Sun Tea: Sage, Mint, and chili

I've been on a real sun tea kick lately.  Our garden in full swing and the long summer days make it perfect sun tea weather.  You can make endless varieties of sun teas depending on what fresh herbs are available to you.  This recipe is one of my more adventures ones, it has a great herby taste to it with a bit of a kick from the chili pepper.

Ingredients:

Lemon, 1
Mint, 1 bunch
Sage, 1 bunch
Honey, 3 TBLS
Dried red chili pepper, 1-2 depending on how spicy you like it
Water

Instructions:

1. In the morning place all the ingredients in a large mason jar or clear sealed pitcher 
2. Cut the lemon in half and juice into pitcher, put the lemon halves in the pitcher as well
3. Fill with water and seal
4. Place the pitcher in a spot that will get sun all day
5. By the evening the tea should be ready to be served with dinner.

Jeff's Favorite Kale

This truly is my favorite way to eat kale.  It makes a wonderful side to grilled pork chops, but is hearty enough to stand as a meal of it's own.  I wish I had discovered this tasty, vitamin packed leafy green sooner in life.  One tip though, while it may be tempting to eat the whole dish by yourself, it's really best shared!

Ingredients:

Kale, 1 bunch (any variety) chopped
1 Apple chopped (I like fuji)
1/2 an Onion, chopped
4 strips of bacon, chopped
Apple Cider Vinegar, 2 TBLS plus extra for dressing
Black pepper, fresh cracked to taste
Grapeseed oil


Instructions:

1. Add a small amount of grapeseed oil to a large skillet over medium-high heat
2. Remove the tough lower stems from the kale and chop the kale, onion, apple, and bacon 
3. When the oil is heated add the onions and bacon to the skillet
4. After a few minutes add the apple to the skillet with the black pepper
5. When the onions and bacon begin to look cooked add the kale
6. Once the kale becomes wilty add the apple cider vinegar, stir and remove from heat
7. Feel free to add more apple cider vinegar if you desire more 

Note:  If the onions or bacon begin to stick to the bottom of the pan at any time add a TBLS of water and stir

Note: This dish also works very well with collard greens or swiss chard

Watermelon Blender

Worst photo I've added to the blog.

This is a great way to have watermelon and a refreshing summer drink.

Ingredients:

Watermelon

Rum (optional)

Mint Sprig (optional)

Instruction:

1.  Cut up the watermelon into chunks and blend in a food processor 
2. If you are in the mood for a mixed drink at a shot of rum to a cup and add the blended watermelon
3. Add a sprig of mint to your glass to add a bit of flair

Stir Fried Green Beans

This is a great quick and flavorful side dish.

Ingredients:

frozen organic green beans, 16oz bag
chili flakes, 1 tsp
garlic powder, 1 tsp
soy sauce, a few good squirts
grapeseed oil

Instruction:

1. Heat your skillet on medium-high heat and add oil
2. When the oil is hot add the green beans, chili flakes, and garlic powder
3. Saute the green beans until they start to get a little color and remove from heat
4. Add a few good squirts of soy sauce, mix and serve

Note: Costco has great deals on huge bags of organic green beans.
Note: If you use fresh garlic, mince and add to the pan 30 seconds - 1 minute before you take off the heat.

Slow and Low BBQ Chicken

My family, extended family, and friends who I've served this to love this dish.  The slow cooking makes the chicken legs wonderfully tender and the BBQ sauce rich and meaty.  This isn't a meal for a first date though, it's messy!

Ingredients:

Chicken Legs, skin on bone in, 1 family pack
BBQ Sauce, 1 can (I use Stubbs HIckory Bourbon)
Water, 1/2-3/4 of a  cup
Apple Cider Vinegar, 1/4 cup
Worcestershire sauce, a few good squirts
Grapeseed oil

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 325
2. Peel the skin off of the chicken legs
3. Pour a bit of grapeseed oil into the bottom of a baking dish and place the chicken legs in making sure they don't overlap
4. Pour BBQ sauce, water, apple cider vinegar, and worcestershire sauce over the chicken
5. Bake the chicken for 2 and a half hours turning every half hour or so 

Grilled Peaches

Now that peaches are in season this makes a great summer dessert that is quick, easy, affordable, and great to serve to guests.

Ingredients:

peaches
grapeseed oil
molasses
vanilla yogurt (for this I prefer the Wallaby brand vanilla)

Instructions:

1. Heat the grill so it's nice and hot
2. Rub the peaches with a little grapeseed oil
3. Place the peaches on the grill for a minute or two on both sides, until they start to get grill lines.
4. Remove peaches from the grill, drizzle with molasses, put a dob of yogurt on each peach half and serve

Note: You can also try this recipe with apricots.

Savory Roasted Sweet Potatoes

This  is our goto recipe when we are hungry for sweet potatoes.  Serves 4

Ingredients:

3 sweet potatoes

1 head of garlic

butter, 3 or 4 knobs 

grapeseed oil, a small glug

smoked paprika, to taste

cumin, to taste

salt, to taste

pepper, to taste

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Peel sweet potatoes and cut into 1” by 1” cubes
3. Crush garlic and take it out of it's skin
4. Put sweet potatoes and garlic into a mixing bowl and toss with a small glug of grapseed oil, smoked paprika, cumin, salt, and pepper
5. Put sweet potato and garlic mixture onto a baking dish with a few good knobs of butter making sure the the potatoes do not overlap each other
6. Cook for 45 minutes or until sweet potatoes start to brown, turn half way through cooking.

Note: I prefer the taste of garnet yams, but there are plenty of good varieties of yams you can use.

Affordably Eating Grain-free

By removing grain from our diet, we essentially cut out the cheap (and completely indigestible to humans in it's natural form) filler from our meals.  Adding on top of that we try to eat organically grown and hormone free when it is available, this can greatly increase the price of the meals we eat, especially since I have a big appetite.  Here are a few tips I use to reign in my spending at the grocery store and still eat like a (grain-free) king.

• Do your meal plan ahead of time, but be flexible.  If you show up to the market and what you planned on is too expensive, change it.  On the flip side if you find a killer sale on an ingredient you know you have recipes for, or that freezes well, stock up!
• Buy in season.  Most time veg that is in season will be cheaper, and lets face it, taste a whole lot better.
• Plan the main course, but leave the sides open.  See what is on sale and plan your sides once you get to the market.  If you don't have a recipe for something you find, a quick google search once you get home will usually yield thousands of results.
• Frozen is your friend.  This is a time saver and potentially a money saver.  When I say frozen, I'm not talking about that prepared crap like hot pockets, I mean vegetables, uncooked meat, berries, and other fruit.  Once again, if you find them on sale they aren't about to go bad, so stock!  Thinking ahead is key.
• Use the whole chicken.  Buying just the breasts is really expensive by themselves, but a whole chicken is cheap by comparison.  Piece it and freeze what you don't use right away or roast it whole.  Jamie Oliver has an excellent recipe for whole roasted chickens , and I highly recommend any cook book of his.  
• An ever better money saving option to the whole bird is just the legs (thigh and drumstick, bone and skin on).  These are hands down the best way to spend your money.  While they have their limitations (I would never serve them over a salad) with a little bit of prep you have, in my opinion, the tastiest part of the chicken.  I will be posting plenty of recipes that make use of chicken legs.
• Don't be afraid to try new things.  Either a new way to make an old favorite or food that you have never tried before, but is dirt cheap when you get to the store.  

Lunch Stuffed Peppers

There are infinite variations of what you could do with this recipe, and there is really no wrong way to make it.  A lot of what you put in will probably depend on what's in your fridge.  This is what I did today:

Ingredients:

1 red bell pepper

filling
1 can of chicken
1 spoonful mayonaise
2 spoonfuls plain yogurt
kosher, salt to taste
fresh cracked pepper, to taste
garlic powder, to taste
red pepper flakes, to taste

garnish
basil, small handful of fresh chopped
cucumber, sliced

1. Cut the bell pepper in half and seed
2. Mix the filling ingredients together in a bowl
3. Fill the pepper with the filling
4. Garnish, with the garnish

Substitutes and variations:

1. Use fresh chicken
2. Before you garnish put cheese on top and broil for a warm version
3. Go veg with hummus or baba ganoush instead of the chicken
4. Roughly chop and saute mushrooms and onions as the filling and top with tomatoes and pesto for a completely different take on it.   

The possibilities are endless, post your tasty version in the comment box so others can give them a try!

Musing on oils

In the past ten years olive oil has really taken center stage.  Any cooking show you watch, and virtually every recipe you find online uses it.  I love it, I think it adds a whole other dimension of flavor to any savory dish you add it too.  However, I don't think it's the all purpose oil that everyone is claiming it to be, and you have to know when is the appropriate time to use this sometimes very pricey oil.

Luckily there is something other canola and vegetable oils that can serve the same purposes.  I want to tell you about a healthy, wonderfully tasty oil you may not have heard of before.  Grapeseed oil.  It imbues the dishes you cook in it with a mild nutty flavor and is rich in vitamin E.  Unlike olive oil, which has a somewhat low smoke point, grapeseed oil's smoke point is 421 degrees fahrenheit.  I've found food will actually cook slightly faster using grapeseed oil.  Although I'm not a baker (Monica is much better at that than I am), grapeseed oil can replace canola or vegetable oil in any cake or cookie.  I also seal my cast iron skillets with it, works great!

Now I understand sometimes you have to have that olive taste that good olive oil gives a dish, what I do in that case is use slightly less grapeseed oil when I sauté or bake, then when the dish is off the heat I add just enough olive oil to get the flavor I want.  If I plan on using an oil raw, like for a salad dressing, I prefer to use olive oil every time, the flavor is just too good.

If you get the chance I hope you try cooking with grapeseed oil, while not a life changing experience I know I enjoy it!

A Palate Cleanser

I have been trying to get Monica to update her blog for about 6 months now, and she finally decided to give in to my nagging... on one condition:  that I start writing about the recipes I cook for our family.  As some of you may have gathered from previous posts we try to eat as grain-free as possible, which presented some very interesting culinary challenges when we started.  For instance:  what do we do with all these wonderful pasta recipe's we have accumulated, how is this even remotely affordable, what if I don't have an hour+ to prep and cook dinner, and other such nagging issues.  Luckily, a year in and we have tackled most of these dilemma's.  My coming posts will hopefully reflect how we have overcome some of these issues and include some of my recipes (I promise to only include the ones that turned out).

Vinegar...

So we have started using vinegar for killing germs around the house and thought...if this salad seasoning power house can squash sammy & ella, what else could it squash? What about those pesky weeds that crop up between the bricks in our paver patio? I can spray those....

It worked! Those pesky greens went the way of the dinosaurs. Between the midday heat and the vinegar they had completely wilted and were easy to pull right from between the bricks. I shouldn't get too proud of myself...a quick google search soon taught me that this trick has been around awhile...and not my one brilliant moment (which I trust is coming). Although I hope that when that moment comes it is more amazing an obscure use for vinegar.

Good thing I didn't go with the urge to use it in my lawn...the results could be devastating (bye bye lush lawn!).

A little bit of Spring...hangover...

So this past fall, I was a little reluctant to let the garden harvest go. We had a pretty successful crop and a good variety of vegetables. And, who can pass up fresh basil or homemade pesto, right?

We started pulling our plants in for the winter by repotting one of our four basil plants into a planter, moving our planter of parsley indoors along with the newly repotted basil. Lastly, we decided to begin growing our own ginger. This winter I have been pleasantly surprised to see that we have been able to keep a steady supply of fresh basil, ginger and parsley without needing to add those ingredients to the weekly grocery list!

One challenge this new venture has presented is the increase in gnats in the house. They were everywhere, but hovering more so around our planters. Wanting to avoid using chemicals on our edible plants I turned to the internet for a more natural solution...cinnamon. By sprinkling cinnamon onto the dirt of your plant, it helps reduce the number of gnats. For our plants it was a significant change. We haven't had to resort to the use of chamomile, but I'll try that if the gnats stage a come back.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...

...he's going to want a glass of milk..

In my case if you give me a really good grain free recipe, I'm going to want to plant the stuff to make it. Case in point: golden beets. I have never heard of them and am assuming that they would be very difficult and/or expensive to find. But I must try this recipe. As much as this grain-free foodie has been enjoying her experimentation with spaghetti squash and developing a grain-free gnocchi recipe, a grain-free version of rice noodles is hard to come by without loosing the right texture.

Which got me reminiscing about last year's garden and all of the wonderful summer produce that we got from it.

Basil...

Zucchini...

And green beans...

So what is in store this spring? I have mapped our our garden plan for this spring and based it on what items we use regularly within a grain-free diet: onion, mint, cherry tomatoes, golden beets (are new this year), lettuce, squash (spaghetti, butternut, zucchini and eggplant), peppers, and I am excited to venture into the world of edible flowers - nasturtium, specifically.