As promised, here’s the jerky recipe I’m (loosely) following. I looked around for ground meat jerky recipes after I read that commercial jerky is often made with ground meat. We knew that jerky was pretty soft, and we thought it would work better for the people in my family that have teeth issues… sensitive teeth or braces. (I’m sorry, Dr. Price, but we learned about you too late.)

The great thing is I have used this jerky on pizza as pepperoni. It is already pretty soft, but during the pizza baking, it absorbed liquid from the tomato sauce and turned out soft and chewy. I think I should have done a thinner batch of jerky for it to be really pepperoni-like, though.

See all Basic Recipes.

But anyway, I looked around for recipes. I ended up following one that I found on a message board. So, thanks to “Christine” for the inspiration. This is doubled from her recipe because if I’m going to make jerky, I’m going to make jerky.

• 3 pounds grass-fed ground beef (or venison, or lamb, or buffalo… )
• 2 teaspoons unrefined sea salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper (original recipe calls for 8 times this amount, which is too peppery for me)
• 2 teaspoons garlic powder or granulated garlic (feel like making your own?)
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin (or more!)
• pinch of cayenne pepper (original recipe calls for much more)

Blend all the ingredients together in a big bowl. You may as well use clean hands.

Taking a portion at a time, press the meat mixture into about 1/8″ thickness on a piece of natural parchment paper that is the same size as your dehydrator tray. Or use the ParaFlexx sheets that go with an Excalibur dehydrator – see Resources for sources. You could also use a rolling pin to spread it out, but I find I can never get the thickness consistent, so I prefer to take extra time and press the balls out into a sheet myself, like so:

When a sheet is full, square up the edges to your liking, using your fingers. Then use a butter knife to score the meat into jerky-size pieces. Don’t use a sharp knife or you’ll cut through parchment paper or Paraflexx sheets!

Transfer the whole shebang to a dehydrator tray and put the tray in/on your dehydrator. Repeat until you’ve spread out all your meat mixture. This recipe fills 4 to 5 trays of my 9-tray Excalibur dehydrator, depending on the thickness I achieve.

Set the dehydrator’s temperature to 145 or 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Depending on thickness, expect total drying time to be 12 to 18 hours. Flip over mid-way, which is usually when the jerky is curling up from the bottom and not sticking to the tray’s liner any more.

You have to play with how much it “cooks” – and keep in mind that coming out of the dehydrator it is going to be much softer than it will be when it cools. I look for there to be no more pink and try to get it out of the dehydrator while it is still really soft. It always surprises me how much it hardens up once it is out.

Tear apart the pieces and put them in a bowl or tray to cool fully. Then store in a cool, dark place in an airtight container. Or in the refrigerator if not using up within two weeks.

Wow, I wish I could get a good picture of the jerky! It tastes wonderful, and is a great snack or a great lunch on the go. We’ll be having it for lunch today when we are out on our “day in town.”

If you’d like a great recipe for jerky made from cuts of beef, try this one from Ann Marie @ Cheeseslave. I tested it with beef cut with and against the grain, and we preferred against the grain by far (because of those sensitive teeth). I completely omitted the Worcestershire sauce and the jerky was fantastic! Pictured below is a shot of both kinds of jerky side by side. Again, (my) jerky is not very photogenic.

So, there you go. What you add to this jerky recipe, for spices? If you make it, be sure to come back and let me know what you did!

See all Basic Recipes.

I’m sharing this post in Real Food Wednesday and Pennywise Platter Thursday.

I had reason to clean my freezer yesterday – it was getting repaired and I had to empty it out. I found 8 ears of corn purchased from the local pastured poultry farm. They grow some wonderful tomatoes and corn, in addition to the poultry.

The corn is a non-GMO heritage variety, grown from seeds they save year after year. I bought a few dozen extra ears of corn in the summer, steamed them and froze them for later. Later turned out to be yesterday.

So there they were come dinner-time, asking to be cooked. Creamed corn? I looked online for homemade creamed corn recipes, but in the end ditched that idea because my husband isn’t a fan of sweet side dishes. This corn is plenty sweet.

You can start with cooked or uncooked corn for this recipe. I started with pre-steamed corn. If you want to go for the creamed corn, add a cup of raw cream or raw whole milk and perhaps a bit of honey – depending on how sweet the corn already is.

By the way, this recipe is very simple.

• 8 ears of corn
• 4 to 6 tablespoons butter or coconut oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Hold the ears of corn upright on a plate that has a bit of a lip to it to catch fluids. Moving downward with the knife, cut the kernels off. Scrape the ear with the knife to release any juices (you’ll get lots of “cream” if the ears aren’t cooked yet!).

Warm the butter or oil in a sauce pan. Stir in the corn and its cream. If uncooked, the kernels will be tender in a few minutes. If already cooked, give them time to warm up and get flavored by the butter, which will also take a few minutes. (Here’s where you add dairy cream or milk and let it simmer, if using.) Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Optional: Sometimes I will saute diced onions and garlic in the butter and then add the corn and seasonings. Also very yummy!

Anyone else have corn, or other summer veggies, in the freezer waiting to be used? What else would you add to this dish? It is pretty simple, but oh, so delicious! We ate it along-side pan-fried wild salmon, and quinoa that I reheated in red palm oil and seasoned with salt and pepper.

Finally! I’ve been looking forward to this day for awhile! We’ve got some great dishes lined up to inspire you for a healthier, more nourishing Thanksgiving. I’d love to hear if you’re able to try any of these dishes – and what your family members thought. Thanks to everyone who submitted dishes for this Gallery – and for those of you who are going to add your links today. I’ll continue building the photo gallery of recipes throughout the day, as recipes are submitted. So be sure to check back to see what’s new! (See below the photo gallery for instructions on submitting your recipe.)

If you’re looking for a never-fail method for cooking turkey, be sure to visit Perfectly Moist Turkey, Every Time.

Look below the Gallery for an announcement!

Click on an image or the soup’s name to be taken to that blogger’s (or commenter’s) recipe.

I’m hosting another Gallery of… in December and guess what it’s going to be? Hmm… this is a hard one! Think Christmas and food! How about real food cookies? So get your real food cookie recipes ready! Details will be forthcoming…

Do you have a real food Thanksgiving side dish recipe to share? If you’re a blogger, leave a link to the recipe’s blog post in the comments – and make sure your blog post links back to this post. Then I’ll add your recipe to the gallery. I’ll use a stockphoto if you don’t have a photo. If you’re not a blogger, but have a recipe to share, feel free to post the recipe in the comments – and I’ll link to it from the Gallery, too!

Following the tip on warming milk in a crock pot, I pour two cans (14 ounces each) of whole coconut milk (not lite) into a crock pot and turn the setting to high.

I stir in 2 tablespoons of agar agar. I have not been able to find the powder, so I used the flakes; the first time I made it, though, the flakes didn’t dissolve completely but instead swelled and gelled, which gave the finished product a bumpy texture. The second time I made the yogurt, I ground up the agar agar flakes in my Vita-Mix into a finer flake—it never really got what I would call powdery. The result was a much smoother, creamier texture. The agar agar made the yogurt set up pretty firmly, so you could probably get away with just 1 tablespoon. I am going to try that next time.

In addition to the agar agar, I stir in 2 tablespoons agave nectar [use any sweetener you desire], and I heat the milk until it is about 150 degrees. A lot of places I visited on the Web said that it probably isn’t necessary to heat the milk to that extent because, as a canned product, it has already been heated. But I did it anyway because I thought it might help the agar agar dissolve better.

While the milk is heating, I sterilize everything I will use for the rest of the process—a quart-size Mason jar, candy thermometer, whisk, tongs, 1 cup glass measuring cup, even the interior of my Vita-Mix wet container—with scalding water and set it aside on a scalded plate. So when the temperature of the milk reaches 150 degrees (as registered on a see-through candy thermometer), I turn off the crock pot and allow the milk to cool to between 105 and 110 degrees.

When the temperature is right, I remove 1/2 cup to 1 cup of the milk with the measuring cup and pour it into the wet container of my Vita-Mix so that I can grind up the probiotic capsules I initially chose to use for yogurt-making (Dr. Ohhira’s Essential Formulas Inc.’s Probiotics 12 PLUS Original Formula). This probiotic is not specifically intended for yogurt-making, but it was recommended as a possible dairy-free culture (something that is really hard to find!). I would like to look into the possibility of finding a powdered culture that I could use instead, in which case I would skip this step with the Vita-Mix and simply stir the culture into a small amount of the milk before adding it back to the whole batch.

Note: The first time I made yogurt, I tried every way I could think of to break open, dissolve or otherwise eliminate the hard outer coating of the capsule to get to the probiotic inside (the actual probiotic is in a moist, fermented form—not a powder), but nothing worked effectively. So I decided to grind up the capsules (I use two in each batch of yogurt) in the Vita-Mix with a little of the milk. It worked, but I was afraid to process it too long for fear of heating it up too much and killing the good bacteria.

After the culture is incorporated, I add a teaspoon of vanilla extract (optional) and pour the entire mixture into the sterilized Mason jar. I cover the jar with plastic wrap and place it into a towel-lined insulated cooler, along with one other large jar (or two small ones) filled with boiling water (the jars with water should not touch the yogurt jar directly, but all of the jars should be insulated by wrapping them in dish towels). Then I close the cooler lid and allow the yogurt to incubate for about 5 hours.

I read about people incubating their yogurt for as long as 8 hours using this and other methods, but I was going for a more pudding-like effect without a lot of tang or tartness. Both times I have made it, the yogurt has had a nice, mild coconut flavor that has mixed well with fruit or even just stirred into oatmeal or other cereal. I’m going to try to tweak a few things until I get it down to just the right process and result. Also, I think I might try to double the batch so that it doesn’t disappear so fast around our house!

I think it is great that Sonya pieced together different techniques to make a new kind of healthy yogurt for her family. Anyone game to try it? Let us know what you think!

I’m submitting this post in Fight Back Fridays! – how are you fighting back?

I would like to share what you know with the great and inspirational readers of gnowfglins.com. Send your favorite kitchen tip(s), accompanying photos, and your website address (optional) to: tips at gnowfglins dot com. You’ll be credited as the author/owner of the information submitted. Please understand that I may not post all tips. By sending me your tips, you are granting me permission to include them in gnowfglins.com publications. Of course, you may revoke your permission at any time.

I’d like to share how simple and fun lacto-fermentation of vegetables can be. I’ve only done a bit of it, but enough to see that lacto-fermented vegetables taste fabulous and are very easy to make. What I love the most about it is that I don’t have to heat anything (though some recipes call for a bit of cooking) and that measuring is not that precise. This is the kind of anti-cooking I like!

First, though, let me tell you why lacto-fermentation is so cool. Forgive me if you already know this. Just skip ahead to the recipe. If you already know this recipe, just skip right on out of the room…

Traditional preservation of food was done without freezers or canning machines, through the process of lacto-fermentation. In this process, the sea salt and/or whey inhibits the growth of putrefying bacteria until enough lactic acid is produced to preserve the vegetables for many months. But, the lactobaccili which produce the lactic acid to preserve the vegetables do much more! They enhance the digestibility of the vegetables, increase vitamin levels, produce enzymes, offer antibiotic and anticarcionogenic substances, and support the growth of healthy flora in our intestines. My goodness, all of this from pickling! Compare that with today’s pickles, which offer nothing but pasteurized vegetables floating in an acidic brine of white vinegar.

All of this information is paraphrased from Nourishing Traditions on page 89. This book contains so much more information that I encourage you to read it for yourself for a better understanding!

To make these lacto-fermented foods properly, you must start with the highest quality vegetables, sea salt, and homemade whey (optional in purely vegetable recipes). You also need quart-size canning jars with metal bands and lids, preferably wide mouth. (Even so, I have been having good success with regular-mouth jars.)

This particular recipe is a modification of the Pickled Turnips in Nourishing Traditions on page 99. I don’t follow the quantities listed, but rather, use what quantities of vegetables I have. Also, I have omitted the onions. I love the flexibility!

Lacto-Fermented Turnips and Beets

You will need:

• naturally-grown turnips – peeled, quartered and sliced
• naturally-grown beets – peeled, quartered and sliced

For each jar full of peeled, quartered and sliced turnips and beets (fill the jar up to within 1-inch of the top), you will need:

• 1 cup of pure water with 2 tablespoons of sea salt –OR– 1 cup of pure water with 1 tablespoon of sea salt and 4 tablespoons of homemade whey (dripped out of kefir or yogurt, not from cheesemaking)
• additional pure water

Update 12/09: Now that I have made this more than a few times, I have found that if I make these without whey and with the additional salt, the veggies turn out on the salty side. Soaking the veggies in water for a time draws off the salt, making them tasty. One could also use less salt, but experimentation would be necessary – you need enough salt to suppress the putrefying bacteria.

Start by peeling, quartering and slicing the turnips and beets.

Mix them up to incorporate. Then fill as many quart jars as required to use up all the prepared vegetables. Press down on the veggies to make sure they’re packed in well and don’t fill up higher than within 1-inch of the top.

How many jars did you fill? Use that information to determine how many cups of water with sea salt — OR water with sea salt and whey — you need.

Mix the sea salt and water (and/or whey) together so the salt is mostly dissolved. If using water and sea salt, add 1 cup to each jar. If using water and sea salt with whey, add 1-1/4 cups to each jar. Then top off each jar with more pure water to cover the vegetables.

Put the lids and bands on the jars and tighten securely. Leave on the counter in a warm room (usually the kitchen) for about three days. The process of the lactobacilli’s proliferation should take about three days when the room temperature is 72 degrees. You will know the process is working because the mixture in the jar will be very bubbly. Then transfer the jars to cold storage until you are ready to eat them.

I usually serve our pickled vegetables topped on a green salad, or as a side with a cold cut type of meal (meat salad, bread, and cheese). These veggies taste bubbly, spicy, and fresh, while offering a great crisp and crunch. I love them! I should admit that not all my family loved them right off the bat (some are still getting used to them). For the kids, I have been putting just a few slices on their salad each day, increasing the amount slowly as they adjust. The other day, Naomi admitted to me that she doesn’t think they’re so bad anymore. Truly, I am baffled how they could not like them right away. I think they’re fabulous. But to each, his own. I am the one who adores the kefir and plain yogurt, and not surprisingly, lacto-fermented vegetables! Try them and let me know what you think.

Now what I need to know is… what do I do with the liquid leftover from this natural pickling? I hate to throw it away because I’m certain it is filled with tons of good bacteria. I think it could be used in salad dressings and dips. Anyone have tips for me?

Pop on over to Real Food Wednesdays to see more real food posts! Or, join in with your own real food post!

We love leftover cooked quinoa. It is ideal in all sorts of skillet dishes. Our favorite is the most simple: I will soften diced onions in extra virgin olive oil (or unrefined coconut oil or red palm oil) in a cast iron skillet, then incorporate the leftover quinoa. Once it is all warm, I season the dish with salt, pepper, and dried herbs. How do you use leftover quinoa?

I bought two packages of okra yesterday at the Farmer’s Market, from the same lady who sells us our chickens and eggs.

This lady gave me a recipe for fried okra and also Robin has a detailed recipe/photo tutorial here. (Be sure to visit just for the photos, even if you don’t like okra!) I am going to bread the okra pieces in cornmeal, as suggested by the egg lady.

Take a bunch of green beans and wash them well. Snap off the ends and snap the beans into about 2″ long chunks.

Meanwhile, heat your cast iron skillet or wok over medium heat with a generous helping of oil. I used unrefined virgin coconut oil, probably about 5 tablespoons for the panful of green beans you see in the picture.

Put the beans in the pan. They’ll probably sizzle if the oil is ready. Using a bamboo wok spatula (or whatever wooden utensil you have) toss them to coat them. Cover. Remove cover and turn every 2 minutes or so, to allow the beans to cook evenly. Of course, you have to taste them to see if they’re done yet. Aim for a good crunch, but tender. This will probably be about 10 minutes.

Douse liberally with soy sauce, additional sea salt (if desired), and black pepper. My friend also adds hot red pepper flakes. A little too hot for me. I’m sure Jeff would like it, and possibly Mikah, but the rest of us wouldn’t.

Serve hot. Oh, so good!

Leftover Corn Skillet

Leftover steamed corn on the cob? Here’s a super easy and fabulously delicious side dish.

Heat a cast iron skilet over medium heat with a few tablespoons of oil (your choice: olive, grapeseed, coconut, red palm, butter).

While the pan and oil are heating, cut all the kernels off the ears of corn.

Transfer the corn to the skillet. Let them sizzle and brown and stir as needed to break up the chunks. Season with salt and pepper, to taste, and more oil, if desired. Serve.

This dish is so delicious, it really doesn’t need anything else.

© Copyright 2008 by Wardeh Harmon.

Pinto Bean Melt

Wild Salmon Melt

gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free (uses goat cheese)

• Four Grain Flatbreads
• chicken, chicken salad, wild salmon salad or pinto bean spread
• Shredded Goat Cheese

Under the broiler of the oven or in a counter-top toaster oven, toast both sides of the flatbreads. Spread with desired topping(s) and then top with shredded goat cheese. Put back under the broiler until cheese is melted and browned. Serve immediately. Yumm!

© Copyright 2008 by Wardeh Harmon.