One of my all time most used pizza toppings is something I usually call ‘fake sausage’. It generally involved dumping a bunch of sausag-y seasonings on any ground meat I had around as I browned it, and it was a big hit with my nieces and nephews.
I have managed to standardize my recipe a bit for the purposes of this blog post, but there’s still plenty of room for adjusting the seasonings to taste. As I generally make it, it has a strong herby, savory flavor without being too spicy hot.
Using this seasoning blend allows for control over the healthiness of all the ingredients of your sausage, but it also allows for using cheaper meats (such as ground turkey) in place of sausage if you’re trying to save money, and the convenience of being able to make a quick sausage replacement for a recipe out of any ground meat you have on hand.
(Edit: I don’t normally keep fennel on hand, but I have added it to the list of optional spices in the recipe, as you may find it greatly increases the sausag-y flavor of your fake sausage.)
Healthiness Rating: Healthy
One of the main advantages of this seasoning mix is that you have complete control over the ingredients. Want to avoid MSG? Just don’t add any. Want to use only non-irradiated spices? No problem. Want to make sausage out of your grassfed beef? Easy.
Yumminess Rating: Yummy
As every sausage brand and blend is a bit different, this one has it’s own flavor profile, but it’s been pretty popular with everyone who’s tried it, and qualifies as husband approved.
Brown meat in skillet, adding spices as it cooks. (Measuring spices is optional. I prefer the sprinkle, stir, taste method myself. ) If you prefer, you can mix up a larger batch of seasoning ahead of time, and simply add a couple TBSP of the mix to your ground meat, but I prefer to be able to customize the exact blend on the fly as needed.
Didn’t you know that ice cream always tastes better when it’s slightly blurry? Also when it’s doused in caramel syrup… Yum…
Caramel syrup is possibly the most addictive food I have ever made. Licking out the pot after making it is a must. There’s something about the balance of sweetness and creaminess and gooeyness that can only be improved on by turning it into salted caramel.
Now, I’m not going to try to claim that caramel syrup is a super food or anything like that. BUT if you like caramel, this homemade caramel syrup is the way to eat it. No chemicals, and some nutrients left in the unrefined sugar make this a ‘not bad’ splurge choice.
I like to keep it on hand for the occasional (usually decaf) salted caramel mocha, but it’s also good drizzled over vanilla ice cream or added to a mug of hot cocoa. I’m sure there are plenty of other uses, so if you have a favorite use for caramel syrup, comment below and let me know what it is.
Healthiness Rating: Kinda Healthy
I wouldn’t make this a cornerstone food in your diet or anything, but as sweet treats go, it’s a reasonable choice.
Yumminess Rating: Yummy
Pretty much through the roof on this one. This stuff is amazing.
Caramel Syrup
1/2 cup butter
1 cup turbinado sugar
1/2 cup milk
optional: pinch of sea salt, dash of vanilla
Melt butter in a medium saucepan over a medium heat.
Add sugar and let cook, whisking occasionally, until the sugar is dissolved and mixture is thick and bubbly. (Because the turbinado sugar doesn’t dissolve well the mixture may stay a little bit grainy until you put the milk in. Don’t worry if you can’t get it to dissolve completely, just give it a good two or three minutes to dissolve as much as it’s going to.)
Add milk. Whisk until thickened and completely smooth. (All the sugar needs to be dissolved at this point, or your syrup will be grainy.)
Use immediately, or refrigerate for a thicker caramel sauce. Store in the refrigerator.
Note: If you happen to be storing this in a plastic container, make the sure the syrup has completely cooled before you pour into the container. The syrup retains heat well and might make your plastic container crumple into odd shapes if it hasn’t completely cooled. Don’t ask me now I know this… The syrup thickens up so much, you’re probably better off storing it in a glass pint jar and spooning it out than trying to keep it in a squeeze bottle anyway.
(Note, 3/15/22: Since originally writing this post I have sometimes upgraded to brining my own brisket. I still use this spice blend, but follow the directions here: https://wellnessmama.com/4420/corned-beef-brisket )
As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, St Patrick’s Day is a holiday we really enjoy celebrating at our house, for both culinary and historical reasons.
Our typical main course for a St Patrick’s Day dinner is corned beef. This is one of those areas of compromise between health and budget: the best option would be to get a high quality beef brisket and brine it myself to avoid all chemical additions to the meat. Instead I buy inexpensive corned beef on sale, throw away the spice packet and use my own blend of spices, so that I at least avoid any msg or other mystery ingredients in the spices.
In case you’re wondering, the rest of our St Patricks Day menu typically looks something like this:
Irish Soda Bread (my husband prefers a sweeter version, technically closer to Spotted Dog Bread than traditional plain Irish soda bread) with butter
Sometimes we may also add an Irish cheese such as Dubliner which is made by Kerrygold (I’ve seen this particular cheese both at Aldi and Costco) or homemade Irish Cream. (Because it’s already a hearty meal, if we do get an Irish cheese, we’re more likely to it as an appetizer or an evening snack than part of the meal. The Irish Cream is also more of an after dinner drink.)
Today I’m sharing my recipe for the spice mix I add to my corned beef brisket. This is my own interpretation of a pickling spice blend, which is basically what the mysterious spice packet included in the corned beef package is supposed to be.
I’ve found it to be a pretty forgiving recipe. In fact, until I was getting ready to write this post, I’d never measured the spices, I just used a heavy sprinkling of some spices and a lighter sprinkling of others. You should be able to pretty easily adjust this recipe to taste and based on what ingredients you have on hand.
Healthiness Rating: Healthy
As with a lot of my recipes, your healthiness results will vary based on the quality of the ingredients you use, in this case most notably the quality of meat. However, this spice blend is on its own merits good for you, and allows you to replace a prepackaged spice packet with mystery ingredients that might include MSG. It seems to me that should merit a healthy rating.
Yumminess Rating: Yummy
It’s been so long since I’ve had corned beef fixed with the included spice packet that I’m not going to try to make any claims this spice mix tastes the same. What I can say is that this spice mix makes the corned beef taste very good and very savory, and based on the results I have no reason to wish for a spice packet or any other spice options.
Spice Mix for Corned Beef Brisket
3-4 pound corned beef brisket
1 TBSP mustard powder
1 TBSP black pepper
1 tsp dill seed
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp turmeric
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp clove
Sprinkle spices on corned beef and cook according to favorite method. This is how I like to do it:
Chop 1/2 a head of cabbage and 2-3 pounds of potatoes and put them in the bottom of a crock pot. (If you’d like, give the potatoes a light sprinkle of salt, but be careful because the corned beef is going to add a LOT of salt to the dish.)
Remove corned beef from packaging, discarding the spice packet and juices. (If you like you can rinse the corned beef as well.) Put the corned beef brisket on top of the potatoes and cabbage, sprinkle with the spices, and cook on high for 4-7 hours or on low for 7-10 hours. (Corned beef is best with a long, slow, moist cooking time in order to tenderize well.)
A close up view of fresh salsa, because all the artsy pictures I got were blurry, and we already ate it all, so I can’t take more pictures. I know it’s not quite the right time of year for fresh … Continue reading →
Homemade raw Greek yogurt, topped with honey and cinnamon.
Over the past couple of years I have struggled with some fairly major health problems. leaving me with low energy most of the time, ranging to completely fatigued and exhausted on a bad day. Thankfully, the bad days are becoming less frequent than they used to be, but even on an average day I have far more project ideas than I have energy to put into projects.
This means, that while cooking healthy food is usually a priority for me, I really don’t like to make any of my projects more involved or complicated than they have to be. Certain projects that others consider complex might fit nicely into my routine, but other projects, sometimes even one that don’t seem so complicated to most people, just seem overwhelming.
So, when I discovered a super easy way to make my own raw yogurt, I was thrilled. Yogurt is generally considered fairly fussy. Regulating the temperature is a pain and doesn’t seem to guarantee results no matter how carefully it’s done. Plus, I was on GAPS diet at the time, with little energy to spare, and a lot of special cooking to be done, and a lot of slowly fermented food needed on a regular basis. The idea that I could drop yogurt in a jar, add milk, and then just let the whole thing sit out in a warm spot to make yogurt was a relief.
Now, as simple as the process is, fermented foods do often have a bit of a finicky streak. You may immediately find a warm spot that happily makes yogurt without any problems, ever. More likely, you’ll have to try a couple warm spots to see which one ferments your milk at the speed which is convenient to your schedule. You may find that the warm spot on top of your fridge, that normally turns out yogurt like clockwork, overheats on your baking day, and the pervading warmth of the oven ferments your yogurt unexpectedly faster than normal.
To me, these inconsistencies are simply an expected part of cooking real and traditional food. Like making soup with leftovers, or marrying into a family that makes a lot of last minute plans, life is often something of a grab bag no matter how carefully we try to regiment it.
I have found this method of making yogurt to produce mostly consistent results, and the occasional batch of extra sour and thick yogurt, or runny yogurt can easily find their home in baked goods without dramatically disrupting the rhythm of my life. These odd batches of yogurt even seem to make fine starter for a new batch in most cases, as the inconsistencies are naturally evened out by the steady working of the natural probiotics and enzymes through slight disruptions of their routine.
If this sort of adaptation to changes in your life is not for you, I recommend googling ‘crockpot yogurt’ and continuing in your quest to bend the world to your will without detouring through my yogurt making method. Best of luck to you in that endeavor.
In the realm of adapting to changes, the video I have posted on making yogurt is technically a fail video. It still demonstrates *how* to use my yogurt making technique, but in a moment of brain fog, I misremembered how much whey was needed for the amount of yogurt I was making, resulting in a less than optimal batch of yogurt. Feel free to both laugh at my fail and glean what you can from watching my methods.
Straining (or draining) the yogurt to make it thicker is completely optional, but since we really like greek style yogurt, and I find it really handy to have whey around for recipes (soaking whole wheat flour, ketchup, etc), I almost always do drain it.
Healthiness Rating: Healthy
Not only is the yogurt completely natural, but making your own plain yogurt gives you the ability to make your own flavored yogurts without any unnatural sweeteners or additives. Obviously, you get an extra boost to your enzymes if you start with raw milk, but you can use this method for any type of dairy you generally use (I haven’t tested it with non-dairy milks) and meet your general health standards.
Yumminess Rating: Kinda Yummy
I’ll be honest here: homemade yogurt isn’t something my husband raves about. He actually kinda likes Yoplaits.
As for myself, I don’t hate yogurt, but I’ve never been a huge fan of any kind of yogurt, even including Yoplait (which baffles my husband). But, throwing a couple splops (yes, that’s a very specific measurement, why do you ask?) of yogurt into a smoothie is easy and doesn’t adversely affect the taste, and if I mix the homemade yogurt with sufficient honey and fruit, my husband doesn’t mind eating it, and in the right mood, I rather enjoy it.
Homemade Yogurt
1 cup of whey or yogurt
3 cups of milk
Mix whey or yogurt with milk in a quart jar. Cover and set in a warm place for 12-24 hours. Refrigerate.
To make greek yogurt: Line a strainer or colander with cheesecloth or thin cotton (not terrycloth) dishtowel. Set on a bowl to catch the whey. Pour yogurt into the cheesecloth lined strainer and let it drain for a few hours, until it is your desired thickness. (You can also make yogurt cheese, which can be used as a cream cheese substitute, by draining the yogurt longer, until it’s very thick.) Using a large metal spoon or rubber spatula, transfer yogurt to a jar or covered bowl and store in refrigerator. Pour whey into a separate bowl or jar and store in refrigerator.
Sushi is the kind of recipe used to terrify new cooks with the complexities of cooking. Recipes call for strangely obscure ingredients and insist that one *cannot* properly make sushi without a specific type of bamboo cutting board for rolling it. Sushi is mysterious and vaguely associated with raw fish and food poisoning and something that one should not even dare attempt without proper training.
In reality, the sushi we’re familiar with is a variation on the japanese version of a sandwich. The simplest version is a rice ball formed around meat, vegetables, or random leftovers, and is the typical lunch of a Japanese blue collar worker. The nori rolled version is a bit fancier, but still not as terrifying as everyone makes it out to be.
You do need a few distinctive ingredients, but they needn’t all be obscure and terrifying. Let’s go over the basics:
Nori sheets: A nutrient dense seaweed used to hold the sushi together. Very good for you, and with a fairly mild flavor, it is very much worth keeping around for its health benefits. Raw nori is, of course, much touted for it’s extra health benefits, but does tend to be a bit chewier, so you may choose roasted nori sheets for better texture.
Rice: You can use white or brown rice, and it doesn’t have to be any special sushi variety, but it MUST be short grain to stick together properly. (I use brown rice, soaked overnight to improve the texture and flavor.) The rice is cooked with vinegar, salt and sweetener for proper sushi flavor.
Meat: I prefer to use canned crab meat as a traditional style meat. (Imitation crab is cheaper, but laden with chemicals, and fresher crab seems to me have a stranger flavor.) However, remembering that sushi is essentially a type of sandwich, you can feel free to use any type of meat you might use in a sandwich, such as chicken salad, ham or turkey (for an americanized sushi) or for a more traditional sushi, shrimp, smoked salmon or probably even a canned salmon or canned tuna.
Vegetables: I’m a bit hazy on which vegetables are appropriate for traditional japanese sushi, but some general possibilities are celery (matchsticks), carrots (shaved, or sliced thin), cucumber (matchsticks, or sliced very thin), sprouts, spinach (blanched, possibly dressed with vinegar or other seasoning), mushrooms (chopped or sliced thin), apples (matchsticks), bell peppers (sliced thin), bamboo shoots, avocado (sliced thin), green onions
Extras: Traditionally, one might include things like pickled ginger and wasabi in one’s sushi experience, though I’m a bit vague one whether they should be included in the sushi fillings or used as dipping sauce and topping. Americanized extras would include cream cheese, mozzerella or cheddar, peanut butter (I ran across this idea elsewhere, it fit’s with the idea that it’s just a sandwich, but I have to admit I’m a little weirded out by the idea of peanut butter in my sushi.) and possibly scrambled eggs
Sauces: Traditionally, wasabi and soy sauce (or this ‘soyless sauce‘) might be used as dipping sauces for the sushi. I made a highly americanized version of one spicy sushi sauce by mixing a bit of hot sauce into mayonnaise. Also pickled ginger (which I just recently realized wouldn’t be hard to make) is traditionally used as a sushi condiment.
Healthiness Rating: Healthy
Nori is exceptionally nutritious, and making your own sushi you can choose rice, sweetener and other ingredients as healthy as you like. The brown rice, seafood (or other healthy meat) and veggie sushi I make, dressed with apple cider vinegar and turbinado sugar is not only healthy, but nearing superfood status.
Yumminess Rating: Yummy
Any time my husband is raving about eating brown rice, vegetables and a super food such as nori, even with a bit of meat thrown in, I figure this is a meal that should be repeated as often as possible. Naturally, you can customize the fillings to your taste, but there’s something about the small slices of food rolled in flavorful sushi rice that makes them more palatable than you might expect. I normally don’t like cucumber or celery, but in sushi they just add a nice crunch. My husband isn’t a huge fan of avocado, but quite enjoys sushi made with it.
Sushi
(makes about 12 pieces or one to two servings, depending on whether it’s served as an entree)
1 1/2 cups of dry brown rice (I recommend soaking it the night before)
3 TBSP apple cider vinegar (or rice vinegar for a more traditional flavor)
3 TBSP turbinado sugar
1 1/8 tsp sea salt
3 cups water
2 sheets of nori
3-4 kinds of veggies, cut in matchsticks or sliced very thin
meat, fish or crab (technically optional, but really, why make vegetarian sushi?)
1-2 extras (optional)
Examples:
avocado slices, cucumber, crab, cream cheese
green apple, ham, mozzerella
carrot, green onion, salmon
Cook rice with water, sugar, salt and vinegar. Let cool to room temperature.
Set nori rough side up on a bamboo sushi board or countertop. Moisten hands, take a handful of rice and spread it thinly across the sheet of nori. Leave some space along the edges for ‘overflow’.
Add fillings along one edge, remembering not to be so extravagant with the fillings that they make your sushi too fat, or leak out the edge.
Dry hand carefully before touching the nori. Fold the edge of the nori slightly over the fillings, then carefully begin rolling the sushi into a tight roll. (See video for more details.)
Slice into pieces about an inch thick, or whatever thickness you like your sushi.
While I have a fair amount of Scottish blood in me, and my husband is part Irish, we share an interest in good foods, celtic music and traditions, and church history. As you might guess, we celebrate St Patrick’s Day every year, and with lots of Irish food. Our standard Irish dinner is corned beef with cabbage and potato, a sweeter version of Irish soda bread, and whatever other irish or green (or orange if I’m feeling especially like a cranky protestant Scottish girl…) food happens to hit the table.
I discovered boxty when looking for ways to extend our Irish food exploration beyond just dinner on St Patricks Day–why not have Irish food for breakfast too?
Boxty is like a cross between hashbrowns, biscuits and pancakes, and can be eating like any of those: with lots of butter, with butter and honey or syrup, with meat and gravy, or with ketchup. It can also be eaten as a breakfast food, or as a side at lunch or dinner. (Or as a snack for that matter. They’re even fairly portable, though better when they’re still warm.)
Healthiness rating: Healthy to Kinda Healthy
While I have no problem with including this in a meal and then classifying the meal as healthy, I am, for some reason hesitant to put forward this recipe as having a lot of redeeming health food features. Depending on your definition of healthy food, and what kind of flour you decide to use, this could range from healthy to kinda healthy food.
Yumminess rating: Yummy
This one is less complicated: yummy and husband approved. (But then, he’s Irish, and eats cold baked potatoes straight out of the fridge, so in this case it might actually be more helpful to point out that I also like this recipe.)
Boxty
Large batch:
10 cups of mashed potatoes
10 cups of grated potatoes
8 cups of flour (white or whole wheat)
5 cups of milk or whey
1 cup melted butter
2 TBSP salt
Small batch:
2 cups of mashed potatoes
2 cups of grated potatoes
1 1/2 cups of flour
1 cup milk or whey
3 TBSP melted butter
1 tsp salt
butter or oil for frying
Put the grated potatoes in a clean cotton dishcloth. Squeeze out the excess moisture. Mix grated potatoes with other ingredients (other than butter or oil for frying, obviously).
Heat butter over medium heat in skillet. Using about 1/4 cup or 1/3 cup batter per pancake, depending on size desired, fry two minutes on each side, until outside is crispy and inside is set to a firm but crispy consistency.
I’ve never seen an episode of The Pioneer Woman’s cooking show. I’ve been a fan of her recipes and her blogging style for years, but it didn’t even dawn on me until recently that most of her fans probably, you know, watch her show.
I’ve also probably never cooked one of her recipes exactly as it’s written. Granted, there are few recipes I have cooked exactly as written. Because really, who has exactly the same ingredients and food preferences as another cook somewhere? Still, I can see this affecting my qualifications as a true fan.
Despite these fan failings I just want to say that I pretty much stole this recipe from The Pioneer Woman (and then proceeded to tweak it for the way I cook) because she has amazing recipes. Her original version of this recipe is here: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/05/quickie-homemade-chicken-strips/
Now for my changes:
I don’t buy the precut chicken strips. I buy ‘split chicken breasts’ with the bone still in, hack out the bones the best I can for the stock pot (the skin goes in with them), and cut the remaining slab of chicken into strips an inch or two wide. Any odd shaped bits are considered bonus nuggets and thrown in with the chicken strips to be fried up at the same time. (Unfortunately I don’t have video of this part of the process, but if there’s interest I can make a video next time I’m cutting up chicken breast.) I buy ahead when split chicken breasts are sale for .99 a pound, and divide the chicken strips into quart freezer bags. Each bag holds around two pounds of meat.
I almost never have buttermilk on hand. At different times I’ve used raw milk, soured raw milk, yogurt and whey to soak the chicken strips in, and they all seem to work equally well. The important part is soaking the chicken so the flour has plenty of moisture to stick to when you go to bread them. I usually just pour my chosen liquid into the freezer bag the night before when I pull the chicken strips out of the freezer, so they have a good long soaking time, but according the the original recipe, soaking them for 15 to 20 minutes before you cook them is good enough.
I use whole wheat flour instead of white. Also, because the whole wheat flour has more texture to start with, I find the touch of buttermilk in the flour to be completely unnecessary. I use soft white wheat, so the breading has little to no whole wheat flour taste. Red wheat should work just as well in the process but would have much more of a whole wheat flavor. (For those who are concerned that the whole wheat flour in this recipe doesn’t get soaked, see my comments on phytic acid here. This would be one of those cases where I think it’s better to enjoy a moderately healthy food than to obsess over making it ‘perfectly healthy’ and ruin your enjoyment of the food in the process.)
I use my own spice instead of the spice blend recommended in the original recipe, including, of course, garlic powder.
I avoid vegetable oil, soybean oil, corn oil and canola oil (not obsessively, but I’ll make some extra effort to keep other oils in my kitchen instead). I lean toward animal fats and coconut oils as being the healthiest oils, especially for frying, but right now my compromise oil for frying is rice bran oil. It is, at least, non-gmo, and not a food that’s over produced and hidden in most food already, so I’m not afraid of over exposing myself to rice. Sunflower seed oil, grapeseed oil and safflower oil would also fit in the compromise category.
While we’re on the subject of frying, are you poised to object when I get down the healthiness rating and declare a fried food as healthy? Once again, it’s case of moderation and variety. Nearly everything, including water and raw spinach, is bad for you if you over consume it. Yes, I’m in favor of water and raw spinach as part of a healthy diet, possibly even in large amounts, but I think a simple variety of real, non-processed foods takes the stress out of concepts like oxalic acid, phytic acid and other real food scares.
Similarly, a diet consisting only fried food would undoubtedly be problematic, whether that’s because of lack of raw vegetable enzymes or an over consumption of fats. But that’s no reason to declare fried food unhealthy and inedible. Use healthy ingredients, use frying as one of many methods of preparing those healthy ingredients, and enjoy your food before you kill yourself by stressing about your food too much.
Healthiness Rating: Healthy
Chicken, milk or whey, whole wheat flour and healthy (or healthyish) fats. I’m not saying this one’s a superfood, but as noted above, I think it’s perfectly reasonable inclusion in a healthy diet.
Yumminess Rating: Yummy
This one’s a winner, and possibly even a good transition recipe if you’re trying to wean your family off of processed foods. In my opinion, a lot of the real yumminess factor comes in your choice of sauces served with the chicken strips, but they make a solid base for such yumminess.
Chicken Strips
about 2 lbs of strips of chicken breast
about 1 cup of sour milk, yogurt or whey (enough to cover the chicken)
about 1 1/2 cups of soft white wheat flour
1 tsp sea salt, or to taste
1/2 tsp garlic powder, or to taste
optional: heavy dash of black pepper, sprinkle of cayenne
Lard, coconut oil or neutral flavored oil for frying (about 2 cups or so)
Soak chicken strips in chosen liquid overnight, or for a few hours.
Begin heating lard or oil of choice over medium heat in a frying pan. I normally make the oil about half an inch deep in the pan.
Mix flour and spices. (As long as it’s still BEFORE you dip raw meat in it, you can actually taste a pinch of the flour mixture to make sure the salt and spice ratios are to your liking. You want the spices to be a light background flavor, and the flour should tasted salted, but not too salty.)
Unfortunately, I don’t have a really good system for knowing when the oil is hot–I normally just wait two or three minutes, make sure I feel plenty of heat coming off the oil, and start frying. If you’re new to frying and don’t have an oil thermometer, I would mix a spoonful of flour with a spoonful of water, and drop it in the oil when it starts to get warm. When this impromptu batter has bubbling oil around it and is turning golden brown. (If you do have an oil thermometer aim for 350 to 375 degrees.) Adjust the oil temperature as you go, if needed. If the breading is only very lightly browned after cooking for 2 minutes on one side, turn the burner up a notch. If it’s getting dark brown or overly crispy by a minute and a half on one side, turn the burner down a notch (or two).
When the oil is ready, dip a chicken strip in the flour mixture. (Tongs make this part less messy.) Thoroughly coat the strip with flour on both sides. Place the strip (carefully!) into the hot oil (the tongs come in handy again here), and repeat until your pan is full without being crowded.
After about a minute and a half, and when the first side is getting golden brown and crispy, turn over the chicken strips. (It helps to have a second pair of tongs for this part–one for raw chicken, one for cooking chicken. Also, one for raw messy breading, one for hot oil.)
Cook on the other side for about a minute and half, then remove the strips to a warm oven. (I like to put a couple of paper towels on a cookie sheet or plate for receiving the newly fried, and dripping with oil chicken strips.)
If you’re concerned about whether the chicken is done or not, here a few tips: The chicken will be floppy and squashy when raw, cooked chicken will be firm and hold it’s shape when pressed or picked up from one end. If you make a slit into the chicken and clear liquid comes out, it’s done–pink or bloody liquid means it’s not done yet. If you’re still in doubt, cut a couple chicken strips in half to make sure they’re done, until you get a feel for how long they take to cook on your stove. (You could also try the whole meat thermometer thing, but it never works for me.)
This is one of my husband’s favorite vegetables. If your family doesn’t like garlic this recipe won’t help you out much in getting them to eat vegetables, but then if your family doesn’t like garlic, you probably won’t use most of the recipes I post. I like garlic. A lot. I make a conscious effort to use other seasoning strategies at times to switch it up, but if I’m in a hurry and need to season something it will probably get garlic, basil and salt and be declared done and yummy.
Also, anything short of biting into a raw clove of garlic could not possibly qualify as too much garlic around here, so if you’re a nominal fan of garlic, but less hardy in your garlic consumption, you may want to cut back on the number of cloves of garlic used in the recipe.
A note on the amount of green beans: I generally use 16 oz packages of frozen green beans when I can find them, but as stores continue to sneak price increases by shrinking package sizes, I often have 12 oz packages of green beans on hand. Because I cook so much by feel and taste I don’t specifically adjust my recipe to different size bags of green beans, but if it matters to you, the recipe as written is more specifically formulated to the 12 oz size.
Healthiness Rating: Healthy
Not only are none of the ingredients unhealthy, but as a yummy way to eat vegetables, this recipe encourages more vegetable eating than commonly suggest ‘recipes’ such as plain celery sticks or iceberg lettuce with fat free dressing.
Yumminess Rating: Yummy
To quote my husband, “Even people who don’t like green beans like these, because they taste like real food instead of slime”. (He went on to clarify that he, personally, does actually like green beans anyway. They’re just better with garlic and butter on them.)
Garlic Green Beans
1 package frozen green beans (12-16 oz)
5 TBSP butter
2-3 cloves of garlic
1/4 tsp sea salt (or to taste)
Mince or smash the garlic cloves according to your preferred method. (See the video for my preferred ‘smash it with a cleaver’ method. It gets it done fast!)
Melt the butter in a skillet (cast iron is preferable) over medium heat. Add the green beans, garlic and salt. Stir so the butter coats the green beans. Continue to stir as needed until the green beans are all thawed and beginning to warm, then stop stirring for a few minutes.
The green beans will release liquid, which will then boil off until you’re left with just bubbly butter again. At this point, let them cook for one to two more minutes without stirring. (If you’re in a hurry, or able to stand over the pan while they’re cooking, turn up the heat to medium high at this point. If you want them to cook slower, or without direct supervision you can leave the heat on medium and go longer between stirring.) The green beans should begin to develop a slightly caramelized golden brown color by the time you stir them. Be careful not to let them burn, but leave them on the stove until many of the green beans throughout the pan have developed this coloring.
(If you’re in a hurry you can skip the browning step, and just have buttered garlic green beans, but the caramelizing adds a lot to the flavor.)
The above recipe serves 2. If you need to serve a crowd, I recommend using 6 lb green beans, 1 pound of butter, 1 head of garlic and 1 1/2 tsp sea salt (or to taste). You may need to caramelize the green beans in batches when making a larger amount.
(Remember the point in the chocolate syrup video where I almost dripped chocolate syrup on my laptop? At about 6′ 18″ in this video, half a spoonful of green beans goes splat right on my laptop, and I totally try to pretend it didn’t happen.)
Aldi often has fresh pineapples on sale for $1 or $1.29 each. Being the nerd and foodie that I am, I once weighed a pineapple after I’d cut off the top and rind and all the inedible bits to find out how much edible fruit was in a typical pineapple. It weighed right around two pounds, which makes the cost of the fruit on a sale pineapple 50 to 65 cents a pound.
Since my rule of thumb is that any food $1 a pound or less qualifies as cheap food, and I’m especially happy when I find basic, healthy food like fruit, veggies and meat in that price range, I began to make a habit of buying a pineapple or two whenever they went on sale.
However, despite that fact that I knew it was a screaming deal anyway, I started to wonder about all the parts of the pineapple I was throwing away. It seemed like rather a lot of waste. Wasn’t there any use for pineapple rinds?
Turns out , there is a use for them. Google turned up this recipe for tepache, a fermented mexican drink made from pineapple rinds, sugar, and a bit of cinnamon.
Traditionally, tepache is mixed with beer, but on it’s own it seems to have a very low to non-existent alcohol content (depending somewhat, of course, on just how long you ferment it). We’ve used in rum based cocktails a couple of times, but we also just drink it straight as a kind of pineapple soda or use it as a smoothie base.
Healthiness Rating: Healthy
It’s fruit based, probiotic, contains cinnamon which is good for your immune system and blood sugar response, and you can adjust the sugar content down for a more tart, less sweet drink if the turbinado sugar disturbs your healthy food sensibilities.
Yumminess Rating: Yummy
As I’ve said in other recipes occasionally, this isn’t one of those foods that we discovered and decided we had to keep it on hand all the time. It’s a nice change of pace, and it tastes good (and yes, it’s husband approved), but it’s not something I often find myself craving.
Tepache
1-2 cups turbinado sugar (1 cup for a tart drink, 2 cups for a sweet drink)
12 cups water
1 pineapple
cinnamon and ginger to taste (1/2-1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4-1/2 tsp ginger)
optional: clove and/or nutmeg to taste
Put the turbinado sugar and two cups water in a saucepan over a medium heat to dissolve the sugar. Cool.
Rinse the pineapple lightly, but don’t scrub too hard, or use cleaners–you don’t want to remove the natural yeasts that start the fermentation process. Cut the top and bottom off the pineapple, then cut off the peels (see video for more detailed instructions in cutting up your pineapple). Save the pineapple fruit for another use. (If desired, when you cut up the fruit you can add the core to the tepache.
Put the peels in a large bowl or crock suitable for fermenting. Sprinkle with spices. Pour in sugar/water mixture and ten more cups of water. Cover peels with a small plate to keep them submerged.
Cover bowl with a clean dish towel and set aside to ferment for 3-5 days. It should be bubbly and a bit foamy like this when it’s ready to referigerate:
Remove the peels and pour the tepache into a jug or jar. Cap tightly and refrigerate for two to three days until fizzy. (You can also drink it right away if you don’t care about carbonating it.)
Good Bad Food 