Cooking is not a mystery
the more heart we put out
the more heart we put in.
To bring cooking alive
we give our life. Giving
our life willingly we don't
get put out.
Washing cutting cooking cleaning,
exploring ways to give life to our life.
Not knowing already how and
what to do,
practice feeling it
out of what is not known
through the warmth and anxiety,
not sticking to a particualr way,
insisting it is the only way
even though it is quite good;
open to feeling the various possibilities,
the tentative ways of giving life to our life.
To feel out our left hand, our back, our toes,
to feel out our breathing, our movements, our stance,
this is our freedom, this is our wisdom.
The mystery is that it is
possible to do
what we don't know how to do.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Focus on the Foods: Bone Broth : August 2011
Although the creation of a health supportive grocery has always been the goal of the kitchen, there exists a bit of a whirlwind of options the kitchen must negotiate. Originally, the idea was to create as many ways to access this food as there are ways to learn the world around you: through classes, feasts, events, personal cheffing, volunteer opportunities, the store, the CSK club boxes and other outreach. I realize in all of this the focus turned away from the foods themselves and rested on the accessibility modalities. I’ve created systems and community (love this one), experiences of one another, vehicles for offering a positive experience of food and one another as well as giving folks back the ability to customize their experience of traditional foods BUT I have neglected the foods themselves.
Now that the community exists, the paradigm is supportive, I feel compelled to step back just a bit to honor yet again the foundational piece of Salt, Fire & Time: The foods!!! I want to educate you on the value, the why and how of what makes these valuable, delicious and powerful healing components of any diet. I want to help you develop your relationship not only to one another but to the foods that brought us all together — these foods create community and have since the beginning of society. This is paramount to taking the initiative to engage one another — if you don’t crave this one, then the whole house of of SFT falls apart and the funny thing is that it’s an easy one to do. The foods romance you all on their own, but please allow me to introduce you to Bone Broth, Cultured Vegetables and Fermented Sodas…
Bone Broth: the ultimate peasant food panacea is the most foundational part of my pantry. Auguste Escoffier said, “Indeed, stock is everything in cooking..without it nothing can be done.” He is so romantically correct. Stocks and broths are the beginning of building flavor in any food tradition. They begin the process of digestion too. Bone Broths are the process of taking what’s left after the meats have been removed and slowly drawing out the minerals, amino and marrow into solution to create a gelatinous multipurpose portion of your pantry artillery. Like all things good, it takes time but no real expertise, unless, like me, you wrestle with patience. One of my students suggested that we start a “forget about it” cookbook, since so many of the processes require you to leave them to the work without much intervention. Bone broth is one of them. Taking your collection of miscellaneous and mixed bone parts, acidulating some water, bring the whole mess to about 180 degrees F and then leaving it to gurgle for at least 8 but sometimes as much as 72 hours! Truly, you have to just train yourself to Forget-About- It for a bit. The result is pregnant with marrow, life essence, and minerals like calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur and trace elements as well as gelatin/collagen and amino acids like arginine and glycine. Though not a complete protein, it is enough of one to support someone struggling to recover for whom the true act of mastication is a challenge — For the rest it aids digestion by drawing digestive enzymes to cooked food in the gut, tones the intestinal tract, helps to prevent and mitigate infectious diseases and soothes the nervous system. It is a folk remedy for just about anything and in our present day palate vernacular, one of the most mysteriously satisfying foods — especially for transitioning vegetarians! ha! I can work it into just about any part of my day and often do as a snack, breakfast, a quick pick me up or a gentle warm cup before bed. This begins to create a foundation for health regardless the condition or necessary nutritional support. Bone Broth is both protocol and preventative for things like cancer recovery, diabetes, weight loss, autism recovery, heart disease, inferitlity, pregnancy support, chrone’s disease and colitis, among others…but most importantly for general wellbeing and optimum health.
Of course, not all bones are created equal…it is imperative that the bones your source come from pastured animal farms. It is also important that your water is clean and your vinegar is clear (like a cider, wine or rice vinegar), beyond that you can choose your own adventure and follow what your palate prefers. Here are some quick notes to guide you…
a splash of raw apple cider vinegar
1/2 handful of aromatic herbs
1 onion, split — include the skin
1 carrot broken in half
Place all the ingredients in a heavy stock pot and allow to sit at room temperature 1 hour to begin the process of drawing minerals out of the bones. Bring the contents to a low boil, check your temperature for about 180 degrees F and allow to gently simmer, bubbles just coming under the surface, for at least 8 hours. Trust me the lower the temperature for a longer amount of time, the better your broth will be. When you are ready, strain out the bones and vegetal material, and package your broth in whatever containers you choose. It freezes well. Some folks like to store it in ice cube trays for easy access. You can also use a pressure canner to store it in your pantry a room temp (saves fridge and freezer space). If your gelatin set isn’t what you were hoping for, not to fear, consider just adding in a pastured gelatin like Bernard Jenson’s Beef Gelatin (available through Radiant Life Catalog) to get the desired effect.
This will become the basis for your soups, stews, braises, sauces, gravy, use it to cook your beans and grains in or any other creative space you can think of!
Now that the community exists, the paradigm is supportive, I feel compelled to step back just a bit to honor yet again the foundational piece of Salt, Fire & Time: The foods!!! I want to educate you on the value, the why and how of what makes these valuable, delicious and powerful healing components of any diet. I want to help you develop your relationship not only to one another but to the foods that brought us all together — these foods create community and have since the beginning of society. This is paramount to taking the initiative to engage one another — if you don’t crave this one, then the whole house of of SFT falls apart and the funny thing is that it’s an easy one to do. The foods romance you all on their own, but please allow me to introduce you to Bone Broth, Cultured Vegetables and Fermented Sodas…
Bone Broth: the ultimate peasant food panacea is the most foundational part of my pantry. Auguste Escoffier said, “Indeed, stock is everything in cooking..without it nothing can be done.” He is so romantically correct. Stocks and broths are the beginning of building flavor in any food tradition. They begin the process of digestion too. Bone Broths are the process of taking what’s left after the meats have been removed and slowly drawing out the minerals, amino and marrow into solution to create a gelatinous multipurpose portion of your pantry artillery. Like all things good, it takes time but no real expertise, unless, like me, you wrestle with patience. One of my students suggested that we start a “forget about it” cookbook, since so many of the processes require you to leave them to the work without much intervention. Bone broth is one of them. Taking your collection of miscellaneous and mixed bone parts, acidulating some water, bring the whole mess to about 180 degrees F and then leaving it to gurgle for at least 8 but sometimes as much as 72 hours! Truly, you have to just train yourself to Forget-About- It for a bit. The result is pregnant with marrow, life essence, and minerals like calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur and trace elements as well as gelatin/collagen and amino acids like arginine and glycine. Though not a complete protein, it is enough of one to support someone struggling to recover for whom the true act of mastication is a challenge — For the rest it aids digestion by drawing digestive enzymes to cooked food in the gut, tones the intestinal tract, helps to prevent and mitigate infectious diseases and soothes the nervous system. It is a folk remedy for just about anything and in our present day palate vernacular, one of the most mysteriously satisfying foods — especially for transitioning vegetarians! ha! I can work it into just about any part of my day and often do as a snack, breakfast, a quick pick me up or a gentle warm cup before bed. This begins to create a foundation for health regardless the condition or necessary nutritional support. Bone Broth is both protocol and preventative for things like cancer recovery, diabetes, weight loss, autism recovery, heart disease, inferitlity, pregnancy support, chrone’s disease and colitis, among others…but most importantly for general wellbeing and optimum health.
Of course, not all bones are created equal…it is imperative that the bones your source come from pastured animal farms. It is also important that your water is clean and your vinegar is clear (like a cider, wine or rice vinegar), beyond that you can choose your own adventure and follow what your palate prefers. Here are some quick notes to guide you…
- Fish Bones (particularly the heads) are a great source of iodine and a folk remedy for thyroid issues (weight gain, heart disease, inability to concentrate and depression) and verility. I like to include the spines and tails too. A bit of white wine and a few aromatic herbs make this a true perfume!
- Lamb Bones – the neck and rib bones make the best gelatin and have great flavor
- Chicken Bones (the traditional remedy for asthma, colds and flu) are the most user friendly. I prefer to use backs, necks, heads and feet as well as the leftover carcasses form dinner.
- Pork Bones — often overlooked, these make a very mild and sweet broth, great for getting kids into broth be sure to include the skins!
- Beef Bones are my favorite. Be sure to include joints, tails and split the long bones if you can.
A Basic Recipe:
1 pound mixed bones/quart of purified watera splash of raw apple cider vinegar
1/2 handful of aromatic herbs
1 onion, split — include the skin
1 carrot broken in half
Place all the ingredients in a heavy stock pot and allow to sit at room temperature 1 hour to begin the process of drawing minerals out of the bones. Bring the contents to a low boil, check your temperature for about 180 degrees F and allow to gently simmer, bubbles just coming under the surface, for at least 8 hours. Trust me the lower the temperature for a longer amount of time, the better your broth will be. When you are ready, strain out the bones and vegetal material, and package your broth in whatever containers you choose. It freezes well. Some folks like to store it in ice cube trays for easy access. You can also use a pressure canner to store it in your pantry a room temp (saves fridge and freezer space). If your gelatin set isn’t what you were hoping for, not to fear, consider just adding in a pastured gelatin like Bernard Jenson’s Beef Gelatin (available through Radiant Life Catalog) to get the desired effect.
This will become the basis for your soups, stews, braises, sauces, gravy, use it to cook your beans and grains in or any other creative space you can think of!
For more information click here to check out the Townshend Letter on Bone Broth (by Dr. Allison Siebecker)
What is a CSK? : January 2011
This is long overdue. Folks ask me all the time what does Community Supported Kitchen mean? I know that for the sake of marketing purposes I am supposed to get that down to a few sentences that would encompass the whole biz and that ain’t easy. It’s not a soup kitchen, it’s not an incubator kitchen, and it’s not even really a shared kitchen. It is community supported by virtue of being driven by community labor to serve community need by selling products and information to a local community of eaters! In truth, Community Supported Businesses are on the rise, because of the demand to seek greater support from the community, during a difficult economy, to share the burden of business development. Even in business there are seasons of growth: feast or famine! The one thing we have in common, as community supported businesses, is asking for the community to participate in the life cycle of a business itself as was demonstrated in the initial Community Supported Agriculture model, introduced in 1986! But Community Kitchens go back even farther to the aspirations of Eleanor Roosevelt whose crusade for low cost cooking, that included fresh and nutritious ingredients in simple preparations, goes back as far as the Great Depression.
The commitment to participate is just one small formality of the process. A CSK becomes a living animal that integrates tradition, local economies, community and learning. It is futuristic in this way because the model seeks to include not only its customers but everyone in an effort to create a reflection of healthy communities. This process means that it becomes a space for folks to meet their fellow community members around a common hearth and as such destroy this very American illusion that independence is sustainable. In community, we create our right to healthcare, our right to free speech, as a matter of mutual respect rather than law, and in doing so honor the generations that came before us as well as those that are yet to come. We honor our place in a grand system of interrelated wisdom and relationships as members of humanity and this is only a tiny window into seeing how that walks, talks breathes and feels.
This kitchen, for me, is certainly a business. It is what allows me a livelihood and I honestly believe it is integral to the integrity of the kitchen that it be so. To create a model that would help create professional identities for me and employees and volunteers and customers and farmers is important to a sense of purpose and responsibility to one another as we work to create seasonal menus and continued success on a multitude of levels.
So it’s not easy to explain…the main focus of the business is selling memberships to the CSK Club, which is a weekly box of prepared foods. Those foods are sourced locally from farmers with faces and families. These menus are intended to reflect our regional food heritage as well as the seasons. By working in collaboration with Mother Nature we ready ourselves to endure the challenges that come with living in this part of the country.
But then there’s more…there exists a traditional wisdom in any cultural style of eating that is important to healing our bodies and creating balance within and without. It is a system of restoration via proper food preparation techniques that continues to prove its value and heal even those illnesses that have developed with the industrialization of our country and the stress of our modern lives (i.e.: mental illness, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, autism, digestive disorders, etc.). In this way, it is a ritualistic wisdom that reflects the tides of change we experience in our life cycles — respectively and in community. It would be ridiculous to believe that we could supersede that kind of ancestral wisdom in a few generations of experimental civilization. Much of the fatalism of our industrialized food culture survives on the mythology that there is no connection between what we eat and our health. These weekly boxes of food honor that older wisdom, represented in the menus as a variety of cultural food traditions and vary weekly. Though the kind of menu is set – there is always room to customize your experience of the boxes with additions/substitutions from the pantry. It is meant to help the process of eating at home to be something nourishing and shared – get all kinds of families back to the table. We have given up our experiences of food and made them something distant rather than something necessary daily and done in community. We have taken away our ability to feed and heal ourselves in simple ways and these boxes are a tiny step in bringing that into the modern world. They are not exclusive menus and are meant to be added to with fresh ingredients, setting the stage for your own menu planning and creative food experiments — but in such a way that you’re guaranteed nutrition. The more folks participate, the more this is able to expand in variety and cost accessibility.
Outside of this comes the volunteering, the classes, the community meals and events – other places for people to come together, to teach and share information – not only with one another as consumers, but also the cottage artisans, the farmers, the food advocates, the teachers, the doctors and other members of our food economy that offer hopeful and sustainable solutions to the health and environmental crises we face. We are not the community of island universes that we have become. We are so much stronger, patient and healthy in collaboration and the more ways we participate in experiences as a community the more we foster proof of a changing world.
I am grateful for the opportunity to develop such a business. I am thrilled every day to go to work as I engage and offer what I can to the local food movement. As my knowledge grows, so does that of every person that comes into my kitchen in some form or another. Thank you for your help in making this possible, available and accessible.
The commitment to participate is just one small formality of the process. A CSK becomes a living animal that integrates tradition, local economies, community and learning. It is futuristic in this way because the model seeks to include not only its customers but everyone in an effort to create a reflection of healthy communities. This process means that it becomes a space for folks to meet their fellow community members around a common hearth and as such destroy this very American illusion that independence is sustainable. In community, we create our right to healthcare, our right to free speech, as a matter of mutual respect rather than law, and in doing so honor the generations that came before us as well as those that are yet to come. We honor our place in a grand system of interrelated wisdom and relationships as members of humanity and this is only a tiny window into seeing how that walks, talks breathes and feels.
This kitchen, for me, is certainly a business. It is what allows me a livelihood and I honestly believe it is integral to the integrity of the kitchen that it be so. To create a model that would help create professional identities for me and employees and volunteers and customers and farmers is important to a sense of purpose and responsibility to one another as we work to create seasonal menus and continued success on a multitude of levels.
So it’s not easy to explain…the main focus of the business is selling memberships to the CSK Club, which is a weekly box of prepared foods. Those foods are sourced locally from farmers with faces and families. These menus are intended to reflect our regional food heritage as well as the seasons. By working in collaboration with Mother Nature we ready ourselves to endure the challenges that come with living in this part of the country.
But then there’s more…there exists a traditional wisdom in any cultural style of eating that is important to healing our bodies and creating balance within and without. It is a system of restoration via proper food preparation techniques that continues to prove its value and heal even those illnesses that have developed with the industrialization of our country and the stress of our modern lives (i.e.: mental illness, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, autism, digestive disorders, etc.). In this way, it is a ritualistic wisdom that reflects the tides of change we experience in our life cycles — respectively and in community. It would be ridiculous to believe that we could supersede that kind of ancestral wisdom in a few generations of experimental civilization. Much of the fatalism of our industrialized food culture survives on the mythology that there is no connection between what we eat and our health. These weekly boxes of food honor that older wisdom, represented in the menus as a variety of cultural food traditions and vary weekly. Though the kind of menu is set – there is always room to customize your experience of the boxes with additions/substitutions from the pantry. It is meant to help the process of eating at home to be something nourishing and shared – get all kinds of families back to the table. We have given up our experiences of food and made them something distant rather than something necessary daily and done in community. We have taken away our ability to feed and heal ourselves in simple ways and these boxes are a tiny step in bringing that into the modern world. They are not exclusive menus and are meant to be added to with fresh ingredients, setting the stage for your own menu planning and creative food experiments — but in such a way that you’re guaranteed nutrition. The more folks participate, the more this is able to expand in variety and cost accessibility.
Outside of this comes the volunteering, the classes, the community meals and events – other places for people to come together, to teach and share information – not only with one another as consumers, but also the cottage artisans, the farmers, the food advocates, the teachers, the doctors and other members of our food economy that offer hopeful and sustainable solutions to the health and environmental crises we face. We are not the community of island universes that we have become. We are so much stronger, patient and healthy in collaboration and the more ways we participate in experiences as a community the more we foster proof of a changing world.
I am grateful for the opportunity to develop such a business. I am thrilled every day to go to work as I engage and offer what I can to the local food movement. As my knowledge grows, so does that of every person that comes into my kitchen in some form or another. Thank you for your help in making this possible, available and accessible.
Endangered Foods: February 2010
I am feeling completely reinvigorated around the idea of endangered foods ie: food traditions and preparations that time forgets to pay attention to in lieu of industrial food choices and most dangerously —TIME constraints. It really breaks my heart to think that we cannot, as a culture, take the time to not only feed ourselves but to feed our food heritage. This concept being something akin to pouring a shot of whiskey on the grave of a loved one or leaving an extra plate at the table for an unexpected visitor, we are bound to pay our respects to the places and people that developed a culture around feeding the generations of people to follow. I want to remember now. And my little toast this month goes out to the native people of this “Salmon Nation.”
Once upon a time… the tribal nations of this area organized seasons of people and celebrations around the salmon returning, spawning, then being available to hunt, for preservation of nutrition, the land and the coming months. They respected the fact that safe and responsible fish harvesting ensured future generations of salmon to be available. The people ate with respect for future generations of people and with the intention that they were responsible for nourishing them. The salmon nutritionally were great sources of protein, good fats, Omega 3 fatty acids, Vitamin D3 and Astaxanthin, a powerful carotene-type antioxidant 100s of times more powerful than Vitamin E.
Despite being over-fished, irresponsibly harvested, struggling pollution concerns that threaten native populations of not only these fish but these people, the salmon are still a sacred food and all the more a precious resource… Specifically for those who live in this region of the country — native foods feed all of us local people and help us seasonally to survive the elements and allow our health to flourish. In the last 40 years, a lot of hard work has been done to restore habitats and protect salmon populations, the result is that they are beginning to thrive again.
This month — a potted salmon is on the menu and is is an adaptation of a traditional native recipe, using pastured butter and hazelnut oil to cream the king salmon meat. I hope that as you enjoy it you can feel a wee bit closer our landscape and people-scape knowing that it was sustainably caught, traditionally prepared and shared locally.
Once upon a time… the tribal nations of this area organized seasons of people and celebrations around the salmon returning, spawning, then being available to hunt, for preservation of nutrition, the land and the coming months. They respected the fact that safe and responsible fish harvesting ensured future generations of salmon to be available. The people ate with respect for future generations of people and with the intention that they were responsible for nourishing them. The salmon nutritionally were great sources of protein, good fats, Omega 3 fatty acids, Vitamin D3 and Astaxanthin, a powerful carotene-type antioxidant 100s of times more powerful than Vitamin E.
Despite being over-fished, irresponsibly harvested, struggling pollution concerns that threaten native populations of not only these fish but these people, the salmon are still a sacred food and all the more a precious resource… Specifically for those who live in this region of the country — native foods feed all of us local people and help us seasonally to survive the elements and allow our health to flourish. In the last 40 years, a lot of hard work has been done to restore habitats and protect salmon populations, the result is that they are beginning to thrive again.
This month — a potted salmon is on the menu and is is an adaptation of a traditional native recipe, using pastured butter and hazelnut oil to cream the king salmon meat. I hope that as you enjoy it you can feel a wee bit closer our landscape and people-scape knowing that it was sustainably caught, traditionally prepared and shared locally.
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