Happy Thanksgiving!

This Thanksgiving, I'd like to share something I stumbled upon, a mantra of gratitude to live this new 'nourishing' lifestyle by:

“I am thankful to family farmers for keeping the traditions of seed preservation, environmental stewardship, and good animal husbandry alive now and for generations to come. I will continue giving my 'dollar votes' to local farmers who practice sustainable agriculture.” ~Anonymous

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that I can name many of my food providers this year, I am humbled to know that these people work SO hard, putting their hearts & souls to the test every day to provide me & mine with healthy sustainable meats, dairy & produce:

• Vernon & every farm involved with Abundant Harvest Organics where I get my CSA box of fruit & veggies from


• Mark McAfee with Organic Pastures, where we get our Raw Milk & Cream


• Sharon with Healthy Family Farms, where we get our eggs, and truly healthy chickens who live & play outdoors, don't eat soy & are distinctly NON vegetarian :), also Heritage milk and whey-fed pork, grass-fed free range beef lovely lambs.


• Kim with Blue Hill Farms for the Turkey.


• Azure Standard for the grains & other bulk items we consume regularly.

This year I had the honor of participating in the "Processing of Turkeys" at a local farm. All the laughter & giddiness, nervousness & 'grossness' aside, I was struck by what an earthy, respectful & peaceful process it was. I chose my bird, held her head and thanked her for providing us our Thanksgiving meal.

I feel VERY connected to my food this year & for that I am strangely grateful.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Blogiversary!

So, guess what!? I missed the anniversary of my first blog post! I can't believe I did that! I knew it was coming & was planning to whip up a special post to mark the occasion....

Wait a sec! Did I say "I can't believe I did that!"??? I'm such a liar! Of course I can believe I missed it! Truth is I'm like that a lot! Life seem to be this crazy fast merry-go-round lately & I'm sometimes lucky I can remember my name! Sheesh!

Oh, I know! I have another really good excuse for forgetting! It was my sisters birthday & I was busy getting ready for her party that day! (Nov 9th, if you must know!)

Here's a few snaps of the food we celebrated with:

Local Organic Fuyu Persimmons (grown with care by Kanan's grandpa), crackers with Chevre & home made jams & marmalades & an authentic Spanish "Tortilla Espanola" (Potato omelette)

The Paella is about half way done, still too much liquid...

Isn't that just yummy looking, and pretty too!

It's Saffron rice, with chicken, sausage, shrimp, peas & a garnish of red peppers

So, back to my blogiversary....I'd planned on a sort of "before & after", a year of blogging & the differences in my life during this year...

We are still:

• (mostly) Eating Nourishing food (raw milk, pastured & grass-fed meats, organic produce)
• Making stock on a regular basis & use it more liberally in everyday cooking
• Soak & sprout legumes, grains & nuts (I try to keep a stock of crispy pecans for baking)

We've added and maintained a few more things:

• Sprout grains & grind fresh flour for my baking
• Make sprouted whole grain breads on a pretty regular basis, hardly ever buy it
• Make & Drink Kombucha & Water Kefirs
• Raw Milk: yogurt, sour cream & buttermilk
• Only use farm fresh eggs from HFF (no soy in their organic feed at all!)
• Make a point to buy grass fed beef, lamb & milk fed heritage breed pork & wild caught/sustainable fish
• I bought Coconut Oil & have incorporated it into several thing I make pretty regularly (Popcorn, baking, sautéing...). Recently I bought Coconut Ghee from Green Pastures (a combo of Grass-fed butter Ghee & EV coconut oil - it's DEE-lightful!
• For butter I use Kerrygold almost exclusively, the exception is that for baking I use Trader Joe's unsalted, it's about half the cost & I feel what's so special about the Kerrygold is the flavor, I feel that is sorta lost in translation when you use it in baked goods....so the TJ's butter is a compromise, it's not organic or grass fed, but at least it's rBst free....
• I made my own lard from milk fed pork fat - amazing! I also keep my bacon grease & use whenever appropriate - about 90% really good bacon

We tried but really haven't liked:

• homemade lacto-ferments: I tried a bunch early on & didn't like them, kept in fridge to see if they'd taste better after time - NOPE
• raw cream cheese, it was sour-ish & too loose to use in most recipes, just feel like it's too labor intensive to be worth it.
• raw milk kefir, I made it very regularly in the beginning, but found I only used it for baking, soaking & smoothies. I did not enjoy it plain; sweetened was good, but not super fast & easy... so I never did that enough to stick with it....I find the buttermilk gets used more frequently for baking & is a simpler process....I still have the grains, maybe I'll try it again & see if I can find a way to make it work better for us....

Haven't tried & not sure we will:

• Organ meats - not entirely true!! I did buy a beef heart (from HFF) & some really great grass fed stew meat from Whole Foods & ground that up to make my own ground beef. That is really tasty & I feel good knowing I'm able to 'handle' it. The boys don't really know about it, so don't say anything! ;)

Still need to work on or implement:

• taking CLO - I bought Green Pastures' fermented CLO capsules, but haven't started taking them yet! What a dork!
• adding more coconut oil to diet
• oil pulling on a regular basis
• exercise of some sort!

So there you have it, a brief review of our progress or lack there of... next year's comparison should be interesting! ;) I sense change in the air in the year to come....Stay tuned...

Sourdough Pancakes

Sourdough Pancakes

2 1/2 cups flour (I used half Sprouted & half AP)

2 cups warm water

1 cup sourdough starter (I used Amber’s Alaskan Starter - all white flour)

2 eggs

2 tbsp Sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

Combine flour & warm water, add sourdough starter. Add eggs & whisk to combine thoroughly. Mix sugar, salt & soda in a small bowl, sprinkle over batter evenly & fold in gently (do not over mix!)

Heat a griddle over med high heat add fat (I used coconut ghee) scoop about 1/2 cup at a time for each pancake. Wait until edges look a bit dry & then flip.

Serve with real butter & real maple syrup.

The batter seemed a bit thin, but it works!

This is the Coconut Ghee I used in the frying pan (Azure has it for about $18)

Here's what it looked like right after I put the scoop in the pan & then how it looked after about 1 minute, see how the edges look a little dry, now it's ready to flip

Viola! A beautiful golden sourdough pancake, just add Kerrygold & maple syrup & we were in Heaven!

This is being posted as part of Real Food Wednesday

Universal Studios 11/11/09

Kanan in a Phone Booth

Joe with Jason Bourne & his favorite tiny car

Gotta love an airstream!

Korean Tacos!???

Mr 3-D

My boys with Chuckie. ewwww! Scary!