menu plan march v

Welcome, my friends, to the busiest week in the life of a pastor.  The time between Palm Sunday and Easter is called Holy Week, and we really double down on the activities and worship this week.  It's all amazing and wonderful.  But it gets to be a little overwhelming.  So, I'm writing my weekly menu plan post as a little distraction.  :)

My favorite Holy Week infographic.  Blow it up if you want your mind blown.

It also happens to be my baby girl's FOURTH birthday this Thursday!  Wow.  To think how much life has happened between then and now.  It's unreal, actually.  Moving from Topeka, buying our house, starting my ministry at City Road, pregnancy and birth of Todd, separation/divorce . . . it's just a lot to contemplate.  She has put in her special menu requests for her birthday, which of course you will see reflected on Thursday.

Here's the food!

Sunday
-- breakfast:  eggs mixed with a little leftover crumbled bacon, shredded cheese, and green onions, scrambled.  Garlic toast.  Satsuma mandarin.  Coffee and milk.
-- lunch:  baked potato soup, more garlic toast
-- supper:  it was finally my birthday dinner!!  (A week late since all my teacher friends were out of town for Spring Break last week.)  My requests were a mushroom risotto with peas, spinach salad, asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, and a lemon meringue pie.  It was completely delectable.  Every bite.  Best friends ever.

Monday
-- breakfast:  granola, raw milk, bananas, coffee and milk
-- lunch:  leftover turnip greens with bacon ends, corn muffin
-- supper:  chicken enchilada casserole, using soaked black beans, some leftover pulled chicken, and the last of some enchilada sauce I made last month.  Topped with avocado and sour cream.

Tuesday
-- breakfast:  scrambled eggs, bacon, garlic toast, satsuma, coffee and milk
-- leftover mushroom risotto, kombucha, pickled carrots
-- supper:  chickpea and yogurt salad, pita bread, roasted sweet potatoes

Wednesday
-- breakfast:  scrambled eggs, bacon, sourdough toast, strawberry jam, satsumas, coffee and milk
-- lunch:  leftover enchilada casserole
-- supper:  tuna salad sandwiches on sourdough, carrot sticks, potato chips

Thursday (Vicki's birthday!)
-- breakfast:  pancakes, butter, syrup, pineapple, strawberries, coffee and milk
-- lunch:  whatever leftovers we still have!
-- supper:  cheeseburger macaroni, peas, green beans, chocolate cake

Friday (Good Friday - office is closed and both kids' schools are closed - don't ya love living in the South!?)
-- breakfast:  scrambled eggs, sausage patties, sourdough toast, raw honey, home-canned pears, coffee and milk
-- lunch:  leftover cheeseburger macaroni and veggies
-- supper:  pizza on sourdough crust (ricotta, cubed sweet potato, caramelized onion, rosemary, roasted garlic, kalamata olives)

Saturday
-- breakfast:  sourdough cinnamon rolls, sausage patties, coffee and milk
-- lunch:  we will be at my grandmother-in-law's house for an Easter lunch.  She has requested that I bring my Asian cabbage slaw!  It's similar to this recipe, but I make a lot of swaps such as using shredded cabbage and carrots instead of bagged slaw mix, sucanat instead of white sugar, a combo of olive and sesame oil instead of vegetable oil, and I add dried cherries.  Okay, it's not really like that recipe at all!  Lol. I should probably just write up my own recipe.  I'll try to take some pictures when I do it this weekend.
-- supper:  roast chicken, stewed turnip greens, mashed potatoes, roasted carrots

What are you eating this Holy Week?

[This post submitted to Menu Plan Monday 3/30/15.]

the voice of the heart: suffering

I'm taking part in this pretty amazing group of pastors and church people for several months this spring.  Our text is "The Voice of the Heart," which is a kind of emotional fluency primer that is great for anyone.  (But would be especially great for you if you came from a background where emotions in general were discouraged, and didn't have a great language to describe your emotional landscape.)

It's technically a Bible study, but it's short on Bible and long on the kind of twelve-steppy sharing stuff that pastors really get off on.  Needless to say, I freaking love it.

In our first couple of sessions, we were asked to identify what kinds of responses we might have experienced in our upbringing related to the sensation of hurting.  Did your parents say things like, "Big boys don't cry"?  Or, "It's not that big a deal?"  Or, "Look on the bright side!"?

Yeah, most of us weren't allowed to fully experience our own hurts.  This is because those who raised us found our strong emotions so threatening that their own well-being was shaken by them.  If you have kids, allowing them to express the fullness of their emotions is very intense.  You know what I mean.  The temptation to tell them "Shhh . . . it's okay" - even from a well-meaning place - is extremely strong.  The primal urge that screams inside our heads These tears are not okay - make them stop! is extraordinarily difficult to resist.

Anyway, in my own family, the attitude was less "look on the bright side," and more "it could be worse."  And so I've always told myself that things could be worse.  Bad marriage?  Sure - but I could be beaten or with no other options.  Hurting because my mom died?  Sure - but she could have suffered so much more, or we could have had a strained relationship and died on bad terms.  Things can always be worse.  In fact, I should just be grateful that the suffering I have experienced has been so manageable.  After all, there are women in this world who are told they are nothing from the day they are born.

For a long time, I thought this was a fairly harmless coping mechanism.  But then I realized that telling myself these things denied a basic truth about my theology.  When I minimized the impact of my suffering, I was denying the fact that there isn't a limited amount of suffering in the world.  

Know what I'm saying?  Like, the fact that someone else is hurting doesn't mean that I'm hurting any less.  It's not like I have 10% of the world's hurt and other people have 90%.  It just doesn't work that way.  And conversely, the fact that other people may not have suffered in the same ways as I have doesn't mean that their suffering is any less real for them.  We all get what we get in life.  There is no way to relativize our own suffering against the suffering of the rest.

So, moving forward, I'm going to allow myself to experience the depth of my own hurt as it occurs.  I will try to stop telling myself that things might be worse (or even better).  Things are what they are, and I can't be afraid to walk through the darkest times.

menu plan march iv

Birthday weekend was a resounding success.  The weather on Saturday was perfect.  We enjoyed the day outside as much as we could - walking, eating, walking, playing, walking.  I bought a record player.  That was the one purchase I wanted to make for myself this birthday.  So - if anyone has their vinyl collection up for grabs, I'll take it!

I started with the classics:

We are still eating our way through Nashville; Amanda will be here until Tuesday.  I'm so excited about tonight!  We are taking a break from our regular Family Dinner with friends (many of them are out of town as they are teachers or school administrators and this is Spring Break).  Instead, Amanda and I will be hitting Husk.  This is a celebrated new-ish restaurant in Nashville that I've been wanting to try for years.  Finally, I have the proper occasion.  :)

Okay - on to the food!

Preamble
We literally always have one of three things for breakfast if we are at home.

1)  -- scrambled eggs from our Mennonite hens
     -- homemade sourdough toast/English muffins/biscuits
     -- raw butter we have been making from our Mennonite cow cream
     -- local raw honey or homemade preserves
     -- seasonal fruit from our CSA or mandarins (in the winter)

2) -- pancakes
    -- raw butter
    -- real maple syrup
    -- seasonal fruit

3)  --soaked oatmeal with raisins, shredded coconut, coconut cream, honey
     --seasonal fruit or preserves

Vicki usually requests #2.  If we have time, I'm happy to oblige.  If I do any sourdough baking, though, we will use the excess starter to have sourdough pancakes.

Since it is so monotonous, I'm not going to put breakfast on the menu plan.

For drinks, we always have raw milk on hand.  We also drink Berkey filtered water, kombucha, or homemade soda from our ginger bug.  I would love to start messing with water kefir soon.

Finally, I try to make one dessert-ish item that we nibble on all week for snacks and desserts.  It's getting warm enough for popsicles finally!  I'm thinking basil and lime this week.

Sunday
-- lunch:  Fish Fry fundraiser at church!  Everything fried.  So good, so bad.  Fish, hush puppies, tater tots, white beans, etc.
-- supper:  Husk.  (Update:  it was good.  Not amazing.  I preferred the birthday dinner we had at Lockeland Table the night before.)

Monday
-- lunch:  meeting the BFF somewhere for lunch where we can sit outside and soak up the sun!
-- supper:  I think we will spatchcock and grill a chicken.  And do some roasted veggies like sweet potatoes, carrots, and turnips.

Tuesday
-- lunch:  grilled chicken and roasted veggie leftovers
-- supper:  bacon cheeseburgers, sourdough buns, oven-roasted sweet potato fries, sauerkraut and pickles

Wednesday
-- lunch:  turnip greens with bacon ends, cornbread
-- supper:  I jotted down a new Shrimp Fra Diavolo recipe while watching America's Test Kitchen on Saturday.  I think I'm gonna try it out!  If I get inspired, I might even make my own linguine.  We will have something green with this, like roasted broccoli.

Thursday
-- lunch:  leftover greens and cornbread
-- supper:  Breakfast for Dinner!  Biscuits and gravy.  Fruit.

Friday
-- lunch:  I'm going to be at a day-long training at our Conference office, and I'm just hoping there will be lunch involved.
-- supper:  I want to try to re-create this pizza we had at Lockeland Table.  It was ricotta, butternut squash (I will use pumpkin), kale, red onion, grana padano (I will sub Parmesan), and chili oil.  So freaking good.

Saturday
-- lunch:  whatever leftover roasted veggies + chicken stock soup, crackers, ricotta-herb dip
-- supper:  chicken enchiladas (homemade enchilada sauce, leftover chicken, grated cheese, black beans, corn - all rolled up together and baked under more enchilada sauce and cheese), Spanish rice, chili-spiced roasted pumpkin

What's on your menu this week?

[This post submitted to Menu Plan Monday 3/23/15.]

the secret to a long marriage

Back when we had cable, we had this fantastic channel called Palladia.  It's dedicated to rock operas, music festivals, interviews and biographies of musicians, and other awesome music stuff.  I remember watching a certain live Lady Gaga concert at least four or five times after Vicki was born, because it was what was on at 2:00 am.

A couple years ago, Palladia was showing a biography of George Harrison, who just happens to have been my favorite Beatle.  They were interviewing his second wife Olivia.  They were married for 23 years, until his death.  She was acknowledging some of the less-than-savory aspects of being married to a major rock star.  He gallivanted, he was on tour, he drank and abused drugs.  He had affairs.  She wanted to split up many times.  The interviewer asked her:  what is the secret to your long marriage?

George and Olivia Harrison

Now, my failed  marriage of not-quite-five years makes me absolutely no expert in the secrets of long and successful unions.  I do know that Jeff and I did have our share of challenges.  We continue to share some very important core values (faith, shared experience, political vision, sense of humor, parenting style), but we had lots of personality and operational differences that made life sticky in the day-to-day.  Sometimes I think I chose someone who is so different than I because I really, really like a challenge.

I also get the privilege of joining many people in matrimony as a pastor.  One of the benefits of being in ministry at a young age is that I get to marry lots of my friends (to one another)!  And my family members (not to one another - to other people).  It is sort of neverendingly joyful.  From last October to next August, I've got four weddings of very dear people on my calendar.

As a responsible clergyperson, I need to counsel these couples on the joys and travails of marriage before using my authority to join them.  I almost always bring up this example of Olivia Harrison discussing the secret to a long marriage, because it resounded so deeply for me.  It's almost like a Zen koan.

The secret to a long marriage, she said, is not getting divorced.

I had to stop and just chew on that for awhile.  And the brilliance of her statement washed over me.

We give up too easily.  "Marriage is hard work," blah blah blah.  We have been sold a vision that says we will find perfect fulfillment in a "good" marriage (hint:  you won't).  We know all this to be true, but at the end of the day, you have to be willing to come back from the worst fight, the nastiest situation, one foot out the door, and say, "This was awful, but I'm not giving up."

Now hear me out:  everyone has their limits to this.  There are clearly situations of abuse (physical, mental, emotional, financial, or substance) that make divorcing not only a good idea, but a mandate.  I am not one of these Christians that thinks divorcing is a horrid sin.  I will say that, in my experiencing in counseling couples, cheating by itself is not a deal-breaker.  You can come back from that.

But you will know inside yourself.  You will know if the reason you are pondering divorce is flimsy or not.  And sometimes all it takes is a week or two and things will look better than they did.  But I hate to tell you - sometimes it's a hard five or ten years in there.  Find your inner stubbornness.  Cling to this idea of life together even when things seem absolutely dismal.

The secret to a long marriage is not getting divorced.

menu plan march iii

Birthday week!  Birthday week!!

Guys.  This week, I will be . . . THIRTY.  Thirty years.  I remarked to my dear Memaw last night that if the next thirty years held as much heartache as the first thirty, I didn't know if I could stand it.  But then again, if they have half as much joy as the first thirty, then it will all be worth it.

All I wanted for my birthday this year was for my very best friend to visit.  She will be here all weekend, and we have some killer birthday meals planned.

This was my birthday dinner last year - surrounded by nine of my closest friends.  Excited for a repeat this year!

Preamble
We literally always have one of three things for breakfast if we are at home.

1)  -- scrambled eggs from our Mennonite hens
     -- homemade sourdough toast/English muffins/biscuits
     -- raw butter we have been making from our Mennonite cow cream
     -- local raw honey or homemade preserves
     -- seasonal fruit from our CSA or mandarins (in the winter)

2) -- pancakes
    -- raw butter
    -- real maple syrup
    -- seasonal fruit

3)  --soaked oatmeal with raisins, shredded coconut, coconut cream, honey
     --seasonal fruit or preserves

Vicki usually requests #2.  If we have time, I'm happy to oblige.  If I do any sourdough baking, though, we will use the excess starter to have sourdough pancakes.

Since it is so monotonous, I'm not going to put breakfast on the menu plan.

For drinks, we always have raw milk on hand.  We also drink Berkey filtered water, kombucha, or homemade soda from our ginger bug.  I would love to start messing with water kefir soon.

Finally, I try to make one dessert-ish item that we nibble on all week for snacks and desserts.  This week I made pumpkin muffins.  The recipe is pretty good, but I think all the spices need doubled.

Sunday
-- lunch:  we had chicken and rice, roasted broccoli, and radishes with butter and salt
-- supper:  it was my friend Emily's birthday choices (I know, I know - confusing - two Emily's, birthdays both in March).  She wanted bruschetta, fettucine alfredo with chicken, roasted brussels sprouts, and apple cobbler.  I made the fettucine.  I bought a pasta roller and tried my hand at making pasta from scratch.  Total disaster.  I will have to try again!!  But I used this recipe for the alfredo.  It was perfect.

Monday
-- lunch:  leftover chicken & fettucine alfredo, roasted broccoli
-- supper:  couscous and chickpeas (subbed turnip greens for spinach), baked sweet potatoes

Tuesday
-- lunch:  out with my lady friend colleagues!  Noshville.
-- supper:  St. Patty's!  Corned beef, cabbage, potatoes.

Wednesday
-- lunch:  leftover corned beef and vegetables, Irish soda bread
-- supper:  shrimp fried rice, soy-sesame turnip greens

Thursday
-- lunch:  leftover fried rice and greens
-- supper:  pork carnitas tacos with pickled cabbage, homemade salsa, corn tortillas, sour cream, avocado

Friday
-- lunch:  out with the Covenant Group!  Mexican.
-- supper:  Jeff is taking me and Amanda out for a birthday surprise dinner!?  No idea what that entails.

Saturday
-- lunch:  Amanda will be with us, so we will probably just roam the neighborhood until we find something good that will also be kosher with two little kids.  :)
-- supper:  my actual birthday supper at Lockeland Table.  Favorite special-occasion restaurant that is just a couple of blocks from my house.  (Same place as picture above from last year!)

[This post submitted to Menu Plan Monday 3/16/15 and Fat Tuesday 3/17/15.]

todd: 22 months

Not much to say about my sweet boy this month.  He talks and talks.  He loves to sit on the couch surrounded by a stack of books and "read."  I think he might be ready to lose the diaper, and I'm dreading that . . . Here are some pictures!

He loved the ice storm until he went sledding down our street and got an ice burn on his hand.  Then it was over.

Isn't this precious!?  He loves his "candals," as he calls them.

He was my +1 at a clergy spiritual retreat - we went down for the evening and introduced him to everyone.

Bookworm life!  This makes me so indescribably happy.  My kids won't travel anywhere without at least two books apiece.

homemade ricotta

One of the things that has been so fun and interesting for me as I ventured into a real-food diet has been the evolution of my concept of consumer choice.  For instance, your standard American mom makes a grocery list based on some recipes she wants to make (or maybe she doesn't even make a list - she just goes to the store and sees what looks good), goes to the grocery store, buys what she needs to make what she wants, and goes home.

I'm kind of doing things backward now!  I buy a half-cow in various cuts, then I look in my deep freeze at the beginning of the week and think about what I can make with what I have.  I get my CSA box and see what will spoil first, and plan on cooking those vegetables early in the week.  And we do a static dairy order each week - we can only change at the new order for the month.  So, if I ordered a gallon of milk, I get a gallon of milk each week, whether I want it or not.  And then I need to figure out what to do with it before it sours!

This may sound like a lot of work, but I really think it's a lot of fun.  It's about being resourceful and imaginative.  And once your brain gets used to shifting the order of operations a bit, it becomes second nature.  

Preserving dairy is a great extension of this resourcefulness.  Whatever we don't bake with or drink straight up or in coffee gets turned into butter, yogurt, pudding, ice cream, sherbet, mozzarella, ricotta, or ricotta salata.  I have shared most of these recipes with you already, but today let's talk ricotta!  

Ricotta is really the easiest soft cheese to make (aside from labneh, which is just strained yogurt).  And the uses are endless!  You can ripen it in the fridge to make ricotta salata, which is a salted, dried, aged version.  You can dollop it on a white pizza.  You can mix with salt, olive oil, and fresh herbs for a nice dip.  You can fold it into a cheesecake.   You can mix it into pasta (a traditional lasagna is my favorite!).  It has a mild, creamy texture and flavor that really make it versatile.  

So here's how you do it.

Start with a quart of whole milk.  (Raw, pasteurized, whatever.)

Heat gently to 95 C (~205 F).  I do this over medium heat, stirring frequently.

Meanwhile, mix 1/2 teaspoon citric acid with a few tablespoons of cool water.

When the milk is up to temp, pull it off the heat and stir in the dissolved citric acid.  The milk will begin to curdle immediately.  Cover and leave it for half an hour.

This is what it will look like when the half-hour is up - totally separated into curds and whey.

I use a ricotta strainer basket to drain off the whey.  I just discard it.  Some people save it to feed to their plants or things like that.  The whey at this point has lost all its probiotic quality due to being heated so high, so it's not a very useful dietary supplement.  You can strain it to your desired dryness. 

After straining mine for about an hour, I turn it out into a container.  

And there you have it!  Fresh, creamy, homemade ricotta, waiting in your fridge for you to eat it up!

From a quart of milk, I will get about 8 ounces of ricotta.

Have you ever ventured into cheesemaking?  Tell me about it!

[This post submitted to Fat Tuesday 3/10/15 and Simply Natural Saturday 3/7/15.]

menu plan march ii

The cheese board(s) I brought to Family Dinner last night!  So freaking good.

Are you crawling out from under winter yet, wherever you are?  Things are pretty gorgeous here today.  We spent the day outside yesterday, and I got the first light sunburn of the season.  So wrong, so right.

Also - chickens!  I bought 8 chickens from Field of Dreams farm on Friday.  We have eaten enough of our half-cow and half-hog that we had room in the deep freeze to store them.  By working directly with the farmer, I was able to get them for $4/lb!  And that is for chickens raised on pasture with non-gmo non-soy supplemental feed.  I seriously love finding deals like that.

In other big food news in the Reeves Grammer household, we are switching up our CSA for the summer.  I found a much cheaper option than the collective we've been with, and they work with the same Old-Order Mennonite community that provides our milk and eggs.  I pretty much trust that community completely.  And I convinced the CSA to host an East Nashville drop!  So excited about it.

On to the food.  Always the food.

Preamble
We literally always have one of three things for breakfast if we are at home.

1)  -- scrambled eggs from our Mennonite hens
     -- homemade sourdough toast/English muffins/biscuits
     -- raw butter we have been making from our Mennonite cow cream
     -- local raw honey or homemade preserves
     -- seasonal fruit from our CSA or mandarins (in the winter)

2) -- pancakes
    -- raw butter
    -- real maple syrup
    -- seasonal fruit

3)  --soaked oatmeal with raisins, shredded coconut, coconut cream, honey
     --seasonal fruit or preserves

Vicki usually requests #2.  If we have time, I'm happy to oblige.  If I do any sourdough baking, though, we will use the excess starter to have sourdough pancakes.

Since it is so monotonous, I'm not going to put breakfast on the menu plan.

For drinks, we always have raw milk on hand.  We also drink Berkey filtered water, kombucha, or homemade soda from our ginger bug.  I would love to start messing with water kefir soon.

Finally, I try to make one dessert-ish item that we nibble on all week for snacks and desserts.  I made some cranberry-orange gelatin that the kids love.  Super-simple:  just heat 2/3 cup each orange juice and cranberries until all the berries burst.  Throw it in the blender with a few spoonfuls of honey.  Pour it back into the saucepan and whisk in 2 tablespoons grass-fed gelatin.  Pour into the mold of your choice and refrigerate until set!  It jiggles just like the stuff from the box.  :)

Sunday
-- lunch:  creamed chicken over cornbread, steamed broccoli, roasted sweet potatoes
-- supper:  Family Dinner!  We had appetizer this week, and I brought a cheese board!  I made a blue cheese-pecan spread and an herbed ricotta dip.  For accompaniments I had mini Gherkins, sliced apple, cucumber spears, roasted pecans, toasted baguette, homemade garlic-herb crackers, and homemade cranberry jam!  A feast.

Monday
-- lunch:  Staff Birthday Lunch!  We went to Thai Phooket and I had Thai iced tea, shrimp summer rolls, and chicken panang curry.
-- supper:  black bean and corn quesadillas with avocado, home-canned salsa, homemade tortillas, raw cheddar, sour cream, and pickled cabbage salad

Tuesday
-- lunch:  chicken salad on yogurt-dough crackers, carrot and cucumber sticks
-- supper:  Asian-style ground beef over peanut rice noodles with Asian slaw

Wednesday
-- lunch:  leftover beef on peanut noodles
-- supper:  beer-battered fish and chips, pickled cabbage salad

Thursday
-- lunch:  out somewhere before Pastor's Bible Study!
-- supper:  pork roast with turnips and cabbage, roast pumpkin wedges

Friday
-- lunch:  leftovers
-- supper:  BBQ pork pizza (homemade sourdough crust, homemade cider vinegar BBQ sauce, pulled pork leftover from Thursday night, green onions, cheddar cheese.  Top with vinegar slaw after it comes out!)

Saturday
-- lunch:  creamed squash soup with crackers and cheese
-- supper:  roast chicken, mashed potatoes, sourdough rolls, roast pumpkin

What's cooking with you all?

[This post submitted to Menu Plan Monday 3/9/15.]

nine ways to eat your cabbage!

Seasonal eating . . . It's what I'm committed to.  It's what I stand for.  It's the right way to eat - the way our great-grandparents did it!  It . . .

Starts to suck really bad in February.  Seriously.  Here's what we get in the dregs of winter:  cabbage, hard squash, turnips, cabbage, sweet potatoes, potatoes, cabbage, onions, carrots, broccoli, cabbage.

A lot of cabbage.  Those heads of cabbage are huge!  I currently have no fewer than five cabbages in my fridge.

I'm lucky that I like cabbage.  But there's only so much cabbage a gal can take.  I put together all my favorite cabbage recipes here, in case you are in a situation of cabbage richness similar to mine.

Here you go - nine ways to eat your cabbage!

Sauerkraut - the classic gateway drug to lactofermentation!  It really couldn't be simpler.  Slice your cabbage very thinly and then weigh it.  For every pound of cabbage, add two teaspoons of salt.  Put it all into a great big mixing bowl and start kneading it with your hands like bread.  Crunch the cabbage shreds between your fingers and press it all together.  Soon it will start to release liquid.  Once you can grab a handful and squeeze it and liquid trickles out of your fist, you are ready to jar it!  I usually do quart-size jars.  Pack the cabbage very tightly into jars.  Use a wooden spoon handle to tamp it down in layers before you add more.  You want the liquid to cover the top of the cabbage.  Once it's full, put a lid on loosely and leave it on your counter for a few days.  It will start to bubble.  Taste it after three days.  Is it nice and sour?  If so, cap it tightly and refrigerate (or cold storage).  If not, let it go longer.  Taste each day until it's ready.  Kraut will last basically indefinitely in the fridge.  It is an amazing natural source of probiotics.  I eat a tablespoon-full every night before bed to settle my stomach.

Pickled Cabbage Salad - I adapted this one from Smitten Kitchen.  Mix up a brine of 3/4 C white vinegar, 3/4 C water, 3 T sucanat or sugar, 1/4 t celery seeds, 2 t sea salt.  Heat the brine until everything is dissolved.  Meanwhile shred a pound of cabbage.  Add a julienned carrot.  Pour the brine over the shredded veggies and let it sit for several hours.  It will get better each day (refrigerated)!  This is awesome on Korean beef tacos or as a side to any rich meat.

Vinegar Slaw - This is the bare-bones version of cole slaw that I prefer!  No mayo.  It's perfect on BBQ pork or brisket sandwiches.  Shred 1/2 a head of green cabbage.  Mix 1/4 C sucanat or sugar, 1/4 C white vinegar, and 1 T salt.  Toss it with the cabbage and let it sit for several hours before serving.

Cabbage, Noodles & Bacon - This is one of my all-time favorite comfort foods.  Something about the piquancy of the vinegar against the richness of the bacon, the texture of the cabbage with the noodles.  I just love it.

Braised Cabbage - With both apple cider and cider vinegar.  This is SO freaking good.  Cabbage + apple + bacon is such a natural flavor combination.  Plus Tom Colicchio can do no wrong.

Cabbage Rolls - Leave it Ina Garten, my personal favorite and the queen of Jewish soul food, to give the perfect recipe for this comforting dish.  It takes a little bit of preparation, but it's no harder than a lasagna!

Cabbage & Rice Soup - This is one I came up with on the fly to use up leftovers.  It was perfect.  I took a mix of homemade chicken and pork stock from the freezer - maybe 2 cups.  I added 1 cup thinly shredded cabbage and let that all come to a boil, cooking until the cabbage was tender.  Then I added a cup or so of leftover sesame-scallion rice.  After it heated through I added a half-teaspoon or so of Sambal Oelek.  It was rich and comforting from the stock, filling with the rice, and pleasantly spicy.  Such a good lunch.

Asian Slaw - This is a big favorite in the family for picnics and potlucks.  This deviates from my Real Food ways a bit, since it uses the noodles and spice packet from a package of instant Ramen noodles.  But hey - you only live once, right?  Have some Ramen noodles.  I basically use this recipe, but instead of bagged coleslaw mix, I do 1/2 a head of shredded cabbage and two shredded carrots.

Cabbage & Noodles - This is supreme comfort food that I learned from my days living with my old friends Stephanie and Julie.  Julie's parents brought up all their children as vegetarians, and they had four kids!  So they needed economical ways to feed the family.  You basically just take a head of cabbage, an onion, a one-pound bag of egg noodles (or a pound of fresh), a bunch of butter, and some salt.  Very thinly slice the onion and cabbage.  Take your biggest pan and saute them in 4 T butter and a few teaspoons of salt (I also added about a teaspoon of caraway seeds last time - very nice).  While that cooks, bring a big pot of water to a boil and add the egg noodles.  Cook until they are done, then drain.  Once the cabbage and onion are very soft and starting to caramelize (maybe 20-30 minutes), add the noodles to the pan and add another 4 T butter.  Taste and add more salt as needed.  Stir well so the noodles are totally coated in butter.  Feed an army and enjoy.

So - do you have favorite cabbage dishes!?  What have I forgotten?

[This post submitted to the HomeAcre Hop 3/5/15.]

menu plan march i

We are scheduled for more snow this week!  Unbelievable.  This is the length of winter I was used to in New York, not here in temperate Nashville.

It's interesting how nature marches on, though, despite what we humans have to say about it.  I drove up to beautiful rural Kentucky yesterday to fetch our milk for the co-op, and saw all the little calves that were just born.  They were snuggled up with their mamas or on straw bales, soaking up the sunshine.  Can you imagine being born in an open field during an ice storm?  Animals amaze me.

Here's what we are eating this week:

Preamble
We literally always have one of three things for breakfast if we are at home.

1)  -- scrambled eggs from our Mennonite hens
     -- homemade sourdough toast/English muffins/biscuits
     -- raw butter we have been making from our Mennonite cow cream
     -- local raw honey or homemade preserves
     -- seasonal fruit from our CSA or mandarins (in the winter)

2) -- pancakes
    -- raw butter
    -- real maple syrup
    -- seasonal fruit

3)  --soaked oatmeal with raisins, shredded coconut, coconut cream, honey
     --seasonal fruit or preserves

Vicki usually requests #2.  If we have time, I'm happy to oblige.  If I do any sourdough baking, though, we will use the excess starter to have sourdough pancakes.

We also have a metric half-acre of bulk breakfast sausage from our recent half-hog purchase, so we have some sausage patties with whatever other breakfast we have.

Since it is so monotonous, I'm not going to put breakfast on the menu plan.

For drinks, we always have raw milk on hand.  We also drink Berkey filtered water, kombucha, or homemade soda from our ginger bug.  I would love to start messing with water kefir soon.

Finally, I try to make one dessert-ish item that we nibble on all week for snacks and desserts.  This week we are loving chocolate pudding pops.  These are a huge favorite with the kids, even though they make a God-awful mess.

Sunday
-- lunch:  Swedish meatballs, egg noodles, roasted turnips
-- supper:  Family Dinner!  We got a pass this week on dessert, since Stephanie had won a gift basket from the Dutch Maid Bakery at a silent auction.  We had lasagna roll-ups, loaded mashed cauliflower, and jalapeno jelly and cheese wonton quesadillas.  It was fantastic.

Monday
-- leftover pasta with pumpkin sauce, salad with red onion and pickled beets, kombucha
-- supper:  BBQ hamburger (this is an old-timey recipe from my grandmother-in-law that's basically ground beef with ketchup, mustard, vinegar, and Worcestershire.  Then you eat it on a bun like a sloppy joe.  I'll do a recipe soon!), roast potato wedges, pickled cabbage salad

Tuesday
-- lunch:  leftover Swedish meatballs and turnips
-- supper:  cabbage, noodles, and bacon; kombucha

Wednesday
-- lunch:  couscous and chickpeas with turnip greens instead of parsley and spinach
-- supper:  pork chops, baked sweet potatoes, braised turnip greens

Thursday
-- lunch:  leftover couscous and chickpeas
-- supper:  sesame/soy-glazed salmon, Asian cabbage slaw, sauteed green beans, scallion rice

Friday
-- lunch:  I'm going to a clergy tax seminar at the Conference Office and I'm fairly sure lunch is included!  If not, I'll just bring a sandwich of some sort and some veggies.
-- supper:  gonna try this pumpkin, sage, and apple pizza!  Holy moly it sounds good.  We will use our homemade mozzarella, of course.

Saturday
-- lunch:  soup of cabbage and leftover scallion rice in pork and chicken broth
-- supper:  roast chicken, mashed sweet potatoes, roasted turnips, pickled cabbage salad

What's on the menu for y'all?

[This post submitted to Menu Plan Monday 3/2/15 and Fat Tuesday 3/3/15.]

vicki jo: 3 years and 11 months

Oh man.  Is there some kind of terrible developmental phase right now?  My child is pretty much insane.  But I'll just leave this series of pictures here because she is still pretty cute.  (Thanks, God/Nature, for making children so adorable - so our hearts are softened when they try us so sorely!)

Here we are on a really great field trip with the Encore Class to Radnor Lake.  They were studying "animal architecture," and that's a beaver lodge you see in the background!  Vicki threw an enormous fit and didn't want to walk up the hill.  It was really fun for everyone.

Lol at Todd in this picture.  This was at an event at Kings Daughters just before Valentine's Day.  They made some special valentines for family.  

This might just be like the most heartwarming thing ever.  The kids have started to occasionally enjoy going into their room together, shutting the door, and reading on the bed.  I peeked in and snapped the picture right before Todd told me to shut the door and leave them alone.

Eating icicles during Nashville Icepocalypse 2015.  The Donald hat is also a favorite.

I call this one "Selfie with exhausted mother in the background."

Can't believe it's just one month until she's four!  I better get started planning that party . . .