Making the best of things

The theme of the last few weeks has been "We'll make it work."

 Everything is going to hell at the office

We'll make it work

We do the math over and over and to our amazement, we're still stupid broke. 

We'll make it work

Or, the focus of today's post,

I get my menu all set for cooking group, only to find the store is out of pretty much everything I need.

We'll make it work.

Breakfast for dinner is what I promised the lovely participants of the New Columbia cooking group. Homemade breakfast sausage, leek and mushroom egg muffins, 

and a simple fruit salad with whipped cream.

Simple, easy, delicious.

Because work is so insane these days (commencement is in three weeks) I'd waited until a mere hour before cook time to pick up ingredients. Luckily, I thought to myself, this group takes place in the market of a little grocery store in North Portland. I figured I'd be all set.

ha.

A dismal selection of berries (there must have been a raid), no mushrooms, and no ground pork, actually no ground anything. Soooooo, off to our local friendly Fred Meyer.

Still no ground pork.

Okay not true, but no ground pork that didn't look questionable.... you know what I mean.

But they were having a sale on organic, pastured happy ground turkey.
#MakinItWork

I picked up the rest of my ingredients and raced back to the kitchen for class.

This kitchen is a pseudo industrial kitchen, the supplies are ever changing, and most things are GIANT size. So cooking a meal for five people is a comical adventure through big-land.

However, tonight's dilemma was kind of the opposite. I could not for the life of me find normal size muffin tins, just itty-itty bitty mini muffin tins.  So....we'll make... mini egg muffins! 

And apparently all the frying pans had taken a walk, so we cooked our sausage in giant stock pots.

Though we lacked proper cookware, the food turned out delicious. The mini egg muffins were perfectly bite size. We threw the leftovers in the fridge and they made an excellent snack or on-the-go breakfast in the morning.  Things always work out right?
Right.
Though making sausage in a soup pan sucks, use a frying pan. Get it together.


Homemade Breakfast Sausage (paleo, primal, 21DSD)

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground turkey or pork
• 1 apple, granny smith or gala, diced into 1/4inch pieces
• 1 onion, minced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 tsp sage
• 1tsp fennel seed
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• oil or butter for pan

Directions

In a large bowl, combine all ingredients. Work together, with your hands, to evenly distribute spices. Using your hands is really the easiest way. Form meat into small 2-3 inch patties that are no more than 1/2 inch thick.
Melt coconut oil or butter in a large fry pan over medium heat. Add patties to pan and cook for 3-4 minutes per side, or until done through. Finish with additional salt and pepper, if you like.


Leek and Mushroom Egg Muffins (vegetarian, paleo, primal, 21dsd)
Makes 12-16 large egg muffins or 24-36 mini muffins
Ingredients

• 8 eggs
• 2 small leeks, ends trimmed, diced (include the greens!)
• 4 cloves garlic minced
• 1 cup mushrooms (we used shitakes) diced
• 1/4 cup sharp cheddar cheese (optional)
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper

Preheat oven to 350F
Dice up all your veggies. You want them fairly small because they will distribute more evenly throughout the eggs.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk the bejesus out of those eggs. You want them fluffy and happy. Happy eggs taste better. Fold in your leeks, garlic, mushrooms, cheese (if using), and spices.
Mix thoroughly to distribute.
Grease your muffin tin. Ladle egg batter into tin, filling each cup about 2/3 full. Place in preheated oven and cook for 15-20 minutes, or until the muffins pass the toothpick test.

Refrigerate any leftovers for up to a week!

Bacon Jalapeno Winter Squash Soup

Woah. Posting two days in a row! WHAT?!

I have good reason...

Last night we resumed our Village Gardens Cooking Collective at the Village Market store. I met with five eager community members to cook and share a delightful winter meal together. In spite of some serious language barriers, we produced a beautiful blood orange kale salad and lots of winter squash soup.

The soup was stupid good. So I'm sharing the recipe with you because I'm nice like that. And I wrote this recipe, so I'm feeling proud of it.

Bacon Jalapeno Winter Squash Soup

Ingredients

• 2-3lbs Winter squash (acorn, butternut, hubbard)
• 6 strips uncured bacon, cut into 1/2inch pieces (be sure to save the fat after cooking)
• 2 jalapeno, deseeded and diced
• 1 sweet onion, minced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 apple, cored and chopped
• 1 tsp. cumin
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• ½ tsp. salt
• ½ tsp. pepper
• 1 quart chicken stock
• 1 cup heavy cream or full-fat coconut milk

 

Directions

·       Preheat oven to 400F. While oven is preheating, prep all ingredients.

·       In a large soup pot, cook bacon over medium heat until crisp.

·       While bacon is cooking, halve and remove innards from squash. Cut into quarters.

·       When bacon is finished, remove and set aside. Carefully pour remaining fat into small bowl to use later in recipe.

·       Add two tablespoons of rendered bacon fat back to soup pot. Add sliced squash and stir well to coat.

·       Dump oiled squash onto a large rimmed baking sheet and place in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes. Cook until fork tender and browned on top.

·       Add remaining fat to soup pan and sauté the onions, jalapeno, and carrots over medium heat until onions are translucent and carrots begin to soften. Stir frequently so not to burn.

·       Add garlic and remaining spices, stir to coat and cook for another 1-2 minutes, until fragrant.

·       Reduce heat to low and add diced apple and chicken stock and cover pot.

·       Remove squash from oven. Let stand for a few minutes to cool then carefully remove skins from squash.

·       Add squash to soup pot and bring to contents to a  boil 

·        Once boiling, reduce heat and let simmer 10-15 minutes for flavors to meld and squash to get squishy.

·       Using an immersion blender, puree soup until smooth

·       Slowly pour in coconut milk or heavy cream and stir to incorporate.

·       Serve soup with crumbled bacon pieces on top!

January Recipe RoundUp

One of my 2014 goals is to be more adventurous in my cooking, so I've challenged myself to try one new recipe a week. Doesn't sound like a lot right?

Maybe not, but coming home after a long day the thought of cracking open the cook book or pulling something off the interwebs and HOPING it turns out well is not exactly the ideal evening for me these days.

Will it actually only take thirty minutes? 

Does it secretly require six hours of prep? 

Will this really be the best pork roast of my life?

Is this a Pinterest fail in the making?

There's still a cheesecake brownie incident I am trying to live down....

But in spite of some hesitations, I stuck to it and attempted some altogether delightful recipes this month.

To kick the month off, I made a Mexican Braised Beef in the slow cooker for our new year's goals party. This was a combination of my Mom's recipe advice and a solid recipe from The Kitchn. Follow her recipe, it'll surely be awesome. Or take my mom's advice and sub out the diced tomatoes for stewed tomatoes and create something MAGICAL. 

Mexican Braised Beef with roasted cauliflower and kale

Next up, I took some solid advice from PaleOMG and made her Almost Five Ingredient Spaghetti Pie. This was really, really good. Like really good. Like go make this right now. I added mushrooms, parsnips and extra sauce to mine because I can't leave anything alone.

Courtesy of PaleOMG (hers is prettier looking than mine)

I have to say this was almost a fail.  I fell victim to not reading the recipe all the way through first.... I'd assembled this delicious casserole, looked at the next step "Bake at 400 for about an hour." So, my own fault, but dinner was at 9 that night. Worth it.

Tonight, the Village Gardens Cooking Group starts up again and I'm preparing two new recipes. The first, a play on my favorite salad: kale, blood orange and avocado salad with a blood orange vinaigrette. I'm a big fan of raw kale salads and I'm excited to try out a new vinaigrette to mix things up! Hopefully my participants will be equally jazzed about the ease and awesomeness of making homemade salad dressing.

September's Cooking Group hard at work

We are also making a roasted jalapeno and bacon winter squash soup. Sounds tasty right? I hope so! The Food Works farm provided us with some beautiful delicata, acorn and pumpkin squash that we will roast to perfection for our soup! Love sourcing local produce!


My new recipe challenge continues and thanks to my lovely soon-to-be-sister-in-law, I am the proud new owner of Beyond Bacon: Paleo Recipes that Respect the Whole Hog. This book is brilliant and the recipe photos are just absolutely gorgeous. Go check it out! Your eyes and stomach will thank me.