Roasted Vegetable and Garlic Quinoa

I am so happy when I see others diving into new territory and embracing it. You know you have "arrived"  when you start making your own original recipes with things you have on hand and they turn out great.  I have met just such person through my classes.  Kami, from Birth with Confidence has written this guest post.  She has put together some fabulous stuff I am so excited to share here on Taste is Trump.

I am a newbie to "real food," meaning, I've only been on this journey for about a year now, but it is a journey that has changed my life and my family's health. I feel happier, have more energy than ever before (quite a feat, for me), and am thinner than I've ever been. I am passionate about real, whole food and it is something I find great pleasure in learning about.Here is a simple, whole foods recipe that is not only incredibly nourishing, it is also delicious!

This recipe is extremely versatile. If you don't have the vegetables on hand that I listed, you can always use anything else. Other favorites of mine are asparagus, zucchini or yellow squash, sweet or red potatoes, and broccoli. If you prefer, you can roast the garlic along with the vegetables. I've kept it raw in this recipe in order to take advantage of the health benefits of raw garlic. It tastes wonderful either way!

6 brussels sprouts

1/2 head of cauliflower

1 red pepper, sliced

1 medium red onion, roughly chopped

5 grape tomatoes, halved

2 carrots, chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

salt to taste

1 cup white quinoa

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 cups water

4 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Herbes de Provence

The night before, soak quinoa in 1 cup water and 1 tablespoon lemon juice. 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place all vegetables in a glass dish and drizzle with olive oil and salt, to taste. Roast vegetables in oven for 20-25 minutes, or until slightly tender. Meanwhile, bring remaining 1 cup water to a boil. Stir in soaked quinoa mixture. Bring back to a boil and reduce heat to simmer. Simmer quinoa until water is gone. Remove from stove top and stir in salt, crushed garlic, a dash of balsamic vinegar, and herbes de provence to taste. Remove vegetables from oven and gently mix the quinoa into them. To serve, top with freshly shredded parmesan or romano cheese. Enjoy alongside a salad and crusty bread, to make it a fuller meal. Enjoy!


links; Works for Me Wednesday, Real Food Wednesday

Jaternice

All this talk and research about traditional foods has gotten me interested in what my own ancestor’s ate.  I would really like to do some more research and find where things went awry in my own history.  My forefathers’s lived in Iowa for four generations and were all into farming.  This means all the way through to my own parents, they had home grown vegetables, chicken eggs, fresh milk and meat from their own animals, mostly pigs.

Looking through my grandmother’s cookbooks, it was obviously a pretty gradual change over time from real to processed to more processed.  Lard changed to shortening and margarine, unbleached flour to bleached white, cans of this and that started popping up and I found it interesting when a recipe was calling for a new pre-made product, it would be extra specific.  Another thing I noticed is that as the print date of the cookbook became more recent, there was less use of animal parts like tongue, feet and liver, cream and full fat dairy. 

I came across the recipe for Jaternice in a cookbook lovingly known in our family as “The Duncan Cookbook,” compiled by a town of mostly Czech immigrants, including my great grandmother. It is a charming, community compilation that was carefully typed out on a typewriter.  It reads:

Liver Sausage “Jaternice”                                                       Mrs. George Malek

Boil a pig’s head.  If too fat and large, trim off the fat.  Boil the heart, lungs and kidneys in the same kettle.  When all is done, grind up fine.  To one part of meat add two parts of stale bread.  If meatier sausage is desired, add more meat.  The bread must be soaked in water and squeezed dry.  Add pepper, salt and marjoram.  Other spices may be added also. Have ready beef casings cut into strips 6 inches long and tie one end.  Proceed to fill casings with meat filling and tie remaining end.  Put them in the liquid in which you have boiled the meat, putting it into one or 2 medium sized kettles. These should be not quite half full.  Let the sausages simmer.  Boiling rapidly will burst them.  When they come to the top, remove them from the liquid and lay out to cool.

My mother comes from a Czech line, which is where Jaternice originated, but this same recipe was shared around their community and went by many different names.  My parents both have fond memories of this dish as children.  Traditionally the meat mixture went into beef casings to make sausage links, but both my parent’s families served “the slop” over bread.  My mom remembers having to compete with all 7 of her siblings for seconds and would often gobble up the topping and sneak some more before the others would have time to finish their plate’s.

We Be Canning

This summer was packed full with hard work, I am still recovering.  I had the opportunity to get my hands on a large amount of great produce.  This was all the stuff that is grown organically, locally, in season and in perfectly fresh, yummy condition.  Mostly a lot of canning, with little bouts of dehydrating, freezing and pickling here and there.  Nearly every other week I spent 2 to 3 days preserving huge loads of this gorgeous food.

Here is a list of what I preserved in the last 4 months;

Carrots

Potatoes

Sweet Potatoes

Tomatoes

Green Beans

Mixed Beans

Cucumbers

Grapes

Apples

Peaches

Pears

Apricots

I loved spending so much time with the bright colors, nibbling all day through and seeing the end results pile up.  How satisfying it is to have well grown food preserved in glass (no bpa) with no additives.  The kids were even helpful at times and those were the most glorious!  They also love to eat the end product.  How awesome it is when the kids are hungry for a snack and I reach for a jar of home canned green bean, which they eat with the same gusto most other have while eating a box of goldfish?

The clean up was not quite as awesome.  Food and water all over the counters, stove, skink and floor, ants from the sticky fruits and fly’s in the compost bucket.  The worst was the heat.  The air would be on all day if it weren’t for the problem it caused with the flame on the gas stove.  I would have to turn it off and sweat it out to get the pots up to temperature. After a few weeks, I was able to get a hot plate to process the jars in the backyard.

We also got out the sun oven for some winter squash that came out of my garden to save more heat from the kitchen.  The plywood strip on the sawhorses behind the oven is what I used to sun dry food, with our heat, most things dried in one day.  It was a pretty efficient use of a lot in the city, that’s for sure.

Links; Fight Back Fridays, Simple Lives Thursday, Things I Love Thursday, Penny wise Platter.

Homemade Jello

I hate when JELL-O is served as a salad. Those boxes that are full of sugar,artificial colors and flavors are junk food. They do not contain a shred of nutrition that makes them worthy of a before-meal course. I have come up with a lovely real food solution to this madness. It is really only slightly more work and, in my opinion, much more delicious.

You can use a juice from concentrate and you will be better off than the box. I used my vitamix, so in a sense, it was a very fine puree rather than juice. If you have a juicer, this would be another great use. The gelatin doesn’t turn out as clear when you have all the natural fibers in there, but as long as it is smooth, the texture will be so similar. Of course serve with real whipped cream to get the full benefit of all the nutrition in the fruit :)

4 cups of real fruit juice
6 tablespoons water
2 tablespoon gelatin
1/4 cup of honey
1 cup of berries, fresh or frozen (optional)

Place the water in a bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over it. Let soften for 5 minutes. Boil two cups of the juice and all the honey, pour into bowl with softened gelatin. Mix thoroughly and then add the remaining juice. Sprinkle berries it bottom of 9x13 or similar size dish. Pour juice into dish, cover and refrigerate for 4 hours. Cut and serve with whipped cream.

Links; Fightback Friday's,  Whole Food for the Holiday's

Zucchini Boats

You know those big, honking zucchini you find after you have been gone on a trip?  The ones that look more like clubs than something to eat.  These monsters are good for something more than zucchini bread, they make one heck of a boat!  Just slice in half lengthwise and hallow out the center where all the seeds and mushy inners are. Pack full of what ever you like, maybe polenta or rice, pilaf or spaghetti. I could even see it as a nice vehicle for tuna melts, sprinkle with bread crumbs and cheese, viola!

They take a good 30 minute bake to soften up and can be cut into sections for serving.  Also look for round “8 ball” zucchini at the farmer’s market, these are grown for stuffing!

links; Simple Lives Thursday. Real Food Wednesday and Works for me Wednseday.

Tomato and Cucumber Salad

I had a nice crop of euro cukes this year.  At the height of the season I was picking 4 a day, they stacked up real fast!  I made a batch of naturally fermented pickles with a bunch of them.  They turned out okay for my first try.  Hopefully I can work on that recipe again in November.  I have 4 plants that I just got started from seed last month, trying an heirloom variety, lemon cucumber, along with the euros.  This summer I also did straight 8's, but they were all bitter and did not produce that well :(

This recipe is really basic and fresh.  It is so good to get raw foods into your diet every meal.  Things are so processed nowadays, that it takes thought and effort to eat something raw.  Raw foods have enzymes that aid in digestion and are overall cleansing.

You can scoop this salad on top of a bed of lettuce to make it a meal.  A cup of cold, rinsed beans would make it heartier.  I had some extra asparagus one day so I cut it up and blanched it before I added it to this salad, it was great!

1 ½ cup chopped cucumber

½ - 1 cup diced tomato

2 tablespoons thinly sliced red onion

10 fresh basil leaves, chopped

1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano

1 garlic clove, minced

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

¼ cup crumbled feta

Toss cucumber, tomato, onion and herbs together in a bowl.  Whisk separately; garlic, vinegar, salt pepper and oil.  Drizzle over vegetables and turn to coat.  Top with crumbled feta.  This will keep in fridge for about 3 days.