Epic Seder 2012!

We just finished an enormous Seder at our apartment  - 25 people crowded into our dining room. Our apartment isn't exactly tiny, but it's still an apartment, so there was definitely a similar feeling to the 20-clowns-in-a-volksy trick. It was warm and lovely and people sang. At least three people had never been to a Seder. Quite a few hadn't been to one in years. 

There was an enormous amount of food, and amazingly, much of it disappeared, which I suppose it does with 25 guests!

I made an unusual brisket - marinaded overnight in red wine with the first spring tomatoes, paprika, onions and garlic. I blended the vegetables into a nice thick sauce. I roasted two chickens, which all but disappeared, and one of our guests who is a terrific cook made salmon with agave-lime sauce. There was asparagus, greens, and, courtesy of other guests, roasted herbed vegetables and salad. I served my chicken broth and one of the grandmothers brought her homemade chicken soup with vegetables and matzo balls.

I also made about 36 hard boiled eggs, a baked apple dish, brown rice, three Seder plates with real horseradish, and carrot tsimmes. People brought all kinds of desserts, including macaroons which disappeared immediately. They were nearly GAPS-friendly, so I will see if I can get the recipe and pass it on here. 

 When I have recovered I will post the recipe for the brisket and tsimmes.

Here are some of the dishes in progress. I was too tired to get the finished images, so please bear with me.

The baked apple dish before baking

Half of the 36 hard boiled eggs.

Carrot tsimmes in progress. This one was a winner. Only two small jars left!

The beginnings of the brisket - meat after marinating and browning. We just started to get tomatoes in our CSA box. Very exciting!

When you're on GAPS, it's sort of like Passover all year, but for those of us who do eat gluten, I got some matzo.

Turmeric and black pepper

I have been taking turmeric, in the form of curcumin, since my awful experience coming home from a long trip with a terrible allergic reaction. Initially, it didn't do all that much, although I do think it kept the worst reactions at bay. Then I came home and made Therapeutic Vegetable Curry Soup, and my symptoms improved in about 3 days. I mention in that post about how turmeric works hand in hand with cumin, coriander and other spices. I did not mention pepper. I also did not use pepper in the recipe on that page because a doctor had told me that it had inflammatory qualities.

Then the other day I was at Other Avenues, and noticed that Gaia includes black pepper with its curcumin supplements, so it got me thinking. I began to add small amounts of pepper to my breakfast after taking my curcumin, and lo and behold, it did seem to magnify the effect of the turmeric. I don't know anything, yet, about proportions or amounts, although it does seem like not much pepper is required to "turn on" the turmeric's anti-inflammatory properties.

Interesting, isn't it, that a food which, on its own, is inflammatory, has what appears to be the opposite effect in the right combination with other foods?

Dairy Cravings

A little background...

Little Moo has food allergies. Her allergies are the reason I got serious about building up our health through nutrition. She was covered with rashes from about the age of 2 to very recently.

We've been seeing Vivian Kushner, a nutritionist who practices BioSET. We went into it as a last resort after months of Chinese medicine that Little Moo hated, food trials that had confusing and unhelpful results, modified GAPS Diet that only seemed to limit the range of foods she could eat and make her tired of eating nuts and coconut milk kefir, horrified stares from other parents and useless allopathic medical advice. After about a month of BioSET and homeopathic support her rashes are GONE. Occasionally, when she's fighting off a virus she gets itchy again, but the rashes appear to have disappeared for good. For the first time in a while we have a clear picture of exactly what Little Moo's allergies and sensitivities are. For a short while we eliminated grapes, bananas and eggs. Vivian treated her for allergies to vitamin C and, of all things, salt. She's eating them all again comfortably and without a single relapse.

Little Moo loves dairy. She especially likes yogurt, particularly a storebought kind that is made of sheeps' milk that you can buy for an exorbitant price at one of the San Francisco co-ops or for even more from Whole Foods plus the keys to the pied a terre in Paris. (No, we don't have one, if you were wondering.) Since we've started seeing Vivian Kushner there's been more hope that her sensitivity to lactose, casein and whey will be finite, so now she has a plan and it's moving into her pretend games. I love that her answer to "I want that" is "I'll make it myself." Better yet, if it's food, she'll get it directly from the farm, then she'll cook it from scratch.

She's four and a half, which means that about 95% of the time she's only here in body. The rest of her is on flights of fancy that we mere mortals can only vaguely follow. Today's game is taking place on our family dairy farm. (We don't have one of those, either.) Evidently, Snackboy is the master of a flock of sheep and a herd of cows. Little Moo got up at the break of day to milk the sheep and went right away to the task of making her own yogurt. She is, at this moment, hosting a tea party in the living room with sheeps' milk yogurt, and tea, while she talks in detail about all the recipes for things that she can make with the yogurt, including "sticky chocolate tops" for cakes that she baked.

Vivian...if you're reading this, much creativity and chefly imaginings are focused on the promise that she will be able to ingest dairy soon...

Work/Life/Home

I am listening to Joan Williams speak on Your Call Radio about the disjointedness between the way our economy and workforce function, the needs of families, of women and men. It's a great show. So interesting that I wanted to add my own .02 about how people and their work is valued in our country.

Women were at one time trapped in the home with no means of independent support. Her homemaking was only compensated by the protection and support of a husband. If a woman was suddenly a widow or divorced she was caught in a system that would not let her work at all outside of the home, and if she did, it was for a paltry paycheck. (The irony that a single mother's paycheck would be the lowest when it's generally her who supports the kids!). With the advent of second-wave feminism,  women went back to work in record numbers, leaving their families so that they could help support them financially. They still made less than men, but were able to contribute in some way. Meanwhile, the kitchen arts died out almost completely after all the short cuts and bad advice of the mid-20th century. There was a new term, "latch key kids," that described the children of working mothers who let themselves in after school in the afternoons. Thirty years later U.S. women have to work. Most of us have no choice. The cost of living in many places is high and health insurance costs are unreal. Too many people get sick and die simply because they can't get care. Because we have no idea how to cook real food, and because women come in tired after work at 6pm every day, undernourished, overeating people get fatter and sicker. Our public school system is depleted and sick enough to drown in a bucket, turning out more and more kids who can't compete in the workplace, and so the circle completes itself.

Jobs are few and far between if your line of work isn't in computers. Women are actually more likely than men to be in the workforce. I know two men who spent their children's baby years as part-time working, stay-at-home dads, simply because their wives were much better employed than they were at the time. I'm just guessing that a lot of these gainfully employed mothers make less than their male counterparts, that many large employers go for female employees because they know that they can pay them less than if they were male.

Meanwhile, men sit at home, waiting to hear from someone at some company somewhere to give them a job offer. This is especially true for manual workers who do not own their own businesses. Unless, of course, they want to move to China or India and take a major pay cut (not to mention that in certain lines of work they'd be in sweatshops with kids). This is also a huge issue, both emotionally and socially.

I'm certainly not criticizing mothers who went back to work in the 70s. It was a huge gain for women at a time when they were second class citizens. My complaint is with a system that took advantage of lots of cheap female labor that desperately needed that paycheck to support their families, with money and health insurance.

Then there are the Michael Pollans of the world whose writings, however insightful, also have a huge blind spot right at the point where women, their work and family have a critical disjuncture. Specifically this: how is a woman who works all day and still often does most of the domestic tasks around the home, to cook whole foods from scratch so that their families can eat every day? It simply does not work. Also, I have never met a man who is either interested or comfortable enough in the kitchen to take up that particular gauntlet (and I mean the full-on-homemaker dad who does laundry, is a member of the PTA THEN lines up his monthly sauerkraut crocks and gets his bone broth in order every week). Maybe they're out there. If you know one, please tell me, because I'm certain that he's a myth. So what is to be done?

Our labor system - the value given to people and what they do - simply must change. Anyone who takes up the domestic tasks of raising a family has to be compensated in some way. People in the workforce need to make a living wage. Someone in our government needs to grow a spine and finally take on the insurance companies.

Now I have to put my stew in the refrigerator for later and get myself to work...I won't be home until after 9 tonight, but everything's fine because the food is done and half of the laundry is folded. :)

GF/DF/EF Stuffing

For Christmas Eve we visited friends for dinner. This is usually a major production for me since I often have to cart over an entire cooked meal for us whenever we go out. A number of our friends are excellent cooks and foodies, but terribly attached to certain types of dishes and traditions in a fairly rigid way. I've never quite understood that. Food for me, even before my allergies were discovered, was a bit of an adventure. I often ate the same things, but that was simply because I didn't have time to learn any other way, or when I was a vegetarian, because I thought I was supposed to. I usually preferred something new and exciting, preferably something that was something entirely new and not a "substitute" food.

Anyway, I've never gotten into the "traditional" stuff that goes with celebratory meals (read: super-sweet candied sweet potatoes with stuffing and a big, often overcooked tryptophan-laden bird with sticky, glutenous gravy - no fermented foods and nothing to relieve the heaviness but a bit of raw green salad with bottled dressing,) although I understand that for many folks it is important.

Our hosts decided to go with the old standbys, but bless her heart - she used ghee in the sweet potatoes so that Little Moo could eat them. She made the turkey herself and it was delicious. I think she gave up entirely on making a stuffing that her husband might like and went and found some at Whole Foods, then I suggested that perhaps I could take all of Little Moo's leftover rice bread-ends and make a stuffing for her and anyone else who wanted it. It was a huge winner. Little Moo had two big helpings, and it went great with an amazingly flavored turkey. Here's the recipe, based on the basic Joy of Cooking for a stuffing made separately from a roast:

Rice Bread Stuffing

4 cups lightly toasted or otherwise hard rice bread, cut into small pieces

about 1/4 lb giblets, cooked overnight in chicken soup

1 onion

1 cup chopped mushrooms

1/4 cup chopped celery

1/4 cup chopped parsley

1/4 cup rendered duck fat

1 cup chicken broth

additional fat for top - can be ghee if tolerated

Finely chop separately: giblets, onion, celery, parsley and mushrooms.

Saute onion for 2o minutes or so in duck fat. This is a good time to chop everything else to make the time go by. Add giblets first, then everything else to the pan and saute another 10 minutes or so.

Pour the bread pieces/crumbs into a 9x12" pan. Pour the sauteed mixture over it. Salt and pepper to taste. Mix well. Add more fat if necessary and the cup of broth and mix it in. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees F for about 20 minutes. Remove foil. If the bread was cut into pieces, you might want to stir and mash it up a bit more if you like a finer grain stuffing. Dot the top with more fat and brown for up to 10 minutes.

What I discovered: when in doubt, add more fat and more broth. :)

My people liked it so much that they had it for Christmas Day breakfast!

Elderberry Coconut Kefir - It's a tasty drink...no, it's a flu preventative...no, it's a sports drink!

I had this idea to make a kefir drink that was also a flu remedy recently. The culturing process makes the elderberry syrup even more potent and all the good stuff in the coconut water even better. Get the syrup version that is as unadulterated as possible, sans alcohol. The unsweetened tincture generally contains citric acid and glycerin, but it's still pretty clean.

3 cups coconut water, warmed to room temperature
4-6 tsp elderberry tincture
1 package of kefir starter

Mix the coconut water with the tincture. Thoroughly mix the starter and pour into a jar. Screw on the top lightly and leave at room temperature overnight to 24 hours. Chill and drink.

My daughter couldn't get enough of it...but do remember that 1 or 2 teaspoons of elderberry tincture is what you're supposed to take 2 to 4 times per day, depending on how proactive you're being. So that's maybe a cup at most!

I keep forgetting: Cranberry Relish (Raw, cultured)

This was the highlight of our Thanksgiving table for me, mainly because it was on my mind for weeks and when I finally put it together, it was incredibly slapdash. Speaking of which, I'd better type fast before I forget what went into this thing. (Wow...so slapdashy that I never even took a photo...you'll just have to take my word for it.) It was super-good! Sweet and tart, with a bit of autumn spice and a nice kick. It also had an almost carbonated fizz to it...kind of like the best punch. (No alcohol, of course! Just kefir-y goodness.) It was also sort of like charoset, and, actually, could be modified for Passover, come to think of it.

Raw Cranberry Relish

1 box (pint) raw fresh cranberries

1 pear, peeled, cored

1 sweet apple, peeled, cored (please note that I wound up adding a bit more fruit midway, so you might need to add as you go for taste)

1/2 cup raisins (to taste)

Blend the above together in a blender or food processor until fruit mixes, but stays a bit crunchy and slightly defined. I looked for the cranberries to start looking moist and as if it was starting to sink into the sweeter fruit.

Add to taste:

about 2 tsp lemon juice (this was the point that I had to sweeten it a bit with more fruit)

Add and blend:

2 crushed cloves

1 large pinch cinnamon

Add and blend slightly:

1/4-1/2 cup crispy pecans (you can also crumble or chop the nuts and hand-mix)

Carefully blend or hand mix into the fruit:

1/4 cup coconut milk kefir (or any non-dairy kefir, actually)

Pour the mixture into a canning jar and loosely fasten the lid. Put up for about 3 days. I thought it was done when it tasted slightly fizzy.

Super-yum. We just finished it tonight.

Mango Chutney

After months and months of lactofermented veggies (for me it's been a few years, actually) it was time for something different. I tried a mango version of the Nourishing Traditions Papaya Chutney. It's delicious. I left off the rapadura and it's STILL amazing.

Basically, get a small onion, bunches of mint and cilantro, respectively, 3 big mangoes, a red pepper, and mix them up in a bowl. Cube the fruit, julienne the pepper, and chop the leaves of the herbs coarsely. Chop the onion, too.

In a separate bowl, mix together a few ts salt, 1/4 c whey, 1/2 c lime juice and 1/2 c water.

Put the fruit mixture into a quart mason jar, punch it down with something like a meat hammer or a ladle. Add the liquid, adding enough water to fill to 1" above the fruit. If anything floats to the top, try to push it down.

Seal it up and keep it in a warm place for 2 days, then refrigerate.

The trick here is that almost anything blended with whey and left to ferment tastes great. So, for a small jar of mustard, relish or whatever gets a few tablespoons and a quart gets 1/4 cup.

Slow Food Nation 08

We finally made it today, on the last day, in the last hour. We couldn't really afford the entrance fee for the events, so we were glad to just stroll around the stalls and see the lovely garden that was right in the middle of Civic Center. I was excited to see Organic Pastures with their raw dairy and their evangelizing of real milk. We bought 2 tubs of lovely butter. One to use and one to freeze. Each tub was only $5! It's about twice that at Rainbow and they're always out of it by the time we get there. I figured that it would actually be worth while to drive all the way to Fresno to stock up on the stuff a few times a year instead of going to Rainbow, even with the phone book coupons. 

In the middle of the square, beside the garden, was a small bandstand with all kinds of music going on. There was great produce from all over California. We stopped at the Pt. Reyes Bookstore stand to check out the books that were, in the last half-hour, on sale for 30% off. I bought "Full Moon Feast" by Jessica Prentiss. I read her first essay while Rain slept this afternoon. She wrote about her young-adulthood in which she partook of what Pollan calls our "national eating disorder," that is, being faced with excess, but little real food, and finding herself obsessed, yet incapable of eating well. 

That made me think. The oddity of starvation when food is so plentiful, yet so awful, makes horrible sense in a way. I grew up eating what my mother grew in her garden, along with traditional foods like chicken bone broth, homemade sourdoughs and meats from the supermarket cooked simply. Some time in the late 70s or early 80s, the foods in the market changed. Corn and soy were hidden in prepared foods. Corn syrups took the place of sugar. Weirdnesses like Nutrasweet joined saccarin on the shelves. The meat industry became more and more deregulated, resulting in an unsafe meat supply, full of hormones and antibiotics. Our eating lives became the equivalent of being alone in a crowd. People were surrounded by huge excesses of food, but it was junk, stripped of nutrients and filled with additives. It became more common to see fat, yet malnourished poor people, while toned, slim physiques became the mark of the wealthy. The overweight and the thin were all starving, because despite the huge amounts of food, with the illusion of choice (it was all wheat, soy and corn additives, citric acid, corn syrup, vegetables and fruits were tasteless and filled with pesticides, corn-fed meats with little nutrient value and too much fat, etc), but actually none. If you were sensitive to corn, soy, wheat, gluten, dairy, casein, citrus or any of the other big 8, you were up a creek. 

I realized something when I started to buy and prepare real foods. Food is expensive. It's also rare to find. There are places in the country where it's impossible to get produce without pesticides or that can be guaranteed not to have been watered with raw sewage or chemical runoff. Most of the country drinks pasturized and homogenized milks and eats meats that some from the centralized slaughterhouse system. In fact, it's nearly impossible for independent ranches like Marin Sun Farms to slaughter their own animals thanks to the regulatory system that is weighted towards big business. A woman I saw at the market today told me that in the centralized slaughterhouses, the ranches are told that there may not be a guarantee that the meat they will receive will be the cows that went in. That means a lot if those cows were raised as carefully as they are at MSF. Although raw milk has made it back to our markets legally, it's always under threat from big dairy. It's rarely seen at any market and often has to be purchased through a cow-share.

Real food is scarce. It is unbelievably expensive. If we choose to only eat real food, we eat sparsely by necessity. The famine, is, in many ways, real. 

Okay. Now I have to reserve Michael Pollan's new book at the library. :)