Long week ahead, Empty fridge

You could, of course, make this stew with all fresh ingredients. I bet it would taste better. But this one is basically instant food cobbled together out of bags in the freezer and odds and ends in the fridge. It tastes rich, Italian without pasta, and delicious. In a short time, without a trip to the store, I have 4 dinners (or breakfasts).

1 bag frozen (already cooked) pearl onions
1 bag frozen multi-colored peppers
1 bag frozen asparagus
5c chicken stock
2/3 jar organic marinara sauce (I had this leftover in the fridge, but you could use a can of diced tomatoes too)
4lbs hot italian chicken sausage
1/4-1/2c pesto (if you don't have pesto you could use olive oil and some dried Italian seasonings like marjoram, thyme, oregano and basil)

Place the chicken sausage in one deep skillet. Add 1/2" water, cover and simmer about 20min. Meanwhile dump all the still-frozen vegetables into your large soup pot, add the pesto and the stock and turn on the heat. Bring to a simmer. When the sausage is done, remove it from the pan and slice it. Add sausage to the vegetables, add your tomatoes sauce and heat through. Sometimes it is just a relief to have appropriate food on hand.

Nutrition Research and Men or Never Be Without Sausage

The effect of prenatal, pre-conception and lactational nutrition has always been at the center of my interest in food and health. The majority of health care practitioners are deathly afraid of discussing pre-natal and pre-conception nutrition with women because they don't want women to feel guilty if their child has a health or behavioral issue that might be related to Mom's poor nutrition. Health care practitioners are afraid to discuss issues of nutrition with breastfeeding Moms (lactational nutrition) for the very real reason that if Mom thinks her diet is bad for her baby she will quit breastfeeding rather than change her own diet. We have lost touch with an incredibly important aspect of reproduction that was a hallmark of traditional cultures: what you eat is directly correlated with the health of your child. Even the most "primitive" of peoples had special nutrition practises for newly married couples (preconception) or pregnant and breastfeeding women. Foods such as raw organ meats, fish eggs, and bitter herbs and weeds were carefully collected by the families and hunters of a group and reserved for members of the group who were in child-bearing mode. Gathering these special foods was performed at great risk to the group often involving trading with an enemy or treacherous expeditions. When asked why they take such risk to procure special foods traditional peoples don't say "because decades of research finally convinced us that adequate folic acid prevents neurologic defects". They say "because without these sacred foods for the parents the children are not strong". The reality of hunter-gatherers was that a child with a significant health issue at birth would die and even a small issue, which we don't even consider a disability today, like poor eyesight or crooked teeth, would likely mean that child did not reach adult hood or could not hunt or support the group. There is no room in this discussion for blame. Guilt is not powerful. Knowledge is power. With knowledge and power comes responsibility. Responsibility is certainly a heavy burden at times, especially when it comes to raising children. During the last few centuries of industrialization we have forgotten our sacred food practises, so we rely on research. Recent research finally is getting around to handing some of the power for healthy babies over to the Dads!! We mostly think of men as sperm donors who either are "good" husbands and fathers or "bad" ones. Our concept of the importance of preconception nutrition for men has been stuck at knowing that if men had really poor nutrition their fertility would drop and they would have trouble fathering a child at all. Slowly, slowly research is digging more deeply into the effect of a father's nutrition on his future children. A fascinating study just published discusses the relationship between the protein intake of males and the cholesterol and lipid synthesis of their offspring:
"The phenomenon, called epigenetic inheritance – where changes in gene expression not caused by changes to the underlying DNA sequence are passed from a parent to a child – may be relevant to a number of illnesses.
Researchers fed different diets to two groups of male mice – the first set receiving a standard diet, while the second received a low-protein diet.
All females were fed the same, standard diet.
They observed that offspring of the mice fed the low-protein diet exhibited a marked increase in the genes responsible for lipid and cholesterol synthesis in comparison to offspring of the control group fed the standard diet – indicating an increased risk of heart disease.
Previous studies have suggested a father's lifestyle can come back to genetically affect his kids – but were unable to rule out socioeconomic factors."
I look forward to the day when men and women will discuss freely and openly with their health care practitioner and their families, the impact of preconception, prenatal and lactational nutrition on the next generation. In the meantime, although my childbearing days are firmly behind me, I'm not going to be one of the low-protein lab rats. Did you know that a couple pounds of chicken sausage cooked up on a Sunday evening is better than an Instant Breakfast on Monday morning? Sometimes I have been know to run late and lack organization in the morning, so while finding homework, computer cords and packing lunches, I just throw my chicken sausage into the nearest appliance that provides heat (pan on the stove, toaster oven) and then I dump it in a bowl and it becomes travel food. You just never know when, at the stoplight during your morning commute, a movement in the car next to you will catch your eye, you will look over expecting to see someone sipping a syrupy "coffee", eating a "breakfast sandwich" or applying mascara while talking on the phone. Instead you will see a completely organized, saucy mother of two boys, eating sausage with her fingers out of a hand made bowl. Mother and boys might be singing along with some classic rock at the same time because eating sausage in the car just calls out for accompaniment by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I believe Lynyrd Skynyrd is also the proper way to prepare for Spanish quizzes and multiplication tests. Try it.

Cranberry Sauce-truly hunted and gathered

Combining new and unusual flavors is one of the most rewarding expressions of culinary artistry. Our global food world has opened up a whole new array of tastes and ingredients to us in the kitchen. This is exciting and makes for some delicious recipes, but it also allows us to engage in some eating habits that are extremely suspect in terms of sustainability. The presence of international flavorings certainly takes us a long ways away from the flavor experiences of our hunter gatherer forebearers. We are approaching the Thanksgiving holiday. There is no shortage of writings on the meaning of Thanksgiving, food and the politics of settling the United States. Personally, I am grateful for a day of family, food, rest and feasting and I believe it is a wonderful day for many of us. However, I also spent many years learning about the history and politics of European settlers and the Native peoples they displaced. This blog is also not the place for an evaluation of that shocking chain of events. This blog is about food and hunter gatherer food traditions. We have robbed the native people's of the United States of many of their food traditions, either by hunting their food supply to extinction, forcing them off the land that sustained them, or by wreaking ecological havoc with water usage practices and invasive species. On this Thanksgiving Day, when we are supposed to be honoring the eastern native peoples, the Abenaki and their neighbors, for saving the helpless, starving pilgrims let's take a moment to be true to the food traditions of those people. Today, we begin with that deep red staple, the cranberry. Cranberry sauce is on many tables only once per year. For some of us it comes jellied in a can and for others we get more adventurous combining cranberries with cinnamon, cloves, oranges and sugar. I'd like you to think about how cranberries would have been used by the Abenaki (or maybe the pitiful pilgrims). Cranberries grow in a swamp where there are nice cold winters. They are primarily a crop of New England. Gathering cranberries is a spectacularly fun activity. There are no thorns like raspberries, you don't have to bend over like strawberries and there aren't zillions of flies and mosquitos like blueberries. In my experience you paddle down a lovely blue river on one of the final brilliantly sunny warm days of the season in your canoe. You paddle up to the bushes alongside the river and you reach out and pick the cranberries and toss them into your basket. If you are brave and adventurous you might climb out of the canoe and cautiously pick your way into the bushes hoping not to misplace a foot and end up waist deep in really cold water!
If we put our minds to the ingredients available to the Abenaki or other early New England settlers (who had used up all their ship stores) we quickly realize that cane sugar would not be available. Citrus fruit was certainly not around, nor were the spices of Asia and Africa. However, gelatin was available in great quantities as well as three wild sweeteners: birch syrup, maple syrup and honey. I made mine with birch syrup.
The Roots of Cranberry Sauce

1 bag organic cranberries, washed
3T powdered gelatin (this obviously is not the form the original Thanksgiving kitchen would have possessed)
1/4-1/2c birch syrup
Clean water

Cook cranberries in 1/4c water on low heat until they soften and burst (about 15min).
You can either press the cooked cranberries through a sieve (wait til they cool) or you can dump them in a blender. I used the blender because I want to eat all the skins and seeds. In my blender I added the birch syrup. Blend until smooth. In the pot you cooked the cranberries in add 1/4c water and heat so that you can dissolve your gelatin in it. Stir up your gelatin until it dissolves and then pour the blended cranberries and sweetener in with the dissolved gelatin. Stir well. Use any type of glass mold or dish that is smooth. If you are worried about removing the sauce from the mold you could line the mold with saran wrap, but let the sauce cool a little before you pour it in. Pour the sauce into the mold and refrigerate for several hours. The flavor of my sauce is deep, rich, and tart, but it is actually less sour than many of the overly sweet canned sauces I've tasted.

Honor the hunter gatherers that gave us this holiday.