Posts in Category: At Our Table
DAMN GOOD GUACAMOLE
There are lots of ways to make guacamole. Simple or robust, I’m beginning to gather that people are very picky about their guacamole. I myself like my guac chock full of ingredients; layers of flavours. One bowl, one dip: guacamole and salsa, a mergence of flavours that we all know belong together anyways.
A good guacamole will captivate your tongue with it’s brazen, creamily textured delightfulness and immediately have you salivating for more. It will beg for a worthy vehicle and cry out for a (in the very least), premium glass of wine or beer. It is in fact, the quintessential, perfect party food.
Or a lunchtime addition. Or a toddler snack. As it is known to be these things and many more around these here parts.
(REFINED) SUGAR-FREE LAVENDER SHORTBREAD
The ultimate adult cookie. The making of which I’ve dreamed about since the summer, when I harvested all of the glorious english lavender from the garden. We’ve enjoyed vases of it all over the house so far, through the fall and the winter and it was time to say goodbye to some of it to be enjoyed in culinary form…
SPELT AND COCONUT FLOUR BANNOCK
One of the most delicious quick breads to make, bannock can also be high in carbs and rather generous with the butter (you can’t have bannock without generous amounts of butter!). Not the healthiest of breads, yet still very much loved by many. Including us! It pairs perfectly with soups and stews and I love making it because it’s so quick and easy and doesn’t need to rise!
While spelt flour has the lowest gluten content of all the flours, it’s not toally g-free so if you’re gluten intolerant this might be okay for you but if you’re celiac? No dice. The addition of the coconut flour is used for it’s delicious flavour and texture as well as being g-free.
Even though this bannock recipe is low- carb and considerably healthier than it’s beloved deep fried brethren, we still consider this bread a treat. Versatile and delicious we enjoy it warm with butter (in case I didn’t mention that yet), or butter AND jam, because hello. But most of all we love it best when paired with soups and stews.
I’m thinking of experimenting with smoked wild fish and meat, root vegetables, herbs, cheeses and spices in the future, different variations. Maybe even desserts made with bannock. Probably a full-on gluten-free one too. Until then however, here is the straight up, low-carb, easy-peasy version…
Paleo Pumpkin Pie
But why? Why on earth would I do that? Psh, you might be saying to yourself…’sure, you could make any baked good without all of those luxurious (necessary) things, but it won’t taste good.’
And after one failed attempt I might have agreed with you. But like any glutton for punishment, home cook who has a big Holiday table to feed, including a bevy of loved ones with food allergies…I knew I had to perfect this recipe. A pumpkin pie that tastes just as decadent and creamy as it’s traditional velvet-like ancestors…
HANDMADE HOLIDAYS: HOMEMADE JAM WRAPPED UP WITH A BOW AND STAMPED WITH LOVE
You can do this with any jam recipe, but you really should do it with this one because it’s kind of one of the best experiments in my kitchen that didn’t blow up in my face this year. Heck, maybe longer, given how truly adventurous I was with it.
I mean, strawberry jam with no white sugar, sweetened with minimal honey and NO PECTIN?! Unheard of right? Yet totally doable, totally delicious and packed with a hidden superfood that makes it all happen. (Chia seeds, my friends. Oh yes.)
So if you’re willing to take my word for it and you’re into the frugality of making your own Holiday presents for friends and family, especially the edible ones (everyone likes some prettily packaged homemade canned goods. Or at least your friends and family probably do if you’re the type of person who’s into that sort of thing.) Make this jam and then follow these simple instructions on how to package it all up with cheer and just the right amount of glitz, glimmer and understated charm that one would hope for in a jar of crimson red Holiday jam…
Kale, Elk Sausage + Potato Soup
I have yet to meet a person who doesn’t look forward to the coming of autumn if for nothing else than the anticipation of hot soups and warm bread. In lieu of our gargantuan harvest of kale this summer and fall, (it just kept growing and growing), I’ve become rather addicted in my obvious (this soup) and hidden ways to incorporate kale into pretty much everything we eat.
Getting Abby to eat kale isn’t a problem, Wyndham however will literally regurgitate any green leafy substance that accidentally makes it into his esophagus. I probably shouldn’t talk about food regurgitation whilst trying to paint you a mouthwatering picture of this soup. So, I shall end things there. Does this soup magically entice my son to eat kale? Nope. What? You thought I was going to say different? Nope, sorry.
But he will eat everything else and pick the kale out and I’ll just give him a sideways look when he pronounces how utterly disgusting kale is and my eyes glaze over in order to ignore his sauce (this would be called picking and choosing one’s battles with a toddler), to fond memories of that morning. Of him slurping down a smoothie that had near a pound of fresh kale in it. Disgusting. Or, delicious as he usually pronounces over the smoothies I make him. Ah, children, so easy to trick. Next up, Santa Claus. Therapy inducing stuff, I know.
In the meantime, there will always be the comforting warmth of homemade soup on cold autumn and winter days. Especially after a therapy session.
How To: Good Ol’ Immunity Boosting Bone Broth
Bone broth where have you been all of my life and why haven’t I been making out with you on the regular? No matter. We’re together now and nothing can tear us apart. It’s you and I forever and like a good samaritan I shall share of your beneficial healing properties and pocket friendly ways like a good believer should. Glory be.
As my learning about food and treating food as medicine deepens, my knowledge base on the healing properties that come from different foods grows wide and strong. Old sayings about food and traditional recipes mean more to me now than just something fine on my tongue and satisfying in my soul and tummy.
Most of us have a had a mom or a grannie or an auntie prepare us chicken soup when we were sick. A recommendation that wasn’t built solely on the soothing feeling of that savoury warmth trickling down a sore throat. Chicken soup is more than just comfort food for the sick. The base, the broth that makes it all so wonderful is truly a medicine…
Caprese Salad With Reduced Balsmic & Buffalo Mozzarella Bocconcini
I’m about to get all up in your face with my snobby tomatoes. You know, the REAL, heirloom kind. The ones that aren’t perfectly uniform, altogether unsymmetrical and absolutely DIVINE tasting. Yea, those ones.
Now, you could make this salad with regular variety beefsteak tomatoes, but for the love of gawd please don’t make them with GMO knock off, fake ‘heirloom’ tomatoes. Please just no. It just won’t taste the same and part of the absolute bliss in eating this salad comes from only being able to enjoy it in this state (with such a variety of home-grown tomatoes), oh but one time of year. When tomatoes are ripe and ready to be plucked off of the vine.
Which, for me – happened late as they were planted late. Lucky us…we’ve received a warm fall so far which allowed all of my green tomatoes the time they needed to grow and ripen into rock-star status. Heirloom tomatoes would in fact be rock-stars if they could, I think.
So now that you’re all quite certain of just how much I love growing, eating and waxing poetic (sort of), about tomatoes, we can move right along to what you’re really all here for, (I think?) A simple yet damned good caprese salad recipe.
(REFINED) SUGAR-FREE, STRAWBERRY LAVENDER CHIA SEED JAM
***2015 UPDATE! You can also make this into raw freezer or fridge jam! Simply put the chia seends into a high powered blender to make a POWDER (so genius, again, I love my Vitamix – it’s truly my boyfriend), and add that to the raw mashed strawberries with the honey. Jar and freeze or put into the fridge. SO EASY, SO YUM.
All of the exclamation points. To me, this is huge. Jam without all of the preservatives of pectin? Without more white sugar than actual fruit? Glory be indeed. Why might I take such a chance with my precious, organic strawberries picked from July, washed and hulled in freezer bags just waiting for the perfect jam?
Because I’m a lunar that way. I like taking culinary chances, in the name of delicious food that’s actually good for you. Healthy. Yet still TASTES GOOD. THAT’S MY JAM. All pun intended.
Clearly, in a house with two toddlers and an old-fashioned food loving man, with all of the substitutions and experimenting I do with (refined) sugar-free, low-carb or gluten free baking and cooking, stuff’s still gotta TASTE GOOD. For me too. I’m no birdie and I love food. So. When a friend of mine whispered sweet nothings into my ear about how she tried out some jam making with chia seeds instead of pectin, I was like, COME HITHER TELL ME MORE. And then one of the 3 children under our feet stuck a finger up someone else’s nose or something and the conversation was left by the wayside.
Fast forward to way past strawberry season, with frozen bags of deep crimson heaven just waiting to be turned into jam. It was this past weekend after just having gotten home from apple-picking that I decided I couldn’t very well make apple butter and apple pie filling without first making jam. Seasonally speaking, I was way late already.
I don’t even know with where to begin on how much I love this jam. It’s preservative free, because NO PECTIN. It requires waaaaaaay less sweetener, because NO PECTIN. (Pectin requires obscene amounts of white sugar to work.) All of the added health benefits that come from chia seeds most definitely make my culinary nerd brain do a little dance…
LOW-CARB, LOW-SUGAR, WHITE PEACH & GINGER MUFFINS!
I struggle with what to call these morsels of joy. They are topped with a most delicious crumble, made with no refined white sugar or white flours. They’re not quite gluten free, but I do use gluten free products in the baking of said joyous muffins.
Basically, they’re just darn good muffins that you can feel good about eating and feeding to your little ones. I’m trying to get into the habit of baking a batch of muffins and cookies one a week to have homemade, package-free snacks to pack into Wyndham’s lunches . So far, so good.
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