A Food Post...

Harvesting mizuna mustard micro-greens, late one night. They are very easy to grow, delicious, nutritious and hip!
These are true micros, harvested before the 'true leaves' appear--not baby greens.

People often ask us what we eat, assuming we are vegetarians.  We are omnivores, the meat we eat is either wild deer, hunted in a good way, or organic chicken, fish, or grass fed/finished beef or bison.  We don't eat meat every meal, and usually it is used more in a flavoring capacity.  We try to eat real food-a la Michael Pollan, unprocessed--from the edges of the grocery store, as they say. The important thing to us, with anything consumed, is to be respectful and grateful.  We always eat at the kitchen or picnic table, and enjoy light conversation---unhappy stories or projections are forbidden!

Here is a poem  (or a piece of doggerel, if you are an academic!) written for me in 1967 by my grandfather, accompanied by a hawk feather, it explains a little of my eating philosophy-life lives on life!

The Hawk

This feather from my last year plume
Floats down as I soar high at noon
So you might see the stripe and shade
   of my new one coming soon.
A sharp look out I always keep
For some live thing I like to eat
Sounds bad I know and call me then
A devil and a sinner
But when we stop and think, my dear
We all enjoy our dinner.     -F.W.Zimmerman, 1967

We eat "local" as much as possible.

The lunch we just finished was typical: Homemade kamut pasta, with tomato sauce with home grown tomatoes, shiitake mushrooms, garden herbs and garlic, salad of romaine with home grown micro-greens, home made pickled okra, home made spicy lacto fermented veggies (like a cross between sauerkraut and kim chee), with mixed herb iced tea harvested and dried from our garden.  Lunch is our big meal of the day, dinner is simpler--but always contains something raw, something fermented with beneficial bacteria, something cooked, whole grains...

We try to eat a wide variety of whole foods, so that we don't need to supplement with vitamins. We use unrefined sea salt that has a wide array of minerals. We listen to what our bodies 'want', and that changes with the seasons and from year to year.

Recently I discovered that making pasta is simple, easy and quick...It has a different character than store bought pasta, and we like it much better.

Kamut* Pasta Dough

3 eggs, beaten
2 cups whole kamut flour
1tsp olive oil
half tsp sea salt

Mix salt and flour in large bowl.  Make a 'well' in the center, add oil and eggs.  Mix with fork or hands until it forms a uniform very stiff, but kneadable dough.  (add flour or water accordingly)  Knead for a few minutes, divide into golf ball sized sections.  Cover in a bowl or plastic wrap for 20-30 minutes.  Lightly dust flour on a clean counter top and roll dough out thinner than you think possible, then cut into strips with a knife.  Drop into boiling water, cook until it floats...usually about 2 or 3 minutes.  Toss with a spoonful of olive oil...serve with any sauce.  To eat later (uncooked), air dry overnight, or wrap and freeze.

For spinach pasta: lightly steam 5oz (large package) spinach, squeeze out excess liquid and puree well in blender or food processor. Let cool and use in place of one egg in the recipe above.  You may need to add more flour to compensate for the water content of the spinach.  Any kind of greens can be used.  Finely chopped herbs can also be added to the dough.

Our Farm Site:  http://www.blueskywaters.com/shoofly.html

*Kamut is a mild, buttery-tasting grain rumored to have originally cultivated in ancient Egypt.  It has more protein, vitamins and minerals than wheat.  The whole grain flour is less grainy (but still has a lot of fiber) than whole wheat flour--making it a good choice for noodles.  The flour is available in most natural food stores.

Kamut is a trademark name for khorasan wheat.  It has been trademarked to preserve the integrity of the grain:

The following specifications are laid out by Kamut International Ltd.

KAMUT® brand wheat must:

1. Be the ancient khorasan variety of wheat
2. Be grown only as a certified organic grain
3. Have a protein range of 12 – 18%
4. Be 99% free of contaminating varieties of modern wheat
5. Be 98% free of all signs of disease
6. Contain between 400 and 1000 ppb of selenium
7. Not be used in products in which the name is deceptive or misleading as to the content percentage
8. Not be mixed with modern wheat in pasta
-Info from www.kamut.com