The Potluck

I now remember how much I LOVE potluck dinners. For awhile my feeling about potlucks was "where will I find any meat amongst the pasta salads and rice pilafs?". I've always been blessed with incredible friends, many of whom are very good cooks, but many of them, alas, have been vegetarians. Last night I had the good fortune to attend a potluck at which the majority of the people are Paleo eaters. There was one, probably a little bit hungry vegetarian, and I would've cooked some of my vegetables separately from the meat for her had I remembered. I was reminded of what I love about potlucks too. Surprises. Getting a little bit of inside information on the other folks. Checking out what people bring to a potluck is kind of like finding out what kind of underwear they like. It is a piece of personal information that brings you closer to them. When you live your life surrounded by people who like to live well and eat Paleo they also have the ability to inspire you. I love to be humbled by the cooks around me. For example, I always stuff my mushrooms with ground nuts, herbs and garlic. Some time soon I will do it in honor of Summer's mushrooms. There was a meat cake (it was a belated birthday celebration) topped with roasted red peppers, a delicious Paleo chili, stuffed mushrooms with pine nuts and raisins, a huge bowl of guacamole (and no one at Paleo potlucks expects you to only take a little spoonful of guacamole, they expect you to take a huge glop), sliced apples and strawberries with chocolate/avocado and chocolate/almond dip, a crab-spinach dish, delicious varieties of peppers stuffed with meats, some Paleo sweets with shredded coconut, and a shredded pork with sage and butternut squash. The shredded pork and butternut squash with sage was my offering. Here you go:

SHREDDED PORK WITH BUTTERNUT SQUASH AND SAGE
Whether or not I am cooking for a potluck I make an enormous amount. It is very good leftover. Sage is a pretty magical herb. Don't ruin it by combining it with other things. It stands on its own.

About 6lbs of pork shoulder or butt (don't use something fancy like a pork roast or loin, you need the heavily marbled fat)
3-4T dried sage (not the finely powdered stuff)
8T lard (or if you are bereft of lard use clarified butter)
black pepper
1 head of garlic, separated into cloves, peeled and coarsely sliced
4c chicken stock
2 butternut squash (peel them with a carrot peeler and chop them into smallish bite-size pieces, you can either separate the seeds and toast them or eat them later or you can put them in the compost, discard the stringy stuff around the seeds into the compost)
4 medium yellow onions, peeled and finely chopped

Heat the oven to 275F. Cut the pork into large chunks (3-4" pieces). On the stovetop, melt half your lard in an oven proof pot that can be covered. Place the pork pieces in one layer with space between them (you might have to do two batches). Cover with the sage and lots of black pepper. Brown them on high heat on two sides. Once all your pieces of pork are browned on two sides, add 3 cups of the chicken stock to the pan, bring to a simmer. Add all the sliced garlic, cover and place in the oven. The stock should come about 1/3 or 1/2 way up the meat chunks, but should not cover them. The meat should stay in the oven for around five hours. As the five hour mark approaches, place another heavy skillet on the stovetop and melt the rest of the lard in it. Add the squash and onions. Saute on high heat 'til browned (about 12min). Then add your remaining 1c chicken stock, cover and turn to low). Take the meat out of the oven. Remove the meat pieces from the pan and place them on a cutting board that will catch the juices. Put the pan on a burner and turn it onto high. You are going to reduce the liquid in the pan to about half. Stir it every now and then. While the squash and onions are cooking and the meat juices are reducing you shred the pork. Just get two forks and pull the meat apart. It will shred easily. Throw out any big chunks of fat that are left (or your potluck guests and your children will be grossed out). Once all the meat is shredded, and the liquid in the meat pan has been reduced by half, return the meat to the pan and mix it well with the reduced sauce. As soon as the butternut squash is soft and tender to the bite (about 40min, don't undercook it) add it to the meat. Mix gently, add a pinch of sage while you give thanks for the pig you are about to eat. Also add some sea salt if you'd like.

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.

What to do with a Limequat

We have an abundance of citrus fruits ready here in Arizona. Go to the Farmer's market and get some. It is so important for food diversity and security of our food supply (as well as taking in a wider range of nutrients on a regular basis) that we try and eat more unusual plant foods. Many of the more unusual species are better suited to growing in your own local environment. Kumquats are a tiny little orange citrus fruit that are eaten whole (skin and all). Limequats are similar except they are yellow, larger and delicious! Unlike larger conventional citrus fruits the "quats" are actually eaten especially for the skin. It is the inside flesh that is the sour part.

I have encountered so many people who don't know what to do with these little citrus fruits even though they have a tree full of them! Aside from eating them whole you can use the zest to make delicious sauces. Using zest in recipes is lightening fast if you get yourself one of these cheap microplaners from the hardware store (see picture). Here is a ghee, parsley, limequat sauce that we had on grilled salmon for our Christmas dinner.

Combine:
2/3c ghee (clarified butter)
1/4c finely minced fresh flat leaf Italian parsley
zest of 4 limequats

Let everything sit at room temperature for a couple hours so the flavors meld.

It's gravy

Gravy used to disgust me. I liked my turkey and potatoes dry as a kid. I'm not sure if this was a personal issue with stunted development or a commentary on the gravies I was served. Gravy is now the best part of any roasted meat meal, including the Thanksgiving behemoth, the turkey.

It is possible to get very sophisticated about terminology regarding gravy. "Gravy" is a thick, flour-based sauce. Potentially disgusting. A reduction sauce, or deglazed stock is thinner, more flavorful and all around more delicious, not to mention easily Paleo. Although we will serve this at our Thanksgiving table, and we will serve it out of a gravy boat, and we will call it gravy, it is not truly "gravy", it is a deglazed, reduction sauce. And it is better.

The first thing about making gravy is that if you are one of those super-stress freak type cooks who focuses more on the end result than on the process you need to get a hold of yourself. The gravy will be made after the turkey comes out of the oven when all the relatives and guests are peppering you with offers of "help" and/or asking when the food will be served. You will be tempted to rush and give in to this outside pressure. Don't do it. The final moments before a large meal with a roast of meat are sacred. Everyone but your true assistants steps aside. It is nice if the meat carver is a different person than the gravy maker. Do as my grandfather always wanted, and warm your gravy boat or dish on the back of the stove. Nothing takes a gravy downhill faster than pouring it into an ice cold dish.



If you begin the roasting process with that Holy Trinity of herbs (sage, rosemary and thyme) mixed in to softened butter, you will not have any worry regarding the flavor of your sauce. I slather this herb butter under the skin of my turkey as well as all over the top before it goes in the oven. Turkey skin is hardly attached to the meat, so this is easy. I use this melted butter as part of the pan drippings that I baste the turkey with during cooking. Once I remove the turkey form the roaster to the carving board I have a large pan full of delicous drippings. If the turkey was particularly succulent and there is a large amount of fat, I pour some of it off. I keep about 1 cup of fat in the roaster and all the other liquid and drippings. If you let your turkey get too dry during cooking you might need some additional stock or water. You can have additional stock on hand by simmering the "giblets", (the neck etc... that is in a little bag inside your turkey usually) in some water while the turkey is roasting. I like about 1 1/2c of liquid to 1c of fat, but to be honest, I usually just leave EVERYTHING in the roaster and get started. I take 1/2c of drippings out of the pan and put them in a pyrex measuring cup. I add 1/4c of arrowroot powder and I mix like mad until there are no lumps. Arrowroot is not as forgiving as flour about yielding up its lumps later on in the process. My grandmother's edition of The Joy of Cooking asserts that arrowroot will make the most delicate textured sauce! This gem of a book also reminds us that arrowroot has a neutral flavor and, unlike flour, does not need to be cooked to remove its "rawness". Arrowroot also has a calcium-base which makes it nice for the Paleo crew. Now, add your arrowroot mixture back into the roasting pan which you should have on a burner with the heat on medium. Whisk vigorously! At this point, your sauce is finished except for the addition of salt if you want it. I sometimes throw some onions, garlic, carrots, white wine etc... in around my roasting meat. You can use this as part of your sauce by removing all chunks of vegetables and blending them with stock before returning them to your roasting pan.

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.

Minerals for your bones, from bones

I believe one of the single biggest flaws in the average Paleo person is the absence of bone stock in the diet. It is absolutely true that paleolithic people did not use dairy and that dairy foods are not required for optimal calcium intake. However, non-dairy eating, paleo person had an extremely good, frequent source of not only calcium, but every other mineral that is required to create strong bone in our body. They got these bone building minerals straight from...other bones. One early cooking method used by several indigenous cultures involved placing chunks of meat and bone into a vessel containing water and heating the contents either over fire or by adding hot stones to the mix. Bones were cracked open and the marrow eaten out and they were sometimes ground and eaten powdered. Fish bones from small fish were always eaten whole (which is why sardines with the bones in are such a good source of calcium whereas boned sardines are not). Even our great grandmothers fed their families bone minerals. A few generations ago no self respecting head-of-the-kitchen would have thrown away a chicken carcass or beef knuckle bone. It would have gone into the stock pot. Modern day Paleo folk who sustain themselves on salmon fillet, boneless chicken breasts and ground beef are missing out. Have your kids do the following experiment just to make it fun. Try to bend a chicken thigh bone. Feel that it is hard. Soak the bone in vinegar for 24 hours. Now check it out. It is rubbery. All the hard minerals like calcium have been dissolved by the acid in the vinegar and are now in solution in your water. Here is how to do it as a delicious stock instead of as a science experiment.

1 chicken carcass precooked. My family likes roast chicken so I use the leftover gristly pieces and bones from our roast chicken. I take any leftover meat off before this process.

Fill a large stock pot with non-chlorinated water. Add 1/4c of vinegar (you won't taste it in the soup). Add the carcass (don't add the leftover gravy or gelatin). Add a couple bay leaves, a few celery stalks, a quartered onion and a few hunks of carrot. Leave this pot at room temperature for about 2 hours.

Bring it to a boil on the stove and then turn it way way down, until it is just barely simmering. Leave it simmering for about 1-2 hours.

Let the stock cool just a little. I set up a large colander over a huge pot or bowl and I dump the contents of the pot into the colander. All the beautiful stock drains into the bowl and I get rid of the rest.

Now you have a plain chicken stock that you can use right away or freeze for later. All winter long you should be consuming bone stock daily. Soup for breakfast is my favorite in cold weather.

EAT BONES FOR STRONG BONES

Make Your Own Superfood…MAYONNAISE!

Mayonnaise is creamy, delicious, rich and…Paleo. For those of you missing your creamy dairy, make some mayonnaise and it should make you feel like you ate something creamy and cow-like. Mayonnaise is not supposed to be sweet and cloying. It should be complex and delicious.
Homemade mayo will include raw eggs, olive oil, mustard, sea salt and an acid like raw apple cider vinegar or lemon juice. The use of raw eggs calls for a conscious search for clean food. There is nothing dangerous about raw eggs if your own immune system is decently functioning, and if your eggs are from a farm that cares for its animals and grounds. Remember that salmonella bacteria is all around us. Kids and old folks or those with autoimmune diseases are the ones who suffer seriously from food poisoning. It doesn’t make sense for us to try to sterilize our food. It makes sense for us to repair our immune systems and to restore the microorganism populations that kill the pathogens in our guts.
Homemade mayo with raw eggs is an extremely enzymatically-rich sauce. Another way to improve your homemade mayo, to turn it into a super food, is to use liquid whey. Liquid whey is a blip in the Paleo approach since it is derived from dairy. Whey is the clear liquid you see on top of yogurt. Using whey enables you to create a lacto-fermentation process such as is used to make traditional saurkraut or Korean kimchi. Anybody who says hunter-gatherers did not eat fermented foods does not understand lacto-fermentation. This is different process from yeast-sugar fermentation which results in alcohol. In lacto-fermentation the process derives from lactic acid producing bacteria. These are many of the bacterial strains people pay money to get in a probiotic nutritional supplement. Lactic acid producing bacteria are the microorganisms that create an inhospitable habitat for pathogenic bacteria like salmonella. You can make your own lacto-fermented foods without whey, but it is an extremely hit-or-miss process which terrifies many people because we have lost the intuitive sense, as well as the food-crafting techniques, to recognize when our fermentation has gone correctly versus when we have cultivated the wrong types of microorganisms. Therefore, please keep in mind that you ABSOLUTELY CAN LACTO-FERMENT WITHOUT DAIRY. Using liquid whey makes the process easier.
Today I added 1 teaspoon of chipotle puree to my homemade mayo so that it made a creamy, spicy dressing for some mahi mahi chunks I had grilled the day before. Here is the recipe:
2 egg yolks + 1 egg at room temperature (or warm the blender jar)
¾ c olive oil (don’t use the extra virgin, green oil, use the cheaper variety or your may will have a decidedly olive oil flavor)
1/2t sea salt
2T raw apple cider vinegar
1/2t Dijon mustard
1T whey

Place all ingredients except olive oil in your blender and blend on low until well mixed, drizzle in the olive oil extremely slowly while the blender is running and then do the same with the whey. Leave at room temperature for 6-8 hrs, then refrigerate. It will last a few weeks. If you don’t use whey, refrigerate your mayo right away and it will only keep a week or so.

To make your own whey you have two choices.
1. If you have access to raw milk, pour raw milk into a quart jar and leave it for 2-3 days at room temperature until it separates. The clear liquid is whey.
2. Purchase a large container of unflavored, plain, whole milk, organic yogurt. Dump the whole thing into a thin, linen dish cloth, tie the dish cloth up and hang it from a hook at room temperature over a large bowl. Over about 24hrs all the whey will drain into the bowl. In the dish towel will be a cultured , cream cheese that if you have anyone in your life who eats dairy , will be a lucky beneficiary.