Breakfast Bites

Sometimes a little advance effort has a big pay-off. That’s most certainly the case with breakfast — the last thing most of us want to do first thing in the morning is spend a lot of time preparing/scrounging for something to eat. Specifically, something that will taste good, be healthy, and be satisfying enough to last until lunch. All three of those conditions are impossible to fulfill — although those with a sweet tooth would probably argue that the “tastes good” criteria would be met — with what you’ll find in the cereal aisle or the reduced-fat dairy section in most supermarkets. (Also known as the Aisle of Sugar and the Section of Sugar departments.)

If you’re willing to spend a little time making these breakfast bites while you listen to your favorite podcast, though, you won’t face a first-thing-in-the-morning crisis. With three kinds of whole grains, two seeds, eggs, extra-virgin olive oil, and natural sweeteners in the form of raisins and dates, these little guys taste great, are healthy, and won’t leave you hungry by 10 a.m. Plus, they’re bite-size and highly portable. How convenient is that?

Breakfast Bites
Makes approximately 60 bites.

1/4 cup sunflower seeds, coarsely ground in a food processor
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds, coarsely ground in a food processor
1/4 cup teff flour*
3/4 cup sorghum flour*
3/4 cup brown rice flour*
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 cup date sugar
1/2 cup raisins
3 eggs, separated
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Powdered sucanat for rolling (optional)

Preheat oven to 350F and cover 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. In a large bowl, whisk together seeds, flours, cinnamon, baking powder, and date sugar. Stir in raisins, separating them by hand if they’re clumping together.

Crack the egg whites into a large bowl and put the yolks in another large bowl. Whip the whites with the cream of tartar — since the cream of tartar is acidic, it helps set the whites faster — until you have almost-stiff peaks (the kind that very slowly and gently starts to fall over after you’ve lifted up the beater).

Using the same beater, whip the yolks with the vanilla and oil until the mixture is frothy and thick. Stir the dry ingredients into the yolks. The dough will be dry, but that’s okay — you still have to fold in the whites. After you’ve folded them in with a spatula, start rolling the dough into 1″ balls and placing them on the baking sheets. I find that the easiest way to do that is pinch the dough together, use your fingertips to form it into a rough ball, and then give it a little finishing “polish” roll in the palm of your hand.

Bake for 12 minutes until bottoms are golden brown. If you like, roll the hot-out-of-the-oven balls in powdered sucanat to give them a little more sweetness. I do like to roll them, so I bake the bites in 2 batches — that way, I can get the first batch sucanat-ed while they’re still hot. Let bites cool completely before storing them in an airtight container.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d rather make a wheat-based version, use an equivalent of kamut, spelt, and/or whole-wheat flour.

Egg & Spinach Breakfast Tacos

Breakfast tacos are a beautiful thing when you make them yourself: you can use whatever filling you’d like, you can use whatever toppings you like, and you can make your tacos as hearty or as light as you’d like. And the best part? These tacos only take about five minutes to make, ten if you make your salsa right there on the spot. (I had made salsa the previous day to accompany a different dish, so I was able to skip those five extra minutes.)

Seeing as these were breakfast tacos, I opted for an egg and spinach filling, but you could just as easily use leftover cooked meat or seafood if you’d like … or you could do an all-veggie taco. Tasty toppings would include everything from cheese to plain whole-milk Greek yogurt (which is even smoother and creamier-tasting than sour cream) to chopped avocados. The only requirement is to have fun creating your Mexican-themed morning meal!

Egg & Spinach Breakfast Tacos
This is sized for a single portion, but feel free to double, triple, or even quadruple it.

For the salsa (which you can make well ahead of time and serve with a variety of other dishes):
Black beans, drained (my favorite brand of canned beans is Eden since they use BPA-free cans and sea salt)
Chopped red bell pepper
Cooked corn kernels (I used thawed organic frozen corn)
Chopped fresh cilantro
Squirt of lemon or lime juice
Dash of sea salt

For the tacos:
3 small or 1 large 100% corn tortilla
Handful of spinach
2 eggs, lightly scrambled in a bowl

See second paragraph for optional toppings suggestions.

To make the salsa, simply combine ingredients in a bowl and toss well. Salsa will keep in the fridge for up to 4 days.

To make the tacos, place the tortillas in a large skillet over medium heat to warm them. The tortillas will probably curl with the heat, so you may have to turn them occasionally and press down on them slightly to try and flatten them out a bit.

While your tortillas are warming, heat a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil or a pat of butter in small skillet over medium heat for 1 minute. Add the spinach. Cook, stirring often, for 2 minutes or until spinach has shrunk considerably. Add eggs and continue to cook, stirring often, for another 3 minutes or until eggs are softly cooked through.

Spoon eggs into heated tortillas and top with salsa and any other toppings you may wish to add.

¡Disfruta!

Strawberry-Oat Smoothie

It’s true: oatmeal makes a great breakfast. But not the flavored, sugared, powdery instant oats that are more chemicals and sweeteners than they are oats. Plain, old-fashioned rolled oats are a much better choice…and you can flavor them any way you want! You could even cook a giant batch once or twice a week and then enjoy “instant” oatmeal whenever the mood strikes you. (Or cook a big batch of steel-cut oats or even oat groats, which is the whole un-steel-cut grain.)

For my breakfast earlier in the week, I had some strawberries that needed to be eaten and a handy bag of rolled oats. I could have opted for sliced berries stirred into cooked oats, of course, but I thought it would be interesting to see what a shake made with oats would be like. The answer? With their thickening power, oats make the ideal shake. And it’s easy enough to make the shake dairy-free if you’d like: just simmer the oats in water rather than milk. So simple! This is a surprisingly hearty and satisfying smoothie to enjoy first thing in the morning or even on the way to work.

Strawberry-Oat Smoothie

Blend cooked plain rolled oats with a handful of organic strawberries* in a blender. (To make a single serving, I cooked 1/4 cup raw oats and tossed in about 9 strawberries.) Add 1 T. maple syrup and a dash of vanilla extract and blend again. If the smoothie is too thick and is refusing to blend to a smooth consistency, trickle in cold water and keep blending until you have a milkshake-like smoothie. Note that this idea of cooked oats + fruit would work with any fruit that’s soft enough to blend. Banana-oat, blueberry-oat, peach-oat…the possibilities are endless!

* Seeing as strawberries are one of the most-sprayed crops on the U.S. market and we eat the whole fruit, they’re worth buying organic.

Enjoy!

Blueberry Kefir Cream

Ah, cultured dairy… The brilliance of it (how else would pre-refrigeration-technology peoples have stored their valuable milk?), the taste of it (there’s even a beer inoculated with the same lactobacillus you’ll find in yogurt — ever tried a bottle of lovely Flemish red ale?), the versatility of it (cakes are lovely when made with sour cream; so are potatoes). If you’ve read this blog very often, you know I’m a fan.

This time I opted to make the most of the glory that is kefir (which, according to a Russian woman who has attended a few of my talks, is pronounced “kah-FEER”) by blending it with wild blueberries, an egg, and a touch of maple syrup to make a sublimely delicious and probiotic ice cream. Even though the kefir tastes slightly sour on its own as a result of its culturedness, when combined with fruit, it doesn’t need much sweetener to make dessert. Or breakfast, really, considering that this ice cream packs a lot more nutrition than your typical bowl of cereal.

Blueberry Kefir Cream

1 cup kefir, preferably made with milk from grass-fed cows (this would be a major component of its nutritious aspect)
1 cup wild blueberries, fresh or frozen
1 egg, preferably from pastured hens (you’ll be eating this egg raw, so if you don’t have a good source for eggs, skip the egg; a good egg does, however, add creaminess and nutritional value galore)
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 cup maple syrup (I prefer Grade B for its richer flavor)

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions. It truly is that simple.

Enjoy!

Orange Segments Topped with Crème Fraîche & Cocoa Nibs

Having just returned from a fascinating — and tasty! — culinary conference in NYC, real food has been very much on my mind. (Although, to be honest, real food is always on my mind. Chalk it up to one of the occupational hazards of being a recipe developer/food writer. In terms of “hazards,” it’s got to be one of the most pleasant.) By “real food,” I’m talking minimally processed foods: grains that are whole, oils that are unrefined, sweeteners that still retain their nutrients, animal products from pastured animals…you get the idea.

Speaking of the pastured animal foods, one of my current favorite dairy products is crème fraîche. It’s still unpopular and un-mainstream enough to be produced by real farms with animals freely grazing. The animals’ state of good health = dairy, egg, and meat products for us that taste damned good and also happen to be the most nutritious. (In case you’re curious about the numbers, pastured animal products have about half the fat of conventional animal products. Pastured also offers higher amounts of anti-inflammatory omega 3 fats and far more vitamins and other micronutrients than conventional products do.)

Along with being produced by great dairyists like Vermont Creamery, crème fraîche is also a cultured dairy product, which means it offers an intriguing tang along with its rich creaminess. It pairs beautifully with everything from fruit to potatoes! The nibs in this recipe add a nice crunch to the juicy orange and creamy/tangy crème fraîche.

Orange Segments Topped with Crème Fraîche & Cocoa Nibs

Peel oranges and gently pull apart into segments. Arrange in a bowl or on a plate and top with a dollop of crème fraîche. Sprinkle with cocoa nibs or broken-up chunks of dark chocolate. (When I say “dark,” I mean at least 75%. The sweetness of the orange is all the sweeter when paired with not-so-sweet chocolate.) Serve immediately for breakfast, dessert, or a snack. If you’d like to experiment with other fruit + crème fraîche combinations, try making Strawberries & Crème.

Enjoy!

Almond Butter & Banana Smoothie

With its focus on nuts and fresh fruit (and coconuts and fresh herbs), I’ve long been a fan of raw food. Every raw dish I’ve ever had has been delicious and innovative. Vegan dishes are tasty, too, but unfortunately vegans seem to rely overmuch on soy and wheat products. I’m not a big fan of soy for a variety of reasons — ranging from health issues to environmental ones — and I avoid gluten, so lots of otherwise-interesting vegan dishes are out for me. Raw food, on the other hand, doesn’t use soy or wheat or anything processed…which means it’s always innovative, always fresh, and always scrumptious.

I’ve been wanting to make more raw dishes at home (especially raw desserts, which are unbelievably good!), but I don’t have a Vitamix and probably won’t any time soon. My trusty Cuisinart food processor just isn’t powerful enough to rip through damned near anything the way a Vitamix can.  (I seriously think you could powder diamonds with one of those.) Chopping nuts and grinding them into coarse meal works in some settings, but raw dishes often call for silky-smooth nuts as a main ingredient.

About a week ago, I finally had a “duh!” moment and hit upon a solution to my sans-Vitamix-but-want-raw-food dilemma: use raw nut butter! Nowadays, you can find everything from almond butter to walnut butter to cashew butter. If you’re lucky, you might even stumble upon jars of macadamia butter sitting next to jars of pecan butter. They all have different flavors, of course, but what they all have in common is that their textures all fall somewhere between velvet and satin. I might still splurge on a Vitamix someday, but in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy experimenting with already-made-smooth nut butters. They make anything taste incredibly creamy and rich.

Almond Butter & Banana (or any other fruit) Smoothie

Note: since nut butters are highly perishable, store them in the refrigerator as soon as you get them home. If you are fortunate enough to have a Vitamix or other warp-speed blender/processor, you can make your own nut butters by grinding shelled nuts until they’re smooth. You may wish to add a matching unrefined oil to give the butter a little more creaminess. (Use unrefined almond oil with almonds, unrefined walnut oil with walnuts, etc.)

Place a heaping tablespoon of almond butter and either 1 full-sized banana or 2 small ones (I prefer the little guys) in a blender. If you use a large banana, break it into three or four pieces before adding it. Add 1 tsp. maple syrup and 1/2 tsp. vanilla. Pour in enough cool water to barely cover everything and blend on high until smooth. You can add a few ice cubes if you’d like more froth and coolness.

Enjoy!

Strawberries with Crème Fraîche

In the wide-ranging world of dairy, there are two main classifications: fresh (or sweet) and cultured (or sour) dairy products. Fresh-milk products are made with just-milked milk that has not yet had a chance to ferment and age into more complex flavors. This includes fresh whipped cream, most ice creams*, most soft and creamy cheeses, and sweet — or what we think of as standard — milk. Cultured products include buttermilk, sour cream, yogurt, and aged cheeses that are more pronounced and cheesy in flavor. *Note that you could make ice cream just as easily with buttermilk and/or yogurt. One of the best flavors I’ve ever had was made with buttermilk.

And then there are some splendidly confusing dairy products that seem to encapsulate the best of both worlds. Crème fraîche is one of them, because although its name literally means “fresh cream” in French, crème fraîche is nonetheless made with cream that has been allowed to culture and sour. (The sourness, by the way, is not added sourness. It occurs because the friendly cultures gobble up the lactose in the milk as they multiply. The more cultures that are in the product = the less lactose. The less lactose, the less sweet-tasting. A handy bit of knowledge for anyone who has difficulty digesting lactose! And anyone looking for lower-in-sugar dairy products, too.)

Although crème fraîche is reminiscent of sour cream, it’s much creamier and smoother and more complex in flavor. And because crème fraîche isn’t produced on the massive scale that sour cream is, crème fraîche is more likely to be made with milk from grass-fed cows. Vermont Creamery is my favorite producer of crème fraîche and other artisanal, small-scale dairy products like fromage blanc, cultured butter, and quark. (Fromage blanc is a cultured yogurt-like cream made from naturally skimmed milk, cultured butter is more tangy and flavorful than fresh-cream butter, and quark is rather like an ultra-creamy cottage cheese that’s been blended into a harmonious smoothness. I fell in love with quark when I lived in Germany and discovered its velvety, fresh existence.)

Since crème fraîche hits a balance between creaminess and tanginess — and hits the nail exactly on the head when it comes to smoothness — it’s great with strawberries. Simply serve a dollop of crème fraîche alongside your organic strawberries (as the #1 most-sprayed fruit, strawberries are worth buying organic) and sprinkle on a little date sugar, sucanat, or coconut sugar.

Enjoy!

Cinnamon-Maple Yogurt with Blueberries & Cooca Nibs

Plenty of “convenience” foods are far more convenient to make yourself — while the commercial versions tend to have unpronounceable ingredient lists and a mind-boggling amount of sugars/sweeteners, you can whip up a homemade version with a few simple healthy ingredients…and in less than a minute. Sixty seconds spent preparing AND at least 30 minutes saved by not going to the store? Now, that’s convenience! And using ingredients you already have vs. spending more money on an inferior product = thrifty (and smart) convenience.

Flavored yogurts fall into the “Prime Candidates for DIY Convenient Foods” category. If you keep a container of full-fat plain Greek yogurt in your fridge, you can enjoy the same yogurt innumerable ways by simply stirring in a few extra ingredients. Plus, when you have plain yogurt, you can even go sweet or savory without having to spend extra money. Use it as a basis for creamy salad dressings (use the yogurt in place of oil), as a way to enrich curries and soups (remove the pan or pot from the heat and stir in the yogurt at the last minute to keep it from curdling), or as a substitute for sour cream (to me, full-fat plain Greek yogurt tastes richer and fresher than sour cream does). And remember that fresh herbs make a wonderful companion to yogurt.

To go the sweet route, you can stir everything from spices to jam into your yogurt. For this batch, I opted to go with cinnamon, maple syrup, fresh blueberries, and a sprinkling of cocoa nibs. Any fruit would work, though, and you can use any sweetener you like, from honey to palm sugar to date sugar. Let your imagination run (conveniently) wild!

Cinnamon-Maple Yogurt with Blueberries & Cocoa Nibs

Plain full-fat Greek yogurt
Drizzle of maple syrup
Sprinkling of cinnamon
Fresh blueberries (or any other fruit)
Cocoa nibs (optional, but adds an appealing chocolate crunch)

Use a fork or a small whisk to stir the maple syrup and cinnamon into the yogurt. Gently stir in blueberries and top with nibs. Note that any fruit would be lovely — just be sure to cut the fruit into bite-sized pieces before stirring it in. Or you could dip larger-sized fruit slices into the yogurt.

Enjoy!

Sushi Undone

If you have access to sashimi-grade fish, making sushi is a snap. (Sashimi-grade fish is suitable to eat raw. NEVER consume raw fish unless it is sashimi-grade fish and you’re getting it from a reputable fishmonger or grocer.)* Short-grain brown rice and seaweed are available even in most mainstream stores, and nearly every American has soy sauce in her pantry nowadays. And I’ll let you in on a wasabi secret: the stuff we buy here is horseradish that’s been finely ground and dyed green. I just haul out my jar of horseradish whenever I want wasabi.

And if you don’t have a rolling mat to make your sushi — or you’re not particularly gifted at rolling — don’t despair! I often lay out my ingredients rather than roll them; sometimes my seaweed is no longer supple enough to roll (once you’ve opened a fresh package of nori, leftover sheets tend to get brittle and crack easily), sometimes I’m feeling fumble-fingered, sometimes I just want something a little different. That’s when I make sushi undone. All you have to do is arrange the ingredients on a plate — no rolling required. In this case, I had avocado, purple sticky rice, two kinds of fish, and fish eggs. That’s it. Can’t get any simpler than that. Or any tastier!

Sushi Undone

Cooked sticky rice (I adore Thai purple sticky rice, but short-grain brown rice works just as well and is much easier to find)
Sashimi-grade fish (here I’ve included my favorites: salmon and white tuna), sliced into strips
Sliced or chopped avocado
Sheets of nori, left whole or sliced or crumbled
Fish eggs (optional; my favorite is the bright orange and incredibly tiny smelt roe)

Spoon some cooked rice onto a plate and top with fish and avocado. Tuck in or sprinkle on some sliced/crushed nori and spoon on some fish eggs. Serve with soy sauce or wheat-free tamari and a dab of wasabi or a dollop of horseradish. Talk about stress-free sushi!

Enjoy!

* My go-to place for sashimi-grade fish (and all Japanese ingredients) is Noble Fish in Clawson.

Pumpkin Walnut Bread

What’s in your freezer pantry? The space adjoining your fridge is just as useful and important as your cupboard shelves. Stashing away frozen fruits and veggies is a great way to make sure you always have a good stock of otherwise-perishable ingredients on hand, plus it’s far more tasty and economical to freeze your own leftover dinners rather than buying prefabricated frozen meals. (And just think: if you only scrawl the date and not the contents onto your leftovers, you can give yourself a happy culinary surprise at a later date. You’re guaranteed to like what you’re getting because you already enjoyed it the first time around — it’s like going to your favorite restaurant and telling the waiter “Surprise me!”)

One of the best ingredients to keep in the freezer is nuts. While chestnuts and almonds have a relatively low fat content and are therefore less perishable than other nuts, richer nuts like walnuts and pecans and pine nuts can turn rancid in just a month or two when stored at room temp.  The fact that walnuts and pecans are often sold in pieces or halves — i.e., their protective outer skins have been breached — makes them even more prone to rancidity. If you store the more delicate varieties of nuts in the freezer, though, they’ll easily last a year. (Side note: always store nut butters in the fridge! Cool temps will keep them fresher, and they’ll still be spreadable straight out of the fridge.)

This hearty breakfast quick bread takes advantage of the natural affinity pumpkin has for walnuts. If you’d like even more walnut flavor, feel free to dry-toast the walnuts in a pan over medium-low heat for about 4 minutes or until the they’re fragrant and browning before adding them to the batter.

I like to amp up the walnut aspect by drizzling some unrefined walnut oil onto my slices when I enjoy the baked bread. (Since walnut oil is primarily an polyunsaturated fat, it should NOT be heated and is therefore NOT suitable for baking. It is, however, fabulous when whisked into dressings and/or drizzled over finished dishes. It’s also a good source of omega-3 fats.)

Pumpkin Walnut Bread

3/4 cup brown rice flour*
3/4 cup sorghum OR millet flour*
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. coriander (optional, but a nice background flavor)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (toasted if you like)
1/2 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
3 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 cup puréed pumpkin (either homemade or canned)

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9×5 glass loaf pan by either rubbing its sides with butter or extra-virgin olive oil.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking soda and powder, spices, and walnuts. In another bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Pour the liquid mixture into the flour mixture and whisk well to combine.

Pour the batter into the greased loaf pan and bake for 1 hour or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. I usually flip on the oven light to peek at the loaf at the 55-minute mark just to do a quick visual check. If the center still looks soggy and un-set, let it go another 10 minutes before doing a toothpick test. If it’s set and slightly domed, do the toothpick test right away.

Let bread cool on a wire rack for at least 15 minutes before cutting into it. Bread will keep for several days at room temp in the cool winter months, but if it’s summertime or you keep your house toasty warm in the winter, you might want to pop the bread into the fridge to prolong its life. I prefer to leave mine out since the fridge has a tendency to suck the moisture out of baked goods and make them a bit dry. (And I am too thrifty to heat the house past 68F in the winter.)

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d prefer to make a wheat-based version, use a total of 1 1/2 cups spelt, kamut, and/or whole-wheat flour.

Sesame-Soy Dip with Seaweed Chips

For a while, kale chips were all the rage, but now it seems like seaweed chips have taken center stage. I love both! Especially if you make them yourself. Not only are they much less expensive that way, you can go with a dunking approach for the seaweed chips. It’s simple and fun, plus you won’t run the risk of over-roasting them by trying to season them and then re-roast them. (When you buy sheets of nori, they’ve already been roasted. Kale, on the other hand, is always available raw, so you don’t run the risk of over-roasting by re-roasting.)

Once the province of Japanese grocers, nori is getting pretty easy to find in mainstream stores — even the bigger chains now have ethnic sections scattered throughout their aisles. Just look for the Asian section to find the square-shaped, slimly-packaged sheets of nori. They’re usually sold in quantities of ten to a pack. Their primary purpose is to make sushi rolls, but they’re also ideal to use as chips. Or you can crumble them up and toss them into salads, onto scrambled eggs, or include them with fish and other seafood dishes.

Once you’ve opened a package of nori, it will start to dry out and become brittle, so if you want to use it for sushi, use it promptly! If you want to break it into chips or crumble it, you can do so long after having opened the package. Making chips out of brittle nori is a great way to use up any leftover nori you might have from having made sushi to begin with.

Sesame-Soy Dip with Seaweed Chips

Pour a drizzle of tamari or soy sauce into a small bowl. (Be sure to get wheat-free tamari if you want gluten-/wheat-free chips!) Add a drizzle of toasted sesame oil. Unrefined and untoasted sesame oil works, too, but the toasted version is more nutty and sesame-tasting. You could also stir in a bit of ground ginger if you’re in a gingery mood.

Tear up some nori into bite-sized pieces and serve them with the dip. It really is that simple.

Enjoy!

Lentil & Mushroom Soup with Roasted Potatoes

What do Brussels sprouts, potatoes, carrots, and mushrooms have in common? They were all in my pantry begging to be made into soup. The lentils looked lonely, too, so I threw them into the mix. Hearty soups are best made in the winter, after all, even if the term “winter” doesn’t seem to currently imply snow. (Glad I’m no longer a little kid in snow pants raring to go with my toboggan!)

It’s worth keeping a few soup essentials on hand in the chilly months: good-quality broth (my favorite is Pacific’s organic free-range chicken), onions, garlic, dried spices, maybe a few root vegetables like carrots and turnips. All of those make great backdrops for heartier elements like beans, lentils, whole grains, and meats. Stirring in some cream and cheese at the last minute is another simple way to transform a thin broth into a thick, rich soup.

For this batch, I opted to roast a few of the veggies and sautée the rest to create a variety of textures in the finished soup. You can go the roasting route, too, or you can stir in the potatoes and Brussels sprouts with the lentils and let them simmer to tenderness.

Lentil & Mushroom Soup with Roasted Potatoes
Makes 6 ample servings.

1 baking potato (Idaho), cut into 1″ cubes
About 10 Brussels sprouts, halved
2 small onions OR 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
8 oz. mushrooms, sliced
3 cloves garlic, chopped or slivered
4 cups/32 oz. chicken OR vegetable broth (if you go with chicken, opt for free-range)
1 T. dried Italian seasoning OR a total of 1 T. of rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, and sage
1/2 cup brown lentils
1 carrot, diced

Preheat oven to 350F and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Put the cubed potato in a large bowl, drizzle in a little extra-virgin olive oil, shake on a little salt and pepper, and toss well with your hands. Spread out onto one of the baking sheets. Put the Brussels sprouts in the bowl and repeat the same process (oil, salt, pepper, toss). Place cut side down on the other sheet.*

Roast for 20 minutes, then pull out the sprouts. Let the potatoes bake for another 15 minutes or until they’re golden brown and very dry to the touch. (That crispy dryness means they won’t get soggy in the soup!)*

While your veggies are roasting, make the soup. Begin by sautéeing onions in a dab of ghee/butter or a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over medium heat for 5 minutes or until soft and translucent. Add mushrooms, reduce heat to medium-low, and continue to sautée for another 5 minutes or until mushrooms are shrunken and soft. Stir in garlic and continue to cook for another 3 minutes.

Pour in broth. Stir in spices, lentils, and carrot. Simmer over medium-low heat (reduce to low if the soup is bubble-boiling rather than ripple-simmering) for 20 minutes or until lentils have reached desired tenderness. By now, the potatoes should be done, so go ahead and stir in the roasted Brussels sprouts and potatoes. Season with a pinch or two of salt — taste as you go! — and serve. Leftover soup can be refrigerated for up to a week.

Note that soup will thicken upon standing. I like not-so-brothy soup, but if you’d rather have more broth, pour a little fresh broth into your next-day soup and mix well before reheating. Serve with grated or shaved Parmesan if you like.

Enjoy!

* If you’d rather skip the roasting, proceed directly to making the soup. When you add the lentils, set your timer for 10 minutes. Add the halved sprouts and the cubed potatoes at that point and simmer everything for a final 10 minutes.

Sunny Side Up Eggs with Smoked Salmon & Dill

Smoked salmon isn’t just for bagels and cream cheese any more — it’s too delicious and convenient to not serve it in a wider variety of ways. And as long as you opt for wild salmon, you’ll be enjoying an anti-inflammatory omega-3-rich boost to your meal. Here’s why: that gorgeous salmon hue is due to the salmon’s diet of red-pigmented krill. The krill are red because of the algae they eat, which in turn contains astaxanthin (the name of the phytochemical that causes the red color) and omega-3 fatty acids. Farmed salmon don’t eat krill, they eat dye chips. If they didn’t eat dye, their flesh would be gray rather than “salmon”-colored.

So what else aren’t the farmed salmon eating because they aren’t eating krill? You got it: the omega-3s. Hence, farmed salmon is nowhere near as anti-inflammatory as wild salmon. Sustainably managed wild Alaskan salmon is also is much better bet for the environment. Point is, it’s worth choosing wild salmon. If you also go with eggs from pastured hens to make this quick breakfast, your day will be off to one heck of an energy-rich, anti-aching day!

Note that smoked salmon, lox, and gravlax are all terms used to described salmon that has been cured and/or smoked in various ways. “Kippered” refers to herring that has been smoked.

Sunny Side Up Eggs with Smoked Salmon & Dill

Ghee or butter, preferably from grass-fed cows
Eggs, preferably from pastured hens
Smoked wild salmon, minced
Dried dill for garnish

Melt a pat of ghee or butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Crack in eggs — figure on two per person — and let cook undisturbed for about 3 minutes or until egg whites are opaque and lightly brown on the bottom. Using a large spatula, gently flip/slide over eggs and cook for an additional minute. Serve topped with minced salmon and a sprinkling of dill. Talk about five minutes deliciously well spent!

Enjoy!

Baked Potato "Cake"

If you have a bit of spare time and a sacrificial kitchen towel*, making a baked potato cake — which can be turned into the world’s tastiest hash browns if you have leftovers! — is a fun way to prepare potatoes. All you need is butter, salt and pepper, and baking/starchy potatoes. (As opposed to waxy potatoes, which aren’t quite starchy enough to do the job here, especially since we’re leaving the skins on.) It’s also quite helpful to have a oven-safe wire rack and a plate that will fit over the top of a 9″ skillet. You can bake the cake directly on a covered baking sheet rather than on a wire rack, but going the rack route will make for a crispier cake.

The flipping part is a little bit tricky, but just remember this: you can’t go wrong with potatoes and butter. Even if you wind up with a smashed cake rather than a flipped one, it’ll still taste delicious.

* I say “sacrificial” because the pigments/antioxidants in the potato will turn the towel black. It’s a fascinating process to watch, actually — when you first squeeze the grated potato in the towel, the towel acquires a brownish hue, but as the pigments oxidize, the brown becomes dark brown and finally almost black. Washing out the towel in running water will turn it grey. Potato-scented grey. So be sure to use a towel you don’t care about…or use one you’ve been wanting to make a potato-scented grey. I’ve designated my sacrificial towel as a potato-twisting towel and plan to re-use it accordingly.

Baked Potato “Cake”

Butter, preferably from grass-fed cows
1 baking potato (the Idaho variety generally works out to be 3/4 to 1 lb. per potato), scrubbed but not peeled
1 sacrificial kitchen towel
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 425F. Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil and top with a wire rack. If you’re going to put the cake directly on the sheet, cover it with parchment paper. Melt about 1 T. butter in a 9″ nonstick skillet over low heat.

Grate the potato with a cheese grater, piling the potato onto the sacrificial towel as you go. Wrap the grated potato securely into the center of the towel, then hold it above the sink and twist it as hard as you can. You should see plenty of juice trickle out. Scrape the grated potato into a large mixing bowl. Stir in melted butter and a generous helping of salt and pepper.

Melt another tablespoon of butter in the 9″ skillet. Add the potato, pressing down gently but firmly with a heat-proof spatula to smooth out your cake. Increase heat to medium-high and cook for 3 minutes or until the underside looks brown when you use the spatula to gently pull up a side so that you can peek underneath.

Take the skillet over to the counter and put a large plate on top of it. Invert the skillet quickly — but securely! — so that the cake drops onto the plate. Slide the cake back into the skillet, return to heat, and cook for another 3 minutes.

Slide the cake onto the wire rack/sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Remove and let cool for at least 5 minutes before shifting/cutting the cake. (The cake will harden into place as it cools.) If you used a rack, place a clean large plate over the cake and flip it over. If the cake sticks to the rack, use your fingers to gently press the cake down and away from the rack, poking your fingers into the space between the bars and gradually working the cake free from the rack. (Starch sticks; that’s why the cake sticks together to begin with.)

Serve immediately, either plain or topped. Yummy pairings include smoked salmon and whole-milk Greek yogurt with a dill garnish (a Russian approach) as well as black beans, corn, and Cheddar cheese (a Mexican approach). Leftover “slices” can be kept for up to 4 days in the fridge. Just sauté them in butter for a few minutes over medium heat, and you’ll have the most amazing hash browns you’ve ever tasted. Even die-hard fast food lovers would have to admit that your potatoes beat the heck outta those McDonald’s fries that people say they like so much.

Incidentally, ever looked at the ingredient list on those fries? Here it is, direct from the McD’s website: “Potatoes, vegetable oil (canola oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavor [wheat and milk derivatives]*, citric acid [preservative]), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate (maintain color), salt. Prepared in vegetable oil (Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness). Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent.” Note the hydrogenated oil (a.k.a. trans fat) and wheat and milk derivatives.

All your potatoes have is potatoes (with skins!), butter, salt, and pepper.

Enjoy!

Mexican Pozole

Who says you can’t have a fiesta in the wintertime? (Especially when it’s 48F outside. It’s like spring in the winter!) Unlike mexicanized restaurant food in the U.S., actual food in Mexico is fresh, vibrant, and light in a satisfying and hearty kind of way. Case in point: a crisp, refreshing version of pozole, served with Applegate pastured bacon and Greek yogurt as toppings. I added chayote squash and navy beans, too — I like having something to chew on in my soups — but as long as you include hominy and chili powder in your batch, you’ll capture the essence of pozole.

Pozole
Makes enough for 4 hearty servings, especially if you include all of the toppings.

1 small onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, chopped
2 cups chicken broth
28 oz. can of tomatoes
15 oz. can of navy beans (my favorite brand of beans is Eden)
1 T. chili powder (I adore chili powder from Spice Hunter)
1 chayote squash, peeled, spongy core removed, flesh cut into 1″ cubes (optional, but adds to the Latin flair of the dish); if you can’t find chayote, opt for sweet potato
15 oz. can of hominy (I prefer yellow, but white works, too)

Optional toppings:
Cooked bacon from pastured hogs (see the Baked Bacon post for tips on finding and preparing top-quality bacon)
Whole-milk Greek yogurt
Chopped cilantro
Lime wedges
Thinly sliced cabbage
Chopped avocado

Drizzle a splash of extra-virgin olive oil into a large soup pot. Add onions and sautée over medium heat for 5 minutes or until the onions are soft but not yet brown. Add garlic, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook for another 2 minutes or until garlic is fragrant and soft. Pour in chicken broth, 1 cup of water, the tomatoes, and the beans. (Seeing as Eden beans are canned in BPA-free cans with sea salt and a pinch of seaweed, I add the contents of the entire can.) Stir in the chili powder and bring to a boil.

Add the chayote/sweet potato, reduce heat to a gentle simmer, and let the squash cook for 10 minutes. Poke a piece to see if it has reached its desired tenderness. (I like mine a bit chewy.) If you’d like to add more chili powder or a dash of sea salt, now’s a good time to do that, too.

Stir in hominy, simmer for another minute to heat everything through, and serve. Garnish with any or all of the optional toppings. Leftover pozole can be refrigerated for up to 5 days — like all tomato-based soups and sauces, the flavor deepens upon standing. You may like it even better the next day.

Enjoy!