Cooking up a Storm
There’s not much I enjoy more than spending a day in the kitchen cooking up all kinds of goodness. Since there are only 2 of us in the house and we don’t eat lots of sweets or grain items, it doesn’t take much time to prepare the food we eat. I’m always happy when there’s a party invite or some other event that allows me to spend the day baking/cooking.
Today my good friend and neighbor is heading over to Washington D.C. for the Stop the Frack Attack Rally. She invited me to go, but as an introvert and highly sensitive person, a trip like this on a bus would nearly kill me. I offered to bake up a bunch of snacks instead.
Yesterday morning was spent baking both sweet and savory goodies. I made one of my specialties, molasses caramel corn. Head on over to Eat Outside the Bag for my recipe.
A big batch of maple walnut granola was also whipped up, along with a batch of cheddar cheese straws. The cheddar cheese straw recipe is from Smitten Kitchen. Of course I tweaked it a bit by using local raw milk cheddar cheese and freshly ground sprouted spelt flour.
When it comes to snacks, I’m not much for sweets or grains, give me olives, cheese, jerky, hard boiled eggs, yogurt or custard. I must admit though, the cheese straws are FANTASTIC, I’ll definitely be baking up a few batches to snack on during our long drive up to Maine mid-September.
What’s your favorite traveling snack?
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Friday Favorite: Sauerkraut
Eighteen pounds of sauerkraut, that’s how much I made 10 days ago. People keep asking me, “What are you going to do with all that?”. I’ll give a few jars away to friends, but we’ll eat most it. It will be on our plate every meal until it’s gone. The chiots will get some each morning as well. We even eat it for breakfast, head on over to Eat Outside the Bag for more about that and links to my recipe.
I must admit, I never thought I’d be listing sauerkraut on my Friday Favorites. Growing up my only experience with kraut was the stuff my grandma emptied out of bags on New Year’s Day. Then I discovered home made fermented kraut and liked it. After reading up on the health benefits and was amazed and liked it even more. Now that we try include it at every meal when we have it available I can say that I really, really like sauerkraut and love the health benefits it provides!
Are you a fan of sauerkraut and other fermented foods?
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Chicken, Duck, Goose
I buy chicken and duck* eggs at the farmers market all the time, in fact we eat about a dozen duck eggs each month and about 2 dozen chicken eggs each week. A lot of eggs, I know, that’s why I’m so excited to have chickens someday. Until then I’m happy getting them from Martha’s Farm, the chickens run happily outside and are fed a diet of organic GMO-free grains purchased from a local farmer. The eggs are fantastic! Yesterday, when I was at Local Roots in Wooster, OH I reached into the egg cooler and spotted goose eggs. WOW.
I grabbed two and nestled them in the skein of alpaca yarn I was buying (my mom’s making me a nice new winter hat). The cashier and I were talking about how the farmer couldn’t figure out what to put the eggs in for people to take them home. She offered some newspaper, but I had my hat and gloves since it was a chilly 28 when I left the house that morning. One giant egg was nestled into each glove which were then stuffed into my hat.
They made it home without a scratch. Each one weighed in at almost 8 oz, that’s almost 4 chicken eggs. Now that’s a bargain for 60 cents!
I’m an adventurous eater so I can’t wait to try these, I was told at the market that they make a wonderfully rich scrambled eggs. I’ve never met an egg I didn’t like and these will most likely be no different. It certainly will be interested to see what they’re like, I’ll have to do some reading on popular cooking methods. I certainly hope they have more next time I’m there!
Have you ever had a goose egg, ostrich, or any other egg besides a chicken egg?
*The duck eggs I buy are used for custard and ice cream since they have big thick yolks and thinner whites than chicken eggs, this results is a creamier custard.
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Sweet Rewards
Yesterday morning I finished up our first batch of maple syrup for the 2012 season. A few days after we tapped the trees, the weather turned cold once again and the sap quit flowing. Usually I wait until I’ll have a gallon or so to finish, but I finished off the 12 gallons of sap we collected down to one quart of syrup. Instead of canning it we decided to enjoy it.
What better way to enjoy syrup than drizzled over sourdough pancakes (recipe at Eat Outside the Bag) with some homemade sausage. When it comes to enjoying maple syrup, my personal favorite is over french toast, but Mr Chiots is a pancake fan so I made him some pancakes. Since we follow the Nourishing Traditions way to eating our pancakes are always sourdough and soaked overnight.
I’m a bit odd in that I don’t really like syrup on my pancakes but I love it on my sausage. The sausage we eat here at Chiot’s Run is always mixed up the night before with herbs from the garden, you can find my Savory Breakfast Sausage recipe at Eat Outside the Bag. Since we purchased a half a hog this year we’ve been having sausage often for breakfast and we’re really loving it.
Syrup on your sausage – yay or nay? What about on your pancakes?
If you want to read up on maple sugaring I’d highly recommend these books:
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Something Sweet from the Oven
I’m not much of a sweet eater, preferring something salty instead. Mr Chiots on the other hand, loves sweets and loves to see something sweet from the oven. Winter is the perfect time for baking since it’s cold outside and you feel like you’re warming the house a bit.
Before our trip to Maine last week I remembered that I had two pastry crusts in the fridge left over from the how-to video I made for Ethel. Regular pies are not good for traveling, but hand pies are perfect. I pulled out a jar of Caramelized Apple Marmalade with Thyme (recipe from Preserving the Taste) and made up a little something sweet for Mr Chiots. If you’d like the recipes, head on over to Eat Outside the Bag.
These are so easy to make and oh so tasty, I also like that they’re not too sweet since there’s only a small amount of jam in each one! These were perfect snacks for our trip, easy to eat while we were on the go.
Do you prefer sweet or salty?
