Reviving Traditional Foods
There’s an old-fashioned charm to homemade root beer with its odd array of roots and bark, flowers, leaves and berries. It, like many other fermented beverages, once enjoyed position as a staple of American cookery. Water, as you know, was not always potable and raw milk, small beers, cider, perry and other fermented beverages were [...]
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 [...]
Dandelion greens, like all greens, love fat. Their robust bitterness and peppery undertones are muted, to some degree, by the liquid smoothness of unrefined olive oil or – even better – the smokiness of a good quality bacon fat, free of added nitrates and nitrites and produced from hogs raised outdoors and under a vibrant [...]
Gluten-free chicken and dumplings swimming in a salty, creamy broth of herbs and aromatic vegetables found its way to our kitchen a few weeks ago. A cold-weather food, good for the changing of the seasons, gluten-free chicken and dumplings can satisfy hungry bellies on chilly autumn evenings – fulfilling the roles of both company food [...]
Over the past few weekends, the snow has cleared from the high country (yes … it takes that long for winter to recede up here), and what time I’ve had that hasn’t been occupied by the online cooking class (there’s still time to register, you stragglers …), I’ve spent planting my new herb garden. My porch is littered with fragrant terra cotta and glazed ceramic pots, bursting with charming herbs: rosemary, rose geranium, sweet bay, peppermint, spearmint, curly parsley, flat leaf parsley, dill, sweet basil and violetta basil, thyme and chives and nasturtiums. I think wistfully about finding French tarragon, stevia for teas, marjoram and sweet cicely (for its charming name alone).
Swimming a pool of fresh cream and seasoned with fragrant herbs, baked salmon makes for a satisfying and deeply nourishing supper. Simple food is often the best food. Indeed, good food needn’t be complicated. When you rely on wholesome ingredients of the best quality you can reasonably afford, the simplest of preparations will illuminate their [...]
Preparing healthy treats for kids can be a challenge. Picky palates seem to prefer junk over wholesome, natural and healthy treats, but even the pickiest kids may find a treat among this list of healthy treats for kids that suits their liking. Many of these are stand-by healthy treats for my family: figs [...]
Our premarket CSA began just this week – perfect timing for One Local Summer. It seems now, more and more, all of our meals are local. If not entirely local, they’re substantially local. What a blessing it is to celebrate real food this way! This week we enjoyed local milk, eggs, [...]
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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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