Food Swap!

I enjoyed my first food swap yesterday! Swaps like the one I attended started in Brooklyn, NYC and have spread to cities throughout the country, including Grand Rapids. If you join the GRap Food Swappers group on Facebook, you will be notified about future swaps. If you aren't from Grand Rapids, look for a local food swap in your town. Or start one! I brought ginger-honey homemade yogurt, sauerkraut, and apple cider vinegar and came home with spice blends, dried herbs, greens fresh from a backyard hoop house, gluten-free cookies (& gift certificate for some reflexology), a bagel still warm from the oven, sweet chili sauce, herbal tea blend, elderberry liqueur aged since 2010, applesauce, and drumroll... milk kefir grains! I almost bought some grains online the other day and am so glad I held off! The swap was a blast and I can not wait for the next one.

This week's menu contains an unlikely ingredient: bread. A dear friend of mine baked me a lovely loaf of honey oat wheat bread. There is so much love in the loaf! It was carefully braided and packaged in brown paper with twine and a sweet note. Although I don't buy anything with sugar, grains, or other non-GAPS approved ingredients, I don't usually decline these things if they are made for me as long as they are made with whole ingredients, which this bread was. If I was at a potluck, I would skip the bread. This was a gift, so I'm eating it. Gluten doesn't bother me, but it will make what remains of my Candida pretty content. :) I'm turning the bread into buttery croutons that will accompany this week's borscht beautifully.

January 29 - February 4 Recipes

Nourishing Borscht (Beet Soup)
Ingredients:
1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 head of garlic, chopped 
4 beets (small-medium)
4 C water

2 carrots, sliced
1/2 bunch chard, chopped or ripped into pieces (~ 6 leafs and stalks )
1/2 Tb salt
1/2 Tb ground pepper 
1 tsp oregano

Directions:

1. In the bottom of a large pot, saute chopped onions and garlic in a tablespoon or two of olive oil on medium. When soft, add chopped beets. Sprinkle a little salt on mixture.
2. Add remaining ingredients. Let reach a gentle boil.
3. Turn heat down. Let simmer until desired texture. Top with croutons.

*Recipe found here, then edited for what I have available in my kitchen.




Buttery Croutons
Ingredients:
loaf of bread, cut into cubes
1/2 c. butter, or other oil you have on hand (coconut oil, beef fat, olive oil)
garlic clove or two, crushed
Directions: 

1. Place oil and garlic in a pot on the stove and heat until fully melted and sizzling.
2. Pour over cubed bread in a bowl, and toss until fully coated. 
3. Arrange on baking sheets in single layers. Bake at  300°F for 10-15 minutes or until golden. Serve immediately, or allow to cool completely
4. Store in an airtight container once fully cool. These should keep for at least a month at room temp, but may also be frozen.

Miso Soup with Kimchi

Yes, I know this is a clash of cultures (Japanese miso and Korean kimchi), but they work well together. My last giant batch of kimchi was fermented too long. It's kind of effervescent tasting, which is weird experience when eating a vegetable. I've been adding it to soups and finding that the effervescence subsides enough to be palatable. This soup is so fast to make, it's my go-to when I'm running late for work in the morning.

Ingredients:

water

seaweed (I have an abundance of nori, which is great with miso)

green onions

tamari (for added saltiness/flavor, optional)

kimchi

egg(s) (optional)

Directions:

1. Heat water in pan until boiling. Crack your egg(s) into the pan and don't stir until they are fully cooked. Then add seaweed.
2. When seaweed is cooked (in the case of nori, when it disintegrates), turn off the heat. Sprinkle in green onions.
3. Once the soup has cooled a little add miso. Miso has active cultures and heat will destroy them. When the miso is dissolved, stir in desired amount of kimchi.

*Cooked chicken can replace eggs, if eggs in soup is not your thing.

Roasted Winter Vegetable Salad

Ingredients:

a fennel bulb, finely chopped
a butternut squash, cubed
an onion, chopped

1/2 stick butter, melted
salt, to taste

Directions:

1. Mix together all ingredients
2. Distribute evenly on a baking sheet and roast for 1 hour at 350 degrees. Gently stir vegetables to ensure even baking. 
3. Check every 15 minutes for tenderness. Remove from the oven when tender.
4. Serve warm with sauerkraut.

**I had originally planned to make this a raw salad with a few different ingredients. Once I started chopping the fennel and tasting it, I realized that it had a stronger taste than I was hoping for. I do enjoy the flavor of anise in moderate amounts, but nibbling on the fennel brought back memories of horror: "OH NO! I think I'm eating a black jelly bean! I thought it was purple!" Roasting the fennel greatly reduced that black jelly bean taste and brought out a delicious sweetness with only a hint of anise. Perfect.

Salad with Basic Dressing

This week, I have some really beautiful greens on hand. At the food swap I received some delicious frilly, slightly bitter greens (lettuce?) that will add nice texture to a salad. Also, beet greens, swiss chard, and kale have been growing nicely in my porch garden all winter. The beet greens are so delicious and sweet! Verging on cherry tomato sweet! I'm making a salad with all these greens, plus a few cucumbers, almond pieces, and basic dressing. And maybe some croutons.

Basic Dressing Ingredients:

2 parts apple cider vinegar

1 part olive oil

1 clove garlic

fresh, finely minced herbs/spices (I like cilantro + ginger)

Directions:

1. Mix well and dress salad. Store in the fridge. It keeps for forever. 

Crustless Baby Quiches
Ingredients:
broccoli florets, bite-sized
butter, for greasing muffin tin
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 of an onion
salt
eggs
1/4 c. milk, yogurt, or kefir
1/2 t. oregano
1/2 t. basil
1/4 c. salty cheese, like parmesan or romano
Directions:

1. Place broccoli florets and onion in a pan with a little bit of water in the bottom, sprinkle with a little salt. Cover. Steam until the broccoli turns bright green and slightly tender.
2. Grease a muffin tin, or line with paper cups. Fill cups half way with broccoli and onions.
3. In a small bowl, whisk eggs, milk, garlic, and herbs herbs until an even consistency is reached. Pour over broccoli and onions in the muffin tin until wells are 3/4 full. 
4. Bake in 350 degree oven until quiches are golden brown.

January was a very busy month for me. I spread myself too thin every week and realized by Sunday that what really needed to be done that week had not even been touched! This February, I will be saying 'no' to more and spending time completing projects and getting enough sleep. Cheers to a restful February!

EAH

GAPS: Week 1

Have you heard about the GAPS diet? Best friend of cookbook Nourishing Traditions, the GAPS diet is a way of eating that helps heal the gut in a profound way. I spent the last 6 months - except for December - getting rid of a Candida yeast infection and in the last two months, an itchy skin rash popped up on my chest. Eczema. As the yeast died off and my body detoxed, excess yeast showed up in the form of a skin reaction. The eczema has now spread to my arms, torso and legs. It's not too extensive. It's also mostly covered by clothes, the season being winter. To starve off the Candida that remains, I have started the GAPS diet.

The first two days were extremely boring. I started with stage 2 of the intro diet, consisting mostly of soup with sauerkraut juice added to it. I didn't notice any difference. Wednesday, I e-mailed a local GAPS-certified naturopath and she responded that I can skip the intro diet. I'll be reading more about GAPS for sure.

This year, I made a resolution to plan out my meals the weekend before. To help me do this, I am writing them down in a notebook and including doodles of the food.

January 22-28 Recipes
Herb Roasted Whole Chicken
-1 roasting chicken
-olive oil
-herbs

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Remove any packaging from the chicken. Rinse well to remove excess blood. If any organs come with the chicken, keep them in the cavity of the bird and places some sprigs of fresh herbs inside along with them. If the chicken doesn't come with any organs, that's fine. If you don't have fresh herbs, that's fine too. 
2. Drizzle chicken with a bit of olive oil and rub down the bird. Place in a roasting pan. If you are using dried herbs instead of fresh, sprinkle on top of the chicken and rub them in too. Pour about 1/2 cup of water in the roasting pan. Cover.
3. Place chicken on the middle rack in the oven. Don't open the door for one hour. After one hour has gone by, open the oven door, flip the chicken, then close it. Keep it closed for one more hour. Check for done-ness. The bird will be golden brown.
4. Cut meat from the bone and store in the fridge. Keep all bones and trimmings for stock.

Good Bone Stock
-bones and gristle from a happy chicken
-onion, carrot, garlic
-rosemary, sage

1. Place all ingredients in large stock pot and cover with a few inches of water. 
2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat. Simmer for at least 2-3 hours. 
3. When bones become soft, cut in half and extract marrow. I use garden clippers to cut the bones and a chopstick to extract the marrow. 
4. When the stock is done, strain out chicken pieces, veggies, and herbs. Store stock in the fridge for up to a week.
5. This stock can be used to make soup and sauces, cook vegetables in, or just sip with meals to aid digestion.

These recipes are essential to the GAPS diet. Memorizing them would be a good idea. :)

-EAH-

PS. Have you heard the news?! School lunches are now healthier, egg-layers have a chance at a happier life, and (good? bad?) the plant hardiness zones have changed. I wonder what this means for food systems world wide.

Giveaway!

After putting this blog on hold for quite a while, I'd like to resurrect it. I am starting the GAPS diet this week (more on that later) which is scary and exciting. Already today, day one, I'm experiencing a *Herxheimer reaction. Sowing Clover will still be about food, but now with a GAPS/Nourishing Traditions spin to it. This means lots of fermented foods, lots of nourishing sugar- and grain-free meals, and lots of traditional recipes/methods of preparing food. My first move in resurrecting this blog is to have a giveaway!

The winner will receive one 16 oz. bottle of apple cider vinegar. The cider vinegar is raw and unfiltered. It's made from Michigan apple peelings fermented in my kitchen for a little over three months. I have never been a fan of the taste of vinegar but this stuff has won me over! It has a distinct appley taste to it. I've been adding it to salad dressings, soup, and tea and loving the tangy apple taste that it adds.

To enter to win, leave a comment on your favorite use of vinegar, or your favorite probiotic food! You can also have additional entries by officially following this blog, and by posting it to Facebook. Please let me know if you did any of these things in your comment.

The giveaway starts now and runs through Monday, January 30th.

-EAH-

*A Herxheimer reaction is basically a die off of bad bacteria/yeast and flushing out of toxins in the body. A Herx feels like a hangover. Herxheimers mean good things but can make the person experiencing them feel tired, achey, irritable, crampy, dizzy, and/or nauseous. No fun but it means that the body is taking care of itself!

The Other Blog

I started a new blog the other day. No worries. This one will still exist. The new blog is purely for art projects and other handmade goods. Craft projects won't be posted here anymore. There will be giveaways there from time to time, one coming very soon. It's called Bowerbird Bazaar, the same as my etsy name. Check it out!

♥ emily

Summer Soup

We've had a nice cool off in the past two days. This means that temps are now in the low 80's, as opposed to high 90's. WE ARE LOVING IT! A cousin of mine married into a farm family, giving our side the chance to work for them at farmer's markets around West Michigan. I primarily work at the one in my neighborhood, the famed Fulton Street Farmer's Market, which has been around since 1900 or so. It's not that huge, but it does the trick for us. While I don't have as much opportunity to homestead this year, besides the little balcony greenhouse garden, the market has been giving me some wonderful chances to experiment with food in ways I wasn't able to last year. Take for example this pot of soup. [Viewer discretion advised. Below is a picture of a real live chicken carcass, boiling up for soup.]

This is real deal chicken soup. It is not messing around. It all started with 3 pounds of "Chicken Soup Bones" meaning necks, skin, fat, wings, bones, marrow, tendons, all that good stuff. I have never, ever tried anything like this before. Some herbs were then thrown in (parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme no doubt) as well as onions and garlic. The pot simmered on the stove until the meat was done cooking and the whole place smelled like heaven. After everything was strained out of the stock pot, carrots, potatoes, and broccoli were added, plus a little salt. It was SO GOOD. Removing meat from the bones was the trickiest part because they were so oily, but I didn't mind. Dinner tonight was 99% local. There was the soup made mostly from farmer's market buys today, plus some herbs from the garden here. Then there was homemade dilly beans, the beans, garlic, and dill all from the farmer's market a few weeks ago. To drink, there was kombucha with added tea made with homegrown mint and foraged chickweed and goldenrod. And to finish off the meal, there was lassi (an Indian drink) made from diluted homemade yogurt with local milk, a drop of raw local honey, and a dash of cinnamon.

This. Is. Summertime. August...my favorite month for produce, when it seems to all roll in faster than you can catch it. Everything is ripe! I took home some peaches today - the very first ripe, local, West Michigan peaches of the season. Biting into the first one, I had to close my eyes in reverence. The peach was so juicy and ripe that I found teeth weren't even needed to eat it; the peach flesh just came away from the pit no problem, yet it wasn't overripe at all. Besides the fact that this entire meal is incredibly nourishing, it includes no gluten or sugar, and I don't feel like I'm missing out. There is indeed a Candida Yeast overgrowth living inside of me, and those 'wee yeasties' make me crave gluten and sugar, but meals like this make me excited about being healthy (finally) soon.

♥ emily

One of These Days...

...I will be able to eat cookies again but for now I'm sticking with these gluten-free, cane sugar free, dairy free super delicious super healthy chocolate bean truffles and their friend bean fudge. Beans, yes, the "magical fruit" kind, specifically red or adzuki beans. Today marks day 36 in my 40 day anti-candida fast. For 36 days, I have not eaten a crumb of any gluten or flour of any sort, any sweetener besides honey or maple syrup, and not a drop of alcohol. The first few weeks were the hardest. I was achy, cranky, tired, depressed, hungry, and sick to my stomach. And then after one Monday three weeks in, the worst day, I was great! I felt happy, energized, awake, healthy, and just craved greens! And although I crave raw vegetables all the time now, I still have a sweet tooth. (Concerning my ayurvedic dosha, I tend towards the pitta appetite rather than the kapha. I'm a pretty evenly split pitta-kapha)

photo via

Desperate, I found this absolutely amazing website called Affairs of Living. Written in blog style, each post gives a break down of what the recipes do and don't have. For example, a recipe may be egg-free, dairy-free, gluten-free, cane-sugar free and, ACD (anti-candida diet). No recipes on the website have gluten, and many are raw. All are nourishing. Many recipes don't have ingredients that your grocery store might not have, like liquid stevia or xanthan gum. Affairs of Living is inspiring. On the website, I found out about how miraculous beans are. Really! I whipped up a batch of truffels and a batch of fudge in under an hour, and had to keep from eating the unchilled "dough" right out of the food processor. For a true 'Never Fail Fudge' recipe, click here. I made mine without the orange or chili powder, just to try it out. And for the quick, easy truffle recipe, you can click here. I put cocoa in the truffels, and melted chocolate on top. Imagine rolling them in crushed tree nuts, coconut, or flakey sea salt!! Both recipes call for tahini, but you may use any nut or seed butter. Imagine chocolate peanut butter fudge!

photo via

Give one of these a try and be amazed. Just remember the little song, "beans, beans, the magical fruit, the more you eat them...." because just even when turned into fudge or truffels, their properties remain the same, if you catch my drift. ;) Now, to try bean ice cream...

♥ emily

NEST: an assortment of homes

This year in January, I visited a bookmaking class for two days and learned a bit about how to construct books. A piece I have been working on was made from a deconstructed book on letters and shapes. I used the cover of the book and a few pages and fashioned a new book out of it, calling it NEST. The pages saved from the old book are ones that spell out the word 'nest.' At the time it was assembled, there were little to no plans for it. I just like nests and think they are aesthetically pleasing. But, after pressing the pause button on academia, having just moved into a new house, and thinking about the possibility of moving back in with my parents, I started to think more and more about this word 'home.' Why can we feel 'at home' in places other than where we rest our heads at night, or where our mail is delivered? What does it mean to be home?

This scrapbook includes written reflections, images, drawings, really anything that helps the reader better grasp the concept of home. It will include pictures and drawings of animal homes as well, for example honey comb, bowerbird nests, a weaverbird nest, an others. I'd also like to include sorts of human homes, like teepees and tents, boat-houses, trailers/RV's, pueblos and other earthen homes. NEST is a collaborative piece. I'm asking friends to add something to the book, because this word 'home' means different things to different people, and gathering more than one perspective on the topic is important in trying to grasp its meaning.

The book was made from a book disected: the pages carefully removed from the cover, bound to empty ones, and glued back into their cover. Originally, it was about shapes and letters. The pages N, E, S, and T present themselves throughout the book. I embroidered the cover on green canvas duck cloth leftover from a couch we had recovered. The button in the embroidered nest was sent by a friend in the mail. I let her know that I was searching for an egg-shaped button and she stitched it to a letter, then sent it to me! The three little birdies are cut from vintage fabrics and the button on the back cover is from another friend's grandmother's button collection. Before it was even filled, the book was a collaboration! There are a few more pages in between the cover pieces than can fit comfortably which is why the buttons have been sewn on. A piece of string wound gently around the buttons keeps it closed. Right now, I'm looking for just the right cover papers to hide the places where I glued the fabric to the inside of the cover.

If the topic of 'home' intrigues you as well and you would like to contribute, please e-mail me and I will let you know the size of the pages so that your contribution fits.

♥ emily