Reviving Traditional Foods
I love the fruits of autumn - pears and quince, yes, but it is the apples I love most of all. Indeed, eighty-five pounds of pomaceous fruit lurk in stacked cardboard boxes in my living room. They wait for me, quietly. And as they ripen, they release their gently scent – mildly floral and slightly spicy. [...]
Homemade mint extract, and other extracts, number among my favorite additions to desserts. And, in keeping with most of the several real food recipes at Nourished Kitchen, it is shamefully easy to prepare and requires only a handful of ingredients. And, in winter when my herbs are frozen over until the spring thaw, I rely [...]
Salsa verde, bright and hot and green, makes its way to our kitchen every August when tomatillos come into their season. No, they don’t grow in our little corner of the community garden – the altitude is too high and the climate too cold, but they arrive in paper bags with our CSA and in [...]
Four Thieves Vinegar can cure the plague, at least, that’s what French folklore teaches us. And while I can’t comment on the veracity of this statement (and, no, it hasn’t been approved by the Food & Drug Administration), I will say that in every little garden whether it’s an expansive lot on a farmstead, a [...]
Homemade ketchup – it sounds complicated as though you’d spend all day in the kitchen pounding your way through vats of tomatoes and slowly simmering them away in kettles on a wooden stove. Making homemade ketchup from scratch seems complex, almost unfathomable in an era when quick-fix, all-in-one bagged skillet dinners constitute “cooking from scratch.” [...]
Homemade barbecue sauce, sweet, hot and full of rich flavor, is one of our favorite indulgences. One of the last opportunities for summer barbecues lurks just around the corner, and we’re preparing for labor day by planning our last big picnic of the season: grass-fed brisket with homemade barbecue sauce, fresh tomato salad, plenty of [...]
Wild mushroom butter. There’s something about wild mushrooms and dishes made from them like wild mushroom butter, something faintly alarming and decidedly adventuresome. It’s a disquieting food, like raw milk, and it takes a certain amount of culinary fortitude to walk into the woods, scratch your way through the pine needles, the brush and slowly [...]
Homemade horseradish found its way to our table this week, and it’s hot – painfully hot, pleasurably hot, perfectly hot. When fresh horseradish root appears at market, which is rarely, I fight my way to it – elbowing into the stand before the other Weston A Price Foundation and fermentation enthusiasts in my community can [...]
Allioli. Allioli. Allioli. I love how the vowels and lulling Ls roll off the tongue – softly and whimsically – almost like a child’s nonsense word. all-ee-oh-lee. It’s a melodic sound. Allioli is a Catalan version of classic aioli, and it differs fundamentally from Provençal aiolis in that it is made without egg yolk – offering just a combination of good quality olive oil, fragrant garlic and unrefined sea salt.
In this bonus lesson for How to Cook Real Food, the online cooking class hosted at Nourished Kitchen, you’ll receive a quick, sneak-peak into the cooking class through this brief video covering how to properly prepare nuts and seeds including recipes for a basic pesto sauce and a basic fruit and nut snack bar. Please [...]
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The Thing About Blueberries . . . is that they don't grind their Harleys over the hot desert tarmac, … [read more]
Confused about grains? You're not alone! It seems that everyone is telling you - to either get … [read more]
Did you know that a simple process can actually increase the nutrients your body absorbs from whole … [read more]
Jenny McGruther is a wife, mother and cooking instructor specializing in real and traditional foods. Her work has been featured on CNN, the Globe & Mail, the Atlantic, the Christian Science Monitor, Denver Post and WebMD. Click here to learn more.
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