s right here. The blog it comes from is quite delightful as well. It looks fantastic and suggests several possible variations. Generally when I get an idea I look up on google and enter the main ingredients of a dish and then I look at 4 or 5 or 6 recipes to come up with whatever I do. In this instance it was only this one recipe so it’s easy to link to it. I’m never without a source of inspiration though, whether it’s a memory from childhood, a cookbook or google at my fingertips.

Ingredients of my variation:

• 3 large chicken leg quarters cut in pieces and skinned
• 1 tbls coconut oil
• 1 – 14 oz can coconut milk
• 1 large bunch of cilantro cut coarsely
• 10 large garlic cloves peeled and smashed
• Lemon zest from two lemons
• Juice of one lemon
• 2 tbls grated fresh ginger
• 2 large jalapeño peppers, sliced round
• Steamed brown rice

Brown chicken pieces and garlic in the coconut oil. (I use coconut oil in many things these days and I’m learning to switch to it for much of my high heat cooking. It’s possible to get very mild flavored coconut oil so that it’s not intrusive even in dishes that aren’t coconutty!

Once it’s nice and brown put in all the rest of the ingredients and turn to a low simmer. Cook until meat is coming off the bone a bit. Serve over rice.

I just ate this. Wrote the above while it was cooking. It was very very good. I would make one change since I like heat. I would use a hotter variety of chili instead of the jalapeños. I didn’t taste any heat at all. The sauce was still very good and the house smelled delightfully lemony while it was cooking.