Lynnette

Greetings All, Culinarybear, THANK YOU for starting this forum! I am still a rather new member of EGullet, and have thoroughly enjoyed reading this forum, from start to finish. I have learned so much from you, Paula Wolfert and others here - so thanks to ALL! Twice I have made confit of duck, and after reading this forum, I now know why the first was great, and the second, less so . The first was of Moulard duck legs and the second from whatever kind of duck my husband bought at Wholefoods. I have the great fortune to live here in the heartland, south of the Twin Cities. Living further south is a Frenchman who raises moulard ducks and supplies both duck and foie gras to the chefs in the cities. On Fridays, he passes through Rochester and will stop to deliver to me . After reading through this forum yesterday, and through the cassoulet forum, I called and ordered moulard duck legs (8), gizzards (1 lb) and duck fat to use in confit. I also ordered some breast meat and carcass bones while I was at it. Also due this week are some grass-fed lamb shanks that I plan on turning into confit as well. I am conflicted about what fat might be best for the lamb - I plan to use garlic and rosemary, and wondered if olive oil would be best, or if organic lard from pastured pigs would be better. I would rather save my duck fat for the ducks... Does anyone have advice for me, regarding the lamb? Many thanks, Lynnette in MN

I finally finished the ox-tail soup this weekend !! I started by making a 24-hour beef broth from meaty bones and ox-tails and the requisite vegetables, and after chilling and de-fatting that, simmered more ox-tails in the broth for another 8 hours. This was again chilled, with the meat picked from the ox-tails and later defatted. The final broth was made into the Epicurious recipe for OXTAIL SOUP WITH RED WINE AND ROOT VEGETABLES http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/102123 (NO canned soup!!! I added a half of a rutabaga and some reconstituted porcini mushrooms and their liquid.) The broth was a rich mahogany color with lots of flavor! YUM!

Hi Suzi... Where do you live? I am in southern MN, and if you are close, sure, come and play in the kitchen with me! Lynnette

I was in the kitchen all day yesterday, attending to a braise and the 2nd stage of some ox-tail soup, which I will finish today. So, this morning I did not feel like cooking and instead, made a smoothie with mixed berries, home-cultured kefir, 2 raw egg yolks from my favorite farmer, and some virgin coconut oil. Hot tea balanced the frosty drink.

Thank you Percy. I love photography, although food photography is new to me so I will have to start plating better soon . The best place to start absorbing Weston A Price's research is in Sally Fallon's cookbook, "Nourishing Traditions" and on the WAPF website, http://www.westonaprice.org/basics.html - at least in my opinion. This morning we had eggs scrabbled in bacon fat with chard & Parmesan, nitrate-free organic bacon, roasted asparagus rewarmed in bacon fat, our regular ww sourdough bread with homemade peach-nutmeg jam. OJ and Darjeeling finished the meal.

Bone Broths are easy. First, you need several pounds of boney cuts. Knucklebones, soup bones, neck bones, ox-tails - all have enough cartilage to release gelatin to the stock. IF you can get it, a hoof, cut into pieces, adds a lot, I'm told. For chicken, older stewing hens make the best stock, and with these, use the necks, and chicken feet if you can get them. I roast the meat and bones until well browned, and then put them in a large stockpot. This step is optional, but it gives better color and flavor to the stock, IMO. Cover with water, and add 1/4-cup vinegar to the meat stock and 2 T vinegar to the poultry (I use a wine vinegar). The acidic bath helps release the gelatin. Let this sit 1 hour and them move the stockpot to the stove and bring to a gentle simmer. Do not boil! I let the stock simmer until it finishes foaming, lifting the scum as it forms. When it clears, I add the vegetables and aromatics (onion, stuck with three cloves, a bulb of garlic, 2 carrots, 1 stalk celery and about 9 peppercorns). I add bay to the meat, and leeks if I have them, to either. Herbs are added when I make soup. Chicken stock simmers for a total of 8 hours and meat stocks, 24. When done, I strain and refrigerate the broth. The next day, I lift the fat and either make soup, or reduce and freeze in cubes. Stock made this way has a lot of body and is almost silky on the tongue. See the WAPF link too: http://www.westonaprice.org/foodfeatures/broth.html

Hi Glazz! It's good to know there is another here who appreciates Weston Price's work. I love cooking the NT way! Sometime soon I think I will make some homemade miso soup for breakfast, as the Japanese are said to do. Bonita flakes and kombu make as a great broth as meat bones! All good for warming the tummy on cold winter days.

Hi All, I am still rather new to EGullet, but when I found this forum, I knew I had found another home. I love to make soups from scratch!!! I have been on a bone-broth kick this year, since I have a great resource for grass-fed meats. Yesterday I made a rich meat stock, preparing for a ox-tail soup, and a rich lamb stock. Both of these stocks simmered for 24 hours. The lamb broth went into a Lentil, Lamb and Rosemary soup that we enjoyed for lunch today, with toasted homemade whole-wheat sourdough bread:

Lynnette, do you run a farm and/or grow the mushrooms? Your breakfasts look great !! I would encourage to post what you made for dinner on the Dinner! thread too. Cheers Percy ← Hi Percy, No I don't run a farm, but since living here in the heartland, I have found several farmer friends all less than an hour away, and one, just a few miles out of town, who raises grss-fed Highland Cattle, lambs, and chickens. All our meat and eggs come from him, and my raw milk, from one of his friends. As for the mushrooms, one of my friends here is a mycologist, and took us on mushroom hunts last fall. We gathered wild maitake, chicken of the woods, puffballs, and more - all carefully identified, and then either cooked and frozen, or dried. We all eat Real Food and subscribe to WAPF principles (_Nourishing Taditions_, by Sally Fallon). As a result, we forage for unadultrated foods as much as possible. I am also a photographer, and love to take pictures of the mushrooms we find in the wild. The shot under my name is one I took last fall. Being rather new to EGullet, I am slowly finding my way around all the forums. I have seen the dinner forum, and have thought about posting there as well, but this weekend is about homemade bone-broth soups, so I am also looking at the 52 weeks... forum. I love to cook so you will see me here and there....

Today, my breakfast was an egg straight from the farm, cooked with wild-harvested mushrooms (previously sautéed with shallots and sherry). This was served with fresh strawberries, and freshly cultured vanilla-scented kefir, in which to dip them. Freshly brewed Darjeeling finished the meal.

Thank you for the welcome Percy. The first picture was tiny - smaller than the one under my name (wild oyster mushrooms), but I went back to the album, clicked on something else, and it worked fine.

Okay, I am doing something wrong with the uploaded photos - can anyone help me figure this out? Thanks, Lynnette, in MN

Hi All, I am a new Egullet member and was delighted to see this breakfast thread. I love breakfast and thought to start my journey here. Last night I cooked a birthday dinner for my husband, consisting of duck breast with fig sauce, wild-harvested mushrooms, sautéed with shallots and sherry, potatoes roasted in duct fat, and steamed chard. Lest you think I am confused about which topic this is, this morning's breakfast was farm-fresh eggs (direct from farmer) scrambled with leftover chopped chard, with reheated potatoes and mushrooms from our dinner last night. This was served with a local farmer's nitrate-free bacon, and my homemade whole-wheat sourdough and homemade apple butter.

I make bone-broth soups regularly. They might be chicken or other poultry based, or made with various meats and bones. Right now I have a rich, dark, jewel-like lamb broth in the refrigerator made with roasted lamb shanks and neck bones from pastured lambs. Since I make so many bone-broth soups, I am looking for some new ideas. I would rather not cloud the beautiful broth, but am otherwise open to suggestions for the finished soup. Any feedback will be appreciated! Lynnette

I cannot say if there is a difference or not, personally. Several friends here have tried both and like both brands of butter. Rochester Produce is where I have seen them side by side. My friendly farmer - the one from whom I buy pastured meats, chickens and their eggs - also sell Pastureland butter (the dairy farmer who makes it is a friend of his). I am told that Pastureland is made and frozen while pastures are green, so that there is butter to sell over the winter with all the benefits of omega-3, CLA and Activator-X (the Price Factor or Activator X). While I have not timed the process, making my own butter does not take long at all. It takes planning - and remembering to set out the cream to culture - but the washing stage takes the longest - maybe 10-15 minutes and I am done.

Hi All, I found this thread fascinating. For store-bought butter, here in southern MN, I buy Pastureland Butter, made from milk from pastured cows. It is sold alongside Hope butter, and is the same high standard. However, I also make a lot of our butter from raw milk from the pastured "happy cows" of MN. I set the raw cream, skimmed from the settled whole milk, out on the counter overnight to sour. With the cream now at room temperature, I use the processor much like fiftydollers, to make our butter, but wash my cultured butter by hand with a wooden spatula, with repeated changes of water. I salt with Celtic Gray salt, but Fleur de Sel also sounds very good to me, so I will have to try it next. I also save the initial buttermilk, as it is truly old-fashioned cultured buttermilk and very useful as such. Raw milk and products made of it, from pastured cows are loaded with good things, like omega-3 fatty acids and CLA. When pastures are rapidly growing the butter is enriched with even more.

Hi All, This is a slightly different kind of liver question. I have never cooked liver (other than chicken livers) and now have some grass-fed lamb's liver. Can anyone recommend a method of cooking it for liver novices, that might convert us to liver-lovers? Thanks, Lynnette

Hi All, I am new to eGullet but I love making stocks. I have just read through all the lessons and Q&A on this subject and thank Fat Guy and everyone else for such interesting posts and pictures . Even an ol' hand at making stocks has learned a lot here! I was wondering if anyone else adds vinegar to the initial stock ingredients. I first learned of adding vinegar from Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon & Mary Enig. My understanding is that the vinegar helps draw out calcium from bones in bone broths. From these authors is an interesting article on broths, that I think you will enjoy: Broth Is Beautiful

WOW! I am new to eGullet and wanted some breakfast ideas and I sure did find them here! I am going to have to order one of those smoked duck breasts - I bookmarked the site, too. This morning's breakfast was a kefir smoothie, with two organic, free-range raw egg yolks, vanilla, honey, 1/2 cup frozen blueberries and 2 T melted virgin coconut oil. Oh, and the pot of Upton's Darjeeling tea.

I guess I should never say never I started on my nutritional journey as a vegetarian (Atkins? Never! ), but when I learned the value of omega 3's, I listened to Dr. Weil's advice and added cold-water oily fish while clearing my kitchen of trans-fats, and later migrated to the South Beach Diet. With the SBD I put the glycemic index further into practice and worked hard to add even more vegetables to our diet (veggies & eggs replaced cereals for breakfast). All the while, we ate low fat and used only EVOO. But then, we moved to MN, and good fish was harder to come by, so I added Amish chickens... until the summer came with the farmers market. Along the way, I had discovered Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions. At the market, I met a farmer who farmed to my new standards, and soon I was buying organic & free-range chickens & their eggs from him. By the end of the summer, I had tip-toed back to eating red meats from his pastured animals. As I understand it, pastured animals have a small amount of omega 3 and CLA in them, that lot-fed animals do not. So now I am eating more saturated fats (always organic & pastured). I use philosophies from all of these diets, but only when I can make them work together. No partially-hydrogenated oils; very little polyunsatuated oil, and then only as found in food; and moderate amounts of really fresh EVOO (thank you David Rosengarten! ). Per Nourishing Traditions, I now also use butter from pastured cows (some of which I make myself), lard, tallow, duck fat - all from pastured animals, and virgin coconut oil. We eat Vital Choice salmon, organic & free-range chicken, turkey, duck, beef, lamb & elk. And of course, lots of colorful vegetables, berries, grapes, and for treats, one (1) Dove Mini, dark chocolate, or one Dove Promise, dark chocolate. So, am I following Atkins now unknowingly?!!?? Lynnette

Hi Chappie, All, I am new with eGullet, but am very familiar with Nourishing Traditions (NT, for short). I have been working with the principles laid out by Sally Fallon for most of the last year. I say principles, instead of recipes, because I usually apply my own recipes to her guidelines. This summer I made lactofermented garlicky dill pickles, my first sauerkraut, and some gingery daikon radish relish. I bake all our bread and it is all sourdough with long fermentations (so as to be "soaked"). I make kefir with real kefir grains and yogurt, both from local raw milk. I will often make wholesome smoothies with one of these for breakfast, with free-range organic egg yolks, virgin coconut oil, and sometimes frozen fruit. Kombucha tea is also constantly brewing here (I use 2 green tea bags and 2 Earl Grey, to 3 qts water & 1 cup sugar, and brew two weeks for a delightful brew). The thing I love most is that Sally got me to start making bone broths again and homemade soup has become a mainstay . Once a vegetarian, I am again eating red meats, but only if organic in principle and pastured. This summer, I met a local farmer at the farmer's market, who farms to my standards, and have been out to his farm to see the "happy cows, sheep and chickens" of MN. Now winter is approaching I am still able to get wholesome meats, poultry and eggs from him. Food never tasted so good, IMO. Lynnette