For the first time in many years, I have been making holiday treats, giving them to friends and clients. Yes, I have eaten a few as well. Do I feel guilty or do I feel as if I am leading my friends down the sugary road to somewhere bad ? No. There are many many ways to indulge in some holiday cheer. I use nuts, honey, stevia, coconut oil, really good raw cacao, all organic of course.

The internet abounds with recipes and ideas galore! I owe a tip of the hat to Wardeh of GNOWGFLINS for her egg nog recipe which of course I have changed up a bit. Thanks to her commenters, too, who added their own taste.

Egg Nog
raw, real, no sugar, lacto fermented

4 cups of milk ( raw and fresh is best. I used 3 c. raw cow’s milk, 1 cup of heavy cream. You could use goats’ milk, coconut milk, make your own almond milk…)
8 yolks from eggs from pasture raised chickens ( I used 7 as some of the eggs were pretty large) ( As I have commented many times on this blog, when your eggs are fresh, local, from the pasture, there is no problem with eating the yolks raw. The chemistry of the whites is such that they are better for you when cooked)
stevia to taste ( I used the liquid kind and used 3 dropperfuls)
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp or so of freshly grated nutmeg
2 T. whey

Combine and mix in your blender. This filled one quart jar and one pint jar with a bit for the cook to taste. Let sit on the counter overnight or 24 hours. Shake well and pour into a beautiful glass. Go ahead and top with whipped cream and/or add a spoonful of alcohol ( rum, whiskey, some sort of liqueur)

Leave for Santa or not. I like to think the old guy might be ready for something lighter so I plan to offer him some fresh made juice. I recently made some for my cooking service, http://healthalchemykitchen.com ( called moving into winter juice, if you Santa Cruz folks would like to order some) I combined, in the blender, purified water, a Mutsu apple, 2 kiwis, 3 stalks of celery, a small amount of peeled celery root, and about an inch knob of ginger. Blend until liquified, strain, and drink.

I found a lovely cookie recipe in the cookbook, Sweet and Natural, by Meredith McCarty. Of course, I switched some things around.

Linzertorte Cookies

2 c. nuts, soaked, then lightly toasted and as finely ground as you can get them. ( I used purchased almond meal) ( can use almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts)
1 c. oatmeal, finely ground
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. sea salt ( I probably used a bit more, I didn’t measure!)
1/2 c. melted butter or coconut oil
1 egg
2 T. water
3 droppers of liquid stevia ( or if you want 1/4. cup honey)
1 tsp. orange zest
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 c. fruit sweetened jam ( raspberry is traditional, I also used ginger jam – NOT fruit sweetened but oh so yummy.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment or brush with oil.

Mix dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk wet ingredients together and add to dry. The dough is not very wet but you should be able to form balls easily. Roll into 1 1/2 in. ( ish) balls. Transfer to baking sheet. Flatten a bit and press thumb in middle. You make have to fix some cracks and form what looks like the caldera of a volcano. Fill indentations with jam.

Bake until golden, 15 to 20 minutes.

Ho, Ho, Ho!! Enjoy a peaceful moment with a healthy beverage and some guilt free cookies . If Santa is lucky, there will be some left for him. Don’t forget the carrots for the reindeer.

I am not sure when it started but a few well known food bloggers had a conversation about pie and soon #pieday was created. It is a  day for food bloggers, food lovers, cooks and chefs to make a pie, take a picture of it, post it on Facebook, Twitter, write a blog post about it. I can’t imagine very many people in our culture anyway who don’t like pie. This event has become a pretty big phenomenon. If you use either Facebook or Twitter I encourage you to go and explore the huge world of pie. Go here for the Facebook event page. Go to twitter and do a search using #pieday ( the “hashtag” is what enables you to see ALL the tweets that have to do with pieday)

I love savory pie. And I have been craving meat, so I created a savory Carnivore Cottage Pie. I wish I could give credit to the blogger from whom I got the crust recipe but the link is long gone. so, thank you, faceless Paleo diet practitioner. The crust is the only part I really have a recipe for. It would have been better had I had a recipe for the rest as I forgot to put some eggs into the filling which would have held it together nicely. Instead, it fell out of the lovely crust. Tasted good, yes, but not so pretty for a photo! As with all my recipes, improvisation is the name of the game and this could have almost infinite combinations of ingredients.

Carnivore Cottage Pie

crust:
5 c.organic almond meal/flour
4 T. cold organic butter, cut into small pieces
2 organic eggs ( please use ones from pastured chickens)
1 tsp. salt

filling:
I used a small onion and a couple cloves of garlic which I sauteed in some leftover bacon fat. Use what oil/butter combination you prefer. I added about 3/4 lb. of turkey sausage, and a couple big handfuls of beet greens, salt, pepper, some Penzey’s Summer in Paris seasoning. This is a good time to use leftover veggies. I had thought of putting mushrooms in, but forgot!

Place almond meal and salt into the food processor.  Pulse in the pieces of butter. Add eggs and mix until it comes into a ball. Dump onto a piece of parchment paper, wrap, and cool in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or so. This dough is pretty fragile before baking. Divide into two balls and roll carefully into circles for your pie pan. I used a deep dish baking dish and pushed the dough carefully up the sides.I put a few slices of pork pate over the dough and sort of spread it around.  Add the cooked filling which you have mixed with a couple of eggs. Cover with the other rolled out crust and gently press the edges together.

Bake at 350º in the center of the oven for about 30 minutes. Yummy!

This post is also part of Traditional Tuesdays and Real Food Wednesdays blog hops. Hop on over and check out the other posts.

The more deeply I have pursued my own personal growth and my career as a personal chef, I have discovered such a need for community. There have been studies which show that having community is one of the elements of having a long healthy life. I have been part of a spiritual community for many years which has become my family and my deepest friends. I belong to a couple of online personal chef communities which gives me information and support, recipes and helpful tips. There have been gatherings in “real” life and those connections have also become deep and important to me.  There is a community of people who support the same ideas I have about nutrition, the political side of food, and cooking, both on line and in everyday life. I work alone, I live alone, and I am always looking for places where I feel comfortable gathering with my peers.

Some of my friends and colleagues and I have decided to do more to create that food community, that gathering of peers to celebrate our good fortune and blessings here in Santa Cruz County, the bounty of good food here, and people who are passionate about what we eat and where it comes from. Together with my friend Noelle Noli, Craig Lane from Health Alchemy Nutritional Services, and the good folks from Santa Cruz Local Foods, I am organizing a dinner.

This event will take place June 17, 2011 at the Masonic Temple in Santa Cruz, starting at 5:30 PM. We will have a socializing time, then dinner will be served family style ( a chance to sit with new friends), followed by some brief speaking, dessert, and some networking time.

We believe in eating seasonally, organically, using local and ethically produced products.

I am excited about the chance to work with these people and to create an absolutely delicious beautiful meal and an opportunity for people to get together and explore our connections. I hope you are too!

our menu:

Flax breads and flavored ghees
Wildcrafted herb and flower salad with several kinds of salad dressing
Sauteed Greens
Beef Ribs or Tempeh with Cherry Chipotle Glaze
Chia pudding Trifle with fresh berries and Lavender whipped cream
probiotic sodas, water

Cost: $40 per adult, $20 for children
Tickets available through PayPal ( account # charitydas)

prices

adult $40.00 child $20.00 child under 8 $0.00

more information , charitydas@me.com

The USDA recently revised their dietary guidelines once again. And, once again, they are so far off the mark of what constitutes a healthy diet. I have been researching nutrition for a long time and in the last few years discovered the work of Dr. Weston Price. He advocated eating a traditional diet of meat, fats such as butter, lard, coconut oil, raw dairy products, lots of vegetables and fruit, and staying away from grains and any processed foods. I know some of you have issues and your own ideas about the fats but once you read the research and once you start eating that way, you will change your mind.

In a brief summary, the new guidelines advise the reduction of saturated fat even further, the further reduction of salt, advocates increasing the consumption of grains and low fat products and dairy.

As you can imagine there has been much discussion of this in the blogosphere and twitterverse ( this post I especially like).  My comments are that history shows us that obesity rates rose significantly after the introduction of the world of lowfat foods. And that the USDA has many ties to the food industry so the individuals involved in making these decisions benefit greatly financially from encouraging people to eat processed food!

I encourage you to read the new guidelines here and the comments from the Weston Price Foundation here . I also encourage you to leave your comments. We need to be educated and not let the government continue to wreak havoc with our health and with the livelihoods of the small farmers . We all stand to lose from these new guidelines, and I don’t mean weight!

This post is part of the Food Renegade’s Fight Back Friday.    

My kitchen has been a laboratory lately. I feel a bit like a mad ( but healthy) scientist. I have discovered the fun of lacto- fermentation. Cultures( pun intended!) all around the world have known the benefits of eating fermented food. Eastern Europeans eat sauerkraut and other pickled vegetables, Europeans and Americans eat yoghurt ( though some of the yoghurt available hardly counts as healthy fermented food), the Mexican people have a lovely dish called cortida, the Japanese drink miso soup, eat natto ( fermented soy), pickled vegetables, and the Koreans are famous for their Kim Chi.  Many people drink fermented beverages in the form of beer, wine, or mead. Back in the day, before electricity fermenting was a way of being able to store food. It just so happens to also be highly beneficial for our digestive systems, adding all kind of good bacteria, probiotics.

People who follow a traditional foods diet recommend some fermented food every day. Vegetables lend themselves to fermenting or pickling beautifully. We all know about sauerkraut and pickles ( cucumbers). Perhaps you have had pickled beets. How about trying fermented carrots ?

I wrote an entry a while ago featuring strawberries and this recipe for a drink called shrub.  How about some lacto fermented ginger ale ?

Ginger Soda

2 c. coconut water

1/4c. whey ( find out how to make your own here ) or water kefir grains

pinch of salt

1 T. cane sugar

handful of peeled roughly chopped fresh ginger ( depending on how much you like ginger)

Mix all of these ingredients in a clean quart jar. Put the lid on and let sit on your counter in a cool dark place for 2 days. Strain liquid into another clean jar and add the juice of 2 limes or 1 lemon, depending on your preference. If you are using water kefir grains, rinse and reuse. Enjoy. Keep refrigerated to stop the fermenting process.

I have an almost eaten jar of beets,onions, and turnips in the fridge, along with a jar of newly fermented beet kvass. The ginger soda is on the counter, starting its fermentation, and some beautiful red and orange carrots are waiting for my attention. Fermenting is fun. It is good for you. Try it! and please let me know how it turns out.

I loved cooking with my mom when I was young. I still do, though we don’t do it often anymore. I loved cooking for my family . I loved my Betty Crocker Junior Cookbook. I loved Home Ec class. ( I think it should still be offered!) I loved being in the 4H and doing cooking projects. I still love to tell the story of my first lesson in food styling. My  4H project one summer was to create a simple lunch and present it at the County Fair for judging. There were many practice runs of muffin and salad making. My lunch consisted of a large tomato stuffed with either tuna or chicken salad ( I don’t remember but I am guessing that Ohio in the early 60′s, it was tuna), a blueberry muffin,melon balls, and a glass of milk. We learned about presentation, that color is important. So, taking that lesson to heart, I colored my milk green and I think I flavored it mint! ( oh dear)  I was so disappointed to only earn a red ribbon ( second place). Why ? I asked. Everything is colorful, different textures, what was wrong ? Well, everything was round! So, to this day, I vary my shapes on the plate. Still looking for that blue ribbon.

I cook professionally now for people in their homes. I love what I do. I love the blending of the art and the science of cooking. How you can put a list of ingredients together and it creates something entirely different and one is not quite sure what the ingredients are anymore. I love the creativity and experimentation that recipes call out for. Perhaps I will use this herb instead of that one. How would this taste with chicken instead of fish ? What if I added some wine to the sauce ? etc. 

I love feeding people and caring for them in that way. I love nourishing peoples’ bodies with good nutrition and their souls with beautiful food. ( I now love doing that for myself after years of struggling with food and eating issues) And, yes, I love the smiles on peoples’ faces when they  taste it.  As a personal chef, not only am I providing my clients with tasty food, I am providing them with time. Time they wouldn’t have if they were struggling to get dinner on the table. I give them peace of mind, family time, less stress. I love that.

I love being part of the food world. I love learning about new food, talking about food, reading recipes. Lord, I have stacks and stacks of recipes I have cut out of magazines and will never in several lifetimes have the time to cook, yet I cut more out weekly or download them, share them on the internet. 

I love being part of the political side of food, the “Real Food” movement. I have found so many colleagues through the internet who share the same passions I do for trying to live more gently on the earth and not polluting Her with non sustainable Big Agriculture.  I love telling people about the benefits of eating eggs from pastured chickens, drinking raw milk, fermenting vegetables, not eating things with ingredients you cannot understand. You cannot really eat well this way if you don’t cook, or have someone to cook for you.

I love to cook. Plain and simple. I cook everyday, not every meal of course. I also do love to eat in a restaurant or with friends. But the best days are spent cooking.