You Might Be A Hippie If...

Sometimes I get so entrenched in my routines that I forget that what I do and how I live is not average or "normal." Then a visitor comes to my house and I see my life through their (wide) eyes and I realize, "Oh, this is kind of different." So, if you're not sure where you fall on the scale of Normal to Weirdo, this post might be helpful to you.

You might be a hippie if-

1- You schedule your week around the Farmers' Markets and picking up your Farm Box.

2- An essential kitchen tool is the roll of painter's tape and the sharpie for marking all of the mystery mason jars in the refrigerator. Otherwise, how do you know what's raw milk, what's kefired milk, what's homemade yogurt, what's homemade sour cream, or whey?

3- You walk outside barefoot as part of your health care regimen.

4- You blacken your teeth with activated charcoal. To get them white.

5- You make your own lotion, deodorant, and toothpaste.

6- Your most used kitchen appliance is your dehydrator. Or your juicer.

7- You spend a half an hour each morning swishing a mouthful of oil.

8- When you're pregnant, the big question is whether or not you'll have a water birth. It's a given that you will birth at home with a midwife.

9- You participate at nurse-ins.

10- You get excited to find a new recipe that uses beets. Or kohlrabi. Or fennel.

11- You plant food plants in the front yard instead of ornamentals.

12- You consider moving to a different neighborhood so you can keep chickens. Or you already have chickens, but want more.

13 - You consider moving to a different neighborhood so you can keep a goat.

14- Your kids are the only ones in their play group that aren't vaccinated.

15- Your dining room has a corner devoted to a collection of 2 gallon jars brewing Kombucha.

16- Your kitchen counters are full of jars bubbling with fermenting foods.

17- You not only know that the head of the FDA used to work for Monsanto, you care. Deeply.

18- You examine the label on every bar of chocolate at Whole Foods for one without the dreaded "soy lecithin."

19- Your toddler doesn't understand how to play with the plastic drive-though toy at the play center. Or orders "broccoli" at the window.

20 - You pack your lunch in glass and stainless steel.

And the top, most telling sign that you might be a hippie? Rinsing and reusing your plastic vegetable bags. Although, if you were really, truly a hippie, you'd bring your own homemade cloth vegetable bags.

Now that you've cleared up your standing on the normal to weirdo scale, let me introduce you to a new favorite dish in our home. As you might know, we used to have pizza every week. And that was one of the saddest parts of giving up grains. No more pizza!  But happily, we have found workarounds. Cauliflower crust pizza is a keeper. We also love making mini pizzas with rounds of squash (maybe lazy me will get around to blogging that someday). But this recipe incorporates pizza flavors with the ease of a quiche. My family gets so excited when it's on the menu!

The top three reasons for making pizza quiche are:

1- It makes two, so there's some for tomorrow's lunch.

2- It's delicious. Everyone will love it.

3- It's real, whole food, so you can enjoy it and not regret it later.







GAPS Pizza Quiche
 - adapted from Spunky Coconut

1 small butternut squash
Olive oil
1 lb Italian sausage
1 onion, diced
2 handfuls spinach or kale
1/4 cup sliced olives
1 can full-fat coconut milk
1/4 cup tomato paste
8 eggs
1/2 tsp sea salt, plus more for sprinkling
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp dried Italian Seasoning
1/4 lb. grated GAPS legal cheese

1- Preheat oven to 350 deg. with rack in the middle of the oven.

2- Peel the butternut squash and slice the neck into 1/4" thick slices. Cut the bulbous part in half and scoop out the seeds.

3- Brush 2 pie dishes with olive oil and lay the squash slices into them, covering as much as possible. Cut the bulbous part of the squash into pieces, fitting them into gaps for better coverage.

4- Brush the squash with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt.

5- Place the pie plates in the oven for 15 minutes.

6- While the squash slices are baking, cook the sausage in a skillet over medium heat.

7- When the sausage is cooked through, remove it to a bowl and set it aside. Pour a tablespoon of olive oil into the skillet and cook the onions until they are softened.

8- When the timer rings, remove the squash from the oven and heat the oven to 375 deg.

9- Divide the onions between the two pie pans.

10- Place the spinach or kale into the skillet over med-low heat. Place a lid on the skillet and cook just to wilt the greens. Remove the lid and let the steam rise off the greens. If they're sweaty, roll them into a kitchen towel or paper towels and squeeze to remove excess moisture. Divide the greens between the two pie plates.

11- Divide the cooked sausage between the two pie plates.

12- In a blender puree the coconut milk and the tomato paste.

13- Add the eggs, salt, garlic powder, Italian seasoning and puree again till frothy.

14- Pour the egg mixture evenly over the sausage. Quickly sprinkle with the cheese and place in the oven right away so they won't lose their loft.

15- Bake for 30 minutes, or until just set in the middle. Let cool for 15 minutes before serving.

Taco Bliss Giveaway

It blows my mind that someone invented the folding chair. I mean, I can barely get the things opened, and someone, looking at a regular chair one day said, "Hmm, if I could fold this up, it would take up way less storage space." And then they made it happen.

Inventors are amazing. When I'm irked by something, I whine and complain about it. If I do think up a solution, it's so impractical it's laughable. Case in point: getting stuck behind a semi going 35 mph on a freeway onramp. Frustration! Solution? Transporters. Like in Star Trek. Why don't we have them??

Clearly I do not have an inventor's brain. And inventor is someone who looks at a problem and then thinks through the steps to a solution. And then takes those steps to improve their life and the lives of countless others.

A friend of mine, Nicolas, is a fanatic about Mexican food. His deep and abiding passion in life is tacos. And Elvis. But that's another post. Back to the tacos. He loves tacos, but was always frustrated with them. Taco shells that shatter when you bite into them? Lame. It's eating taco salad with your hands. 

And really, what is the heart of Mexican food? The reason we love to go to Mexican restaurants? I mean, besides the margaritas. The cheese, of course! Melted, gooey cheese. The more the better!  Where in a typical homemade taco is that ooey gooey delight? You don't get it. By the time you sprinkle your cheese over your cooked meat, the meat is too cold to melt the cheese. Fail!

Such were the ruminations of Nicolas as he worked on a job at a factory that used a laser to cut steel. The light bulb moment hit. Aha! Cut steel into a shape that would hold a taco and then you could bake the taco, melt the cheese, and have peace on earth in our time! Well, maybe not that last one, but you could definitely have a happier dinner table.

Nicolas send me a Taco Rack, his invention, to try and I was super impressed with the craftsmanship (made in America!). It's sturdy stainless steel, so it's good for a lifetime. It's dishwasher safe, which makes it a win in my house. And, bonus, it comes apart to store flat in a drawer! I love that!

I took my Taco Rack to my sister's house to make tacos. (She eats grains, plus her house is way cleaner than mine.) We tried both corn and flour shells, prebaking to crisp, filling with cooked, grass-fed ground beef and cheese, and then baking to make the cheese melt and the heart sing. OMG, what a difference a baking makes. When I packed up to head home my niece was happily chomping one one of them.

At home, I made the GAPS version. My daughter helped me to dream these up and I named them. They're like little canoes of food. Made from zucchinis. Zucanoes. What do you think?

Zucanoes (GAPS-friendly)

zucchinis

Italian sausage

cheese

toppings

sour cream

salsa

Start with smaller zucchinis. You can't use the end of season baseball bats here because they need to fit on the Taco Rack. Preheat the oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.

Cut a V-shaped wedge out of the top of the zucchini, leaving the ends alone. If you cut all the way through, they'll leak. Save your wedges for soup, stir-fries, or to eat with dip. With a spoon, scrape out the seeds. Discard the seeds.

Put the Taco Rack on the cookie sheet and place the zucchinis on the taco rack. Bake in the preheated oven for 10-15 min. (The bake time depends on the size of the zucchinis. You want them crisp/tender)

Cook Italian sausage and stuff the zucchinis 2/3 full with sausage. Sprinkle generously with grated GAPS-legal cheese. Return to the oven and bake till the cheese is nicely melted.

Remove from the oven, top with your choice of fresh toppings. I used chopped tomatoes and drizzled sour cream over them. They were amazingly good! 

Now, to reward you for making it to the bottom of the post, a giveaway!

Because he is kind and generous, Nicolas offered to share the joy of oven-baked tacos with one of my US readers. Leave a comment below to be entered in the giveaway drawing. If you mention the Taco Rack giveaway with a link on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, come back and leave another comment letting me know that for extra entries. I'll do a drawing on Friday and let you know who the lucky winner is!

The Choice

In the movie The Matrix there is an iconic scene where Neo is offered a choice. Take the red pill and learn the truth. The whole truth. With the drawback being that you can never go back.  Or take the blue pill, forget everything you've learned, and go back to life the way it was - comfortable, familiar, totally deluded, dying by inches.

I kind of feel that way about food. I don't remember anyone ever offering me a pill, but somewhere along the line I swallowed one. Now I can't go back. As tiring as it is to look in the refrigerator and sigh, "What can I eat?", as frustrating as it is to try to figure out how to get my family to eat that mystery green item that came in the farm box, as much as I miss the happy days in the kitchen whipping up delicious cookies,  breads, cakes, and marshmallows, I can't go back. You can't unknow knowledge.

I used to not think about the food I ate. If it looked good and tasted good, I ate it. It was not uncommon for a bag of Oreos to jump off the shelf into my cart at the grocery store. When they begged for it, I'd buy my kids sugary breakfast cereals, as a special treat. I also caved when they wanted Otter Pops and I'd have a whole Costco-sized box of them in my freezer all summer long. Some of my husband's favorite recipes feature Cool Whip as a key ingredient; we used to joke that he considered it one of the four basic food groups. And I lived on Diet Coke. Hey, I needed to balance out all those cookies, right?

Then I started a food blog. As I blogged my kitchen exploits, I started reading other blogs and learned from them. I learned recipes, tips, techniques, and I also started seeing a different way of thinking about food. Local, organic, sustainable? Pshaw! That was for weird hippies. Bring on the cookie recipes! Show me the chocolate! Let there be bread!

Then my daughter introduced me to Nourishing Traditions, a cookbook/textbook that fosters the radical notion that food is for nourishment. We should eat to sustain and strengthen our bodies, not for entertainment or  pleasure.

I read through the work of Dr. Westin Price, who traveled the world documenting that traditional people groups who ate their traditional diet had straight, strong, white teeth. Dental caries did not show up until western diets were introduced.

I started reading labels. So many of the foods I used to buy contained high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated fats, and chemical compounds I couldn't even pronounce. Foods marketed to kids had upwards of 30 grams of sugar a serving and a host of preservatives and artificial colors and flavors. I started to realize that couldn't be good for my family!

The more I learned, the more I realized that I was poisoning my family and the way we ate had to change.  Now I read labels obsessively and make most of my food from fresh ingredients, rather than mixes or cans. I've weaned myself off Diet Coke. I buy more greens in a week than we used to eat in a month. Or more.  It's not an easy way to eat. It's a lot more convenient to go through the drive-thru and grab a bag of burgers, rather than menu plan, carefully shop, and prepare a nourishing meal. But I don't have that option any more. (Have you seen the Happy Meal Project?)

Many people would say our diet is odd, unrealistic, or extreme. No grains? Come on! No processed sugar? Right, how's that supposed to work? But now that I know what I know, I can't go back. I can't feed my family food that will make them sick.

So what do I feed them? Horrible gruel that's nasty but "good for them?" No, I feed them food that's actually quite tasty. Once you get rid of additives, preservatives, and artificial colors and flavors, your palate can appreciate how good God made food to taste naturally. Don't believe me? Whip up a batch of these super simple meatballs. Coconut curry meatballs. They're delicious as an appetizer or snack with dipping sauce, or, if you're feeling super adventurous, serve them over spaghetti squash or zucchini spaghetti (which I'm doing tonight) with sauce. Or, if you're not in the same place I am on your food journey, pair them up with noodles and a marinara sauce. (And to keep it all in perspective, I'll tell you a secret. My marinara sauce still comes from a jar. But I read the label before buying!)

Coconut Curry Meatballs
 - adapted from Primal Blueprint Quick & Easy Meals

1-1/2 lbs. ground turkey or chicken
1 carrot, grated
2 garlic cloves
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 egg
2 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp salt
handful of cilantro or parsley

1- Place all of the ingredients into a food processor and pulse until smooth.

2- Divide the mixture into 24 equal portions and shape them with your hands into meatballs.

3- In a large skillet over medium-high heat, heat several tablespoons of olive oil or coconut oil. When it's hot enough so that a small piece of meat sizzles when dropped in the oil, put all the meatballs in.


4- Cook for two minutes, then roll the meatballs over and cook five minutes more. Put a lid on the pan and finish cooking for another 6-8 minutes.