Whole30 and Beyond

I have cranked up my cooking classes again (which have surprisingly gotten very popular lately...had to put a cap on the number of people descending on our kitchen for messy activities such as making pasta from scratch...it was fun, but, whew! That's a lot of eggs) and wow, are we having a good time!

My family and I completed the Whole30 challenge in January, and although I would say that not everyone 'enjoyed' it, I did. Maybe because I poured my heart and soul into in the kitchen all month. Maybe because I definitely saw some improvement in the way I feel, slept, energy levels, etc. I would highly recommend this to anyone who has the time to devote to meal planning and cooking. I learned so much about myself and my relationship to food, and learned a bunch of new things in the kitchen, too. I ended up making all kinds of things from scratch: mayonnaise, almond milk, bacon (yep - can anyone say 'pork belly?'), and salad dressings.

I thought it would be awesome to pass along some of what I learned to my cooking class, so we had a BforD (Breakfast for Dinner) last night. (*note: cheese is a no-no on the Whole30 but I introduced it last night as an option for those not following the diet)

Menu: Frittata, Sausage, and Banana Pancakes

Frittata is awesome because it is so easy, kinda gourmet, and can be different every time. It lets a new cook feel a huge sense of accomplishment while allowing so much freedom to be creative. And you can use leftover meat, veggies or cheese. No special ingredients necessary. 

Frittata
Ingredients and Instructions:
A cast iron skillet, small if you are just making enough for one or two.
Olive oil
Vegetables: can be fresh or already cooked, leftovers are great! Mushrooms, onions, garlic, peppers, spinach, kale, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, etc.
Meat, if desired: ground beef, pork, chicken, shrimp
Cheese: whatever!

Heat oil in skillet. Saute vegetables and/or meats til thoroughly cooked. Season if desired with s&p, oregano, thyme, sage...be creative!

When saute is complete, add beaten eggs, one or two per person. Turn heat to medium-low and let eggs cook until they are almost set. Add cheese on top if desired and place in broiler for a few minutes until frittata is completely cooked (eggs will be set) and cheese is melted and browning.
Remove from oven and serve.

Sausage
Most ready-made sausage has sugar in it, so I wanted to find a way to enjoy this breakfast treat in a Whole30 compliant way. This recipe would also work with ground chicken or turkey.

1 pound of ground pork
1 t. each of garlic powder, thyme, oregano, sage, celery seed, parsley
1/2 t. each of salt and red pepper flakes
(you can adjust these seasonings to your liking)
Mix together and fry in saute pan.

Easy peasy.

Banana Pancakes (and technically, you're not supposed to eat pancakes while on the Whole30, although I'm not sure why???)
My daughter brought this one home from college, and it's become a staple around here.

The basic recipe is 2 ingredients: a small banana and 1 egg. But I thought they needed a little more substance so I beefed them up a little.

Per person, makes 2 pancakes:
1 small banana
1 egg
1 1/2 t. coconut flour
1/4 t. baking soda
Sprinkle of salt
Sprinkle of cinnamon
Few drops of vanilla

Put all ingredients in a blender and pulse a few times to combine. Spray non-stick skillet with coconut oil and cook like regular pancakes. You can add berries or pecans, or top with a crushed and cooked berry mixture.

Love filling up this big table with happy faces!

Pasta with the Masses

Ready, set, go! Oh, so organized...but not for long!

Before the holidays, we had a lesson in pasta making, which I've discussed here before. But it's always new to someone who hasn't learned it before and I love watching faces light up with the joy of discovery! I always start this lesson thinking I'm going to keep my kitchen under control...but inevitably, it ends up looking like a bomb went off. It's all good though...everyone pitches in and helps with the clean-up. And we always have a good time being together. 

These guys always want a challenge!

Just an all-around good time, learning new stuff, laughing and eating. 

Next time, though, fewer students.

The Humble Lentil

As I've mentioned before, we have lived in Italy twice: once in the late 1980s and again, in the first year of this new millenium. Such rich cultural experiences can be had by living, not just visiting, overseas. Both times (and these opportunities were related to my husband's work) we determined to immerse ourselves in Italian life. We studied the language and tried to be culturally sensitive. We spent time in our neighbors' homes. Our kids played with an assortment of Francescas and Federicos. We ate Italian food, attended their festivals, and drank a LOT of cappuccinos, er, um, cappuccini.

Here in North Carolina, a traditional meal for New Year's Day is black-eyed peas. Eat 365 black-eyed peas for 365 days of good luck. In Italy, it's lentils. Indeed, it would be easier to eat 365 lentils. I didn't grow up in either place, so I've no attachment to the traditions, but it's always nice to have a good go-to recipe for these things if the mood strikes.

 So, in honor of the new year, our first cooking night involved this humble legume. Inexpensive, mineral and vitamin rich, and available in many colors, these high-fiber jewels need little introduction. But American diets don't typically contain them. I am not sure when I ate my first lentils, but I can guarantee it was well into my adult life.

Menu:

Lentil Stew with Sausage and Tortellini

Cornbread (homemade this time)

Assorted Pickles and Olives

Apple Crisp with Vanilla Ice Cream

My dear friend, Ana, also spent many years in Europe and introduced me to this wonderful recipe. I invited a crowd to help me cook this time, and we had many new faces. This recipe is easily multiplied and accompanied by cornbread and finger food, makes a hearty and well-rounded meal. It was a cold night when we cooked together, so a warm apple crisp with ice cream was perfect to go with this comforting soup. Becca, of Puerto Rican cooking night fame, chimed in, with "let's make more of the 'goody'!" She was talking about the topping to make apple, well, crisp. So we doubled the butter, brown sugar and cinnamon and, well, she was right! It was super-wonderful.

Pantry Soup

So, I got to go home to NC after my first few weeks in Puerto Rico. I was a happy girl. The kids have been keeping the house in pretty good shape, although my puppy was in desperate need of a bath. It took me a while, however, to get back into the swing of things in terms of being in charge of the household again. I hit the ground running with doctors appointments, meeting friends for coffee and following up on construction projects that we had started.

I wanted to cook something for everyone who would be home that night, but I was tired after a long day of running around, and the last thing I wanted to do was hop in the car and go out for groceries. This is when one's culinary skill is tested: what can you make with what you've got in the house?

There had been several cans of beans and peas in the pantry for months. I don't know if someone bought them for a food pantry and never delivered them or if they were the collected leftovers from some retreat. But I was tired of seeing them in there and put together a plan to turn them into something delicious. A can of peas is nothing special on its own, but with the combined magic of oil, garlic, bacon...mmmmm.

I don't have any photos to share, so you'll have to use your imagination. But I've learned when working with beans, though filling and satisfying, they need some help in the flavor department. A basic beginning to any bean based soup is a combination of oil, some sort of cured pork product (think bacon, sandwich ham, smoked ham, sausage), thyme, basil, carrots, celery, onions, garlic, a cube of chicken boullion, salt and a lot of black pepper. Once you get all that going, simmering the vegetables down to a nice soft consistency, you can add the beans. If you are using dry beans, of course soaking them and cooking them first would be necessary. But since I was cleaning out the pantry I used the cans I had on hand: cannelini, peas, limas, black. I drained all of them first, using the liquid as needed to make a soup. I warmed all the beans in the oil and vegetable mixture, to spread all the flavors around evenly. I added the liquid from the beans a little at a time, and some water. And then as I was finishing up, it seemed the soup wasn't quite thick enough. I thought about blending half the soup to create a thick consistency, but I saw a lonely can of refried pinto beans at the back of the shelf. In the pot and give it a good stirring. Instantly perfect consistency! I made some cornbread and we had a very veggie meal.

This made a pretty huge pot of soup, so it was great for lunches, etc. To me, it always feels good to clean out the pantry. I like to wait until I've made use of almost everything in the house before I go shopping again. That way, I know we are eating everything I buy and nothing is going to waste.

A couple of photos are always a good idea on a blog...even if they have nothing to do with the entry! So, here's what else we did while home on this little break from PR:

I really enjoyed my fall garden...

...and we got in a great visit with our kids in the mountains!

CRABS!

I grew up in Baltimore, hon, and when you do that, you eat a lot of crabs in the summer. I remember with fondness, picnic tables spread with newspaper in my Aunt Elizabeth's backyard in Ellicott City, Maryland. All the grandparents, aunts, uncles and distant cousins would pile their cars in the yard, unload their bring-your-own-beer, while Uncle Earl dumped bushels of steamed blue crabs on the tables. As a child, I never questioned how or where these crabs were prepared, nor did I appreciate the effort put into all the side items that went with: corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes, gallons of beverages, desserts. I just remember running around her house and yard, away from our city row-house life, and feeling special. Eating crab is such a monumental effort; I don't know how the adults in our midst had the time or patience to teach us youngsters how to dissect one for consumption. Maybe we were born with the ability to do so, like an instinct. But it seems to me that I was able to find the meat inside a crab, and spend hours on many a hot Independence Day and have enough.

Other memories of eating crabs: I was TERRIFIED of eating the "dead man." No, there was not a rotting corpse or his body parts in the bushel basket with the crustaceans. "Dead man" is the term that was used to describe the feathery gills/lungs that the crabs use to extract oxygen from the sea water. I was warned every time I ate crab, not to eat it, or I would DIE. Literally. Now, I'm dubious that it was quite that serious of a culinary infraction. I really started questioning this when I realized that people (in Baltimore) eat soft-shell crab sandwiches - which is the whole crab, eyes, legs, guts, etc. - all the time and don't perish. Surely the dead man is in there still, right?

And "mustard" is really crab poop. Some people love it, but I think it is disgusting. So I would gingerly scrape it out of every cavity and crevice in the body and be quite careful not to let it touch anything that went in my mouth.

When I first moved to North Carolina, I was appalled by a "pig-pickin'," a Barbaric sort of summer ritual where a complete pig is slow roasted all day, and then you go and pull the meat off the carcass. Yuck. (The meat IS tasty, but I prefer fetching it from a serving dish.) But then I considered the summer feasts we enjoyed tearing the legs off of bottom-dwelling garbage collectors of the sea, and didn't judge so harshly. I guess every culture has its nasty culinary delights.

So, along with my two trusty Virginia Beach natives, we steamed some live crabs (males only, please) early this summer and introduced our friends to our favorite summertime treat. Steaming crabs is not for the faint of heart - there is the sad detail of putting those lovely bright blue and gray critters, so desperate to live, reaching out with their vice-grip claws for your hands as you squeeze them with the tongs, in a pot of steaming water and vinegar, sprinkling them with a generous portion of Old Bay seasoning, and putting the lid on their sad lives. They claw away, trying to escape, until after about 30 minutes, they turn a lovely shade of bright red-orange and stop moving.

Then you must dump them unceremoniously on the newspaper strewn picnic table, pass out a knife and a crab mallet to each person, along with a stack of napkins and dive in. The verbal instructions go something like this: "First, you tear off the claws. Then the legs, but be careful to pull firmly from the joint between leg and body; then you can get the backfin meat from the body cavity." Sounds awful when I put it that way.

The requisite corn on the cob and sliced tomatoes go around the table. Beer, lemonade and sweet tea is enjoyed. Since we did this at dinner time, we are still sitting around the table outside at 10 pm, pounds of crabs left untouched. Apparently, a bushel of crabs feeds 10 Baltimore and Virginia Beach natives, but is way too much for novices. We had a ton leftover. So Grandma came the next day and picked all those leftover crabs and made crab cakes for lunch. So delish.

There wasn't much 'refinement' (at least by Southern cotillion and debutant standards) in my mid-Atlantic urban upbringing. But I am so grateful for the rich experience of this one Chesapeake Bay summertime tradition.

Our Kentucky Pie Girl

There is a lovely lass that lives in my house. Her name is Jessie. She grew up near the Ohio River in Kentucky, and came to us during her four years at UNC. She wooed her way into our hearts via our oldest daughter, and has shared our home and enriched our lives for the past year, while she prepares for grad school. Since we were on a roll with guest chefs, I asked her to share some faves from the heartland.

Two things about Jessie:

#1 She has a sixth sense about food and cooking. Whenever we cook together, she has a keen eye for what works and what would work better. And she's creative.

#2 She was the "pie-girl" at a little country restaurant called "Moonlight BBQ" through high school and summers in college. In my book, these two qualities make her quite capable of teaching us something amazing.

So, although she was trying to break every stereotype a person might have about Kentucky (and all manner of fried things that come from there), we deep fried a lot of things. But we also had an awesome chicken casserole, some roasted mushrooms (not really from KY, but a new recipe she found online) and of course, pie. Lots of pie.

Menu: Sour Cream Chicken Casserole

Roasted Mushrooms

Fried Pickles, Onions, Banana Peppers, Cheese (oh my goodness, what else did we fry?)

Peanut Butter Pie, Coconut Cream Pie

Originally, we were just going to fry pickles. But then we all started searching through the refrigerator for other things that would be amazing dipped in egg and flour and sizzled til it turned tan. And we had some confidence about frying after the tostones last week. So, out came the vegetables, the cheese, and the banana peppers - this is where Jessie shines, because it was her idea that if pickles are so amazing deep-fried, then certainly other things with strong tastes would. Because, she said, "the flavors and textures play off each other." That is something Mario Batalli would say. See what I mean?

So after we had gorged ourselves silly on a deep-fry buffet, we settled in for the main course. No one had room for pie, but she had made TWO of each kind! So we had to stuff it down. Good thing there were boys around to eat. I had coconut cream pie for breakfast for a few days. And then we started giving it away to the neighbors.

It was all so yummy. Jessie always makes me laugh any time I'm frying anything...she says the smell of cooking oil makes her feel like she's home.

I guess that's why they call it "comfort food."