A local farm, a new store featuring local produce and meats, fabulous egg dishes, and magic muffins – enjoy this week’s links! (And be sure to share some of your own with me!)
- Deck Family Farm – At the new store in Sutherlin, OR, Localvore Fresh Oregon Foods (also see here, scroll down to the very bottom), which opened for business on Tuesday, we bought some pastured pork sausage from Deck Family Farm. This farm is in Junction City, Oregon and they raise grass-fed beef, pastured pork, lamb and chicken. Larisa (the owner of Localvore) said that people from our area drive to Junction City for this farm’s meat. Now they won’t have to drive so far, with Localvore carrying it. I don’t know what to do with the sausage,though – I’m looking for recipes, cuz I want whatever we eat using it to be awesomely good! Any suggestions?
- Breakfast of Champions – My goodness, these breakfast egg dishes look fabulous! Alyss at Real Food, My Way serves up Mushroom and Dill Puflette and Red Flannel Hash. My family members would die of bliss if I made any of these. And thankfully, I think I can. Mikah has had (pastured) egg yolks in ice cream two weekends in a row without any reactions, so I think I could make his dish with just egg yolks. What are your favorite ways to cook eggs?
- Mama’s Magic Muffins – Another super-looking and sounding recipe, this one from Nurturing Wisdom. These “moist, light muffins are packed with nutrition. They’re made with soaked organic, high in protein quinoa flour, soaked organic pecans, mashed ripe, organic bananas, unsweetened, organic apple sauce, and semi-sweet organic chocolate chips (65%cocoa).” I’d really like to try them! I am trying to figure out what to use instead of bananas, which may ruin the end result (I hope not!); we don’t usually buy bananas because they come from so far away. Then again, maybe I should break down for once and just buy the darn bananas.
Have you run across any interesting links this week – anything made you think? anything made your mouth water? anything made you mad? Please share!
Jami – I have not officially blogged about it yet...
My husband found out he is allergic to egg whites. Could I still make him a scrambled egg yolk? Or in recipes calling for eggs? I never thought of just using the yolks. Tell me more.
Christie – I don’t know that much! But yes, we have made Mikah scrambled egg yolks and we’ve added yolks into ice cream. You have to do the separation very carefully so as to minimize how much white is still attached. I roll the yolk around in a big spoon – the white wants to flow off and into the catch bowl. You wouldn’t want to use yolks only in a recipe that is white-dependent, like meringue… (bad example bcs you’d never use yolks here, but the point is that meringue depends on whites) I don’t know how it would be with yolks in a cookie recipe – do cookies need the white for binding? I would suspect not, as they do allright with no eggs at all, but maybe you’d want to use flax seed meal plus water to make up for the loss of the whites. I’ve only given Mikah raw pastured egg yolks so far and only once per week. This week I’d like to try one instance of cooked egg yolk. Not that I think there is a difference between raw and cooked, but I’m just being careful. Let me know how your experimenting goes!
Wardeh – we like a white sauce made with the sausage drippings and then poured over noodles, rice or potatoes. It is REALLY good
Love,
Jami
Jami – Oh, that sounds good! So you cook up the sausage, then make the sauce with the drippings and the sausage is added back later to become part of the dish too? I’ve been wanting to make some homemade sprouted grain noodles and this would be fantastic! Tell me more about your white sauce, please? I haven’t made one for AGES.
Fist let me apologize, as I do not use measurements. Even when learning a new recipe I learn it for remaking from pictures/amounts in my head and not memorizing the measurements. A bad habit I learned from teaching myself to cook. However exact measurements for making a roux (r??) can be found in most cook books and all over the Internet…… Here is my recipe for a meat white sauce……
I brown my meat in an iron skillet. If it doesn’t have enough fat I add a bit of coconut oil so the meat doesn’t stick and gets a nice color. With sausage I will mix in some of my very lean grass-beef which needs more oil in my skillet. This way I extend the sausage and make extra for freezing, but this is just me – you cook up your meat however it suits you.
Then, as you say I remove most of the meat and make a ROUX by adding in small amounts of flour and stirring, I repeat this process until it is the consistency of thick portage/oatmeal and I let it cook a few seconds more. This is to ‘cook’ the flour and change its taste by browning it with the drippings in your skillet.
Then I stir in what liquid I have such as coconut milk, buttermilk, Kefir or thinned out yogurt. I don’t buy store cows milk, as you know
and my source for raw has dried up LOL
Stir and add the milk-quid until you have a sauce the consistency you like. Make it a little thin at this point because it will continue to thicken as it cools off. And now taste it. This is where you decide to add any extra spice depending on what you are going to do with the sauce. Maybe a little more sage, cumin seed, crushed garlic or fresh Italian basil yum! Maybe nothing at all…..
- With sausage I usually do not add anything, when just using hamburger I add most of my spices to the meat when browning and so not much is needed at this point. However if you were making a roux without meat this is where you would add your spices including salt and pepper. The exception to this would be if you wanted a spice/item with ‘roasted’ flavor, then add it with the oil and roast before adding the flour
It is ready to spoon over whatever you like now – biscuits, rice, veggies in place of cheese sauce or Homemade Noodles! And it is very forgiving, so if it’s to thick just thin some more, to blah add a pinch of salt, to thin let it sit and cool a bit more…..it’s very easy.
When preparing sauce for homemade noodles – 1. Make your noodles, cut and dry or don’t dry, set them aside. 2. Brown your meat. 3. Start the boiling water for cooking noodles. 4. Make your white sauce as the noodles boil – sauce and noodles should be done around the same time….. Make a salad if you like as you start the meat is cooking and your meal will be ready at the same time.
I know you have this skill Wardeh, but this ‘order of things when cooking’ was the hardest thing for me to teach myself, so I put it here for others it might be helpful for.
Blessings to all,
Jami
Ooopps! I wish I could edit my posts – Oy!
I see my special character of lines over the two ‘OO’ for the proper sound made when saying roux was changed to ?? so ignore that – Ha…..
Add I forgot to say you add the meat back in with the milk-quid
silly me!
Jami – Fantastic! If I have any time off this weekend from fencing, I will be making this dish! Since it is more involved than my usual easy cooking when working on projects, I want to do it only when I have enough time! Thanks for sharing it!