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Spring bounty

Spring - finally!!  Our cherry & apple trees are just beginning to bloom, the rhubarb is doing fantastic (ate some of that with breakfast this morning!), and the new asparagus bed is on its second year.  Strawberry plants are doing well, chives and wild onions are thriving.  Volunteer radishes are coming up too.  I can't wait to get in and plant the garden, but it will likely be next week, or the week after.  We are fencing in the yard this summer for the munchkin; we took out the existing hedge which gives us additional room for garden space.

Wednesday I tried Morel hunting in one of my favorite places.  Morels are up in various places here in Minnesota, but it was just too early in my spot, I think.  The only fungus I saw was one tiny little inky cap, about 2" tall.  We'll go back a few times over the next couple weeks; hopefully we'll have a bounty like last year! 

I may not have found any Morels, but I did score some early asparagus!  I'd guess about 90% of what we found was too little to be picked, but it's a great spot and we try to go at least once every spring.

Which brings me to this: 
Roasted Asparagus with Goat Feta Cheese & Pecans

Ingredients:
asparagus
olive oil
lemon juice
garlic granules
sea salt
pepper
goat feta cheese
pecans, roughly chopped

Layer the asparagus on a baking sheet.  Drizzle on a little olive oil & lemon juice.  Season lightly with salt, pepper, and garlic.  Toss on some goat feta cheese and top with pecans.  Roast for 10 minutes at 415F (set the oven somewhere between 400 and 425F).  Remove from oven, drizzle with a little bit more olive oil & lemon juice and serve warm.

It's very easy to eat a lot of this!! :)

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Fundraising time!

Kaiden's been using a Vantage Lite (LAMP system) loaner unit in speech therapy and is doing fantastic!  He picked it up quicker than anyone thought he would (except me, LOL!!  I KNOW he's a smart little stinker!!).  But, since it's a loaner unit, it's time for it to be used with another child.  These speech devices, while fantastic . . . are not cheap.  We're talking a range of $6000 and up, up, up.  So . . . here we are . . . fundraising time!

Here is our GoFundMe page: http://www.gofundme.com/HelpKaidenTalk  Please go check it out - donations of any size are immensely appreciated, as well as sharing his page via social media.  We're off to a great start, and are so blessed to have so many wonderfully caring people in our lives!

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NRHEG Star Eagle: A Christmas Story of Love and Hope

We've been featured again!  I graduated from NRHEG, so this is the "hometown" paper, the NRHEG Star Eagle. :)  They did a fantastic job with this article - while I was immensely pleased to be featured in our local town paper & magazine, they did get a lot of the details incorrect so this has been a chance to get it out there, with the "right" story!

Please click to read:

Featured in the 2013 Christmas Edition of the 

NRHEG Star Eagle:

A Christmas Story of Love and Hope

 

 

 

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Nightshade free pepperoni!

Yes, that's right.  I searched online for a nightshade free pepperoni recipe and came up with nothing truly nightshade free.  I did, however, find several recipes for vegan "pepperoni" made with beets (and nightshades).  So today's experiment:  Nightshade FREE pepperoni!!

 

I modified the existing recipes to not only be nightshade free, but to my own taste:

1/2 a large beet, quartered and sliced thin

Sauce:
1/2 c. water
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp garlic granules
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

grind together, either in a coffee grinder, or a mortar & pestle:
1/2 tsp dehydrated onion flakes
1/2 tsp mustard seed
1/2 tsp fennel seed
1/4 tsp sage leaves (dried)

Layer beets in a baking dish.  Stir sauce ingredients together, and pour over beets, stir to coat.  Spread the beet slices out, but no need to be single layer.  Bake at 325F for 20  min, and flip the beets.  Bake an additional 10 - 15 minutes, then stir, and repeat until beet slices are soft and edges begin to curl, with most of the liquid absorbed.

I had my doubts that this would taste like pepperoni, but I was wrong!  Okay, it's not exactly like pepperoni, but it is pretty close! And delicious!!
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1/23/14 Editing to add: I tried them on a nightshade free paleo pizza.  They were very tasty on pizza,but the pepperoni flavor wasn't strong enough; it was more like eating a veggie pizza.  Next up I tried marinating hamburger in the recipe above  - but while that amount of fennel is perfect for beets, it overpowers the meat.  Good thing I like fennel!  3rd attempt was the same recipe, only doubling all the spices/herbs except the fennel, which was cut to about 1/8 tsp, and using venison burger.  THAT was excellent!! Not perfectly pepperoni-like, but close!

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Paleo Chocolate Covered Cherries

With the holidays just past, paleo desserts have been on my mind.  I miss chocolate covered cherries, but don't dare eat the commercial ones. Processed sugars make my joints hurt something awful!  I modified a traditional recipe but have not really figured out precise measurements yet for the paleo version - just did my typical "throw stuff together". 

Original version: 60 maraschino cherries, 3 Tbsp of butter, 3 Tbsp of light corn syrup, 2c of powdered sugar, and 1 lb dipping chocolate.

My version: a package of frozen dark sweet cherries (approx. 30 cherries), and what I'm guessing amounted to 1/4 c (unrefined) coconut oil, 1/4 c maple syrup, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 1/2 c arrowroot powder, 1/4 tsp xanthan gum, and a 10 oz package of Enjoy Life Chocolate Mega Chunks.  I'm pretty good at eyeballing measurements. :)

I melted the coconut oil with the maple syrup and vanilla extract, then added a little arrowroot powder not only to thicken, but to give that slightly powdery texture that powdered sugar would give.  It blended up nicely and I thought about putting it in the fridge to cool so it would be easier to apply to the cherries . . . but I am impatient.  So I added xanthan gum.  Now, I did not mean to use that much xanthan gum - the bag spilled.  It gelled the mixture a little more (okay, a lot more) than I wanted!  I will note that some of the coconut oil, I estimate about 1 Tbsp, refused to mix in no matter how much I stirred.  Actually it wasn't a bad thing that the mixture gelled that much - it was fairly easy to apply it to the cherries, which were still frozen. With the coldness of the cherries, the coconut oil hardened back up quickly and the mixture stayed on the cherries nicely.  Then I melted the chocolate and dipped the coated cherries, and placed them in mini-muffin paper cups.  The chocolate began to cool and the frozen cherries began to melt, so while the first half of the finished batch looked great, the second half was not particularly appetizing-looking!

If I had been thinking, I would have used either a double boiler or a heating pad to keep the chocolate all melty, and kept the coated cherries in the freezer or at least on cold packs to keep them frozen for easy dipping. But at least they tasted great!  They were even better the second day.

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You ever throw together a dish and wonder what you're thinking??

That would be my lunch today.  I really didn't have a plan in mind, just started throwing things together, adding as I went.  The end result . . . well, it wasn't the most appetizing looking . . . probably should have sliced rather than shredded the zucchini for a main dish, or better yet, pureed the zucchini for soup instead . . . but it turned out amazingly good!!


This started out with me wanting to use up a partial zucchini and a box of smoked baby clams. What to do with that??  First I added coconut oil for frying.  Then freshly grated ginger root.  And because I wanted sweetness with the ginger, I added honey.  And because I like lemon with ginger and honey, I added lemon juice.  Then garlic, just because I like garlic, and it goes well with lemon and ginger.  Then I thought it should have a creamy sauce, so I added part of an avocado.  Then at the last second I tossed in a chunk of French type goat cheese for an even creamier sauce.  Black pepper sprinkled on the top of that . . .  I put a little on my plate, wondering if this would taste good, or just plain weird . . . hahaha, it was SO good I went back and ate the rest!!  (And I'm not ashamed to admit I licked my plate!!)

 

Now that I think about it a little, I think next time I would puree the zucchini and make soup. Maybe a wee bit of shredded zucchini swirled with melted goat cheese on top to pretty it up. :)

EDITED TO ADD, Round #2:
Pureed the zucchini this time.  I don't know why, but this garden zucchini had turned yellow instead of staying green.  So the darker flecks should be green, but are yellow instead.  Or, you could peel the zucchini, but I don't bother to do that. Topped with bacon, green onion, and pepper. So delicious!!! :)

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