Reviving Traditional Foods
I love a traditional wassail, and I make it three times a year – on the first day of snow, on the longest night of the year and on New Year’s Eve. And today marks the longest night of the year and the shortest day. We’ll celebrate with wassail and by lighting a candle that [...]
We headed into the woods this weekend to hunt for our Christmas tree and a log for our yuletide fire. Living close to nature as we do, after all the National Forest is within walking distance of our home, we relish the turning of the seasons and, perhaps, feel their urgency more than most [...]
After years of overdone and tough birds, I was entrusted with this recipe – passed from my husband’s grandmother to his mother, from my mother-in-law to my husband and, eventually, he shared it with me. You see, my husband, taught me to cook. And while it must be some level of a sin, a [...]
While we’re away at the annual Weston A Price Foundation annual conference, learning about the GAPS Diet, traditional foods and hearing speakers like Denise Minger bust established myths regarding health, nutrition and the place of fat and animal foods in the diet, I thought I’d take the time to share with you some older posts [...]
Homemade sauerkraut, in all its funky humility, is a favorite food in our home – particularly in wintertime when fresh, local produce is a rare treat and we rely on what we’ve put by over the summer and autumn months. For us, this means lots of fermented foods and sauerkraut in particular. We grow cabbage [...]
I always feel a little lost, a little wasteful when it’s time to thin my garden as though all those little plants, doing their best to grow in our very rocky mountain soil, are being plucked early with no chance of reaching their potential. It’s a curious thought, but I’m known for being particularly sentimental [...]
When the snows recede and the forests open we like to venture out: reveling in the woods, fishing in lakes and streams and cooking over the campfire in rustic simplicity. And while it’s too cold to camp comfortably in our area for another month, we spent the last three weeks traveling from Colorado to the [...]
Onion bisque, a decidedly humble food, bridges the seasons of winter and spring in a beautiful marriage of overwintered onions and shallots with the new leeks of early spring. While many traditional bisques rely on thickening from cream or a floury roux, this simple onion bisque relies instead on a smooth body of pureed leeks [...]
Slowcooker chicken soup can soothe a weary soul. These days mine is in desperate want of soothing. There are months when life seems to take the lead and you’re always just one step behind – months when obligations never cease, when kids and work and charitable obligations all need your attention NOW and without compromise. [...]
Homemade potato chips find their way to our kitchen only very rarely, but what a heavenly indulgence when they do appear. You see, I’m a potato chip addict. I may blend a killer kombucha, spend my afternoons brewing water kefir and culturing raw milk yogurt, but it’s the humble potato chip: salty, crunchy and wonderfully [...]
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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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